David D. Burns
David D. Burns
David D. Burnsis an adjunct professor emeritus in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the author of the best-selling books Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy and The Feeling Good Handbook. Burns popularized Aaron T. Beck's cognitive behavioral therapywhen his book became a best seller during the 1980s...
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powerful guilt behavior
Guilt serves a powerful social function in terms of policing our behavior.
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Forgiving yourself, not guilt, increases personal accountability.
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Guilt doesn't help. What should fill in for it? Remorse. Remorse is when you feel bad about what you did. Guilt is when you feel bad about who you are.
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Guilt is not the best way to remedy your mistakes.
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It's very rare to have a patient who isn't absolutely delighted when you say, 'I read your feedback. The session didn't go well. You actually got more upset, and I made about three really horrible errors.' If you do that from the heart and not as a gimmick, boy, it's a wonderful thing.
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I have been amazed by the interest in cognitive behavioral therapy that has developed since 'Feeling Good' was first published in 1980. At that time, very few people had heard of cognitive therapy.
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There is no standard 'therapeutic process,' since there are so many different schools of therapy.
change patients
What saddens me is seeing patients who have been going to therapy for years and years with no change, but they keep going to the same therapist. To me, that's not right.
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Cognitive therapy is a fast-acting technology of mood modification that you can learn to apply on your own. It can help you eliminate the symptoms and experience personal growth so you can minimize future upsets and cope with depression more effectively in the future.
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Although no one treatment will ever be a panacea, research studies indicate that cognitive therapy can be helpful for a variety of disorders in addition to depression.
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There is no 'ultimate goal of therapy.' Thinking there is some ultimate or universal goal of therapy is one of the most fundamental errors of our field. To me, that concept is rather arrogant, as if therapists were some kind of spiritual experts who knew what human beings are supposed to be like.
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I'm all for 'tools,' not 'schools,' of therapy. To me, the schools of therapy compete much like religions, or even cults, all claiming to know the cause and to have the best method for treating people.
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Most therapists do not appear to know how to pinpoint and reverse therapeutic resistance - to head it off at the pass. Instead, they try to persuade the patient to change, or to do the psychotherapy homework, while the patient resists and 'yes-butts' the therapist. The therapist ends up feeling frustrated and resentful, and doing all the work.
goofy incredibly time
I've been interviewed for hundreds of magazine articles, and they come out incredibly goofy about 90 percent of the time.