Dr. Matt May

I love that too, David. Yeah. Just to further the conversation a little bit, I'd be interested in your response. I can't read the mind of the person who posted on Reddit, and I actually haven't gone to track down their actual statements, but imagine that their personal experience was that they were helped significantly.

Through the their religious beliefs that the idea that they have a soul that's eternal, that they'll have an afterlife, that God loves them, that that has led to a sense of safety and peace and comfort for them and for their and for their community. It makes sense to me that they might feel threatened. Right. Sure.

Uh, or scared if people are trying to pull the rug out from under their feet on a set of ideas that has been extremely comforting to them. And, and so my guess is that he's trying to be in a protective role. Um, and yeah, I, I can kind of see where that's coming from. Sure. I, I, and I also, also totally as a bit of a hero, right. Sees himself as a bit of a hero protecting folks who might, uh,

Straight from the faith.

Yeah, exactly. And it leads to this in-group, out-group thinking that is so dangerous in humans to think of ourselves as, okay, we're in this group. We identify as Christian or Lutheran or Muslim. And therefore, everyone else is on the outside. Yeah, right. And that creates so much conflict and suffering.

Yeah, and I guess if we wanted an aggressive response to this individual, we could ask, well, what about all the brainwashing of children at a young age before they can actually think through ideas that are presented to them? It's not a mystery that most people who are Christian were raised in Christian families, and most people who are Jewish were raised in Jewish families. Yeah.

And those ideas can have a danger in and of themselves, too.

So I agree with you that it's important to be able to talk about these ideas as adults in a format where we can just be open to talking about it. Yeah.

Right. That seems like a bad idea to me. And we can attack that idea without attacking the people, whoever has that idea. You know, it's, it's problematic. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I can dive in there with a couple of quick thoughts, one of which would be to respond with a question, which is what would it be worth to him for him to be accountable to doing his homework? How important is that to him? What would he be willing to give in order to be accountable and consistent doing his homework?

Zero percent.

I like that a lot. I think what you were getting at earlier, David, too, is that there's even an upstream question when it comes to procrastination, which is a person willing to pay the price of getting started when they don't feel like it. Exactly. Exactly. Are they wanting to feel like doing the exercises first and then do the exercises?

Or are they willing to commit to doing the exercises even when they really, really, really don't want to?

Yeah, I'm afraid to let you down there. I've got methods that can just, you know, return the joy to your life and the happiness. But it would be something that you'd have to do all the hard, hard work on. And it's really unfair.

And that can be a very effective technique to to write down as an exposure exercise. What would I have to do? Yeah, because people can get kind of deer in the headlights and frozen up. And oh, yeah, you helped me when I was stuck doing my laundry. I couldn't do my laundry.

Yeah, I was stuck in a kind of rebellious phase, and I'd gone to Costco many times just to buy new packages of underwear, 30 pounds.

I got really into it for a while, and I had a pile of laundry bigger than me.

I'm pretty well prepared for underwear emergencies.

I'm ready to go.

$7.95.

That's the price. Okay. I think other considerations are things like making very small commitments and giving yourself credit for doing those. To put a star in your calendar every time you do your homework. Because people return to doing things because they get some positive, you know, stroking or experience or something like that as a result of doing it.

I'm glad that you added that. It actually, it sounds similar to something I was going to add into the conversation too, which is the idea of having a personality or a self implies that it's unchanging, right? And I think that's a problem or can lead to a sense of hopelessness. Yeah, right.

Like one useful way of defining a personality might be, you know, the habits that we have in our thinking are ways of relating to other people in our behaviors. And those are just habits or behaviors that, in fact, we can change. We can practice a different set of behaviors. If I wanted to be more outgoing, I could just practice being more outgoing.

Or if I wanted to be more at peace, I could practice being more at peace. And yeah, to not...

Good point.

Yeah, I liked your response. So... My thinking, I'll just re-express, and it hasn't changed much as a result of this question or this conversation. It's simply that I don't, I can't imagine something other than the brain being responsible for our decision-making. And certainly we all make decisions. We can witness that. And the question is, can we control what our brain is doing in the moment?

And I don't think that that's possible. I think our brain just has an atomic structure that operates according to the laws of physics and that there's nothing else that could control it outside of... There's nothing else determining our decision-making other than the operation of our brain. And it doesn't make sense to me the hypothesis of a self that's operating the brain or the idea that we...

could somewhere from some outside space control the brain isn't a reasonable hypothesis in my opinion. I don't know how to explain it that well. It's hard to explain something you don't believe.

We'd have just a different universe. I can't even imagine what that might be like.

Yeah, the reason this topic is interesting to me is that I think it can be useful to rid ourselves of blame, both self-blame and other blame, that if we couldn't have done differently than what our brains chose to do, then we shouldn't have done differently. So if you want forgiveness or if you want to forgive someone else, this is one approach you can take. And I found it useful personally.

A lot of my patients have found it liberating to let go of some idea of a self that's operating their brain and to realize we're just a product of nature and nurture that we didn't choose.

Yeah, I can be changed by a cheeseburger. I can go from feeling hungry and angry to very satisfied.

I guess maybe one thing is like saying that is unlikely to change their opinion. Exactly, exactly. And so I don't think you're in much danger of pulling the rug out from underneath them.

Yeah, there was one other statement this person brought up in the email exchange that we had, and I really appreciated that email exchange. But it was a concern about viewing people as like a clockworks, that if my view is that they don't have a self or a soul, that they're really just like machines.

And one thing I wanted to acknowledge there was that we all have feelings, and so we're not machines. And those feelings are very real. And that's why we care about each other. So I think the philosophy that there's no self or free will is actually consistent with caring about people a lot. And I just wanted to bring that out into the conversation.

Right.

I have maybe one brief thing to say about that, which is just guilty as charged. I'm often very aggressive when I'm debating an idea. And sometimes that even kind of crosses over a boundary, I think, of attacking the person with the idea. And I feel really sad if I have harmed anyone or disrespected someone based on their belief system. I respect anyone of any belief system.

And yeah, I have no place to judge others based on their belief system. I do like the freedom that we have to kind of debate ideas. I think that's important and would like to continue to do that. But I don't want to do any harm or cause anyone suffering or to feel judged based on the way I'm approaching this conversation. So, yeah, I'm sad. I'm sad that they experienced that.

And I'm glad that they brought it up on Reddit for us to talk about here.

So glad to be here with both of you and all of our listening audience.

Yeah.

I cheated and I looked it up online. It means to respect and admire oneself.

I'll try to say some cool things.

Or bears.

Sure. Did you look that up too?

From what I gather, self-confidence is something like believing that you can do something, believing in your skills or abilities to do something. And whereas self-esteem is like admiring oneself and respecting oneself.

Yeah. Yeah, I think that'll be part of the answer to David's question is why would we want to get rid of it? But yeah, I think we could have too much self-confidence believing that we could do something like, say, open heart surgery if we're not a surgeon. And that would be excessive self-confidence. And we could have too much self-esteem, too.

We could we could think highly of ourselves, even if we're doing something kind of terrible. And it would be inappropriate to be approving of ourselves and more appropriate to acknowledge our wrongdoing and let others know that we were not having a lot of self-esteem right now. We're kind of hating ourselves for something that we've done and and then to let go of the self-loathing, too.

Exactly. Yeah. So I think it's very situational, context dependent. And was it adaptive to have confidence here, self-esteem here or not?

Well, I was thinking self-confidence is related to thoughts like I can do this. I have the skills and the abilities to do this. And that that could be adaptive or maladaptive. Like you could... have not enough self-confidence where you actually have the skill to do something, but you don't believe in yourself.

And so you might not, even if you're a cardiac surgeon, give CPR to someone if you have too low of self-confidence and you don't believe in your abilities. Whereas self-esteem would be the sense of admiration for oneself and respecting of oneself, not listening to our inner critic. for example, and but loving ourselves, admiring ourselves. And that can be an antidote to self-loathing.

But it's also not always appropriate to feel that way. I think there are, in fact, times when to say To say, gosh, I'm really hating myself right now for the way I treated you. I really hurt you and I don't like that I did that. I'm not approving of myself right now because I treated you badly. But that would be a more adaptive mood state in certain situations.

Right. And I don't think there's like one mood state or thought that we need to cling to in all situations because they're usually not valuable in all situations.

So to distinguish between self-acceptance and self-esteem? Yes. Yeah, I would consider self-acceptance to be a set of beliefs or thoughts about oneself that is acknowledging shortcomings, flaws, and failures with a light heart. I have many of those flaws, shortcomings, and failings. And so it's a very honest way of appraising oneself. I'm accepting myself with all these flaws and shortcomings.

Whereas I think of self-esteem as I'm focusing on the, I'm admiring, I'm focusing on the positives and kind of defending against the negatives. So I personally like self-acceptance more than self-esteem. It feels more genuine and true to accept ourselves warts and all. than to focus on the positive and defend against or respect ourselves so that we shut down the negative.

Yep. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

That you don't have to earn it, that there's nothing that you have to do to improve or there's nothing you have to have in terms of popularity or wealth or success in order to you just choose to do it. As you said, David, it's a decision that I will approve of myself the way I am and without judgment.

I have a couple of thoughts on that, David. But yeah, thanks for bringing that up because it is a little confusing. Why would you want to get rid of self-acceptance or self-esteem? One answer to that is that if we're still focused on the self, then we're missing out on a whole lot. And letting go of that, you know, gazing into the mirror, which is a bit narcissistic, really,

And focusing on our experience and others and our relationships and our work and things that are meaningful to us, it's more like looking through the window than looking into the mirror.

Maybe knowing when to do those things.

That's powerful self-acceptance. That's the acceptance paradox, right, David?

I have one maybe subtle point and then one question. I'm not sure if we fully explored the question of what is the best way to achieve self-esteem, unconditional self-esteem, and unconditional self-acceptance. That's the premium version, Matt.

Yeah, so I'm not sure that there's one path that's correct for everyone. That's true.

Yeah. But the understanding like which methods are more likely to be effective is based on what kinds of negative thoughts you're prone to. That our thoughts are like just habits that get produced by our brains.

And so to address them in a customized way, like in one moment in time, just one thought helps because in every other moment in the future where you are upset, you'll have the precise same set of negative thoughts, just like I'll always have the same thumbprint. And if I know what method is helpful for me, it will always work for me in the future.

Love that story, David. And I also experienced, I'm not sure if I have severe borderline personality disorder, but I did suffer from the love addiction and the approval addiction where my self-worth was tied up in whether or not other people loved and approved of me. And I did the cost-benefit analysis on that. And it just dissolved right there in front of my eyes.

Yeah, I was thinking, oh, I need to wait around for other people to approve of me before I do, because that'll motivate me to be a wonderful friend and partner. And then I realized, no, that's putting me in a terrible mood and it's not allowing me to connect with the other person. And it's me being real needy and that drives people away.

And when I saw the cost benefit analysis play out, I realized this isn't something I want to do. I want to skip the middleman and just approve of myself.

Yeah, it was super helpful to me. And then the other thing that you recommended to me was to go collect rejections. And that was the behavior that actually really annihilated that belief that I need approval or love from other people. And it gave me tremendous self-esteem, self-confidence, acceptance of myself. Because I realized nothing bad happens if someone rejects you.

That you still have the ability to like yourself from within. And if you're doing that, you're kind of impervious to rejection. And then once I had that experience, then suddenly I connected with someone. And my love life went from rags to riches that day.

Yeah.

It's great spending time with you, Rhonda and David.

I just want to say briefly how proud and grateful and excited I am because I've worked very closely with Brandon and Heather for many years. And I just can't think of anyone more qualified to do a fantastic job on this project. I think it's going to be phenomenal. And I'm just really grateful to the two of you for doing that. I have maybe a couple of comments. One is that

I think some people might still be reluctant to do an AI for therapy. And I wondered if we could address that concern. Like people might say, well, I don't want to be talking to a robot or something like that. But I think you've got some excellent data to show that that's actually not the experience that the users have. And I wondered if maybe David or Brandon or Heather, you could address that.

Yeah, that's been my experience with folks who have used the app is that they describe it as fantastic empathy and tremendously healing. Uh, even for severe, uh, emotional states. And, uh, I guess that's, that's what your data was saying is that it's better than talking to a friend. It's probably better than talking to most therapists and, uh, and it has real results.

And so one of my messages to emergency doctor physicians is don't prescribe a month-long course of benzodiazepines for anxiety. Let psychiatrists handle that because it can actually create a new problem where there was really a solution in the first place called cognitive behavioral therapy. You can learn about that.

You can read David's books, When Panic Attacks, and you can get excellent treatment for panic and anxiety. without going down the side track of getting onto a medication that is highly addictive and hard to get off of. If you've already gotten onto it, go ahead David.

I think the question was about, okay, what's the best way to get off of it if you've gotten onto it? The answer to that is complicated because it would depend on the individual. their circumstances, and the medication that they're on. So one answer might be immediately go cold turkey off of benzodiazepines. That's frequently the correct answer. Really? Yeah.

If you're a young, healthy person who's only taken it for a few days, and you recreationally partied on Xanax, Alprazolam, for a couple of days, and you realized, huh, This has caused me a lot of problems. Like I broke up with my girlfriend, my friends got angry with me, I acted in ways that were irresponsible, I spent too much money. Xanax does all of these things.

Benzodiazepines, they take the break off of our dopamine receptors and they cause us to do things, it's called disinhibition, where we'll behave in radically bizarre ways. And the best thing to do if you're driving down the road and you've got a bag of pills of Xanax and you've just partied for a couple of days, you're a healthy person, you don't have seizures, just get rid of it immediately.

Stop cold turkey. That's often the best plan. An extreme alternative version of that is that you've been on a benzodiazepine to stop your seizure disorder. You've got seizures and if you go off of it, you're going to have more seizures.

And so the plan would be not to go off of your benzodiazepine at all, but to find a new medication that helps you treat your symptoms, prevents you from having seizures, without all of the side effects of a benzodiazepine. So the correct answer actually depends on the individual, the circumstances, and the specific medication involved. And we could write a whole textbook about that.

But I think we lead back to the team model, which is we want to get more information. Like, what are your circumstances? What are your goals? And how long have you been taking a benzodiazepine? Do you have medical circumstances that might predispose you to having a seizure if you acutely go off of a benzodiazepine? So I can't give a general correct answer to a nonspecific question.

But there are some key guidelines that help guide us. And one of them is the half-life. David, you referred to that. which is if you are on a short half-life medication like Alprazolam and you're trying to get off of that, that's going to be a lot more challenging than if you're on a long half-life agent like Chlordiase, Epoxide, or Valium.

You can essentially, for most people, be on a dose of Valium that has a super long half-life and just stop taking it. And it will linger in your bloodstream and in your cerebrospinal fluid for a very long time. And you don't have to worry about crashing or a strong whiplash effect where you get rebound anxiety, etc.

Yeah, if we can avoid that detour along the route of cure, because it just adds a new problem for most people, that most people then get hooked and they now have anxiety, but they also need to get off of an addictive substance.

Matt? Yeah, I like the question too. I can't claim to be an expert on it. There was a book, Music and the Mind, that I read some time ago, and it did resonate with me, to use a musical term. I have some guesses about it. I'll maybe identify two things that I think might be going on with music. So one is rhythm. All music has a rhythm.

And I think human beings are exposed to that early in life, actually while they're in the womb, because sound transmits so clearly through solid matter and liquid, that an unborn child can hear the heartbeat of their mother. And that heartbeat varies according to circumstances that are also related to her neurophysiology. So I think we get an early exposure to music that may be very specific

and create profound emotion. And I think as a species, we've evolved to be very social, that the most important cues that we could be picking up on in our surroundings are related to other people, their facial expressions, their voice, their intonations. And we hear that from a young age, too. We hear the voice of our mother before we're born.

And music has both of those components, both rhythm and melody. And so I think it is easy for us to anthropomorphize or hear another person when we're hearing a frequency. Certain frequencies sound sad, a minor note. Certain sound happy, a major note. And everything in between. And so we pick up on those, we learn those from a very early age.

And I think that when we hear music, we imagine either that emotion is within us or it's coming from outside of us, that we imagine a person speaking to us, talking to us. And it makes a lot of emotional connection to us because of those experiences and those attachments and connections. Those are just guesses. Those could all be wrong.

Again, I haven't seen a lot of science on that, but there are some books about it that might be interesting to people.

But, David, I also like the sentence, I like bullshitting.

So I'm happy to do that all you'd like and ask all the questions you'd wish for me to answer in a bullshit way.

It's really not that important, but I do meet every other Monday with Jacob Towery in person at Palo Alto University. It's an awesome group and really love the people who are attending and love teaching with Dr. Jacob Towery.

You've achieved, achieved enlightenment. I'm very jealous of you.

Well, sure. Harold, I really appreciate the question. The, if you're upset a lot about, you know, thoughts about the world, um, I would invite you to consider whether there might be should statements attached to those thoughts. You listed a couple of different thoughts. And at times, those will be very just true statements about reality. There's just a lot of suffering in life, for example.

And the question I have is whether or not you're also telling yourself that it shouldn't be that way, that there shouldn't be so much suffering. If so, then there would probably be some help for you, and we could probably help address those as should statements the way we would any other self-directed should statement.

Only the path would be a little bit harder, because addressing a self-directed should statement, like I should be better, leads to immediate resolution of guilt, shame, pressure, etc.,

However, if it's outwardly directed, if you're saying the world shouldn't be this way, then you're not going to experience an immediate relief from guilt, but you're going to experience something different, which is an acceptance of the world around you, and you won't be as outraged or angry. And a lot of times people want to feel outraged and angry because it gives them a sense of purpose.

In fact, one of the main things that seems to draw people's attention is outrage. If they're presented with information that causes them to feel very upset, they're more likely to interact with it. They get kind of hooked on ideas that the world shouldn't be this way. And they'll keep clicking and focusing their attention on that.

It's a very addictive substance is blaming and saying the world shouldn't be this way. So it's actually a little bit more challenging to defeat than an internalized, oh, I'm the problem, I shouldn't be this way kind of thought. But the same methods are effective.

You could use the semantic technique, the Socratic technique, and talk back to all your reasons to get focused on this idea that the world should not be this way.

I'd be happy to.

Yeah, there's a tremendous amount of suffering in life. And I've been thinking about you a lot recently and the suffering that you've been experiencing. And it seems really outrageous to me and preposterous that you'd be experiencing so much of that and so little joy after how much you've put in, how hard you've been trying. I'd be feeling pretty pissed off and angry if I were you. Yeah.

And I wonder how you're doing. Could you tell me a little bit, a little more? I'm really glad you're talking about this with me.

Somewhere around, and that's a great question. I don't know. I don't think my grade really matters, just yours.

That explains a lot for me, David. Thank you. I appreciate that.

You helped me a lot just to identify my own niceness and to change sort of the way that I approached dating and interacting with other people in general. Just to be a little bit more selfish was okay. And I really appreciated that one of the most important lessons you taught me is it's okay to get rejected. Yeah. And in fact, you prescribed that to me. You said, go get rejected a lot.

And I did so. And that was the most liberating experience of my life to realize that a single rejection actually doesn't cause any harm in the grand scheme of things. In fact, 10 or 20 rejections doesn't cause any harm in the grand scheme of things. It's perfectly okay to get rejected. And after I did that and experienced that, then I felt much more free and liberated. And my anxiety went away.

And it just occurred to me, gosh, it's a matter of time until I find someone who's really appropriate for me. And linking that to the hidden emotion, That perhaps the person asking this question is suffering from is maybe they're getting distracted by world events and getting upset with the themes that are in the world rather than acknowledging that they felt a little rejected. Yeah. And angry.

And angry. And that's a very painful, upsetting set of feelings. And oftentimes nice people don't want to acknowledge that they feel angry or upset. They want to distract themselves with politics or other things. But I love that you were able to delve a little bit deeper with this person and get to where their real suffering is.

Yeah, there was a little bit of an overcorrection error on my part. You helped me there as well. Thank you.

Those can be just standalone negative thoughts that would respond to other methods than the hidden emotion. The hidden emotion would be just one of many different methods that could be helpful for someone who's upset about world events. And we could just ask, like, gosh, why wouldn't you want to be upset?

There are so many world events right now that are affecting, you know, are just horrifying to consider, right? And it seems very appropriate to be concerned about them. And so to side with, gosh, that seems like an appropriate emotion to be feeling and to look at all the reasons to feel that would be one first step.

I thought that was a beautiful answer.

I've almost forgotten the question. Treating schizophrenia.

So I think it's true that people... All people have multiple problems. So one might be they've got schizophrenia or bipolar, but then they'll also have other problems in their life, just like anyone else. They might have social anxiety. They might be feeling down about themselves, judging themselves, etc.

So we would treat that in the same way, but we would also want to treat whatever biological problem that was affecting their brain. Schizophrenia and bipolar, there's a lot of evidence-based treatments out there to help folks with the symptoms related to that. There are other biological problems that exist that affect the brain.

But we would also want to treat – mostly we're treating the person with those problems and trying, as you said, David, to identify what are their goals, what are they hoping for. And then we can come up with a long – list of methods that could be helpful to them and help resolve those problems. It might include medication or other methods that they could engage with.

But yeah, to have a diverse set of skills and tools to offer somebody to address both the biological, psychological, social components to their suffering would be important.

I love what you're saying there, David. It reminded me of something that was helpful to one of my patients who had pretty intense feelings of paranoia. And their experience was that they couldn't. explain different coincidences that were occurring to them, that it seemed unlikely that they were just coincidences. And then I recalled a statistics class that I took in medical school

where the teacher was looking at a case, an unusual case, where an individual had been struck 17 times by lightning. Wow, that's weird. It was really weird, and the teacher asked, well, why did that happen? Was it something with their physiology? Were they different in some way, etc. ? and the class took all these guesses which were in fact wrong.

The correct answer is that statistically speaking, if you take the number of human beings on planet Earth and the frequency of human beings being struck by lightning, that there will be a few people who are struck 17 times by lightning. If you just run the math, it would be a more bizarre

more weird set of circumstances, more likely to be a conspiracy theory if there was nobody who was struck that many times by lightning. There actually wasn't anything different about this person. They didn't have a different physiology, higher sodium levels in their body, nothing like that.

They just happened to be that one person who got struck 17 times by lightning, which was predictable according to statistics. And realizing that, the person I was working with, came to terms with the fact that, gosh, there are just a lot of coincidences around us. A lot of things happen.

And it would be more unusual and more unlikely and less easy to explain if there were just no coincidences at all. So sometimes just explaining things, like you said, in a way that makes sense, whether it's mathematically or at an interpersonal level, can help folks who are struggling with a negative thought, including paranoia.

Was it temazepam? Restoril?

Klonopin or Klonazepam?

I was kind of spaced out there for a second.

Not at all. No, you're describing a very typical experience with benzodiazepines, often prescribed for sleep or for anxiety.

Pleasure to be here, Rhonda. Thanks for inviting me.

Yeah, I love what both of you are saying. I really appreciate the personal experiences, David, that you're sharing, that oftentimes people are prescribed a benzodiazepine for sleep or anxiety. Frequently, I see people who have gone to their emergency department, with a panic attack, thinking that they're having a heart attack. They're given some Ativan. They feel better.

Maybe they're prescribed 30 days of Ativan. And then they leave the hospital feeling temporarily a lot better. But then they get hooked on the benzodiazepine. A lot of people don't know what a benzodiazepine is. And so I think it's helpful to just describe that. What is that?

It's a drug that affects the GABA chloride channel ion in the brain, meaning that there's a natural substance in the brain called GABA and that binds to a chloride ion channel and it opens the channel up. Chloride comes into the neuron and it basically depolarizes that neuron and it ceases to function. The result of that is that you can start to feel a number of things.

You can feel extremely relaxed, calm, and at peace. It can address anxiety symptoms acutely. You can even feel a little bit high because it releases, it takes the break off of the dopamine receptors in the brain. So it's a very addictive drug because it affects dopamine

And in the long term, there's a rapid tolerance that develops where you need more and more of the drug to achieve the same amount of reduction of anxiety. So I'm frequently seeing patients who come in after being seen in the emergency department, prescribed a month-long course of benzodiazepine. that works the same way as alcohol. It binds to the same receptor as alcohol, the GABA receptor.

And now they've gotten a little bit hooked on it. They've still got the same problem that they came to the emergency department with. They've still got their anxiety, but now they've got a new problem. They're hooked on Ativan or Klonopin.

Or Xanax or some other medication like that. And so they still need the treatment for the initial problem that they presented with, whether it was anxiety or panic attacks. But they also need strategies for how to get off of a medication that they've become addicted to, physiologically addicted to. Yeah.

Right, yeah. So one thing is that he's not only got intrusive thoughts, but he's also got a should statement that's creating suffering when he has those thoughts. So there would be a number of different ways to help with a should statement. Sure.

Oh, I shouldn't be having these thoughts anymore. I shouldn't have such intrusive, upsetting thoughts going through my mind.

Well, he wants to protect his family. His priorities and values are about making sure that nothing happens to his wife and nothing happens to his son. And his thoughts are there to make sure he's on guard and keeping them safe and doing everything in his power to protect them.

That's always a good one to try when there's an element of OCD, the hidden emotion.

Nice. That would be fun. Could I share a brief vignette of an experience that I had about 19 years ago? Yeah, that would be awesome. So I had a dear friend who had his first son was born And one of the things he experienced that he shared with me that was very disturbing to him, his job was to take the boy from downstairs upstairs at the end of the day and to tuck him in.

But every time he was climbing the steps, he would have this intrusive and very disturbing thought of dropping his son over the edge of the balcony. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And he began to think that this meant something terrible about him. that maybe he is a bad father or is a psychopath or something like that.

And when I suggested to him that sometimes our brain is just trying to warn us about things and to make sure we're being safe and careful, and he's probably just trying to be especially careful not to drop his son in that moment because he loves his son so much and cares about his son so much. that all of his symptoms went away. He was no longer disturbed.

He realized he should be thinking about that, that his brain is making an effort to protect his baby.

Exactly. And then the images actually did kind of go away because he was not defending against them. He welcomed them and saw what they were trying to accomplish there for him.

I'm appreciating Rodolfo for his question. Yeah, thank you, Rodolfo. I loved your answer, David.

Okay. What do you think, Matt? If it's just a simple survey question, then my answer is it's absolutely fine to enjoy being on your own and doing your own thing.

I think if other people – we can demonstrate the feared fantasy and prove that if other people are judging us for that, that we don't need to be bothered by their judgment, that the feared critic of our nightmares has no teeth and can't hurt us. Yeah. I think the one caveat I would have is if she has her own personal reason for not wanting to spend as much time on her own.

So, for example, if it's a goal for her to have a family, but she's not going out to meet anyone or date, then that could be a reason that she might want to be more social or do more dating or something like that. But if it's only the concern that she's letting other people down, and they're judging her, then I think we get back to this probable feeling of hidden anger.

Like she probably feels a little bit annoyed that she's not allowed to make her own decision and just choose to be on her own. And she could do some methods like survey technique. And she could ask people, is it annoying to you that I kind of prefer my own personal time? As far as I'm concerned, my response would be no. Have the time of your life and enjoy being alone.

And if you wanted to spend time together, that'd be great too.

Right on. The water's warm. Jump on in.

I'm sadly allergic to cats. I love cats, and they love me. But, yeah, I tend to... get all puffy in the face and runny nose, et cetera.

Rhonda, I also want to say that I'm extremely powerful and judging you, but I'm also exquisitely sensitive and being hurt by you. And you should feel I'm very weak, and you should feel... bad about hurting me and also scared about my, from my judgment, my powerful.

I agree that I think the most important part of the work is motivational thinking. is to understand how is this thought, this structure of thinking beneficial to you? What would be the problem of letting go of the shoulds? How is it functioning? And what does it say that's great about your value system? And if that's not addressed, if that

resistance is still in place, none of the methods will be that effective. If he overcomes that resistance and he decides, I want to let go of those shoulds and I have permission to do that, then we'd have a lot of cool techniques like the semantic technique or the Socratic technique or shades of gray or reattribution, et cetera, et cetera.

But the first question I have is, why would he let go of his shoulds? It seemed like they're highly... motivational and getting him to live up to his standards. And I can see a lot of other good reasons to shoot himself. And I'm not convinced yet that I'm not convinced yet that he should stop shooting himself.

I often like having plans on a Saturday. I don't have any plans this Saturday, and that's actually okay with me. Sometimes I think, gosh, I'd prefer to have some plans. Maybe I could do something and make some plans. That's exciting to me.

Oh, I'd love to avoid that. That'd be great. I'd love to be faster, more efficient, make fewer errors. Maybe you've got some pointers for me on how I could do better in that way.

Well, if I'm just condemned to slowness and inadequacy, I'll just accept that then. That's okay with me. I guess I would prefer to be better, but you're saying I couldn't be better.

Oh, gosh, I just plead guilty and admire them for their awesomeness. They're doing such great work, and oh, man, I goofed up. I wish I hadn't messed up in that way, but they did such a great job. Gosh, I feel so fortunate to be a part of such a brilliant team.

Thank you for the role play too, David.

Yeah, well, let's say you could eliminate shoulds from your mind. Would there be any danger to doing so? Because a lot of people imagine some slippery slope that if I'm not constantly monitoring and shoulding myself... That I'll just become complacent and lazy, never get anything done. That I need my shoulds to motivate me and keep me on track. And that can be a powerful form of resistance.

That if someone is there and they're thinking, gosh, yeah, that's just true. I have to should myself or I'm going to be in trouble. Then I wouldn't go on to any methods anymore. there. I would just admire their sense of responsibility and they want to be productive and contribute to society. And that's awesome. So why would we change this? This is a good thing that's working for them. Right.

I agree wholeheartedly. I think... The metaphor sometimes I've used is that when we're working on the thoughts, if we just work on the thoughts, if all we do is cognitive therapy. And we're not looking at the motivation, the values, the reasons to keep the thoughts. It's sort of like we're trying to defeat this plant.

But if we go to the roots, if we address the root of the problem, suddenly the whole plant changes and transforms. And it's easy. It's not a constant hacking away at this thing that keeps regrowing. It's an actual fundamental, deeper type of change and cure that's possible.

Yeah.

One thing I've seen be quite effective that's also an agenda setting for should statements is a version of the magic dial question, which is something like, how much longer should I continue to should myself? Yeah. Should I be shooting myself at all times from the moment I wake up in the morning? Should I be doing that as intensely as possible?

Should I maximize my suffering at all times for the rest of my life in order to get the best results here?

David, I think you're not using enough should statements or self-criticism.

I think that would be an appropriate plan.

Well, that's very rebellious of you and bad of you.

OK, well, it's rubbing off. I think it's working.

I'm so happy that that project is occurring right now. I'm also delighted to be a part of it.

I have one comment. I love that Rhonda is taking some notes, but I can also hear the note taking a little bit.

Yeah. That's okay. I wonder, I would love, David, just to hear a brief summary of what you were describing. What is the difference between healthy and unhealthy acceptance? How do I know if I'm accepting myself in a way that's appropriate versus inappropriate?

Yeah, it seems a little strange to me that hopelessness and despair would be so close cognitively to enlightenment. That a state of mind that, you know, I'm defective and that's horrible and it means it's hopeless is so close to I'm defective and I embrace that. And I'm delighted to be in good company with all of us.

Hey, David, I'm your negative thoughts, and I have a really important message for you. I need you to understand that you're really defective.

Absolutely true, yeah. An excellent example of the acceptance paradox.

Yeah, I'm happy to speak to Rodolfo's question. It's an excellent one. I'm glad we're revisiting it. So I'll just point out maybe one of the common places where people get stuck or a little bit trapped trying to defeat their negative intrusive thoughts. And that is that they're trying to eliminate them from their mind. They're trying to control their brain.

And that's simply not a switch that we have. There's no button to unsubscribe from our own minds. Our minds just kind of create thoughts and images and might play annoying jingles that we heard on an advertisement 20 years ago. That's just something that the brain will do. what we're actually offering is to not be disturbed or upset or to get stuck having those thoughts recurrently.

And that requires an understanding that our efforts to try to control our brain will backfire. It's like a law of physics that if we try to press or force or demand that we not think about something, we will inevitably end up thinking about it. And you can just try and experimentally right now demand loudly in your mind that you do not think about a blue-eyed tiger.

and see what occurs in your mind. And so you'll probably realize, oh, I'm suddenly thinking about a blue-eyed tiger. And so the first step is to carefully identify your agenda. If you're trying to eliminate the thought from your brain, you'll run into trouble. But if you're trying to develop a sense of comfort with the contents

of your consciousness, like whatever thoughts, emotions, et cetera, come up, then you've got a chance at a cure of not being troubled by those thoughts and feelings.

Love that answer, Rhonda. I agree wholeheartedly.

That was really helpful and informative, David. And you shared that with me in the past, and it helped me really understand the dynamic there and how to help people get out of it. A lot of it having to do with talking back to those kinds of thoughts and just becoming aware that those thoughts are in our mind. is the first step, getting them on paper like the Daily Mood Log.

I wanted to say one other thing about Rhonda's question about learned behavior. I think that's definitely true. There was something I was reading last night in my preparation for today that said that one of the most influential

associations around bullying predictors of bullying is whether or not the person believes that the authority figure in their life would approve of it and so if you have a parent who is abusive and bullying and you know subscribes to this idea of you know might is right and you know

take advantage of people, bully them, then it's much more likely that as a child you would engage in bullying yourself. And I think that there are positive reinforcements that occur there. You know, if you bully someone and people laugh, that's a type of reinforcement. If you bully someone and you take something from them, Now, that's reinforcement as well.

And there can be negative types of reinforcement where you get more attention, even if it's negative attention, because kids desire that. And so often it's kids who aren't getting enough attention who will act out in ways that are antisocial.

Sure. Yeah, yeah. I think it's a good practice to introduce and can be so helpful to anyone who's being abused or bullied or picked on. And do you want me to be the positive thoughts person?

I think some of the classics are things like, oh, I'm worthless. Or I'm a loser.

Yeah.

Sure, yeah. The email that you sent. We can work through those. I like Manuel's thought, like everyone's looking down on me or everyone's judging me.

Right there.

Ready when you are. Bring on the negative thoughts.

Sure. Are you my negative thoughts?

Oh, do you have a hypothesis or a guess?

Oh, gosh, worthless, yeah. Yeah. I actually disagree with you on that. I think I'm priceless because I'm not for sale.

I felt good on that one.

That was pretty big. Hit me with it again.

Oh, gosh, worthless. You know, I do have lots of flaws and shortcomings. I could improve in a lot of different dimensions, and I'm actually totally fine with that because I think I'm in good company there.

Yeah, yeah. So a couple things there. I think it's extremely unlikely that everyone thinks exactly the same way and that everyone is judging me and looking down on me. I think there are lots of really compassionate, thoughtful people out there who would witness bullying and want to come to my aid and care about me a lot.

And for those people who are enjoying looking down on me or criticizing me, I don't have to care about them. It's not on me to be concerned about their thoughts. That can be something that they take along with them and doesn't belong to me.

Yeah, I could ask, well, specifically whom? Who thinks that about me, and how do I know?

Yeah, go for it. I'm feeling good about my responses right now, and so feel free to pile on. You could add more negative thoughts to try to get me with them.

Let's do a role reversal manual. So could I play the negative thought? And I'd love to hear what you might say to a patient. If I were a patient and I'm struggling with this negative thought. How would you respond if I'm attacking you with it and saying, hey, you know, everyone is judging you. Everyone's looking down on you and thinking what a loser you are. Nobody likes you.

What would be a more appropriate way for someone in that age range?

Yeah, I know.

Yeah, Manuel, that was fantastic. There are many different types of bullying is one thing I discovered in my Wikipedia review last night. There's the psychological, there's the physical, and I guess more and more we're seeing cyber bullying of kids online, which is quite problematic. You can make a video of someone doing something ridiculous and

I think that's why the practice is important. Exactly. Yeah.

Matt. Yeah. Rhonda, you know, I, sorry to tell you this, but you're kind of Rhonda too, right? I'm Ron. I'm, uh, yes, I'm, I'm Rhonda. Uh, negative Rhonda.

Sorry about that. I'm a mess today. I'm a mess. Yeah, Rhonda, I'm your negative thoughts. And I just wanted to let you know that you're not attractive enough for Danny. He's way out of your league and he's not interested in you because you're gawky and awkward.

Suddenly the whole school knows about it, and kids are quite sensitive to that kind of shaming and emotional abuse.

Oh, who's that?

Was that a big win? I thought so. I thought so, too. I thought that was huge.

I love that little example of feared fantasy and how, David, you were able to throw in some stroking. Yeah. I think that's one of the features of the feared fantasy. If you're able to get that, work that into the response, I think it is kind of a win. Yeah.

We could do Rhonda's. I could play, Rhonda, would you like to respond to your bully as if they were a real person, not your negative thought? So in the feared fantasy version.

Yeah. So what if my name's like Lindsay or something like that? And hey, Rhonda, I saw you kind of making eyes and trying to flirt with Danny earlier. But I wanted to let you know that he's way out of your league. You're just not attractive enough. I'm way more popular and beautiful than you are. And you're just a little toad by comparison.

Not huge. Yeah. Why not huge? It didn't feel complete.

Ouch, Lindsay, that kind of hurts to hear, especially coming from you. You've always had such style and grace and you're so beautiful. But I feel a little angry with you for saying that because I really like Danny. And I think I've got a chance with him. But maybe you could give me some pointers. You've got such beautiful hair. How did you accomplish that?

Do you have a special product that you use? And your makeup looks so nice today. Yeah. Tell me, what is your secret to looking so beautiful all the time?

I felt like I won. I don't know if it was huge or not.

Okay, yeah.

And they may be thinking that, and I think this is the exercise to defeat that way of thinking, that they might start there in therapy, but where they would end is through repeated efforts like this, trial and error, to get better and better at a response that feels – I agree that it needs to feel authentic to them. They need to feel like, I could say that.

But I think sometimes the reason that kids might not want to say something like what I did – is motivational. It goes back to agenda setting is would you be willing to turn this enemy into your friend by, by sincerely complimenting and liking things about them? And so you, you've got real style and grace and I've always been a big fan of yours, but I must've done something to piss you off.

You're really laying into me here. What did I say to upset you? Cause I really liked Danny and, and, uh,

Oh, that's such an ugly shirt. I can't believe you left the house today wearing that old rag.

I think that was a slam dunk. That was awesome, David.

There was no defensiveness in it. It was also just you were willing to disagree with me and say, oh, I really like it. And I must have weird taste. I thought that was disarming. And then, you know, as your critic, it's really hard to keep criticizing you when you're complimenting me.

How would this work with threats? that kids won't talk about the bullying that they're receiving. And I think oftentimes because it's that contract, if you talk about it, I'm going to hurt you worse, that David was mentioning earlier. So I wondered if...

I would give that an A+. I mean, I wonder if there's any other type of harassment or bullying that the audience would want to hear our responses to. Other negative thoughts?

Good. I thought that was good. How did that feel to you, David? Was that a huge one?

That sounds good. I like that element. Yeah. Manuel, do you want to respond to that one?

Yikes. I like that. That's fun. I could offer some summarizing.

Yeah, I love that answer, Manuel, because, I mean, in the very first part of the team model, the T is for testing. How do you get the information that there's something going wrong here that as a parent I would want to be able to help my child with? And if the child is in this contract of abuse, they're not going to want to tell us in a straightforward way.

And so we have to be looking out for those signs that there might be something going on. I had a wonderful friend who was a pediatrician. And one thing he said to me is to get into the habit of talking to your kids about their emotions and what's going on in their life and their friends and their

and talk about things that kids are often kind of afraid to talk about, so that's just sort of a natural repertoire of what happens, and I've tried to do that with my kids.

We didn't talk a lot about the empathy model, but once someone does start to talk about their experience of abuse, I think we want to reward that and tell them how proud we are of them for talking about it, let them know that we're going to... be there for them just to listen, but also to help. And what do they need right now? And then I thought we did a good job.

Today on the methods, and we addressed a little bit of the agenda setting that oftentimes at a motivational level, folks will not want to approve of themselves if they're getting bullied. And Manuel, you pointed out, you can actually decide, no, I'm going to approve of myself even if someone else is rejecting me or bullying me. And I love that point that you made there.

And that was my effort at a summary, and I'll let Wanda go.

Yeah. I love that to model self-disclosure and opening up and how to talk about those things.

Right. Yeah, I experienced some of—I was really grateful to have your training, David, because my son went through a little bit of bullying, not too bad. And I offered him, you know, there are a couple ways I could help. I could— I could just listen and you could talk about it. Or I could help you feel better about it.

I could show you some tools that you could use to kick your negative thoughts out of your head. Or we could practice how to talk to that bully. And what type of help would you like?

And that was really effective.

He said he wanted help with just talking about it. He just wanted to talk about it with me. He wanted to handle it on his own. He didn't want me to interfere, but he did want some help talking back to some negative thoughts.

A relief not to have an ego. Yeah.

Yes.

Cool. Thanks. Great spending time with you all. Thanks.

We'll see you.

Hey, Rhonda. Hi, Matt.

Go ahead. Great points, Manuel. Yeah, to your question, David, it does seem like there's an inherent feature to human psychology. There's not been a generation of humans where there wasn't bullying and cruelty. And I think it is important to understand the motivation behind. Behind it in order to help kind of deal with bullying.

And so one of it is that just sadistic desire to, you know, enjoy causing harm and feeling powerful, which is sociopathic and There's also Machiavellian, as you mentioned, to get power and influence through control and manipulation and lying and innuendo. And then there's also a narcissistic motivation, which is the belief that – I am superior and therefore I deserve more.

I deserve your lunch money as well as my own lunch money. And so I'm just going to take it from you because I deserve it. But I think there's probably a genetic basis behind all of these and that you will find different amounts of those traits in different human beings.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. For people who want to give this a try, I've made some observations over time about this method that might be worth hearing.

That would be valuable, Matt. So one thing I've seen happen very, very often is that after being like heard for the first time, the speaker feels really excited and will want to keep talking. They feel like, oh my God, this is exactly what I wanted to be able to just like get things off my chest to be heard and understood.

And so they will then just continue the conversation rather than pausing to give the feedback. But the feedback is super vital and important. So that's the number one thing that I see go wrong here is that the speaker finds it hard to pause to give that feedback to the listener.

But I think for some couples, this works really well. For other couples, I haven't seen it work that well for them. But I like it a lot. I think it slows down the communication instead of both parties trying to get their message across. uh, simultaneously to break it artificially into a speaker and a listener. Uh, it's just a genius approach.

Yes. Yes.

I do.

Why should I have to do that if she's not cooperating?

Okay, all right, you win. I'll show up even if she doesn't.

Yeah, that makes sense.

That's clear.

I like that.

Thank you.

I can only make guesses. I think one could be just that the intensity of the anger that had been repressed was so great that it served a bit like a hidden emotion. Or perhaps she was afraid that she would express something like that. She was afraid to let it out.

And when you allowed her to just let it out and you accepted her while she was doing that, she learned, oh, it's actually OK to feel really angry about what happened to me. And so it's OK to have these intense feelings and images. And now I don't have to be perfect anymore or contain myself. I can go out in public without feeling ashamed.

Go ahead. One other quick thought occurred to me is that a fear of transportation would also be useful to her if she was off to school. if she just couldn't come back home to where that person was who had molested her.

So it's good to be afraid of transportation. I just can't come home. I'm too afraid rather than acknowledging how angry she was.

Sure, I can start. I mean, I think first I'd begin with a lot of empathy that he's probably really pissed off and angry. He's doing all this stuff and it's not helping someone. It's not providing him with useful information that he can apply. And it's probably painful for him to be going through this. And maybe he just needs to let it out and vent a little bit.

talk to me about his feelings of frustration or annoyance or anger. What is that like for him? And then if he's feeling understood and I'm getting him, I'd ask him if there's some type of help that he was looking for. And I think there are some thoughts there that are in the version of a should, like I shouldn't have to do this, that I could probably help with. And

If we were to revise that thought, he'd probably feel less upset as he's doing that work. So that would be my brief answer.

Okay. Love that answer. Love that. If I ever have any legal problems, can I give him a call?

I've just so enjoyed our time together. Thank you for having me on the podcast.

When do I get to go?

Okay, so I... Yeah, last night we were talking a lot about a plan in very specific terms. I kept asking questions and you kept clarifying your preferences. And then this morning I got it all wrong. And it wasn't anything like the plan that you were describing that we were talking about the night before. And it's just so incredible.

What grade did I get, Rhonda?

Yeah, yeah. So so and by the way, I'm not supposed to agree, so I shouldn't disarm. Is that part of the or can I can I say you're so right? Last night we had this big discussion about a plan for today. Yeah, sure, that'd be okay. That's not provocative. Okay, I didn't understand. Exactly. And then this morning, I got it all wrong, actually.

I don't think I did any of the things that we had planned on doing. And you said it was frustrating to you. And I could also understand why you'd be feeling really irritated with me and angry. And you said you felt really hurt. That makes sense to me, too. You were wondering if maybe I just wasn't even paying attention or maybe there's some kind of cognitive problem that I'm not getting it.

And so that was scary for you as well. And you felt sad. You felt lonely. I wondered if you even felt defeated or hopeless. What's the point in trying to make a plan or talk to me about stuff if I don't really listen to you? How am I doing now?

I'd like to hear your points there.

Yeah, I've, I've been the victim of many should statements in my own mind. And it all, it often seems like it's the, right thing to do, that I should be beating up on myself or punishing myself if I've failed at something that's really important to me. So my guess is that her value system is around being a wonderful mom.

And if she makes some error around that, she beats up on herself because at some level she believes she deserves it. She hasn't earned the right to feel good if she's not performing at a really high level as a mom.

Maybe guilt or shame. And then associating those feelings with spending time with her daughter would be bad for the relationship.

Yeah, so they're often very nice people. uh, anxious, um, avoidant, people pleasing, wanting to avoid any type of conflict. They value peace and harmony in their relationships. Yeah. They don't want to rock the boat.

Right. And it seems good in the short term.

I'm afraid I'll be winding down for the day. Okay. I'd love to spend time with both of you, but I'll be too sleepy.

Oh, I feel guilty and bad for not showing you how much I care about both of you.

Well, I'll have to politely decline.

I loved it. I loved it. I had a couple other comments just on that pattern since I've lived it myself personally. One observation was that it seemed like resentment would kind of build up over time, like water behind a dam. If I was operating under the system, like I'll just always be nice and expect other people to reciprocate.

If I was expecting that and it didn't happen, I'd feel a little bit resentful, but I still wouldn't want to rock the boat. And so I wouldn't bring up my feelings. And then it would like build up over time. And eventually it would be like some straw would break my back and my feelings would come out in a way that I didn't like that. I, you know, it's like it was rushing out of the dam.

And so that was a terrible consequence of this rule, interpersonal rule that I had to always be nice. And the other thing that really helped me was the double standard technique, where I would imagine, would I tell someone else that they should be a better mom or a better person? Would I communicate to someone else in all these critical ways? And as a nice person, I just wouldn't do that.

And it helped me see that double standard and let go of it. And I've noticed that that works really well when people are prone to being nice, is they can just employ that tendency to help themselves.

Yes, I have. It's been very helpful to me. A little healthy selfishness.

And that it would almost certainly include testing, careful measurement of mood to know if you're making progress or not, as well as empathy. careful agenda setting to address motivational barriers to improving, and a whole host of methods, each of which has some small chance of success.

Thanks.

But we'd want to have not assumed that every person will be responding identically to different methods just because they carry the same diagnosis.

Or When Panic Attacks by David Burns.

Yeah, it's a strange paradox, right? Because you would imagine that you would want to address your whole life to be able, rather than focus in on one moment, but realizing that our whole life is just a repeating pattern of thinking. And that if we defeat that thinking in one moment, then we have the tools to do it in every other moment. Yeah.

Cool. I have a couple of thoughts. I really like Owen's question. And I think for folks who can successfully do externalization of voices on their own, they're essentially cured, right? That would be a metric of whether or not they're ready to graduate from therapy.

And I would say that it's hard to do that on your own because it's unlikely, not only for the reasons that David mentioned, which is that there will be hidden resistance that will make it such that you wouldn't be motivated to defeat the thought, but often because when most people are trying externalization of voices, they tend towards the defense only responses.

And it's really useful to hear a therapist use the acceptance paradox or the counterattack or just Socratic technique or other methods that might be more effective or more effective in combination. And so often I recommend that my patients make an audio recording of

of successful externalization of voices that they've done with their therapist and then to play that back and then to practice on their own. And I think in other podcasts, we've mentioned versions of externalization of voices that you do on a folded sheet of paper where one side is your critical thoughts and the other side is your responses.

And I have seen that be effective for myself and for many of my patients with a little extra training. They can do externalization of voices on their own. And that's before we had the app. So I think with the app, it would be far more effective.

Sure. A classic one would be something like, I'm worthless.

I think I detect my negative thoughts coming at me. And, you know, I've got a lot to do today. I don't think I have time to listen to that.

I felt good about that one. I tried the kind of counterattack.

I felt like it was a I'm not currently suffering with the thought that I'm worthless. So it worked for me. I think there was a lot unsaid. And maybe I'd like to hear a role reversal. Maybe we could try again.

Hey Matt, I'm your negative thoughts and I just wanted to let you know that you're worthless.

I like that response. I think you took away the overgeneralization part that I'm, you know, worthless and defective in all ways at all times. So I like that response. What grade would you give it, Rhonda? I would give it a B. A B, okay.

Maybe I can be Matt's negative thoughts and attack David. OK.

Right.

So you're positive, Matt, and I'm Matt's negative thought. Great. Yeah. Oh, hey, Matt. I'm your negative thoughts, and I don't mean to make you feel bad or anything, but I think it's important that you know that you're worthless.

I like that a lot. I would give that an A. I would think that's a huge win. I like that you were able to kind of humbly accept and embrace flaws and shortcomings, and even in a joyful way, in a happy way. And that seems like, you know, at the core of the acceptance paradox.

Okay. Hey, Rhonda, I'm your negative thoughts, and I just wanted to give you a really important message, which is that you don't matter.

I like that. How did that feel to you, Rhonda? Was that a win?

A huge win?

Awesome. I liked it. I thought it was a huge win, too.

Okay.

I have a reference to another awesome quote that I think represents the acceptance paradox. This is from Zen Buddhism. Oh, neat. There was a monk who asked, what is Buddha? And Master Yunmen Unmon, probably pronouncing that incorrectly, answered, a dry shit stick. A what? A dry shit stick.

I'm wondering how many more weeks of wear you can get out of it.

Yeah, I think if I were going into solitary confinement, I would be feeling extremely grateful to have the skills and methods and tools that are in team therapy for that experience. I think there's a little bit of a paradox if we consider that solitary confinement is very similar as a situation to a silent meditation retreat.

that people would pay a lot of money to go to experience something really wonderful in their life. And I think that could be kind of confusing until we look at the cognitive model that what would shape your experience in solitary confinement or in a silent meditation is exclusively what you're thinking in those situations.

And so to have the skills to address your negative thoughts as they're coming up would be of tremendous value. Yeah.

Yeah, my concern about the prison system is it's probably using that punishment as a deterrent for bad behavior. So they're not likely to want it to be a pleasant experience for prisoners. And I think we could debate whether that's an appropriate way to treat anyone is to lock them up and ignore them. I'm skeptical of that being a way of reforming behavior.

I don't think that people come out of that experience highly motivated to connect with others and feeling better about society and wanting to play by the rules. I think they probably come out more bitter or more depressed, more resentful.

Another one that I saw was discounting the positive or just focusing on the negative, focusing on errors or times when she's upset rather than when she's being patient and loving and kind.

There's almost always all or nothing thinking hidden somewhere in a negative thought. And perhaps in this case, parenthetically, she's thinking, you know, I'm never a good enough mom or I'm always a bad mom. Yeah. I'm never good enough on some scale of awesome momness. Yeah.