Feeling Good Blog

Brief Intensive Preview Video!
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Brief Intensive Preview Video!

Hi everybody,

My two esteemed colleagues, Angela Krumm, PhD and Jill Levitt, PhD, kindly made a brief video on the upcoming summer intensive. The intensive in Banff last week was blow-away, and I’m hoping the upcoming intensive in Burlingame, California will be as good!

Here’s the video:

 

Here are the details:
High Speed, Drug Free Treatment of Depression and Anxiety
A Four-Day TEAM-CBT Advanced Intensive
July 31 – August 3, Burlingame, California
For more information, click here
phone: 800-258-8411

There will be many cool helpers from my Tuesday group at Stanford helping out with the small group exercises.

If interested, move quickly as the date is fast approaching and the event is almost sold out, only a couple openings left, as attendance is strictly limited. I hope you can join me, and look forward to getting to know you if you attend!

All the best,

David

 

If you are reading this blog on social media, I appreciate it! I would like to invite you to visit my website, http://www.FeelingGood.com, as well. There you will find a wealth of free goodies, including my Feeling Good blogs, my Feeling Good Podcasts with host, Dr. Fabrice Nye, and the Ask Dr. David blogs as well, along with announcements of upcoming workshops, and tons of resources for mental health professionals as well as patients!

Once you link to my blog, you can sign up using the widget at the top of the column to the right of each page. Please forward my blogs to friends as well, especially anyone with an interest in mood problems, psychotherapy, or relationship conflicts.

Thanks! David

Summer Intensives Coming Immediately!
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Summer Intensives Coming Immediately!

Here’s a little slide promo for my upcoming intensives! There’s no sound–we’ll have to figure out how to add some cool music for the next one! I’m flying to Canada tomorrow, July 16th, for the Banff intensive, in fact. It’s right around the corner!

I am offering two four-day intensives for mental health professionals this summer, in Banff, Canada and Burlingame, California. These are always the most effective and rewarding training conferences of the year. Here are the details:

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: A Four-Day Intensive Training

July 17 – 20, Banff, Canada

For more information, click here

Phone: 604.924.0296  Toll-free: 1.800.456.5424

High Speed, Drug Free Treatment of Depression and Anxiety Disorders–

A Four-Day TEAM-CBT Advanced Intensive

July 31 – August 3, Burlingame, California

For more information, click here

phone: 800-258-8411

I hope you can join us!

All the best,

David

If you are reading this blog on social media, I appreciate it! I would like to invite you to visit my website, http://www.FeelingGood.com, as well. There you will find a wealth of free goodies, including my Feeling Good blogs, my Feeling Good Podcasts with host, Dr. Fabrice Nye, and the Ask Dr. David blogs as well, along with announcements of upcoming workshops, and tons of resources for mental health professionals as well as patients!

Once you link to my blog, you can sign up using the widget at the top of the column to the right of each page. Please forward my blogs to friends as well, especially anyone with an interest in mood problems, psychotherapy, or relationship conflicts.

Thanks! David

My Experience Resonates with Mona!
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My Experience Resonates with Mona!

Hello Dr. Burns.

My experience resonates with Mona. Your book, When Panic Attacks, has helped me immensely. It was a turning point in my life. Now I am almost panic free and I am sharing my experience with others so that they can benefit from it.

I always wanted to thank you!

Himanshu

Hi Himanshu,

Thank you for your kind comments, and for giving me the permission to share them on my website. I greatly appreciated it!

David

 

If you are reading this blog on social media, I appreciate it! I would like to invite you to visit my website, http://www.FeelingGood.com, as well. There you will find a wealth of free goodies, including my Feeling Good blogs, my Feeling Good Podcasts with host, Dr. Fabrice Nye, and the Ask Dr. David blogs as well, along with announcements of upcoming workshops, and tons of resources for mental health professionals as well as patients!

Once you link to my blog, you can sign up using the widget at the top of the column to the right of each page. Please forward my blogs to friends as well, especially anyone with an interest in mood problems, psychotherapy, or relationship conflicts.

Thanks! David

 

 

Priceless and Beyond Valuable
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Priceless and Beyond Valuable

Hi, Dr. Burns.

This is Mona, I’m writing to you the second time.

Not sure if you can remember my case with hypochondriasis. I was reading the What-If Technique in your book, When Panic Attacks, and did the exercise, starting with my Negative Thought, “I think I have Hepatitis C or HIV.” As you suggested, I asked myself, “If that were true, what’s the worst that could happen? What am I the most afraid of?” You said you could ask this question over and over, and it was a good way to get at the deepest core fears that fuel our anxiety.

It worked really well, and the end result was, “I’m gonna end up being alone and lonely,” which send tears streaming down my face. As a result, I had a conversation about my fear of rejection with my husband sitting next to me that made me feel very relieved.

Now the second very emotional moment came when I was listening to your podcast describing the case of Ralph which was EXACTLY identical to my case. I couldn’t hold back my tears listening to his struggle and couldn’t stop laughing with my tears coming down when you said the good news is that you’re going to experience the same whenever you have a Hidden Emotion.

I just wanted to let you know that these podcasts are all very constructive and I’d recommend them to anyone who is reading either Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy, or When Panic Attacks. The podcasts really showcase each technique and make the points made in the books crystal clear.

Dr. Burns, I don’t know how to thank you for all these insights and I would like you to know that your contributions are priceless and beyond valuable.

I don’t really believe in God but if you do, God bless you!

Mona

Thank you, Mona! Your email means a great deal to Fabrice and me. We are so happy that people like the Feeling Good Podcasts and find them beneficial! They are fun to do because I really enjoy working with Fabrice, but I hear from many therapists and non-therapists alike who say they really help, and that is what we hoped might happen.

On one of the Sunday hikes, a young therapist who works with children and teenagers told me that he listed to one Podcast per day for 30 days, and this really boosted his understanding of TEAM-CBT. I could see that this was absolutely true, because he has only recently joined my free weekly training group at Stanford, but his psychotherapy skills are simply zooming forward.

Mona, all the very best to you!

David

If you are reading this blog on social media, I appreciate it! I would like to invite you to visit my website, http://www.FeelingGood.com, as well. There you will find a wealth of free goodies, including my Feeling Good blogs, my Feeling Good Podcasts with host, Dr. Fabrice Nye, and the Ask Dr. David blogs as well, along with announcements of upcoming workshops, and tons of resources for mental health professionals as well as patients!

Once you link to my blog, you can sign up using the widget at the top of the column to the right of each page. Please forward my blogs to friends as well, especially anyone with an interest in mood problems, psychotherapy, or relationship conflicts.

Thanks! David

 

Summer Intensives Coming Soon!
by

Summer Intensives Coming Soon!

I am offering two four-day intensives for mental health professionals this summer, in Banff, Canada and Burlingame, California. These are always the most effective and rewarding training conferences of the year. Here are the details:

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: A Four-Day Intensive Training

July 17 – 20, Banff, Canada

For more information, click here

Phone: 604.924.0296  Toll-free: 1.800.456.5424

High Speed, Drug Free Treatment of Depression and Anxiety Disorders–

A Four-Day TEAM-CBT Advanced Intensive

July 31 – August 3, Burlingame, California

For more information, click here

phone: 800-258-8411

If interested, move quickly as the dates are fast approaching and they often sell out, as attendance is limited at both events. I hope you can join us, and look forward to getting to know you if you attend!

All the best,

David

If you are reading this blog on social media, I appreciate it! I would like to invite you to visit my website, http://www.FeelingGood.com, as well. There you will find a wealth of free goodies, including my Feeling Good blogs, my Feeling Good Podcasts with host, Dr. Fabrice Nye, and the Ask Dr. David blogs as well, along with announcements of upcoming workshops, and tons of resources for mental health professionals as well as patients!

Once you link to my blog, you can sign up using the widget at the top of the column to the right of each page. Please forward my blogs to friends as well, especially anyone with an interest in mood problems, psychotherapy, or relationship conflicts.

Thanks! David

Fantastic Email–“I was planning to commit suicide the day you left a copy of Feeling Good at my front door!”
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Fantastic Email–“I was planning to commit suicide the day you left a copy of Feeling Good at my front door!”

Dear friends and colleagues,

I thought you might enjoy this wonderful email I received several days ago, and publish here with the permission of Dr. Robert Schachter, from New York city.

David

Dear David,

I want to share an experience that almost made me cry.  A woman from Nebraska had tracked me down on the internet to treat her mid-20’s daughter who was living in New York.  She said that she had been profoundly affected by Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy.

She went on to say that when her daughter was in preschool, the nursery school teacher was fired and had been very distraught. She had liked this woman and felt very bad for her. So, she went to her house but the woman would not come to the door. She then went home and took her copy of Feeling Good and left it on the woman’s doorstep.

Their paths diverged, but some time later she bumped into her.  The woman came up to her and said, “I just want to thank you.  I want you to know that you saved my life!  My father had committed suicide and the day that you came by, I was planning my own suicide.  That book saved my life.

Thank you.”

Then my patient’s mother said, “God Bless Dr. Burns.”

Bob
Robert Schachter, Ed.D.
Licensed  Psychologist

 

If you are reading this blog on social media, I appreciate it! I would like to invite you to visit my website, http://www.FeelingGood.com, as well. There you will find a wealth of free goodies, including my Feeling Good blogs, my Feeling Good Podcasts with host, Dr. Fabrice Nye, and the Ask Dr. David blogs as well, along with announcements of upcoming workshops, and tons of resources for mental health professionals as well as patients!

Once you link to my blog, you can sign up using the widget at the top of the column to the right of each page. Please forward my blogs to friends as well, especially anyone with an interest in mood problems, psychotherapy, or relationship conflicts.

Thanks! David

Another Cool Video for You! The “Niceness” Disease!
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Another Cool Video for You! The “Niceness” Disease!

Here is another cool short video from Jill Levitt, PhD, who is the Director of Training at the Feeling Good Institute in Mt. View, California, and Taylor Chesney, PhD, who is he Director of Training at the Feeling Good Institute in New York City. But you might enjoy it more if you read the material below the video first!

 

Scenes from a Sunday hike:

 

I have always emphasized the importance of personal healing for therapists, as part of their development as psychotherapists and their growth as human beings. In this video, Dr. Taylor Chesney remembers one of my Sunday hikes when she did some personal healing and came to understand the Hidden Emotion Technique in much greater depth. Something sudden and unexpected happened that had a profound effect on Taylor’s life.

Because Dr. Levitt wasn’t there when Taylor and I were doing our work, I will share a tad of additional information that might illuminate Taylor’s experience while hiking. First, Taylor asked if I could help her with some sudden anxiety she had about transitioning to her private practice at the end of her post-doctoral training. She was extremely anxious and had negative thoughts like, “I won’t get any referrals,” and “My practice will be a failure,” and “I won’t be able to help anyone,” and things along those lines.

Taylor could easily identify the distortions in her thoughts, which included Fortune Telling (making arbitrary negative predictions), Discounting the Positive (since she was highly regarded by everyone in our training program and was already getting many referrals, and had tons of patients who were doing great because of her superb skills), Emotional Reasoning (I feel anxious, so I must be in danger,) and All-or-Nothing Thinking (viewing a private practice as either a smashing success or a total failure) to mention just a few of the cognitive distortions in her negative thoughts. However, Taylor simply could not come up with positive thoughts that effectively crushed the negative thoughts, so she continued to believe them, even though on some level she could see that the negative thoughts were simply not true. She kept clinging to the irrational belief that she’d get no referrals and be totally ineffective in her clinical work, and so forth.

Then I asked myself “why” Dr. Chesney was being so unreasonable, since she was really a sweet, smart, and enthusiastic individual. I began to think about the Hidden Emotion Model, which can be incredibly helpful in the treatment of anxiety, especially when patients seem stuck. The idea behind the Hidden Emotion Technique is that only “nice” people develop anxiety disorders, and it’s often because of some hidden feeling or conflict that the patient has not brought to conscious awareness. The Hidden Emotion or conflict is NOT something that’s buried in the past, it’s something that’s buried in the present–some ordinary thing that’s bugging the patient right now, but you can’t seem to “remember” what it is.

Sometimes the suppressed feeling is a negative one, like anger, but sometimes it can be a positive feeling, which turned out to be the case with Dr. Chesney. And usually, the anxiety is the symbolic expression of the conflict. Once you bring the Hidden Emotion to conscious awareness, and the patient deals with, you will nearly always see a dramatic and sudden reduction in the anxiety, or even a complete elimination of the anxiety.

Essentially, Dr. Chesney seemed to be saying, “private practice won’t work for me and you can’t convince me that I’ll be successful no matter what!” Could it be that some hidden feelings was getting in the way? If you haven’t yet watched the video, take a guess. Then watch the video and you’ll find out what the Hidden Emotion really was! After you’ve finished the brief video, you can link to my final comments if you’re interested in learning a little more.

You can also link to a previous blog on the Hidden Emotion Technique as well as two previous Feeling Good Podcasts on the causes and treatments for anxiety, including the Hidden Emotion Technique:

023: Scared Stiff — What Causes Anxiety? What’s the Cure? (Part 2)

027: Scared Stiff — The Hidden Emotion Model (Part 5)

David

If you are reading this blog on social media, I appreciate it! I would like to invite you to visit my website, http://www.FeelingGood.com, as well. There you will find a wealth of free goodies, including my Feeling Good blogs, my Feeling Good Podcasts with host, Dr. Fabrice Nye, and the Ask Dr. David blogs as well, along with announcements of upcoming workshops, and tons of resources for mental health professionals as well as patients!

Once you link to my blog, you can sign up using the widget at the top of the column to the right of each page. Please forward my blogs to friends as well, especially anyone with an interest in mood problems, psychotherapy, or relationship conflicts.

Thanks! David