Dr. David Burns

85. Let's see. How frustrated?

And how angry?

Any other negative feelings?

Sure. Now, yeah, I'm so sad to hear because these scores are really, really intense. And there is another point that we were talking about, because, you know, if the goal of our work is to reduce these feelings, then we want to know how severe they are.

And if I or maybe any of your listeners were to rate how you feel in these, let's see, nine dimensions, we would be way off because I would say, oh, this guy is a happy guy. He's got it all.

But in point of fact, your suffering inside is incredibly intense, almost beyond human understanding for someone to grasp just how profound your anxiety is and your sadness and your guilt and inadequacy, your loneliness, embarrassment and hopelessness and frustration and anger.

And I want you to know that when I hear that and hear what a wonderful person you are, I just like and admire you so tremendously. I feel sad that you're hurting this much inside. How how accurately am I kind of getting how you're thinking and feeling?

Yeah. The profound, profound loneliness. Uh, yeah. The, uh, let me, uh, I kind of hate to push this and move rapidly, but I'll try that anyway. Suppose we work together really successfully, and at the end of our session you said, wow, that really knocked my socks off. What would happen? What would you be hoping for?

Right. So would that involve no longer believing these messages so strongly and no longer believing these negative feelings so strongly?

Yeah. Which are the ones that you might not want to let go of?

Oh, I love that. Let me write that down here. In fact, let's do this with all of your feelings. The frustration, you say it's motivated me to work on myself. Yes. Yeah, and also... motivated me to work. Another good thing about frustration is that it shows you haven't given up. Right? Yep. Is that a good thing?

Yeah, haven't given up. Frustration was the hardest one for me to figure out what was good about it when I first developed positive reframing. And the second hardest one was hopelessness. What are some good things about your anxiety?

Yeah, yeah, I love that. I love that. I have that same thought, you know, every day. It's like a go-to thought. Like, I have to do something like... I had to check something in our bank balance, something like some financial thing. My wife takes care of things, and then my automatic thought, well, I'm not going to be able to figure out how to do this. And it seems very real.

I might put it off for a day or two. And any other good things about anxiety? It kind of motivates you to face your fears.

Yeah. Yeah. Is that important?

Is that real? That's very real. Is that important or is that powerful?

Yeah, awesome. And then how about what's really beautiful and awesome about your sadness? In fact, there's three questions we can ask about each negative feeling. Why is this appropriate? How does it help me? And what does it show about my core values that's positive and awesome?

Let me write that down. Maybe I can send you the list later. I don't know if you're writing any of these down. I'm not. It's highly desirable to write them down. If you have a piece of paper there, care about others, because this is so important, the things that you're saying here. Yeah, what else does the sadness show about you that's positive and awesome? How does it help you?

Yeah, that you have high standards, high expectations. Is that real? That's very real. Is that powerful?

Is that important?