Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy

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Our research has documented that the negative thoughts which cause your emotional turmoil nearly always contain gross distortions. Although these thoughts appear valid, you will learn that they are irrational or just plain wrong, and that twisted thinking is a major cause of your suffering.

Every time you feel depressed about something, try to identify a corresponding negative thought you had just prior to and during the depression. Because these thoughts have actually created your bad mood […] By learning to restructure them, you can change your mood.

When you are sad, your thoughts will represent a realistic interpretation of negative events. When you are depressed or anxious, your thoughts will always be illogical, distorted, unrealistic, or just plain wrong.

When you are depressed, you wear a pair of eyeglasses with special lenses that filter out anything positive.

You arbitrarily jump to a negative conclusion that is not justified by the facts of the situation. Two examples of this are “mind reading” and “the fortune teller error.”

Cognitive distortions: All-or-nothing thinking, Overgeneralization, Mental filter, Disqualifying the positive, Jumping to conclusions (Mind reading and The fortune teller error), Magnification/Minimization, Emotional reasoning, Should statements, Labeling, Personalization (Blame).

MENTAL FILTER: You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that colors the entire beaker of water.

DISQUALIFYING THE POSITIVE: You reject positive experiences by insisting they “don’t count” for some reason or other.

What is the key to releasing yourself from your emotional prison? Simply this: Your thoughts create your emotions; therefore, your emotions cannot prove that your thoughts are accurate.

Unpleasant feelings merely indicate that you are thinking something negative and believing it. Your emotions follow your thoughts just as surely as baby ducks follow their mother. But the fact that the baby ducks follow faithfully along doesn’t prove that the mother knows where she is going!

He measured himself by the way others looked at him and by what he had achieved. If his cravings for approval and accomplishment were not satisfied, Eric sensed he would be nothing because there would be no true support from within.

The great majority of depressed individuals are in fact very much loved, but it doesn’t help one bit because self-love and self-esteem are missing. At the bottom line, only your own sense of self-worth determines how you feel.

One of the cardinal features of cognitive therapy is that it stubbornly refuses to buy into your sense of worthlessness.

The simple exercise of answering your negative thoughts with rational responses on a daily basis is at the heart of the cognitive method.

This type of criticism incapacitated her because it created the impression that she had a personal problem so big and bad that no one could do anything about it. The emotional upset this labeling caused prevented her from defining the real problem, breaking it down into its specific parts, and applying appropriate solutions

Would you say that states of mood elevation and happiness prove you are great or especially worthy? Or do they simply mean that you are feeling good?

When you are depressed, you get so frozen in the pain of the present moment that you forget entirely that you ever felt better in the past and find it inconceivable that you might feel more positive in the future. Therefore, any activity will seem pointless because you are absolutely certain your lack of motivation and sense of oppression are unending and irreversible. From this perspective the suggestion that you do something to “help yourself” might sound as ludicrous and insensitive as telling a dying man to cheer up.

You might also inadvertently distract yourself from the task at hand by obsessing about endless other things you haven’t gotten around to doing yet. To illustrate how irrational this is, imagine that every time you sat down to eat, you thought about all the food you would have to eat during your lifetime.

His lack of satisfaction results from the fact that he always finds a way to discredit his efforts. His bad habit of saying “It doesn’t count” successfully torpedoes any sense of fulfillment.

If I evaluated my work exclusively on the outcome or product, I would experience a sense of exhilaration whenever a patient did well, and feel defeated and defective whenever a patient reacted negatively. This would make my emotional life a roller coaster, and my self-esteem would go up and down in an exhausting and unpredictable manner all day long. But if I admit to myself that all I can control is the input I provide in the therapeutic process, I can pride myself on good consistent work regardless of the outcome of any particular session. It was a great personal victory when I learned to evaluate my work based on the process rather than on the product.

When you try to talk back to [your upsetting thoughts], they’ll come at you even harder from all angles with such speed that you won’t even know what hit you. But when you write them down, they become exposed to the light of reason.

Dare to put modest time limits on what you do! Have the courage to walk away from an unfinished task!

If you translate shoulds into wants, you will be treating yourself with a sense of respect.

An extremely successful cognitive technique involves testing your negative predictions with actual experiments. Suppose, for example, you’ve been telling yourself: “I’m so upset I can’t concentrate well enough to read anything at all.” As a way of testing this hypothesis, sit down with today’s newspaper and read one sentence, and then see if you can summarize the sentence out loud.

Instead, ask the person [who criticizes you] a series of specific questions designed to find out exactly what he or she means. Try to avoid being judgmental or defensive as you ask the questions. Constantly ask for more and more specific information. Attempt to see the world through the critic’s eyes. If the person attacks you with vague, insulting labels, ask him or her to be more specific and to point out exactly what it is about you the person dislikes.

Whether your critic is right or wrong, initially find some way to agree with him or her.

How can you agree with someone when you feel certain that what is being said is utter nonsense? It’s easy — you can agree in principle with the criticism, or you can find some grain of truth in the statement and agree with that, or you can acknowledge that the person’s upset is understandable because it is based on how he or she views the situation.

You will notice you have a profound, almost irresistible tendency to defend yourself when you are unjustly accused. This is a MAJOR mistake! If you give in to this tendency, you will find that the intensity of your opponent’s attack increases!

It can be immensely helpful to find a friend to role-play the difficult situation with you afterward so that you can practice a variety of responses until you have mastered an approach you are comfortable with.

I find that the following method is highly effective [to silence a heckler in an inoffensive manner]: (1) I immediately thank the person for his or her comments; (2) acknowledge that the points brought up are indeed important; and (3) I emphasize that there is a need for more knowledge about the points raised, and I encourage my critic to pursue meaningful research and investigation of the topic. Finally, I invite the heckler to share his or her views with me further after the close of the session.

The perception of unfairness or injustice is the ultimate cause of most, if not all, anger.

Your assumption that they are “being unfair” implies that your way of looking at things is universally accepted. For this to be the case, everyone would have to be the same. But we aren’t. We all think differently. When you overlook this and blame the other person for being “unfair” you are unnecessarily polarizing the interaction because the other person will feel insulted and defensive. Then the two of you will argue fruitlessly about who is “right.” The whole dispute is based on the illusion of “absolute fairness.”

Suppose you are enraged about some senseless violence you read about in the paper. Here the act seems clearly hurtful and immoral. Nevertheless, your anger may not be [useful] if — as is usually the case — there is nothing you plan to do about it. If, in contrast, you choose to help the victims or begin a campaign to fight crime in some way, your anger might again be [useful].

He asked himself: What have we learned in the laboratory about the most effective scientific methods for influencing all living organisms, including bacteria, plants, and rats? Can we apply these principles to wayward and sometimes brutal husbands? The answer to these questions was straightforward — reward the desired behavior instead of punishing the undesired behavior.

If you learn to see the world through other people’s eyes, you will often be surprised to realize their actions are not unfair from their point of view.

Change and learning occur most readily when you (a) recognize that an error has occurred and (b) develop a strategy for correcting the problem. An attitude of self-love and relaxation facilitates this, whereas guilt often interferes.

All human beings make mistakes, like sometimes paying too much.

If you feel obligated to please everyone, your family and friends will be able to coerce you effectively into doing many things that may not be in your best self-interest. To cite a trivial example, how many social invitations have you halfheartedly accepted so as not to hurt someone’s feelings?

When Margaret did confront [her brother], she found he was not nearly as tough […] as she imagined. He actually seemed relieved and began to act more adult when she put some limits on the relationship.

Remember that the hurt you inflict in the long run by not following your best self-interest is usually far greater.

When people whine and complain, they are usually feeling irritated, overwhelmed, and insecure. When you try to help them, this sounds to them like criticism because it implies they aren’t handling things properly. In contrast, when you agree with them and add a compliment, they feel endorsed, and they then usually relax and quiet down.

First, while her illness had reduced her productivity, she still contributed to herself and her family in numerous small but nevertheless important and precious ways. Only all-or-nothing thinking could make her think her contributions were a zero. Second, and much more important, she realized her personal worth was constant and steady; it was a given that was unrelated to her achievements. This meant that her human worth did not have to be earned, and she was every bit as precious in her weakened state.

For example, if one of his associates lost a big sale, he’d simply say, “It’s not the end of the world; keep plugging.” But if it happened to him he’d say, “I’m a loser.”

And that’s why a lot of people who have won fame and fortune are unhappy. It’s just an example of perfectionistic standards. You can go on and on and on, and no matter how much achievement you experience, you can always say, “I could have done more.” This is an arbitrary way of punishing yourself.

The beauty of the downward-arrow method is that it is inductive and Socratic: Through a process of thoughtful questioning, you discover on your own the beliefs that defeat you.

Imagine the bewildering array of explanations for suffering that you would hear if you went to a religious counselor (spiritual factors), a psychiatrist in a Communist country (the social-political-economic environment), a Freudian analyst (internalized anger), a behavior therapist (a low rate of positive reinforcement), a drug-oriented psychiatrist (genetic factors and brain-chemistry imbalance), a family therapist (disturbed interpersonal relationships), etc.!

“Why is that upsetting to me? What does it mean to me?”

The price you pay for your addiction to praise will be an extreme vulnerability to the opinions of others.

It’s a fact that approval feels good. There’s nothing wrong with that; it’s natural and healthy. It is also a fact that disapproval and rejection usually taste bitter and unpleasant. This is human and understandable. But you are swimming in deep, turbulent waters if you continue to believe that approval and disapproval are the proper and ultimate yardsticks with which to measure your worth.

“[…] Disapproval can be uncomfortable, but it doesn’t mean I’m less of a person.”

Criticism and disapproval can upset you only to the extent that you “buy into” the accusations being brought against you.

If you are an approval addict, you are in the bad habit of flicking your inner switch only when someone else shines their light on you first.

If you do [this exercise] alone, write “self” in this column. (This word will remind you that you are never really alone, since you are always with yourself!)

While women are not immune to career concerns, they are more likely to be depressed after the loss of love or approval. Men, in contrast, are especially vulnerable to concerns about career failure because they’ve been programmed from childhood to base their worth on their accomplishments.

Clearly, happiness and great achievement have no necessary connection.

Write down the worst persecutory insults you can level at yourself and then answer them. It may be hard at first, but eventually the truth will dawn on you—you can be imperfect or unsuccessful or unloved by others, but not one iota less worth-while.

Self-esteem can be viewed as your decision to treat yourself like a beloved friend. Imagine that some VIP you respect came unexpectedly to visit you one day. How might you treat that person? You would wear your best clothes and offer your finest wine and food, and you would do everything you could to make him feel comfortable and pleased with his visit. You would be sure to let him know how highly you valued him, and how honored you were that he chose to spend some time with you. Now — why not treat yourself like that?

You will fully acknowledge your positive attributes without false humility or a sense of superiority, and will freely admit to all your errors and inadequacies without any sense of inferiority or self-depreciation whatever. This attitude embodies the essence of self-love and self-respect. It does not have to be earned, and it cannot be earned in any way.

You don’t have to earn love or respect on the treadmill, and you don’t have to be number one before you can feel fulfilled.

How could you set up process goals if you were applying for a job? You could (1) dress in a confident, appealing manner; (2) have your résumé edited by a knowledgeable friend and typed professionally; (3) give the prospective employer one or more compliments during the interview; (4) express an interest in the company and encourage the interviewer to talk about himself; (5) when the prospective employer tells you about his work, say something positive, using an upbeat approach; (6) if the interviewer makes a critical or negative comment about you, immediately agree, using the disarming technique introduced in Chapter 6.

Suppose on the average it takes about ten to fifteen interviews for each acceptable job offer you receive in your profession (a typical batting average for people I know who have been recently looking for work). This means you’ve got to go out and get those nine to fourteen rejections over with in order to get the job you want! So each morning say, “I’ll try to get as many rejections as possible today.” And each time you do get rejected you can say, “I was successfully rejected. This brings me one important step closer to my goal.”

Suppose the motel bed is too lumpy and you paid fifty-six dollars for the room. You called the front desk, and they have no other beds or rooms available. Tough! Now you can double your trouble by demanding perfection, or you can conjure up your “happy, imperfect” memory. Remember the time you camped out and slept on the ground and loved it? So you can certainly enjoy yourself in this motel room if you choose! Again, it’s up to you.

When I started my academic career, I spent over two years writing the first research paper I published. It was an excellent product, and I’m still quite proud of it. But I noticed that in the same time period, many of my peers who were of equal intelligence wrote and published numerous papers. So I asked myself — am I better off with one publication that contains ninety-eight “units of excellence,” or ten papers that are each worth only eighty “units of excellence”? In the latter case, I would actually end up with 800 “excellence units,” and I would be way ahead of the game. This realization was a strong personal persuader, and I decided to lower my standards a bit. My productivity then became dramatically enhanced, as well as my levels of satisfaction.

After writing down my automatic thoughts, I was able to pinpoint the irrational assumption that caused me to get upset over her ingratitude. It was, “If I do something to help someone, they are duty-bound to feel grateful and reward me for it.” It would be nice if things worked like this, but it’s simply not the case.

However, it is also clear that psychotherapy does not work for everyone, and that some depressed patients recover faster with the help of an antidepressant.

The method that helped this patient is also called the “double-standard technique.” It is based on the idea that many of us operate on a double standard. We may judge ourselves in a harsh, critical, demanding way, and yet we judge others in a more compassionate and reasonable manner.

Patients who feel hopeless usually cannot see that they are deceiving themselves. They are nearly always convinced these feelings are entirely valid. […] One of the most important tasks of any therapist is to help depressed patients find the courage and determination to resist and fight these hopeless feelings. This battle is often fierce and rarely easy, but nearly always rewarding in the long run.

Patients can be so incredibly persuasive about their hopelessness that even their doctors and families may start believing them after a while. Early in my career I grappled with this and often felt tempted to give up on particularly difficult patients. But a trusted colleague urged me never to give in to the belief that any patient was hopeless. Throughout my career, this policy has paid off. No matter what type of treatment you receive, faith and persistence can be the keys to success. I cannot emphasize this enough.