![[dr. bob]](/dr-bob-sm.gif)
Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 25 of 47. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by pedrito on May 2, 2005, at 16:55:10
Hello all,
I apologise in advance if this is a RTFM question, but I want to know what you guys&gals, the people at the coal-face, think are the best CBT books out there.I'm looking for one that reads well, is not insulting to your intelligence and for intermediate/advanced CBT-ers.
After giving up CBT for REBT (Rational Emotive Behavioural Therapy) and yet still feeling crap, I have decided to give CBT another go!
Many thanks in advance,
Pete
Posted by partlycloudy on May 3, 2005, at 10:26:43
In reply to top CBT book, posted by pedrito on May 2, 2005, at 16:55:10
I think the consensus here amongst those who frequent the boards is "Feeling Good - The New Mood Therapy" by David Burns, for CBT.
If you take a look at the Psychology board, there is an entire thread devoted to the best books regarding therapy.
Posted by pedrito on May 3, 2005, at 11:38:06
In reply to Re: top CBT book, posted by partlycloudy on May 3, 2005, at 10:26:43
Thanks.
I did take a look round the Books and Psychology boards but found people's favourite non-psych books instead.
Cheers,
Pete
Posted by alexandra_k on May 5, 2005, at 16:01:04
In reply to Re: top CBT book, posted by pedrito on May 3, 2005, at 11:38:06
REBT
(rational emotive behaviour therapy)
Is a particular kind or version of
CBT
(cognitive behaviour therapy)
The main REBT guy is Albert Ellis
And he is considered to be a CBT theorist / therapist too.
Posted by pedrito on May 5, 2005, at 16:19:04
In reply to Re: top CBT book, posted by alexandra_k on May 5, 2005, at 16:01:04
Jah, I know. I've been studying REBT for 3 years now =o]
When I was living in London I saw Windy Dryden, who is a major REBT player. He wasn't cheap but he helped me out considerably.
pete
Posted by alexandra_k on May 5, 2005, at 23:22:33
In reply to Re: top CBT book » alexandra_k, posted by pedrito on May 5, 2005, at 16:19:04
> When I was living in London I saw Windy Dryden, who is a major REBT player. He wasn't cheap but he helped me out considerably.
Hmm. But you are still 'feeling crap'???
What kind of book are you looking for?
Something like a text book?
??
Posted by pedrito on May 6, 2005, at 8:52:11
In reply to Re: top CBT book » pedrito, posted by alexandra_k on May 5, 2005, at 23:22:33
Yep.
I think so. Something that's not "Jack and Jill went up the hill and felt sad" stoopid and not super-dry and theoretical.
I'm going to check out Burns' effort this weekend.
Thanks,
pete
Posted by badhaircut on May 9, 2005, at 10:44:04
In reply to Re: top CBT book, posted by pedrito on May 6, 2005, at 8:52:11
Pete—
You saw Dryden? Wow. What was he like, if it's not too personal to ask? I read your post on the other board that he was very smart. He must've had something to say about you still "feeling like crap" after 3 years of REBT.
If you're casting around for a slightly new approach, you might also want to look at "Acceptance and Commitment Therapy" (ACT), which has some overlap with CBT but goes in a different direction. It emphasizes accepting bad thoughts & feelings since (it says) trying to manage them is self-reflexively doomed.
Albert Ellis recently gave ACT enormously positve endorsements, which is surpising to me since it doesn't care very much if a patient has irrational thoughts. It deliberately leaves them alone.
web site: http://www.acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy.com
(And welcome back.)
-bhc
Posted by pedrito on May 9, 2005, at 21:40:46
In reply to Dryden, Ellis, ACT » pedrito, posted by badhaircut on May 9, 2005, at 10:44:04
bhc,
thanks, it's nice to be back (well, it's nice that dr-bob's site is still going strong!).Now I'll be clear here: I'm just giving my opinion here, I'm not slating Windy, just giving my impression. I have the utmost respect for him and like the guy.
However. He comes across as being abrupt, sometimes rude, aloof and impatient. It's as if he takes REBT to the max and then turns it up a notch. He really does not seem to care whatsoever what people think. Which is great, I wish I could be like that. The psych I'm seeing at the moment knows him well and concurs that he is certainly not your average Joe.
As for him having something to say? Probably. If you paid him, that is =o]
Thanks for the links, those ideas sound interesting. However these days, from a personal point of view, I'm leaning towards a mainly meds-based recorvery. I'm beginning to believe (and this is quite a rational belief since it's based on evidence) that I'm not going to think myself better without some serious help. Which is a situation I hate but am beginning to accept.
What about you? You seem someone au fait with the various therapies? Are you OK/improving/doomed/bad these days?
pete
Posted by badhaircut on May 10, 2005, at 0:20:55
In reply to Re: Dryden, Ellis, ACT, posted by pedrito on May 9, 2005, at 21:40:46
> What about you? You seem someone au fait with the various therapies
Eh, I've tried the main ones but only for 20 years, off and on. Nothing has ever worked. (Today I got 47 on Dr Bob's depression meter: a war zone score but my happiest yet.)
Psychoanalysis was the most fun — and most expensive, most years-consuming, and ultimately most destructive. I wouldn't recommend it. There was a thing Sunday in the NYT Book Review about how Freud has ruined fiction, too.
Shock treatment, many many many many meds, exercise, self-help, light boxes, CBT, prayer, support groups.... none of these was the ticket for me. But before I start sounding like Marvin the robot (if it's not too late), I'll add that though I'm less hopeful of a cure I'm more hopeful of a *life* than I have been in a long time. Maybe ever.
Very interesting about Dryden. He sounds a lot like Ellis.
Good luck with the meds. I hope you'll be one of the successes! If so, please post about it! :)
-bhc
Posted by pedrito on May 10, 2005, at 22:19:24
In reply to my therapies » pedrito, posted by badhaircut on May 10, 2005, at 0:20:55
OMFG I just wrote a massive reply, hit Submit and got "you must supply your name, try again" and lost it all !!! =0(
Too tired to re-type the whole lot so I will summarise:
- I doff my cap at your tenacity and resilience
- I know from a friend of Ellis that he's indeed also very odd, bordering on socially dysfunctional
- I have recently discovered I have derealization quite frequently which explains a lot to me. But is also bad news since it's a bugger to get rid of. Ho hum.I will indeed write if the meds work. Just don't hold your breath...
pete
Posted by alexandra_k on May 12, 2005, at 21:49:06
In reply to Dryden, Ellis, ACT » pedrito, posted by badhaircut on May 9, 2005, at 10:44:04
> If you're casting around for a slightly new approach, you might also want to look at "Acceptance and Commitment Therapy" (ACT), which has some overlap with CBT but goes in a different direction. It emphasizes accepting bad thoughts & feelings since (it says) trying to manage them is self-reflexively doomed.
> Albert Ellis recently gave ACT enormously positve endorsements, which is surpising to me since it doesn't care very much if a patient has irrational thoughts. It deliberately leaves them alone.It doesn't follow from ACT's focusing on ACCEPTANCE rather than CHANGE that it 'doesn't care very much if a patient has irrational thoughts'.
The focus is CBT is changing the thoughts.
The notion is that if you change the thoughts then you will thereby change how you feel (which is the problem).
The trouble is that sometimes people don't seem to be able to change their thoughts.
Hardly suprising since thoughts tend to 'occur' to one rather than being 'chosen' in the first place...
So if they just do continue to occur to you but you want to change how you feel then you could always try to ACCEPT your thoughts. Not accept that your thoughts are true, just accept that you are in fact having the thoughts that you are in fact having. If how you feel is produced by you judging yourself negatively for having the thoughts you do then accepting is removing negative judgement - which is itself a change in thought.Sometimes people are distressed because they judge themselves for being upset. If you accept the fact that you are upset without judging yourself for it then you may continue to be upset - but you won't be SO VERY upset.
Acceptance... Is itself change.
Posted by pedrito on May 13, 2005, at 7:36:37
In reply to Re: Dryden, Ellis, ACT » badhaircut, posted by alexandra_k on May 12, 2005, at 21:49:06
>> It doesn't follow from ACT's focusing on ACCEPTANCE rather than CHANGE that it 'doesn't care very much if a patient has irrational thoughts'.
- A valid point no doubt but in badhaircut's defence, the language he used did indicate a very rough/terse description of ACT which isn't too wide of the mark.
>> The focus is CBT is changing the thoughts.
The notion is that if you change the thoughts then you will thereby change how you feel (which is the problem).
The trouble is that sometimes people don't seem to be able to change their thoughts.- that'll be me then. And countless others.
>> Hardly suprising since thoughts tend to 'occur' to one rather than being 'chosen' in the first place...
- I'm feeling that for sure.
>> So if they just do continue to occur to you but you want to change how you feel then you could always try to ACCEPT your thoughts. Not accept that your thoughts are true, just accept that you are in fact having the thoughts that you are in fact having. If how you feel is produced by you judging yourself negatively for having the thoughts you do then accepting is removing negative judgement - which is itself a change in thought.
- this is exactly the logic which a previous psych I saw tried to espouse to me. The problem of course is getting to the stage where you don't believe your troubling thoughts! And let's face it, repeatedly having very troubling, obtrusive thoughts and constantly accepting yourself for having them is hardly a good quality of life.
>> Sometimes people are distressed because they judge themselves for being upset. If you accept the fact that you are upset without judging yourself for it then you may continue to be upset - but you won't be SO VERY upset.
- Granted. A 20% quality of life is better than a 10% quality of life. But I'd guess ultimately most people require more, or at least the possibility of more out of life.
Acceptance... Is itself change.
- Agreed. It's just crap to have to accept really unpleasant thoughts and feelings all day! =o]
Pete
Posted by alexandra_k on May 13, 2005, at 21:44:15
In reply to Re: Dryden, Ellis, ACT, posted by pedrito on May 13, 2005, at 7:36:37
Ok. So you are having troubling thoughts... There are two things that you can try and do: (1) try and change them (2) accept them.
So, but the sounds of it you have really really really tried to change them - but that doesn't seem to be going all that well for you.
Sometimes medications can help with recurring thoughts. They can make it so they don't occur to you so often, or they can make it so that it is easier for you to not to feel as bothered by them.
I have these two thoguhts occuring to me at many different points during the day:
'I hate myself'
'I wish I was dead'.
They come BAMB! Even at times when I am enjoying myself during the day. They just keep on occuring to me.These aren't even thoughts about external reality. They are thoughts about how I feel or what I think. But it can be hard for me to seperate out the fact that the thoughts do occur to me from whether they are true or not in the sense that I actually do hate myself, or I actually do wish I was dead.
But it is a jump...
>The problem of course is getting to the stage where you don't believe your troubling thoughts!
Indeed. But a thought is just a thought.
It might be true or false...
The only thing that is certain is that you are infact having the thought.> And let's face it, repeatedly having very troubling, obtrusive thoughts..
What I wonder is that you perceive them as 'troubling' and 'obtrusive' because you TAKE THEM SERIOUSLY in the sense that you believe what they tell you..
>and constantly accepting yourself for having them is hardly a good quality of life.
But if you can accept the fact that you are having them
(What a strange thing to think, and it isn't even true!!!)
Then you might not be so troubled by them anymore.
> - Granted. A 20% quality of life is better than a 10% quality of life. But I'd guess ultimately most people require more, or at least the possibility of more out of life.Sure they do.
But the point is:
What is the problem here???\
Is it the fact that you have certain thoguhts.
Or is it the fact that you are finding certain thoguhts to be distressing?
If you cannot change the fact that you have them then all that is left to be done is to try and change your response to them.> - Agreed. It's just crap to have to accept really unpleasant thoughts and feelings all day!
I'm not saying that you have to accept feeling crap.
Well... Sometimes people do.
My point is that if you can accept the thoughts
(just as thoughts - not as being true)
Then you may be able to change your feeling like crap.Acceptance is change...
If that sounds paradoxical the idea is that in accepting one thing you quite often can change another.
Posted by pedrito on May 13, 2005, at 22:44:34
In reply to Re: Dryden, Ellis, ACT » pedrito, posted by alexandra_k on May 13, 2005, at 21:44:15
> Ok. So you are having troubling thoughts... There are two things that you can try and do: (1) try and change them (2) accept them.
- agreed.
>
> So, but the sounds of it you have really really really tried to change them - but that doesn't seem to be going all that well for you.- correct.
> Sometimes medications can help with recurring thoughts. They can make it so they don't occur to you so often, or they can make it so that it is easier for you to not to feel as bothered by them.
- indeed.
> I have these two thoguhts occuring to me at many different points during the day:
> 'I hate myself'
> 'I wish I was dead'.
> They come BAMB! Even at times when I am enjoying myself during the day. They just keep on
occuring to me.- that must be rather crap. FWIW I "crash" when having fun too. It's almost like an anti-fun device installed in my head.
> These aren't even thoughts about external reality. They are thoughts about how I feel or what I think. But it can be hard for me to seperate out the fact that the thoughts do occur to me from whether they are true or not in the sense that I actually do hate myself, or I actually do wish I was dead.- I follow.
> But it is a jump...
>
> >The problem of course is getting to the stage where you don't believe your troubling thoughts!
>
> Indeed. But a thought is just a thought.
> It might be true or false...
> The only thing that is certain is that you are infact having the thought.- In my case, no. I suffer from derealization (I think) which (I'm sure you know, you appear very knowledegable) means I disappear off for most of the day into a distant, anxious World of cognition that bears no resemblance to what I actually think whatsoever.
I know the kind of thinking you are referring to since I also have those kind of disturbing thoughts that just "crop up". Derealization is different though, it's like a different World. A horrible different World, unfortunately.
>
> > And let's face it, repeatedly having very troubling, obtrusive thoughts..
>
> What I wonder is that you perceive them as 'troubling' and 'obtrusive' because you TAKE THEM SERIOUSLY in the sense that you believe what they tell you..- I see where you're coming from but when I'm having a really bad day of DR, nearly all of my thinking is totally unreal/not my own/foreign/distant. It's not obtrusive in nature, it wholly displaces your cognition. I can't have a rational thought if I try.
>
> >and constantly accepting yourself for having them is hardly a good quality of life.
>
> But if you can accept the fact that you are having them
> (What a strange thing to think, and it isn't even true!!!)
> Then you might not be so troubled by them anymore.
>
> > - Granted. A 20% quality of life is better than a 10% quality of life. But I'd guess ultimately most people require more, or at least the possibility of more out of life.
>
> Sure they do.
> But the point is:
> What is the problem here???\
> Is it the fact that you have certain thoguhts.
> Or is it the fact that you are finding certain thoguhts to be distressing?
> If you cannot change the fact that you have them then all that is left to be done is to try and change your response to them.
>
> > - Agreed. It's just crap to have to accept really unpleasant thoughts and feelings all day!
>
> I'm not saying that you have to accept feeling crap.
> Well... Sometimes people do.
> My point is that if you can accept the thoughts
> (just as thoughts - not as being true)
> Then you may be able to change your feeling like crap.
>
> Acceptance is change...
>
> If that sounds paradoxical the idea is that in accepting one thing you quite often can change another.- Think of DR as being in another World where normal thoughts can't reach. It's just not the same as having even frequent, intrusive, disturbing thoughts. For example, when I started on Reboxetine I could not stop picturing suicide for 2 weeks. The images just kept on appearing. However, I just batted them away, knowing it was not something I wanted or was going to do. It was a bloody horrible experience but a fundamentally different one to DR.
I wish I could explain this more clearly or even knew for certain that DR is what I am experiencing. Either way, it's good to talk with someone who has had similar experiences.
Pete
Posted by alexandra_k on May 14, 2005, at 0:53:07
In reply to Re: Dryden, Ellis, ACT, posted by pedrito on May 13, 2005, at 22:44:34
> - I suffer from derealization (I think) which ... means I disappear off for most of the day into a distant, anxious World of cognition that bears no resemblance to what I actually think whatsoever.
Ah.
Thats helpful. I wasn't sure what kinds of thoughts were worrying you.Is it that it isn't so much a problem with your thoughts (your internal verbal dialogue)...
or your mental pictures (I used to get images of myself hanging off one of the rafters in my house)...
But more a problem with the QUALITY of your EXPEREINCE???
Does that seem right???
>Derealization is different though, it's like a different World. A horrible different World, unfortunately.Yeah. I get this sometimes. But I'm not too sure on whether our experiences are similar or not. I haven't really talked about what it is like to anyone in very much detail. Probably because - as you say - it is hard to describe / explain.
> nearly all of my thinking is totally unreal/not my own/foreign/distant. It's not obtrusive in nature, it wholly displaces your cognition. I can't have a rational thought if I try.
> - Think of DR as being in another World where normal thoughts can't reach.Some people experience their thoughts as being alien. Like they aren't produced by them the way that they should be. Some people experience their bodily movements / actions as alien in the same way.
'Less extreme' versions of these are found in de-personalisation (the sense that one isn't real, or all there, somehow). An extreme version can be found in delusions of thought insertion and alien control. Where (apparantly) people come to believe on the basis of their experiences that an external agency is controlling their thinking / feeling / behaviours.
Is that kind of what you mean?
The other way is de-realisation. Thats when the world seems removed or distant somehow. The world doesn't seem real.
Quite often depersonalisation / derealisation can be found together.
Is this what you are getting at???
I'm not at all sure that either cognitive restructuring or acceptance can alter the experience.
But medication may help.???
I don't know...
Posted by badhaircut on May 14, 2005, at 1:26:35
In reply to Re: Dryden, Ellis, ACT, posted by pedrito on May 13, 2005, at 7:36:37
(I didn't realize there were new posts on this thread. Then while I was composing this, Alexandra & Pete posted much more. I apologize if this doesn't account for later posts.)
Alexandra-
Great capsulizing of cognitive therapy.
When I said ACT "doesn't care very much if a patient has irrational thoughts," I was in fact thinking of the classic "Everyone-always-hates-me" variety, but the ACT principle covers your counterexample, too. (For other readers I should add that an ACT therapist would "care" -be concerned- about the troubling thoughts, even if she didn't try to change them.)
As you say, if a client accepts being upset and stops judging himself harshly for it, that is itself a change in thought. But ACT doesn't care very much if a patient has self-judging thoughts, either. It allows him to go on judging himself harshly and hating himself for judging himself and so ad infinitem. ACT holds that to try "removing" any cognitions, even hostile self-judgments, is like trying to turn your own body inside out.
Attempts to push a thought aside, hide it, stuff it back in, vilify it, or even forcibly disbelieve it, will both (a) hijack a lot of mental resources and (b) ironically intensify the unwelcome thought.
ACT realizes that people will have much better lives if they're NOT stewing in a corner with their thoughts of self-hatred or their irrational beliefs or whatever, but it insists that no one can control her own thoughts & feelings very much without enormous, life-destroying costs. Give up on that, it says.
So then, why would anyone write a book about ACT!
This is my summary, not the authors': The less effort is made to control thoughts (bad OR good), the more freedom there is for thoughts of all kinds, including helpful, happy, creative, loving, productive ones, to occur. As you say, they come unchosen. I think in a sense the "better" thoughts are always there, it's just hard to see them when one is struggling for control over the others. If one allows them all to be there, to come & go, freely plaguing & vexing, then the brighter ones can also occur more freely & frequently than they do when one is busy pushing & pulling the darker ones all out of shape.
With more thoughts of all kinds "at the ready," one can act more effectively to improve the life that's *outside* of the head.
Posted by alexandra_k on May 14, 2005, at 6:38:25
In reply to acceptance » alexandra_k, posted by badhaircut on May 14, 2005, at 1:26:35
Disclaimer: I don't know anything about ACT other than that it has the word 'acceptance' in it and Linehan goes on about acceptance and I think I agree with her... So. I am trying to defend acceptance though don't necessarily buy ACT (I don't know if I buy it or not because I don't know anything about it) ok??
:-)
> When I said ACT "doesn't care very much if a patient has irrational thoughts," I was in fact thinking of the classic "Everyone-always-hates-me" variety.
But is it that they 'don't care' or that they don't wet themselves with excitement as a CBT therapist tends to???
> As you say, if a client accepts being upset and stops judging himself harshly for it, that is itself a change in thought.
Lifting judgement... I prefer to talk of 'lifting' judgement rather than 'stopping' judgement. I'll get to *why* in a bit..
Yeah. It is a change in thought. But even more importantly it is a change in FEELING.>But ACT doesn't care very much if a patient has self-judging thoughts, either. It allows him to go on judging himself harshly and hating himself for judging himself and so ad infinitem.
How do you mean 'allows him to'???
Do you mean the t doesn't insist on making the client stoppit??? (Which is a silly thing to insist on anyways because it isn't like the patient CAN just stoppit. I mean, if they could then they wouldn't bloody well be in therapy to start with).>ACT holds that to try "removing" any cognitions, even hostile self-judgments, is like trying to turn your own body inside out.
Attempting to stop having certain thoughts is an ironic process. Example: Do NOT think about oranges.
Did you manage to do it???
Trying just makes it worse.
That is an ironic process.
That is what happens when we try and instruct ourselves not to think about certain things:
suicide
how much we hate ourselves
how depressed we feel
oranges.
Its not about being mentally unwell
Its a fact about human cognition.
> Attempts to push a thought aside, hide it, stuff it back in, vilify it, or even forcibly disbelieve it, will both (a) hijack a lot of mental resources and (b) ironically intensify the unwelcome thought.Absolutely.
Waste of time :-)
> ACT realizes that people will have much better lives if they're NOT stewing in a corner with their thoughts of self-hatred or their irrational beliefs or whatever, but it insists that no one can control her own thoughts & feelings very much without enormous, life-destroying costs. Give up on that, it says.Yeah. Our lives would be much better if those nasty old thoughts never occurred to us in the first place. But fact is, they did. And we can't make them go away.
> This is my summary, not the authors': The less effort is made to control thoughts (bad OR good), the more freedom there is for thoughts of all kinds, including helpful, happy, creative, loving, productive ones, to occur. As you say, they come unchosen. I think in a sense the "better" thoughts are always there, it's just hard to see them when one is struggling for control over the others. If one allows them all to be there, to come & go, freely plaguing & vexing, then the brighter ones can also occur more freely & frequently than they do when one is busy pushing & pulling the darker ones all out of shape.
Oh oh oh!!!
This sounds a bit like mindfulness meditation...
You can't 'make all your thoughts go away'.
You can't make yourself stop thinking...Ah.
But you can.
The trick isn't to try and make yourself stop thinking...
The trick is to take all of your attention
Everybit of it that you can muster
And focus on how your breathing FEELS.
It isn't that your thoughts stop.
It is that all you are aware of is how your breathing feels.
Mostly I feel a kind of dual-awareness.
I'm focusing everything I can on how my breathing feels
But... out of the corner of my mind little clouds of thoughts float past.
After a while you can even watch them
In a spirit of 'I am observing my thoughts' in a 'I am not my thoughts they are merely one thing going on' kind of way.
Guess what?
They come and go.
But if they come
And you grab 'em and say 'go away little thought' over and over
You only make it hang around.
If you just observe the fact that it came...
WEll.
Then it will pass.
It might come back
a hundred times.
But each time...
It passes.
Good thoughts come too.
I used to cling to those.
But then I found that I actually learned a whole heap more by resisting the temptation to cling to them.This is all really hard to explain in a coherent way that doesn't run into paradox.
But I do think there is sense in it.
> With more thoughts of all kinds "at the ready," one can act more effectively to improve the life that's *outside* of the head.:-)
Posted by badhaircut on May 14, 2005, at 11:40:17
In reply to Re: acceptance » badhaircut, posted by alexandra_k on May 14, 2005, at 6:38:25
> But is it that they 'don't care' or that they don't wet themselves with excitement as a CBT therapist tends to???
LOL.
> >But ACT ... allows him to go on judging himself harshly...
> How do you mean 'allows him to'??? Do you mean the t doesn't insist on making the client stoppit???Yes, exactly.
> Attempting to stop having certain thoughts is an ironic process.
> Example: Do NOT think about oranges.
> Did you manage to do it???
> Trying just makes it worse.For sure! I found a really neat book about that: "White Bears and Other Unwanted Thoughts" by Daniel Wegner. It's not a therapy book, but it has applications to therapy. He suggests you "invite the thought back in" as the only way to deal with it.
> Its not about being mentally unwell
> Its a fact about human cognition.Amen!!
> Oh oh oh!!!
> This sounds a bit like mindfulness meditation...Yes, ACT is in that ballpark. The authors put out a book with other mindfulness-type therapists like Marsha Linehan (DBT guru) and Zindel Segal and others. They're calling themselves the "third wave" of behavior therapy. First there was mean old behavior therapy, then thought-attacking CBT, now various mindfulness techniques. ("Mindfulness and Acceptance: Expanding the Cognitive-Behavioral Tradition")
> It isn't that your thoughts stop.
> It is that all you are aware of is how your breathing feels.
> Mostly I feel a kind of dual-awareness.
> I'm focusing everything I can on how my breathing feels
> But... out of the corner of my mind little clouds of thoughts float past.
> After a while you can even watch themYes. I am becoming more aware of the "observer-I." For example, Thursday I was too anxious or whatever to leave my house (yet again!). But I was able to step back from my feelings & beliefs a little without giving them up. My usual thought "I'M A JACKASS!!" came up. I observed it sorta like a cloud, as you say, but it didn't float past, it just enveloped me like a mist — and stayed. But I saw it as separate from me, from observer-me. I thought something like, "I see myself and I may be a jackass. I see I have jackass-feelings. I can watch myself leave the house and 'be' a jackass outside..." So I did, I went outside and observed myself feeling and –sorta– being a jackass. I was not quite indifferent to it: 'being' a jackass did not feel good. But better feelings were no longer my target. I was outside.
Logically, I know I'm not a jackass (well, not very often one). But my heartfelt belief is that I am the braying Jackass King. Doing this mindfulness tactic Thursday, I was surprised to see how much I struggle against this belief — I try to avoid it over & over all day long. So much energy goes into this.
"Do THIS and you won't be a jackass!"
"Do THAT and you won't care if you're a jackass!"
"Oh god! You did that one wrong! YOU JACKASS!!"> Good thoughts come too.
> I used to cling to those.
> But then I found that I actually learned a whole heap more by resisting the temptation to cling to themIt's interesting. The good thoughts can loose their "effect" as quickly as the bad ones.
> This is all really hard to explain in a coherent way that doesn't run into paradox
Very hard to talk about. I'm glad you take the time to do it.
Posted by alexandra_k on May 14, 2005, at 19:54:32
In reply to Re: acceptance » alexandra_k, posted by badhaircut on May 14, 2005, at 11:40:17
>I found a really neat book about that: "White Bears and Other Unwanted Thoughts" by Daniel Wegner. It's not a therapy book, but it has applications to therapy. He suggests you "invite the thought back in" as the only way to deal with it.
Mmm.
Books.
I might have to interloan that.> Yes, ACT is in that ballpark. The authors put out a book with other mindfulness-type therapists like Marsha Linehan (DBT guru) and Zindel Segal and others. They're calling themselves the "third wave" of behavior therapy.
Ah. I had heard of Segal but didn't know anything more about him. This is verrrrrrry interesting to me :-)
>First there was mean old behavior therapy,
(LOL!!! shocking dogs to learn about 'learned helplessness')
>then thought-attacking CBT,
(LOL!!!)
>now various mindfulness techniques.
("Mindfulness and Acceptance: Expanding the Cognitive-Behavioral Tradition")
Hmm. I might just have to buy that one...
> My usual thought "I'M A JACKASS!!" came up. I observed it sorta like a cloud, as you say, but it didn't float past, it just enveloped me like a mist — and stayed.Yup. But lots of processes are going on in you at the same time. Thoughts, feelings, sensations from your different sense modalities. I think I only become aware of things 'floating past' when I am attempting to focus all my attention on something different. I'm only aware of my thoughts floating past when I'm trying to concentrate on how my breathing feels. If I try to focus all my attention on my thoughts then they don't seem to 'float past' - but my breathing does.
>But I saw it as separate from me, from observer-me. I thought something like, "I see myself and I may be a jackass. I see I have jackass-feelings. I can watch myself leave the house and 'be' a jackass outside..." So I did, I went outside and observed myself feeling and –sorta– being a jackass. I was not quite indifferent to it: 'being' a jackass did not feel good. But better feelings were no longer my target. I was outside.
Shot.
Well done :-)
You got yourself outside YAY!!!!!Though...
There what you seemed to be doing was accepting that you are in fact a jackass. And if you are a jackass inside then you may as well go be one outside. You brought into the belief that you were one and tried to accept that it was true and realised that it being true didn't mean that you had to stay inside. Thats a kind of 'worst case scenario thing'. It is like the belief (though I prefer to think of it as a thought) 'Everybody hates me'. You could try to accept it as fact - but come to realise that it doesn't matter because you don't HAVE to be loved by everyone. You don't NEED that. But IMO that strategy is limited. It buys into the truth of the thought where it need not do so. So the CBT alternative is to try and challenge the thought so that you don't have to believe it is true. But that doesn't seem to get rid of the sense of conviction that one has that they are true when the thought occurs to one.
> Logically, I know I'm not a jackass (well, not very often one).But you seemed to accept the fact that you were above.
>But my heartfelt belief is that I am the braying Jackass King. Doing this mindfulness tactic Thursday, I was surprised to see how much I struggle against this belief — I try to avoid it over & over all day long. So much energy goes into this.
> "Do THIS and you won't be a jackass!"
> "Do THAT and you won't care if you're a jackass!"
> "Oh god! You did that one wrong! YOU JACKASS!!"Yup.
Hmm.
It is an undeniable fact that you do have those thoughts. They are about the only thing that is certain, actually. But where room for doubt creeps in is when you jump from the fact that you have the thought (that you do have the thought is necessarily true) to whether the thought is an accurate representation of reality (that you actually are a jackass).You have to accept having the thoughts you have. Because they just occur to you. There isn't squat you can do about whether they occur to you or not. In a sense thoughts are something that happen to you - or in you.
But... What we do seem to have control over is our attention processes. Whether we attend to those thoughts or not. Lots of processes are going on in us at any given point in time. We seem to be able to choose what we attend to.
(Trying hard to avoid paradox here.....)
A feeling of conviction or certainty has become attached to the content of a thought being veridical, where really the sense of conviction or certainty should be attached to the fact that they are having the thought....
I wonder how things would have gone if you were able to try to focus your attention on something like how your breathing feels for a while. A few minutes. You should get better at being able to do this fairly quickly with practice. Then to become aware 'out of the corner of your mind' that you are having thoughts that are coming and going... Whenever it starts to become a big cloud then focus your attention back on your breathing... Maybe... Maybe... You could see it AS a thought. And see that while it is certain that you are having a thoguht - it is just a thought. And what I mean by seeing that it is JUST a thought is seeing that it isn't something that you do believe. It is just a thought. Not even a belief.
Because logically you know that - right?
You don't believe you are a jackass.
But the thought occurs to you and the sense of conviction becomes associated with the thoguhts being true rather than with the fact that you are having the thoguht.Does that make any sense at all???????
> > Good thoughts come too.
> > I used to cling to those.
> > But then I found that I actually learned a whole heap more by resisting the temptation to cling to them
> It's interesting. The good thoughts can loose their "effect" as quickly as the bad ones.Well. Thoughts do come and go. If I try to cling then I get mad / pissed / upset when they go - as they invariably do. That just makes it harder to let the bad ones go. Clinging hurts. Basically. Clinging to the good only results in the bad. Better to remain detached to a degree and just take what comes as it comes...
> > This is all really hard to explain in a coherent way that doesn't run into paradox> Very hard to talk about. I'm glad you take the time to do it.
:-)
Thanks for the book links.
I really should check those out..
:-)
Posted by pedrito on May 15, 2005, at 17:33:00
In reply to Re: Dryden, Ellis, ACT, posted by alexandra_k on May 14, 2005, at 0:53:07
> Is it that it isn't so much a problem with your thoughts (your internal verbal dialogue)...
> or your mental pictures (I used to get images of myself hanging off one of the rafters in my house)...
> But more a problem with the QUALITY of your EXPEREINCE???
> Does that seem right???- Errrm that's more like it, yes. Some days (like Friday) I disappear off to this "external viewpoint" pretty much the whole day and cannot seem to snap out of it. Other days (like Saturday) I'm relatively fine and have occasional periods of intrusive thoughts, which I sidestep or challenge, depending on what I think's most likely to help (neither techniques help mostly).
> Yeah. I get this sometimes. But I'm not too sure on whether our experiences are similar or not. I haven't really talked about what it is like to anyone in very much detail. Probably because - as you say - it is hard to describe / explain.
>- Yes, it's phenominally difficult to describe. I'm still not 100% sure I have DP/DR. Pretty confident though. Plus it's not talked about or worked on that much by the looks of it.
> 'Less extreme' versions of these are found in de-personalisation (the sense that one isn't real, or all there, somehow). An extreme version can be found in delusions of thought insertion and alien control. Where (apparantly) people come to believe on the basis of their experiences that an external agency is controlling their thinking / feeling / behaviours.
>
> Is that kind of what you mean?- Yes and no. I certainly don't believe another party is controlling my thoughts. That's bonkers (no offence to anyone who thinks that). However, I do believe, and have considerable, painful evidence that I "zone out" to what feels like a place where I'm not doing the thinking. This, I'm certain goes back to 10 years ago where I spent 3 months 24/7 generating vivid imagery of people loathing me. I think I incidentally trained myself into DR/DP =0(
>
> The other way is de-realisation. Thats when the world seems removed or distant somehow. The world doesn't seem real.
>
> Quite often depersonalisation / derealisation can be found together.
>
> Is this what you are getting at???
> I'm not at all sure that either cognitive restructuring or acceptance can alter the experience.
> But medication may help.
>
> ???
>
> I don't know...- Neither do I. It's a f_cker. Friday was almost unbearable and yet Saturday was fine. That's not your regular anxiety/depression scenario. At least I get the occasional OK day I suppose.
Pete
Posted by pedrito on May 15, 2005, at 17:46:21
In reply to acceptance » alexandra_k, posted by badhaircut on May 14, 2005, at 1:26:35
> Attempts to push a thought aside, hide it, stuff it back in, vilify it, or even forcibly disbelieve it, will both (a) hijack a lot of mental resources and (b) ironically intensify the unwelcome thought.
- Amen.
> ACT realizes that people will have much better lives if they're NOT stewing in a corner with their thoughts of self-hatred or their irrational beliefs or whatever, but it insists that no one can control her own thoughts & feelings very much without enormous, life-destroying costs. Give up on that, it says.
- I read that ACT was radical but that still sounds insane to a hardened thought-fighter like myself. However, considering that I've been working my t*ts off at various belief/thought-attacking therapies for probably 5 years now and still have a crap quality of life, I'm all ears.
>
> So then, why would anyone write a book about ACT!
>
> This is my summary, not the authors': The less effort is made to control thoughts (bad OR good), the more freedom there is for thoughts of all kinds, including helpful, happy, creative, loving, productive ones, to occur. As you say, they come unchosen. I think in a sense the "better" thoughts are always there, it's just hard to see them when one is struggling for control over the others. If one allows them all to be there, to come & go, freely plaguing & vexing, then the brighter ones can also occur more freely & frequently than they do when one is busy pushing & pulling the darker ones all out of shape.- This is very interesting. I know for a fact that my CBT/REBT "defences" are like a house of cards. Once one of these unwelcome/unhealthy thoughts comes in, the whole defence collapses. Additionally I then generate a deluge of unwelcome thoughts that I just can't repel.
I guess the key, which is something that Alexandra alluded to earlier, is to somehow learn not to pay the unwelcome thoughts much attention, to learn how to treat them just as thoughts. To "bend like a willow" and watch the thought go whizzing past. A bit like an Agent in the Matrix =0) (God, how tragic do I sound...)
>
> With more thoughts of all kinds "at the ready," one can act more effectively to improve the life that's *outside* of the head.- Well that'd be just top-banana. bhc - have you tried these techniques? have you had much success?
pete
Posted by pedrito on May 15, 2005, at 18:09:21
In reply to Re: acceptance » badhaircut, posted by alexandra_k on May 14, 2005, at 6:38:25
> Attempting to stop having certain thoughts is an ironic process. Example: Do NOT think about oranges.
> Did you manage to do it???
> Trying just makes it worse.
> That is an ironic process.
> That is what happens when we try and instruct ourselves not to think about certain things:
> suicide
> how much we hate ourselves
> how depressed we feel
> oranges.
> Its not about being mentally unwell
> Its a fact about human cognition.- lol. I COMMAND YOU TO STOP THINKING ABOUT LAWNMOWERS - YES, SIR!
> Ah.
> But you can.
> The trick isn't to try and make yourself stop thinking...
> The trick is to take all of your attention
> Everybit of it that you can muster
> And focus on how your breathing FEELS.
> It isn't that your thoughts stop.
> It is that all you are aware of is how your breathing feels.
> Mostly I feel a kind of dual-awareness.
> I'm focusing everything I can on how my breathing feels
> But... out of the corner of my mind little clouds of thoughts float past.
> After a while you can even watch them
> In a spirit of 'I am observing my thoughts' in a 'I am not my thoughts they are merely one thing going on' kind of way.
> Guess what?
> They come and go.
> But if they come
> And you grab 'em and say 'go away little thought' over and over
> You only make it hang around.
> If you just observe the fact that it came...
> WEll.
> Then it will pass.
> It might come back
> a hundred times.
> But each time...
> It passes.
> Good thoughts come too.
> I used to cling to those.
> But then I found that I actually learned a whole heap more by resisting the temptation to cling to them.
>
> This is all really hard to explain in a coherent way that doesn't run into paradox.
>
> But I do think there is sense in it.- Cool. So do you find this technique helpful? Has it helped lift your mood? Have you found the troubling thoughts decrease in frequency? Is your quality of life higher now?
This seems a technique that could sit quite nicely alongside some REBT style beliefs. E.g. upon receiving a really nasty thought:
There's that thought again. I really wish I didn't have these thoughts but there's no law of the universe dictating that I mustn't. They're unpleasant and difficult to bear at times but I can bear it and will do so.pete
Posted by badhaircut on May 16, 2005, at 0:31:48
In reply to Re: acceptance, posted by pedrito on May 15, 2005, at 17:46:21
>> So I did, I went outside and observed myself feeling and –sorta– being a jackass.
> There what you seemed to be doing was accepting that you are in fact a jackass....
> You bought into the belief...
> But where room for doubt creeps in is when you jump from the fact that you have the thought (that you do have the thought is necessarily true) to whether the thought is an accurate representation of reality (that you actually are a jackass)
This is indeed hard to talk about without paradox.
You're right. From what I wrote it sounds as though I bought into the idea. Like I was applying Albert Ellis' snarly rhetorical question: "Whaaat's so baaaad about being a jaaackass?" (I can hear his voice saying it. And hey, Pete, it sounds like Ellis would know! LOL)
But that's not what I meant. I guess I've lived with the intense I'm-a-jerk mindset for so long that I didn't realize quite how I was applying mindful detachment.
For me, "jackass" comes as a set, cemented to a ton of loud, persistent thoughts like:
•People think I'm annoying.
•No one will sincerely like me.
•I don't know anything about wine.
•etc etc etc
And feelings of shame, humiliation, fear, and shame.I guess by " 'being' a jackass" (and what I now realize I meant by the ironic quotes and the "sorta") I was talking about the whole set. Accepting Me as the guy who has all those thoughts all the time. Wow! That is what I meant.
On any checklist of boorish behavior I would score very low. In this sense I am not a jackass. But that sense is inseparable in my mind from all those other senses that do apply to me. Senses like, "One who thinks he is a jackass." And they're not merely inseparable: they turn into each other so rapidly & sneakily that if I say any one sense is false I could end up trying to deny my own existence.
I'm not a jackass except that I think that I am, and anyone who thinks that he is one, is.
There's no way out of that.
> A feeling of conviction or certainty has become attached to the content of a thought being veridical, where really the sense of conviction or certainty should be attached to the fact that they are having the thought....
A feeling of certainty is itself a sort of mental event one can watch float by like a cloud.
Sometimes I cannot separate a feeling of certainty from the crazy thought it's attached to. But I can separate myself (my core sense of self-recognition, the mindful "observer-me") from both the crazy thought and its attached feeling of certainty. Both of which walk along with me, but neither of them is me or even part of me.
Easier to write about than to practice, of course.
> I know for a fact that my CBT/REBT "defences" are like a house of cards. Once one of these unwelcome/unhealthy thoughts comes in, the whole defence collapses.
Been there. The ACT position is that our fantastic, symbol-manipulating, complexity-untangling, question-solving, verbal faculties that serve us so amazingly well in controlling the physical world and influencing other people and predicting hurricanes are completely unsuited to controlling one's own thoughts & feelings. But misusing them this way is an early-acquired, universal, and easy mistake. A tool (language skills) so broadly effective in virtually every other application is an obvious choice to use for reducing anxiety.
And it works, to a degree. But the same persistent, complex connectivity among ideas that enables us to build bridges and find off-season bargains is a disaster when applied inside one's own head. Use a mental trick to avoid thinking about some scary thing and voila! anxiety decreases. But soon enough that trick itself becomes as scary as the thing we avoided thinking about. Now you have to use another trick to avoid thinking of the first trick. And so on. This sort of contagion does not happen in the real world: Chop a tree down with an axe, and the axe doesn't turn into a tree.
ACT says, Apply problem-solving to the exterior world; apply acceptance to the interior. Though the authors do go into more detail than "Just accept it."
> bhc - have you tried these techniques? have you had much success?
I got outside my house on Thursday! This is no small thing. ACT says start somewhere and keep broadening the circle of un-avoided experiences, moving toward the things that are most personally important to you, and only you. But I don't know what's important to me, and I'm afraid to find out, so I haven't continued broadening my experience much. This exact situation wasn't covered in the literature.
In these posts I sound like a recruiter for the local ACT house. I'm not. I've been burned by NEW! & IMPROVED! Psychology enough times to be jaded. But I'd love to get people interested enough in ACT issues to tear through the theory with me. As you two have been doing.
-bhc
Posted by pedrito on May 17, 2005, at 8:18:15
In reply to Re: acceptance » alexandra_k, posted by badhaircut on May 14, 2005, at 11:40:17
> For sure! I found a really neat book about that: "White Bears and Other Unwanted Thoughts" by Daniel Wegner. It's not a therapy book, but it has applications to therapy. He suggests you "invite the thought back in" as the only way to deal with it.
- again, that sounds like big trouble to me. Intentionally and obsessively generating imagery was what got me into troublesville in the first place. At this juncture though, I’m willing to try anything =o]
>
> > It isn't that your thoughts stop.
> > It is that all you are aware of is how your breathing feels.
> > Mostly I feel a kind of dual-awareness.
> > I'm focusing everything I can on how my breathing feels
> > But... out of the corner of my mind little clouds of thoughts float past.
> > After a while you can even watch them- sounds cool. Sounds hard to do.
> Yes. I am becoming more aware of the "observer-I." For example, Thursday I was too anxious or whatever to leave my house (yet again!). But I was able to step back from my feelings & beliefs a little without giving them up. My usual thought "I'M A JACKASS!!" came up. I observed it sorta like a cloud, as you say, but it didn't float past, it just enveloped me like a mist — and stayed.
- that’s exactly what I get. A lot of the time I’m deep into the mist, completely lost in it, before I even realise. At that point, I’m stuffed usually. I think this is where the DR is a killer, it’s as if you’re in the mist withing 3 minutes of waking up and it’s all your used to – you don’t know what it’s like not to be in the mist. If that makes any sense. Last night, even when playing in a wicked game of soccer I could not stop picturing/thinking “I am utterly loathesome”. I finally gave up and agreed, in a slightly sarcastic manner, that I was wholly loathesome and felt a lot better within 30 minutes. Hmmm.
> But I saw it as separate from me, from observer-me. I thought something like, "I see myself and I may be a jackass. I see I have jackass-feelings. I can watch myself leave the house and 'be' a jackass outside..." So I did, I went outside and observed myself feeling and –sorta– being a jackass. I was not quite indifferent to it: 'being' a jackass did not feel good. But better feelings were no longer my target. I was outside.
- cool.
> Logically, I know I'm not a jackass (well, not very often one). But my heartfelt belief is that I am the braying Jackass King. Doing this mindfulness tactic Thursday, I was surprised to see how much I struggle against this belief — I try to avoid it over & over all day long. So much energy goes into this.
> "Do THIS and you won't be a jackass!"
> "Do THAT and you won't care if you're a jackass!"
> "Oh god! You did that one wrong! YOU JACKASS!!"
>
> > Good thoughts come too.
> > I used to cling to those.
> > But then I found that I actually learned a whole heap more by resisting the temptation to cling to them
>
> It's interesting. The good thoughts can loose their "effect" as quickly as the bad ones.
>
> > This is all really hard to explain in a coherent way that doesn't run into paradox
>
> Very hard to talk about. I'm glad you take the time to do it.- yes. Clinging rigidly to any kind of thinking is bad news. It’s inflexible thinking that gets us into trouble in the first place. One thing I’ve learned of late is, if I have a good morning for example, DO NOT go crazy trying to remember exactly what I did and then “replay” those actions rote. Bad move.
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