Crushing Negative Thoughts / Resurrection / Relapse Prevention Training
In this third and final podcast featuring live therapy with Marilyn, David and Matt move on to the M = Methods phase of the session along, and encourage Marilyn to challenge the Negative Thoughts on her Daily Mood Log. The use Identify the Distortions, the Paradoxical Double Standard Technique, the Externalization of Voices, and Acceptance Paradox. Marilyn emerges as a powerful partner and begins to crush the negative thoughts that had seemed so real, devastating and overwhelming at the start of the session.
David emphasizes that the perceptions of therapists can often be way off base, so even though Marilyn appeared to change—fairly dramatically—during the session, David, Fabrice, and Matt will not know for sure until they review Marilyn’s end of session mood ratings on the Daily Mood Log as well as the Brief Mood Survey, and Evaluation of Therapy Session.
David defines a relapse as one minute or more of feeling lousy. Given this definition, all human beings will “relapse” frequently, including Marilyn. Relapses nearly always feel demoralizing and painful, but do not have to be devastating, or even long-lived, if the patient is prepared for them. No one is entitled to feel happy all the time, but it is entirely possible to keep our inevitable and occasional trips to the gates of hell rather brief. You will hear David and Matt doing Relapse Prevention Training with Marilyn using a number of techniques, including the Externalization of Voices.
Fabrice, Marilyn, Matt and David discuss the session, and what it meant to Marilyn from a personal and spiritual perspective. You can view this session as a powerful psychological experience—Marilyn described it as a “mind-blowing” experience. You can also see it as a profoundly spiritual experience: the emergence, resurrection, or rebirth from the “Dark Night of the Soul.” And you can ask yourself—did a genuine miracle happen here today?
Matt, Fabrice, and I are deeply indebted to Marilyn for making this phenomenal and intensely personal experience available to all of us. Thank you, Marilyn. We love you!
I want to thank my co-host, Fabrice, for making these podcasts happen! What a joy it is to work with you every week, Fabrice!
I also want to thank you, Matt, for support and friendship over these many years! Matt, as you know, I often sing your praises in my workshops around the country, telling people how amazing you are. Now they will see what I mean first-hand!
I hope that through these three podcasts, Marilyn has touched you and many people. If you were helped by these recordings, please let your friends and colleagues know, so that they might have the chance to “tune in” as well.
In the show notes for the first session with Marilyn, I mentioned the highly controversial theory that our pain usually results from our thoughts, and not from the circumstances of our lives, and put a link to a survey on the home page to see what you thought.
What do you think now? If you are interested, take thirty seconds to indicate your thinking on the survey below. Then we can look at the results of our informal experiment, and see if your thinking has changed.
[polldaddy poll=9770372]
Note: We’ll publish the raw, uncut version of the complete session separately (iTunes does not seem to distinguish it from the regular podcast episode).
