Dr. Alok 'Dr. K' Kanojia

Now that I failed this test.

I'm not going to get a 4.0 GPA.

If I won't get a 4.0 GPA, I won't get into college.

If I don't get into med school, then I won't make my parents proud and I won't ever get married.

And like all these things happen, right?

So we look at this one thing in life, whether we get dumped or we get a bad grade or whatever, we become hyper-focused on it.

So instead, what dereflection is, is taking a step back and looking at how even this setback...

which existential psychotherapy does a great job of this.

Existential psychotherapy says that life is full of suffering, right?

So suffering, there's some amount of unavoidable suffering.

Buddha said the same thing.

The key thing is how we respond to it.

So when we have these setbacks, what dereflection encourages us to do is pivot towards something called a transcendental value.

So pivot towards something that matters to you that is greater than this problem.

So I'll give you all a couple of examples of how I do this with patients.

So let's say you fail a class, okay?

And now you're catastrophizing.

So when I work with people, what I'll do is I'll ask them, okay, like, so sure you failed, but let's think about this for a second.

How useful do you think it is to be someone...

who is capable of bouncing back from failure?