Rhonda starts today’s podcast, as usual, with a warm
endorsement from Sally, a podcast fan who really liked Podcast 355
on the topic of “Relationship Problems: Be Gone!” She said the
role-play demonstrations were “incredible” and especially helpful.
We’ll keep that in mind and see if we can do some more role-playing
demonstrations in future podcasts, along with instructions so you
can practice at home, as well.
This can be extremely helpful if you want to master the
techniques we describe. They may sound simple, but they’re not! In
our recent podcast on free practice groups (put LINK), you can find
many virtual practice groups you can join from home to practice
many of the techniques in TEAM-CBT with like-minded colleagues and
become part of the growing TEAM-CBT community. We now have many
excellent and free practice groups for the general public as well
as and training groups for shrinks.
Today, Mina returns to the show with a new
problem—pre-menopausal symptoms that are scaring her and casting a
shadow on her future as well as her marriage with her husband,
Maurice.
Menopause is a topic that freaks many people out, due to
feelings of anxiety and shame which can sometimes be intense.
Today, menopause will be out in the open and front and center.
However, Meina is confused because so many problems and feelings
are swirling around in her head, and she doesn’t quite know where
to start.
At the start of the session,
Mina's
Brief
Mood Survey indicated mild depression, severe
anxiety, moderate to severe anger, and greatly diminished feelings
of happiness and relationship satisfaction, thinking of her
husband, Maurice.f
If you review
Mina’s Daily Mood Log. you can see that the
Upsetting Event is irregular periods due to menopause. You can also
see that Mina is struggling with fairly feelings of depression,
anxiety, shame, inadequacy, loneliness, embarrassment,
hopelessness, frustration and anger, and she’s giving herself some
intensely negative messages, like “My body is falling apart,” and
“My husband will leave me,” and “I’ll get osteoporosis and die in
pain like my grandmother,” and more.
During the initial Empathy phase of the session, Mina described
quite a lot of personal and professional concerns, as well as
somatic complaints of various kinds. Sometimes, in the past, Mina
has developed numerous somatic complaints that terrify her, because
she has interpreted them as possible serious diseases, like
multiple sclerosis. However, excellent physical evaluations rarely
or never provide any medical evidence or explanation for her
symptoms.
This pattern of obsessing about somatic symptoms is actually
quite common. Many general practice doctors report that as many as
a third of their patients complaining of pain, dizziness, and so
forth do not have any medical disease that could possibly explain
the symptoms. In fact, in his classic book, Caring for Patients,
the late Dr. Allen Barbour from Stanford reported that about half
of these types of patients experience a disappearance of their
somatic symptoms when they identify some conflict or problem that
they've been avoiding, and then take steps to express their
feelings or solve the repressed problem.
Pretty much every time, this has been true of Mina, too. It
often turns out that she is upset about something she is sweeping
under the rug, and the Hidden Emotion Technique has proved
extremely helpful in pinpointing the hidden feeling or conflict.
Then, as soon as she acts on this information, and expresses her
feelings, the somatic problems immediately disappear.
So, our first task in today's session was to see if the same
thing was happening. It turned out that she was quite upset with
her husband, Maurice, so we did a Relationship Journal to see if we
could get a better understanding of what was going on. Her
complaint was that Maurice did not want to talk about “difficult
feelings.” Instead, he suggests they go for a nature walk or watch
a movie. So, she felt sad, anxious, rejected, hurt, frustrated, and
alone.
But, as is the case nearly 100% of the time, when we examined a
brief interaction between them—what did he say and what did she say
next—it became clear that she was actually pushing him away and
putting him down. This was understandably painful for Mina to see,
and a bit embarrassing, but she was super brave, and saw how she
could use the Five Secrets to respond to Maurice in a radically
different and more inviting manner.
As an aside, the person who seeks treatment for a relationship
problem will nearly always discover that they have actually be
causing the very problem they’re
complaining about. If Mina’s husband had come to us for help, he
would have made the exact same shocking discovery—that HE was
causing the problem he was complaining about.
I call this strange but fascinating phenomenon the “theory of
interpersonal relativity.”
Mina feared abandonment, but discovered that her real problem
was that she was rejecting her husband, and forcing him to reject
her!
Although this type of sudden insight can be tremendously
painful, it is also liberating at the same time. That's because
people discover that they have far more power than they thought.
Mina felt helpless, but was actually pulling the strings. Once you
“see” this, you have the option of moving in a radically new and
more rewarding direction. Mina promised to send a follow up once
she’s had the chance to try a new approach during her interactions
with Maurice. We have our fingers crossed!
In addition, we worked with Mina's negative thoughts and
feelings on her Daily Mood Log, starting with Positive Reframing,
which she found helpful. What did her negative thoughts and
feelings show about her that was positive and awesome, and how were
they helping her?
Then we did several rounds of Externalization of Voices and she
was quickly able to knock her negative thoughts out of the park,
with incredible results that you can see if you examine the
emotions goal and outcome columns on her emotions table
HERE. As you can see, there was an immediate
and dramatic reduction in all of her negative feelings.
We publish these TEAM-CBT sessions because we believe that the
vast majority of mental health professionals do not know how to
trigger rapid and extreme changes in how people think, feel, and
interact with others. It is our hope that these podcast live
therapy sessions, in conjunction with our weekly training groups,
will make mental health professionals aware of what’s now possible,
and how TEAM-CBT actually works. We try to make it look simple, but
it requires tremendous training, practice, and commitment.
Rhonda and I have strong, tender feelings toward our dear
colleague, Mina, and we are deeply indebted to her for making
herself vulnerable in a public forum so that we can all learn and
feel much closer to one another. Personal work is one of our finest
teaching tools.
In addition, feelings of respect, love, and connection are so
often missing in our embattled and hostile political and world
environment these days. We cannot change the world, but we can
definitely make our own small ripples in the pond, and work on
changing ourselves.
This podcast features David D. Burns MD, author of "Feeling Good, The New Mood Therapy," describing powerful new techniques to overcome depression and anxiety and develop greater joy and self-esteem. For therapists and the general public alike!