Read Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy Online
Authors: David D. Burns
Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy (18 page)
The “Can’t Lose” System
. You may feel hesitant to put your “can’ts” to the test because you don’t want to run the risk of failure. If you don’t run any risks, at least you can maintain the secret belief that you’re basically a terrific person who’s decided for the time being not to get involved. Behind your aloofness and lack of commitment lurks a powerful sense of inadequacy and the fear of failure.
The “Can’t Lose” System will help you combat this fear. Make a list of the negative consequences you might have to deal with if you took a risk and actually did fail. Then expose the distortions in your fears, and show how you could cope productively even if you did experience a disappointment.
The venture that you have been avoiding may involve a financial, personal, or scholastic risk. Remember that even if you do fail, some good can come from it. After all, this is how you learned how to walk. You didn’t just jump up
from your crib one day and waltz gracefully across the room. You stumbled and fell on your face and got up and tried again. At what age are you suddenly expected to know everything and never make any more mistakes? If you can love and respect yourself in failure, worlds of adventure and new experiences will open up before you, and your fears will vanish. An example of a written “Can’t Lose” System is shown in Figure 5–10.
I’ll bet you still may not know for sure where motivation comes from. What, in your opinion, comes first—motivation or action?
If you said motivation, you made an excellent, logical choice. Unfortunately, you’re wrong. Motivation does
not
come first,
action
does! You have to prime the pump. Then you will begin to get motivated, and the fluids will flow spontaneously.
Individuals who procrastinate frequently confuse motivation and action. You foolishly wait until you feel in the mood to do something. Since you don’t feel like doing it, you automatically put it off.
Your error is your belief that motivation comes first, and then leads to activation and success. But it is usually the other way around; action must come first, and the motivation comes later on.
Take this chapter, for example. The first draft of this chapter was overwritten, clumsy, and stale. It was so long and boring that a true procrastinator would never even have the fortitude to read it. The task of revising it seemed to me like trying to go swimming with concrete shoes. When the day I had scheduled for revising it came—I had to push myself to sit down and get started. My motivation was about I percent, and my urge to avoid the task was 99 percent. What a hideous chore!
Figure 5–10.
The “Can’t Lose” System. A housewife used this technique to overcome her fear of applying for a part-time job.
After I got involved in the task, I became highly motivated, and the job seems easy now. Writing became fun after all! It works like this:
If you are a procrastinator, you probably aren’t aware of this. So you lie around in bed waiting for inspiration to strike. When someone suggests you do something, you whine, “I don’t
feel
like it.” Well, who said you were supposed to feel like it? If you wait until you’re “in the mood,” you may wait forever!
The following table will help you review the various activation techniques and select what’s most helpful to you.
Table 5-1.
Synopsis of Self-Activation Methods
Target Symptoms | Self-Activation Techniques | Purpose of the Method |
1. You feel disorganized. You have nothing to do. You get lonely and bored on weekends. | 1. Daily Activity Schedule | 1. Plan things one hour at a time and record the amount of mastery and pleasure. Virtually any activity will make you feel better than lying in bed and will undercut your sense of inadequacy. |
2. You procrastinate because tasks seem too difficult and unrewarding. | 2. The Antiprocrastination Sheet | 2. You put your negative predictions to the test. |
3. You feel overwhelmed by the urge to do nothing. | 3. Daily Record of Dysfunctional Thoughts | 3. You expose the illogical thoughts that paralyze you. You learn that motivation follows action, not |
4. You feel there’s no point in doing anything when you’re alone. | 4. Pleasure-Predicting Sheet | 4. Schedule activities with the potential for personal growth or satisfaction, and predict how rewarding they will be. Compare the actual satisfaction you experience when you are alone and when you are with others. |
5. You give yourself excuses for avoiding things. | 5. But-Rebuttal | 5. You get off your “but” by combatting your “buts” with realistic rebuttals. |
6. You have the idea that whatever you do isn’t worth much. | 6. Self-Endorsement | 6. Write down the self-downing thoughts and talk back to them. Look for distorted thought patterns, such as “all-or-nothing thinking.” Make a list of things you do accomplish each day. |
7. You think about a task in a self-defeating manner. | 7. TIC-TOC Technique | 7. You substitute task-oriented cognitions (TOCS) for task-interfering cognitions (TICS). |
8. You feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of everything you have to do. | 8. Little Steps for Little Feet | 8. Break the task down into its tiny component parts, and do these one step at a time. |
9. You feel guilty, oppressed, obliged, and duty-bound. | 9. Motivation Without Coercion | 9. a. You eliminate “shoulds,” “musts,” and “oughts” when you give yourself instructions. b. You list the advantages and disadvantages of any activity so you can begin to think in terms of what you |
10. Someone else nags and harangues you. You feel pressured and resentful, so you refuse to do anything at all. | 10. Disarming Technique | 10. You assertively agree with them and remind them that you are capable of doing your own thinking. |
11. You have difficulty modifying a habit such as smoking. | 11. Visualize Success | 11. You make a list of the positive benefits of having changed the habit. You visualize these after inducing a state of deep relaxation. |
12. You feel unable to do anything on your own initiative because you see yourself as “a procrastinator.” | 12. Count What Counts | 12. You count the things you do each day on your own initiative, using a wrist counter. This helps you overcome your bad habit of constantly dwelling on your inadequacies. |
13. You feel inadequate and incompetent because you say, “I can’t.” | 13. Test Your Can’ts | 13. You set up an experiment in which you challenge and disprove your negative predictions. |
14. You are afraid to fail, so you risk nothing. | 14. “Can’t Lose” System | 14. Write down any negative consequences of failure and develop a coping strategy ahead of time. |
Verbal Judo: Learn to Talk Back When You’re Under the Fire of Criticism
You are learning that the cause of your sense of worthlessness is your ongoing self-criticism. This takes the form of an upsetting
internal
conversation in which you constantly harangue and persecute yourself in a harsh, unrealistic manner. Frequently your inner criticism will be triggered by someone else’s sharp remark. You may dread criticism simply because you have never learned effective techniques for handling it. Because it is relatively
easy
to do, I want to emphasize the importance of mastering the art of handling verbal abuse and disapproval nondefensively and without a loss of self-esteem.
Many depressive episodes are set in motion by external criticism. Even psychiatrists, who are supposedly professional abuse-takers, can react adversely to criticism. A psychiatric resident called Art received negative feedback intended to be helpful from his supervisor. A patient had complained that several comments Art made during a therapy session were abrasive. The resident reacted with a wave of panic and depression when he heard this, due to his thought, “Oh God! The truth is out about me. Even my
patients can see what a worthless, insensitive person I am. They’ll probably
kick
me out of the residency program and
drum
me out of the state.”
Why is criticism so hurtful to some people, while others can remain unperturbed in the face of the most abusive attack? In this chapter you will learn the secrets of people who face disapproval fearlessly, and you will be shown specific, concrete steps to overcome and eliminate your own exquisite vulnerability to criticism. As you read the following sections, keep this in mind: Overcoming your fear of criticism will require a moderate amount of practice. But it is not difficult to develop and master this skill, and the positive impact on your self-esteem will be tremendous.
Before I show you the way out of the trap of crumbling inwardly when criticized, let me show you why criticism is more upsetting to some people than to others. In the first place, you must realize that it is
not
other people, or the critical comments they make, that upset you. To repeat, there has never been a single time in your life when the critical comments of some other person upset you—even to a small extent. No matter how vicious, heartless, or cruel these comments may be, they have
no
power to disturb you or to create even a
little bit
of discomfort.
After reading that paragraph you may get the impression that I am cracking up, mistaken, highly unrealistic, or some combination thereof. But I assure you I am not when I say: Only one person in this world has the power to
put you down
—and
you
are that person, no one else!
Here’s how it works. When another person criticizes you, certain negative thoughts are automatically triggered in your head. Your emotional reaction will be created by these thoughts and not by what the other person says. The thoughts which upset you will invariably contain the same types of mental errors described in Chapter 3: overgeneralization, all-or-nothing thinking, the mental filter, labeling, etc.
For example, let’s take a look at Art’s thoughts. His panic was the result of his catastrophic interpretation: “This criticism shows how worthless I am.” What mental errors is
he making? In the first place, Art is jumping to conclusions when he arbitrarily concludes the patient’s criticism is valid and reasonable. This may or may not be the case. Furthermore, he is
exaggerating
the importance of whatever he actually said to the patient that may have been undiplomatic (magnification), and he is
assuming
he could do nothing to correct any errors in his behavior (the fortune teller error). He unrealistically predicted he would be rejected and ruined professionally because he would repeat endlessly whatever error he made with this one patient (overgeneralization). He focused exclusively on his error (the mental filter) and over-looked his numerous other therapeutic successes (disqualifying or overlooking the positive). He identified with his erroneous behavior and concluded he was a “worthless and insensitive human being” (labeling).