413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
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Hello, and welcome to the Feeling Good Podcast, where you can learn powerful techniques to change the way you feel. I am your host, Dr. Rhonda Borowski, and joining me here in the Murrieta studio is Dr. David Burns. Dr. Burns is a pioneer in the development of cognitive behavioral therapy and the creator of the new Team Therapy. He's the author of Feeling Good, which has sold over 5 million copies in the United States and has been translated into over 30 languages. His latest book, Feeling Great, contains powerful new techniques that make rapid recovery possible for many people struggling with depression and anxiety. Dr. Burns is currently an emeritus adjunct professor of clinical psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine.
Hello, Rhonda.
Hi, David. And hi, Matt May, who's here again with us, gratefully. I want to welcome everyone to episode 413 of the Feeling Good podcast. Hey, Rhonda. Hey, David.
Great to be here. Hi, Matt. Good to see you. It's always great hanging out with you, too. Some of my favorite times in life are being with you, too. Me, too. It's a pleasure.
So I thought I would start our Ask David today with an endorsement from Brittany, who I believe is one of our questioners. And she wrote, Hi, Dr. Burns. I was listening to your podcast on self-acceptance, and it was really interesting hearing the results. I like how you said, just because we accept something about ourselves doesn't mean we still aren't working on it. I think people confuse that a lot. I'll read her question later because it's our second question. That was a very nice endorsement on her part.
Yeah, and that is a common confusion. People have a lot of reasons not to accept themselves, and there's a kind of healthy acceptance and unhealthy acceptance, and most people can't distinguish them, so they think that acceptance means you get stuck in your crummy self, but actually acceptance is... the greatest change a human being can make. When you accept yourself, you have made an awesome change. And I discovered someone who said that long before I did. You want to know who it was? The Buddha? Not that early. It was from the 20th century. Carl Rogers. I think he wrote on becoming a person. And he was all about listening and empathy and accepting. But one of the fellows on our app team found all of these quotes he had on how acceptance is the same as change. And it really surprised me. I think I might have read. read about him when I was in college. We had a class on third-force psychology, the so-called new psychology at the time, that was going to focus on peak experiences, not what was neurotic about people.
But he was very much into acceptance, and I'd always associated his name with empathy, you know, Rogerian listening, right? That's the guy. But apparently he was heavily into acceptance as well, which I was excited to see that.
How would you describe the difference between healthy and unhealthy acceptance?
Well, it's very dramatic, and we have a class on that that we're about to publish in the Feeling Great app, and that's one of the lessons in that class on acceptance. But unhealthy acceptance is accompanied by joy, and then unhealthy acceptance is accompanied by despair. Healthy acceptance is accompanied by laughter and lightness. Unhealthy acceptance is accompanied by cynicism and anger. Uh, that's, it's just, they're, they're, they're, they're just the opposite from each other. And there's a lot of distinctions between them, but, but essentially you see, um, to take the thought, uh, uh, I've, I've decided to accept my shitty self, my below average self, uh, And I've decided to accept the fact that I really am defective and there's nothing about me that doesn't need improvement.
And are those thoughts a reason for suicide or a reason for celebration? That's the issue. And when you get acceptance, it's not like a death warrant. It's like a celebration of birth. You wake up in a whole new universe. You've changed and the whole world around you has changed.
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