Podcasts about i david

Bible Readings:1 Chronicles 29:1-25Psalms 84, Psalm 27 Sermon Outline: Psalm 27:4 (NKJV) 4One thing I have desired of the Lord, That will I seek: That I may dwell in the house of the Lord All the days of my life, To behold the beauty of the Lord, And to inquire in His temple. I David’s… The post 11/05/2025 – Evening Service: Longing for public worship appeared first on Maroubra Presbyterian Church.

You were beginning to doubt we'd actually drop a third episode, and yet. Due to some scheduling issues we actually had to record what would have been Parts 3 (discussion of Episode 7) and 4 (Episodes 8-10) together and it was just easier to make it a long one, so here you go! We've got one more of these to get out covering the final arc, which you will have in advance of season 2 starting next week, though please don't get excited about the idea of us doing this all over again for the new season, because we've got no current plans to commit to that much extra stuff and I (David) don't want season 2 to be work before it's entertainment. Also, we changed up the format of this one from the last and we'd really appreciate some feedback on what you think of it, so please let us know, especially if you're a patron who can let us know easily and simply in the discord (hint hint, join the patreon at http://patreon.com/praxicast )   Cast: Jamie - https://bsky.app/profile/wizardcubes.bsky.social Rob - https://bsky.app/profile/trufflehog.bsky.social David - https://bsky.app/profile/sanitarynaptime.bsky.social

In this special episode of the KPC podcast, we're celebrating the revival of DKDKTV with none other than my partner, Danny Kim! But did I pick the wrong guests for the occasion? Kelsey and Tammy, who probably know all our deepest secrets, waste no time exposing us on camera.This episode gets extra spicy as Danny and I (David) get called out—hard. But it's not just about the chaos; we also dive into life, the content creation scene, and the ever-evolving world of Korean content and K-pop. Buckle up for an episode filled with laughs, revelations, and maybe a little regret on my part.Get early access, exclusive bonus podcasts, K-pop reactions on Patreon - https://patreon.com/KoreanPizzaClubUnique & Aesthetic Korean products shipped globally - https://biroso.net/?utm_source=YOUTUBE&utm_medium=cpc&utm_id=Korea+Pizza+Club__

welcome back to the Bushnell project John Bushnell here as we continue to encourage one another in reading God's word finding peace in the midst of a storm maybe and a really getting to know God's the story of God and we' in the middle of the story of David and Goliath and Jonathan and Saul, but it's it's God's story. And so it can get confusing. We talked about how sometimes it's written we're gonna get some clarity here as we continue in chapter 18 our first Samuel.ond this relationship with David and Saul, David had been in Saul's um employment, if you will, playing the harp to sue the spirit that was upon him, a spirit sent from God a a evil spirit and so that that's going on and then they all go to war and so David's not doing that and so he's helping his father with the sheep and his father sends him after 40 days to go find out what's happening and to take some provisions to his brothers. He does that he seizes Goliate, he takes out Goliate. and Saul's impressed who is this guy, Jonathan knits his soul, basically his heart. soul to the Bible's his soul, so souls will go with that to David. and and now we're gonna have basically the parade..oliias and the Philippines beams. being destroyed. So that's we're at chapter 18 verse six is they were coming home when Davy returned from striking down the philistine. the women came out of all the cities of Israel singing and dancing to meet king Saul with tambourines with songs of joy and with musical instruments, and the women sang to one another as they celebrated Saul has struck down his thousands, and David, his ten thousands. Saul was very angry, and this saying displeased him. He said, they have ascribed to David 10 thousands, and to me they have ascribed thousands, and what more can he have but the kingdom? and so I David from that day on the next day a harmful spirit from God rushed upon soul, and he raved within his house, while David was playing the lyre as he did day by day, Saul had his spear in his hand, and Saul hurled the spear, for he thought I will pin David to the wall, for David evaded him twice. Saul was afraid of David because the Lord was with him, but had departed from Saul. So Saul removed him from his presence and made him a commander of a thousand, and he went out and came in before the people, and David had a success in all his undertakings, for the Lord was with him, and when Saul saw that he had great success, he stood in fearful awe of him, but all of Israel and Judah loved David, for he went out and came in before them. and we'll stop there, 16 so many know the story. This is that time when King saw throw a sphere at David. misses him or David evades it as the Bible says, and then he tries with the can, so says twice there was it twice in a few seconds or was it twice in a few hours. Nevertheless, David is now going to be in charge of a thousand men. command over a thousand men, so that he's not in Saul's presence playing the lear more. or the liar. So David's fame is growing rapidly, and Saul is very, very jealous. And one of the things to realize here is this this jealousy, this rage, all this comes from a man who no longer as the spirit of God. And but this rage and his anger is going toward a man who does how the spirit of God and notice David's response, he doesn't he doesn't defend himself. He doesn't attack back. He doesn't. uh repel the evil with evil. and for us, I think today us Christians that's a good thing for us to look at is how do we press on a life even when people treat us wrong or people treat us in a way that they shouldn't. yet how do we respond to that? What our our response for people who are filled with the Holy Spirit, who know that they are saved by God's grace because of what Jesus did on the cross outside of Jerusalem, and that God raised him from the dead and that he is seated Jesus at the right hand of the Father, interceding for us, so that when people do something wrong to us, why should we lash out? We know t

Feeling Down? Try the Feeling Great App for Free! The Feeling Great App is now available in both app stores (IOS and Android) and is for therapists and the general public, and you can take a ride for free! Check it  out at FeelingGreat.com! Life Coaching: A New Dimension in Counseling Today we discuss the recent upsurge in life coaching, and feature one of the leaders in this emerging field, Angela Poch, and one of her wonderful students, Lorna Bird. Lorna Bird Angela Poch (see featured photo) is a Registered Professional Counsellor (RPC) with the Canadian Professional Counselling Association, certified Master Life Coach, and TEAM-CBT Level 4 Advanced Therapist and Trainer. She has been teaching health and wellness for over 30 years and was Vice President of Education with the Adventist Association of Health & Wellness Coaching. She has written several articles and books on health and wellness including, “The Truth Will Set You Free.” She has a YouTube channel (@talkingteamcbt) interviewing clinicians about their journeys with TEAM-CBT. She also has a channel on psychology and health (@bodymindhealth4u). Lorna Bird holds a Diploma of Counseling from Australia and is a certified Life and Health Coach. She is also a Level 3 certified TEAM-CBT therapist  https://www.yestohealth.com.au/ Angela and Lorna will give us the true scoop on coaching. To get started, what IS coaching, and how does it differ from psychotherapy? I am aware that our podcast goes worldwide, so the answer may differ depending on the country or state where you live. According to AI, “In California, the term "psychotherapist" is defined in the Civil Code to include a number of mental health professionals, including psychologists, psychiatrists, and clinical social workers. In general, anyone who provides psychotherapy or counseling in California, whether in person, by phone, or online, must be licensed.in California.” Coaching is quite different. Again, according to AI, “In California, there are no specific state-mandated requirements for individuals to use the term "coach" or practice life coaching, meaning anyone can technically call themselves a coach without obtaining a specific license.” Angela Poch resides in Canada, and she has been a leading and beloved member of the TEAM-CBT community. She emphasized several differences between a “coach” and a licensed mental health professional: Diagnosis: A coach does not diagnose clients into the familiar DSM categories of “mental disorders,” such as “Major Depressive Illness,” “Bipolar Disorder,” “Schizophrenia,” or any of the hundreds of “mental disorders” listed in the DSM. In the same vein, licensed mental health professionals will typically screen for suicidal thoughts and urges, and will treat suicidal individuals, but this is forbidden territory for coaches. Purpose / aims of coaching: The purpose or aims of coaching do not, as a rule, involve delving into your past to search for the “cause(s)” of your problems, such as adverse childhood experiences or traumas. Instead, the focus of coaching is primarily on making changes in the here-and-now in how you think, feel, and relate to others. This might involve learning to challenge distorted negative thoughts so you will think and feel more positively about your life, as well as how to relate to others more skillfully. Coaching is goal-oriented and forward-moving rather than dwelling on the past. Of course, good counsellors and licensed mental health professionals may also provide tools to move forward as well, so there can be overlap. Training / credentialing: Because coaching is so new, there are not yet any widely accepted standards or requirements for calling yourself a “coach.” There is a varying degree of training to be “certified,” which might just consist of watching a couple videos to 100's of hours of supervision with the ICF (International Coaching Federation), and everything in between. Here's a generalized diagram Angela created to help with further clarification. NOTE: many TEAM-CBT therapists also are client/goal focused as well as and will often use coaching-style tools. Angela described a 20-hour “Feeling Great Coach” certification program she has developed. Her program is based almost entirely on TEAM-CBT and includes a final exam you must pass to get certified. She also offers a TEAM-CBT Masterclass & Mentoring Program for both coaches as well as therapists that includes live training twice a month, online practice groups, case consultation in small groups, one-on-one mentoring sessions, and personal work as well. She said this integrates seamlessly with FGI's Fast Track program, any of David's intensives, or the Tuesday group for those who want more individualized support and training. Lorna enthusiastically described her experiences learning from many of Angela's training programs. I (David) have had the pleasure of knowing and working with Angela for many years now, starting with her attendance at a number of my intensives and two-day TEAM-CBT training programs in Canada. Lorna is really enjoying the Masterclass Mentoring Program and recommends you take Angela's free workshop called “Effective Compassion.” You can check it out at www.teamcbt.ca/effectivecompassion How do I, David, feel about coaching? I am, for the most part, enthusiastic, but with a few reservations. I would have to confess that I spent 5 years in medical school, four more years in psychiatric residency, plus two years in post-doctoral research training at top institutions, but did not learn much at all, if anything, that has really helped me treat human beings who are hurting. Of course, I did learn how to prescribe drugs for those with severe difficulties, like Bipolar I Disorder, or Paranoid Schizophrenia, but that definitely did not require years and years of intensive medically oriented training. All I ever really wanted to do was psychotherapy. In my last year or so of post-doctoral psychiatric training, I discovered cognitive therapy, although it was not a part of the required curriculum, and learned quite a lot that has been really helpful in working with patients. But for the most part, all of the extensive medical training I received had very little, at best, to do with how I now work with patients, and an awful lot of what I do was things I had to figure out for myself. I do have great respect for psychology training (either clinical psychology or PsyD training), because of the emphasis on research and critical thinking, but I do think there is lots of room for new approaches such as coaching to emerge and evolve, and it seems to be the case that more people than ever are still struggling with depression, anxiety, addictions, rage, and more. Like any field, I think coaching is vulnerable to misuse by narcissistic individuals who wish to deceive or exploit the general public, and individuals who are naïve or unaware of the background or training of their therapists are perhaps at great risk of abuse. But I would also say that this problem is in no way limited to coaching, since a great many licensed mental health professionals have been charged and convicted of all manner of unethical conduct and as well as malpractice over the years as well. That's why I'm enthusiastic about responsible leaders who, like Angela Poch, are blazing new trails and setting the bar high for those who wish to enter the field of life coaching. I'm also delighted to see that for years now, the Feeling Good Institute (FGI, feelinggoodinsititute.com) has included coaches in their superb training programs as well, and many high profile individuals you may be familiar with, like our beloved Professor Mark Noble, have taken and benefit from TEAM-CBT certification via the FGI. To learn more, contact Angela at feelinggreat@angelapoch.com or visit https://angelapoch.com/ to learn about Angela's many training and treatment programs. You can reach Lorna at:yestohealth777@gmail.com or https://www.yestohealth.com.au/ And here is the contact information for TEAM-CBT Australia: https://www.teamcbtaustralia.com.au/

Feeling Down? Try the Feeling Great App for Free! The Feeling Great App is now available in both app stores (IOS and Android) and is for therapists and the general public, and you can take a ride for free! Check it  out at FeelingGreat.com! What's the Meaning of Life? Before we start today, I have a special shoutout to Max Kosma, our new colleague, friend and brilliant technical guru who helped make our new video studio possible! Next week, we'll see if we can pipe him in to say hello to all of you. His spirit is joyous, infectious, incredibly generous and supportive. Thanks, Max! Rhonda opened today's podcast with a vibrant and inspiring endorsement from Jeff, a podcast fan who was raving about the Feeling Great App. Thank you Jeff, and please check out our new app at FeelingGreat.com. Important Announcement Rhonda, along with a group of dedicated TEAM Therapists, including Amy Berner, Brandon Vance, Leigh Harrington, Mariusz Wirga, and Mark Noble, has just created a new non-profit organization called TEAMCBT International (TCI). TCI will provide seed money in the form of no-or-low-interest loans for groups around the world who want to offer TEAM-CBT intensives for therapists in your country. Rhonda has been instrumental in the organization of successful intensive workshops in India, Poland, Mexico, England and Ireland. They have been well received, but can be somewhat costly to produce, so Rhonda's new group is ready to provide a helping hand. I've had the honor of presenting keynote addresses, live therapy demos, and Q and A sessions in many of those programs, and have totally enjoyed them. A big hug and THANKS to Rhonda once again! To learn more, just go to TEAMCBT.International. Today, Matt joins us for a discussion of the meaning of life, something young people often worry about, but people of any age can be concerned. So, today, you may finally find the answer to that lofty question! But first, I (David) mentioned a little about one of last week's questions, “Is the universe real?” I provided the type of answer the famed philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, might have provided. Namely, that the question is nonsensical, it is language “out of gear.” So, we can dismiss the question, as opposed to trying to answer it. HOWEVER, the question DOES make a ton of sense when we ask if human beings are “real.” And I am not referring to some metaphysical nonsense, but rather the tendency of many people to present a happy or confident false front, all the while feeling empty, lonely, anxious and ashamed inside. Two of the now more-than-140 TEAM techniques include Self-Disclosure and the Survey Technique, where you take the chance of opening up about some of the secrets you've been hiding, and ask others what they think about you. Although this takes tremendous courage, it often results in tremendous warmth and connection to others. I provide a description of a young man who disclosed a tremendous amount he'd been hiding in our recent Tuesday group at Stanford, and he was convinced the group would judge him and look down on him. But just the opposite happened. He encountered a flood of warmth, admiration, and respect from the people in our group. A small miracle, perhaps, but a real and meaningful miracle at the moment when his universe suddenly became “real” and radically different from the dangerous and critical world he'd feared and imagined. Then we tackled today's philosophical question: “What's the Meaning of Life?” As usual, our brilliant and beloved Matt May began with a description of an extraordinarily depressed patient he once treated who'd been hospitalized for 180 days with no improvement, including a very dangerous suicide attempt. Matt was worried for the patient's safety, so told the referring doctor that he'd been willing to talk with the patient while the patient was still in the safe environment of the hospital. The patient called Matt and, after some listening and empathy Matt said he would like to help and that there would be committed to helping the man and thought he could help him make a complete recovery, work with this man, and thought there was an excellent chance for significant progress, perhaps even complete recovery, but the patient probably wouldn't want to work with him.as long as he'd be willing to give Matt what he needed in order to work together effectively. Matt suggested the patient give him a call. On the call, Matt told him he might not be able to afford treatment, since part of the “cost” of therapy was that the patient had to make a commitment to life, and that he must agree never to attempt suicide no matter what, for the rest of his life. After a couple days of reflection, the man convinced Matt that he WOULD make that commitment. Then Matt described the man's problem. Both of his parents were world famous, successful scientists, and during his upbringing, his parents emphasized how fantastic and rewarding a career as a scientist could be, and he was convinced that his parents expected him to follow in their footsteps. He had "learned that doing science was the "meaning of life" and would inevitably result in his feeling satisfied, joyful and proud. So. sure enough, this young man, who was extremely bright, pursued a scientific career, and eventually one of his papers was accepted for publication in one the world's most prestigious research journals. There was a big party at his laboratory, and everyone congratulated him and sang his praises. But there was one big problem. He felt nothing! Of course, he smiled and didn't let on that he felt nothing. He tried to act happy, but simply WASN'T. He said, “I faked it.” He concluded that he must be defective, since he'd done what he was supposed to do, in order to feel joyful and happy, but he felt nothing, even though he had fulfilled his parents dreams and expectations for him. This plunged him into his severe depression, with the familiar theme of “I'm not good enough. In fact, I am deeply flawed and defective, incapable of feeling joy or happiness. There must be something terribly wrong with me!” Sound familiar? Did you ever feel like YOU weren't good enough? During an early session, Matt asked his patient what he really enjoyed, what he'd really LIKE to do with his life. The patient confessed, after much resistance, that he felt that his fantasies were totally ridiculous, but what he really loved were trains, photography, and painting. He said his dream job would be to be a conductor or engineer on a train where he could take pictures of the scenery and especially, the people on the train. BUT, he said, that would be meaningless, since he wouldn't be contributing to science and would be letting everyone down., etc. etc. etc. I bet you can guess what followed! If you were his shrink, what would you say or do? Put your ideas here, into the text box, and then I'll tell you!   If you took a guess, thanks! If you didn't, no problem. Matt suggested he do those very things—take a train somewhere, start snapping photos, and do some painting. Predict how satisfying each thing will be (0 to 100) BEFORE you do it. Then do it, and record how satisfying each activity actually was on the same scale of 0 to 100. He exclaimed, “I'd LOVE to do that,” and started crying. His depression score immediately fell to zero. The next week he brought a large cardboard box to his session. It was filled with books on ancient philosophy and how to find the “meaning of life.” He said, “I don't need these anymore, so they're a gift to you!” Matt said, “I don't need them either!” Now you know about the “meaning of life.” We discussed some of the many meanings in this story, including: Rhonda pointed out what Kurt Vonnegut said on the meaning of life. He said, “We're all here to fart around!” David discussed the basic idea that it's not what we're doing, but our thoughts, that trigger ALL of our feelings. And at the moment you learn to turn off that critical voice in your brain, you will experience your own “enlightenment. David has also said, over and over, that when you discover that you no longer need to be “special,” you can experience the “Great Death” of the “self,” but it's not like a funeral. It's more like a celebration, because when you lose your “self,” and discover you didn't “need” the things you wrongly thought you needed (like love, achievement, perfection, etc.), at that moment you'll experience enlightenment and you'll inherit the world, and life, and deeper connections with the people you love. There's not one “meaning” to life. There are many meanings every day. And today, for Matt, Rhonda and David, it is VERY meaningful and joyful just to hang out with each other, and with you, so we can shoot the breeze together! Or, as Kurt Vonnegut said, so we can "fart around" together. Please keep your wonderful questions and comments flowing, and be sure to catch us in our new video version on my feeling good YouTube channel. Warmly, Rhonda, Matt, and David

Special Announcement #1 The Legendary Summer Intensive Starts on Thursday of this week! Featuring Drs. David Burns and Jill Levitt August 8 - 11, 2024 Click for registration / more information! This workshop is a training program which will be limited to therapists and mental health professionals and graduate students in a mental health field  Apologies, but therapists have complained when non-therapists have attended our continuing education training programs. This is partly because of the intimate nature of the small group exercises and the personal work the therapists may do during the workshop. Certified coaches and counselors are welcome to attend. Special Announcement #2 Here's some GREAT news! The Feeling Great App is now available in both app stores (IOS and Android) and is for therapists and the general public, and you can take a ride for free! Check it Today's Podcast #408-- Does God exist? We started today's podcast with a beautiful testimonial and a shout out for the intensive from August 8 to 11, 2024 at the South San Francisco Intensive in person or virtually if you prefer. To learn more, contact www.CBTintensive.com. Act fast because the intensive is on Thursday of this week when today's podcast will be published. Today, we tackle another popular and intensely debated philosophical / religious puzzle: Does God exist? People have very heated views, one way or the other. I (David) will start with a brief explanation of a Wittgenstein answer to this question, and then for the most part, we will focus instead on the question of how we all incorporate spirituality into TEAM-CBT. Wittgenstein emphasized that philosophical problem exist when we debate about the meanings of words or terms that are vague, or poorly defined. Traditionally, we think there are three positions one could take: Theism: You believe that God exists. Atheism: You do not believe in God. Agnosticism: You say that you do no know whether or not God exists. My own thinking, which is strongly influenced by Wittgenstein, would be that I don't understand any of those three stances because I have no idea what you mean by your use of the word, “God.” What is it, exactly, that I'm supposed to believe in, or not believe in? To me, the question, “Do you believe in God,” is nonsensical, so I simply do not deal with it. All of the three positions listed above are based on the idea that the word, “God,” has some kind of clear meaning that we can all agree upon. But it clearly does not. You might define “God” as the “creator of the universe.” Well, there is certainly something magical and mysterious about the existence and creation of the universe (assuming it did begin with some kind of “big bang.”) Some questions might include “Where did all the energy come from all of a sudden?” Or “Are there many universes?” These are valid questions, and physicists are pursuing the answers, which is very exciting and fantastic. But they are generally not invoking the concept of a “God,” although some undoubtedly would say that they do “believe in Gad.” Regardless, I cheer them on and find every new discovery about the nature of the universe, and how the universe works, endlessly fascinating! For today, we will ask a much simpler question of whether and how we include some kind of spiritual dimension into our work as shrinks. This is a topic that is equally exciting, and definitely meaningful. Rhonda got us started by explain that she sees the belief in God as a matter of faith, and is not something that can be tested empirically, which is certainly true. She says she does believe in God, or some “higher power,” but does not believe in a God who “rules over things.” She was raised in the Jewish religion, and says that many Jews believe that God exists in everyone . This sounds a little like Hinduism, which traces back at least 2500 years ago, and possibly as early as 5000 years ago. I believe that the Hindus believe that God exists in everything. The practical impact of the belief that God exists in all of us, is that we will treat each other with love and respect, since we are all an expression of God. She also said that we can “create God among us as a community.” Matt said that he was raised as a Christian and that when he was growing up he had heard about miracles, like Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead in the New Testament on the Gospel according to John. He said that he views our work with individuals who are severely depressed as a kind of spiritual healing, even though we are working with purely secular methods. This is especially true when we are working with individuals who appear to be paralyzed by depression, claiming they are unable even to get out of bed, people who bombard themselves with harsh criticisms, and feel hopeless and ashamed. Matt said that self-acceptance (accepting ourselves exactly as we are) is one of the many tools we use, and that he (Matt) loves to think about the ripple effects of our work, which not only transforms the lives of individuals who awaken from their depressive trance, but this also has enormous positive effects on their friends and family as well. He asks, “How do we achieve this?” I (David) loved hearing from Rhonda and Matt on spirituality in TEAM, and pointed out many areas of overlap between TEAM and the Christian theology I was raised on, since my dad was a Lutheran minister. For example, The TEAM concept that you do not, and cannot, earn genuine feelings of worthwhileness or self-esteem through achievement. In other words, your worth is not your work, but something you give yourself unconditionally. In Christianity, we are sometimes taught that you cannot get to “heaven” through your good works. Enlightenment is a gift, a decision, and not something you have to earn. We also teach that humans are not purely good, but have a mixture of positive and negative motives, and that many people suffer because of guilt and regret about past errors or sins. When we are teaching the Acceptance Paradox, we are teaching a “letting go” of the inner abuse we endure from that relentless, critical voice in our brains, labeling us and telling us that we aren't good enough, we're “bad,” we're “losers,” and so forth, using powerful tools like the Externalization of Voices. In Christianity, this message is delivered in my ritualized ways, including the act of communion, confessing your sins and accepting the blood and body of Christ who “died for your sins.” This is just another way of sending the message that it is okay to accept the fact that you are flawed and fallen, and yet still worthy of God's love—and your own love! In the interpersonal TEAM model for troubled relationships, the entire emphasis on pinpointing your own role in a problem with a friend, colleague, loved one, or stranger, instead of casting blame on the other person and feeling angry and morally superior. My Relationship Journal is a tool designed to facilitate this process very rapidly. In Christianity there are many messages about taking out the moat in your own eye, as well as the idea that when you blame others, and cast judgment, you condemn yourself. There is a strong emphasis on humility and accountability in TEAM-CBT. This often comes up during positive reframing; we talk about how the patient's self-criticisms are often an expression of high standards, honesty, and humility, and that these are beautiful qualities that are real, important, and powerful. And this similar, it seems to me, to the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus talked about “blessed are the meek, for they shall be called the Children of God.” There are many, many additional areas of overlap, and many books have been written on this subject. During the podcast I provided examples of how the spiritual and psychological realms can meet and reinforce each other at the moment the patient recovers and discovers their own enlightenment. I am proud to have developed TEAM-CBT, and it is clearly infused with many spiritual dimensions, even though it is entirely secular. I mentioned that I was born on a Sunday morning, and my dad said it was the only time he was unable to preach his sermon. He was too excited, especially since my parents had become reconciled to the notion that they could not have children. He called me David Dean Burns, and hoped that someday I would become D.D. Burns, D.D. DD is an honorary degree in theology, and he (and everyone) assumed that I would one day be a minister, like was. He was L.C. Burns, DD. (Lyle Charles Burns) I went in a different direction, but have kind of returned to my original calling, though threw an unexpected route, and hope you have all enjoyed our “sermons” this morning. I would add that I would never impose my beliefs or spiritual orientation on any patient, and only ask about the integration of their successful recovery with their own religious beliefs AFTER they have recovered, so as to add a deeper level of meaning to the work and transformation that they experienced. We only emphasized the Jewish and Christian approaches to spirituality because that was our upbringing, but the spiritual “discoveries” during TEAM treatment are actually compatible with nearly all, if not all, religions and spiritual paths. Warmly, Rhonda, Matt, and David

Special Announcement #1 Attend the Legendary Summer Intensive Featuring Drs. David Burns and Jill Levitt August 8 - 11. 2024 Learn Advanced TEAM-CBT skills Heal yourself, heal your patients First Intensive in 5 years! It will knock your socks off! Limited Seating--Act Fast Click for registration / more information! Sadly, this workshop is a training program which will be limited to therapists and mental health professionals and graduate students in a mental health field  Apologies, but therapists have complained when non-therapists have attended our continuing education training programs. This is partly because of the intimate nature of the small group exercises and the personal work the therapists may do during the workshop. Certified coaches and counselors are welcome to attend. Special Announcement #2 Here's some GREAT news! The Feeling Great App is now available in both app stores (IOS and Android) and is for therapists and the general public, and you can take a ride for free! Check it Today's Podcast Practical Philosophy Month Part 1, The Free Will Problem Welcome to Practical Philosophy month. For the next five weeks, we will discuss some of the most popular and challenging problems in philosophy, such as these: Do human beings have free will? Or is free will just an illusion? Do human beings have a “self?” Or is the “self” just another illusion? Is it possible to be more or less “worthwhile?” Are some humans “better” or “worse” than others? Does God exist? Is the universe “real” or “one”? What's the meaning of life? What is “self-esteem”? How does it differ from self-confidence? What's the difference between conditional and unconditional self-esteem? What's the difference between self-esteem and self-acceptance? What do you have to do to experience joy and feelings of worthwhileness? We will try to complete the list in five weeks, so some weeks we may include more than one topic, since many of these topics are related to one another. Rhonda and David will be joined by our beloved Dr. Matt May, a regular on our Ask David episodes, and for the first and second sessions we will be joined by our beloved Dr. Fabrice Nye, who created and hosted the Feeling Good Podcasts several years ago. Each week, you will also hear about the linkage between these philosophical dilemmas, and emotional problems, like depression, anxiety, and relationship conflicts. For example, nearly all depressed individuals believe that they aren't sufficiently “worthwhile.” I see my goal as a psychiatrist not as helping people feel “more worthwhile,” but rather showing people, if interested, how to give up this notion entirely and become free of certain kinds of damaging judgments of the “self” and others. You will also learn how these types of philosophical problems continue to play a large role in psychiatry and psychology, including the DSM5 diagnostic system. For example, is the diagnosis of “Generalized Anxiety Disorder” a true “mental disorder” that you could “have” or “not have?” And might some or most of the so-called “mental disorders” listed in the DSM be based on faulty philosophical / logical thinking? And if many or most of the “mental disorders” are based on goofy, faulty thinking, is there a more productive and effective way to think about most emotional problems? And how did we get into this mess in the first place? Worrying certainly exists, and we all worry at times. But how much or how often do you have to worry before you develop or have a “mental disorder” called “Generalized Anxiety Disorder” that can be diagnosed like any medical illness and treated with drugs? Or is “Generalized Anxiety Disorder” (and hundreds of other “mental disorders in the DSM” based on a certain kind of nonsensical thinking? And if so, why? What is the goofy, faulty thinking in the DSM? And are there some “mental disorders” that are valid and real? We HAVE touched on all of these themes in previous podcasts, but I thought it would be nice to put them all in one place and bring in a variety of “solutions,” controversies, and experts. I David, will often represent (hopefully, and to the best of my ability) the thinking of Ludwig Wittgenstein, as expressed in his famous book, Philosophical Investigation, published in 1950 following his death. That book consists of a series of numbered brief essays (a few paragraphs each) that were based on notes found in a metal box under his dormitory room at Cambridge University. He'd written these in preparation for his weekly seminars in his dormitory room. Wittgenstein, although now widely regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of all time, did not think he knew enough to teach in a classroom. In fact, because of his feelings of depression and self-doubt, he sadly never tried to publish anything when he was alive. Wittgenstein's philosophy also played an indirect but significant role in the evolution of several modern psychotherapies. His philosophy created new ways of thinking that gave rise to the work of Dr. Albert Ellis, the famous New York psychologist who created Rational Emotive Therapy during the 1950s. Ellis emphasized that the “Should Statements” that trigger so much guilt, shame, depression, anxiety, and rage are based on illogical thinking. He might often say, “Where is it written that people or the world “should” be the way you want them to be?” Of course, this idea actually traces back to the Greek Stoic philosophers like Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. Wittgenstein's thinking also seems to have played a role in the thinking of Dr. Aaron Beck, who adapted the work of Ellis and called his version of the “Cognitive Therapy.” Beck emphasized many thinking errors, like All-or-Nothing Thinking, and Overgeneralization, that trigger depression, anxiety, and more. Sadly, Wittgenstein struggled with severe depression and loneliness throughout his life, and three of his four brothers tragically died by suicide. Wittgenstein also had prolonged periods of time when he considered suicide. It is also sad that he did not know how to apply his brilliant philosophical breakthroughs to his own negative thinking, but that application of his work did not develop at the time he was still alive. Part of Wittgenstein's depression was related, I believe, to the fact that very few people, including the most famous philosophers of Europe, could understand his thinking when he was alive. From time to time, I think he glimpsed the enormous importance of his work; but I believe that he also had prolonged moments of self-doubt when he thought his work was of little value at best. To be as correct as possible, Wittgenstein did write a manuscript called Tractatus Logico Philosophicus as a young man, although he never tried to publish it. He wrote it when he was a prisoner of war. He thought this book solved all the problems of philosophy, which had plagued him since he was a child, and he felt great relief. He sent a copy of his manuscript to Bertrand Russell, who was a famous British philosopher. Bertrand Russell was incredibly impressed with the Tractatus and distributed it to many European philosophers. Bertrand Russell thought it might be the greatest book in the history of philosophy, and a number of the 20th century philosophical movements including Logical Positivism, were inspired by that book. However, Wittgenstein left the field of philosophy, thinking that his work was done, and that he'd found the solutions he was looking for. He tried teaching grammar school for a while, but was fired because he became frustrated and violent toward some of his students. He also tried to survive as a fisher in a Norwegian fishing town, but was not successful at that, either, because he didn't know much about fishing, much less supporting yourself through fishing. One day, he learned that a brilliant Swedish economics student had found a flaw in his Tractatus, and his inner turmoil about the puzzling problems of philosophy flared up again. He decided to return to the study of philosophy. He applied to be an advanced undergraduate at Cambridge University, but when someone in the admissions office spotted his application, they recognized his name and showed his application to Bertrand Russell, who had been wondering what had become of the young man who once sent him such a brilliant manuscript. Russell, who was the chair of the department of philosophy, said to being Wittgenstein to his office immediately for an interview. Russell explained that he would have to reject Wittgenstein's application to be an undergraduate at Cambridge University. Deeply disappointed, Wittgenstein asked why. Russell told him it was because he was already recognized as the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. Bertrand proposed that if Wittgenstein would agree to skip college and graduate school, they would immediately award him a PhD for the manuscript he'd sent to Russell years earlier. Russell also offered him a full professor ship in the department of philosophy. Wittgenstein protested and said he needed to study philosophy again, because of the error in Tractatus, and that he didn't know anything, and definitely could not teach in a classroom. Bertrand Russell insisted, and they finally struck a deal where Wittgenstein would agree to be a professor of philosophy but all he would have to do was to have a conversation session with anybody who wanted to talk to him at his dormitory room once a week. Wittgenstein accepted and met for years with students and famous philosophers who came from around Europe to crowd into his dormitory room for his weekly seminars, and he began to shape a radically different philosophical approach from the one he'd described earlier in his Tractatus. He was determined to find a new way to solve all the problems of philosophy. And, to my way of thinking, along with those few who really understand him, he was successful. But he was often frustrated because, so few understood him. This was unfortunate, because what he was saying was incredibly simple and basic, and it was pretty similar to, if not identical to, the thinking of the Buddha 2500 years earlier. The Buddha apparently had the same problem—almost nobody could understand what he was trying to say when he was still alive. They couldn't “get it” when he was talking about the so-called “Great Death” of the “self,” or talking about the path to enlightenment. The Buddha's frustration resulted from the exact same problem Wittgenstein encountered 2500 years later. The Buddha was saying something that was extremely simple, obvious, and basic—and yet, it was rumored that of his more than 100,000 followers when he was alive, only three actually “got it” and experienced enlightenment. When I read Philosophical Investigations my senior year in college, it was rumored that only seven people in the world understood what Wittgenstein was trying to say. Wittgenstein's dream was that philosophy students would “get” his thinking and give up philosophy when they realized that most if not all philosophical problems are sheer nonsense. He wanted them to do something practical and real in the world instead of studying philosophy. He was verry disappointed when his favorite student, Norman Malcolm (one of the seven who “got it,”) pursued an illustrious career teaching philosophy in America at Cornell University. I always wished I could have known Wittgenstein when he was alive, so I could have told him this: I loved you, too, and I got it after several months of confusion, trying to understand your Philosophical Investigations, but eventually understood it with the help of your student, Norman Malcolm. His book about you was very inspiring. And that's why I left philosophy for something more practical in the world. I decided at the last minute to go to medical school to become a psychiatrist instead of philosophy graduate school. Hopefully, I am doing something that you might be proud of! But oddly enough, your thinking has also influenced my approach to people who feel depressed and worthless. They are also under a kind of destructive “enchantment,” thinking that there is some such “thing” as a more or less worthwhile human being! And this is a major cause of depression and anxiety and feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness. I wonder if you, Wittgenstein, ever felt that you weren't “good enough” when you were feeling down. hopeless and suicidal? I sure wish I could have helped you with that! If you want to understand Wittgenstein's work, the best book in my opinion is Norman Malcolm's moving and affectionate tribute to his beloved teacher, entitled “Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir.” It's a short moving tribute to his beloved teacher, and tears go down my cheeks every time I read it, or even think about it. If you ever visit my office here at home, you'll find that memoir proudly sitting on my bookshelf, with a handsome photo of Wittgenstein on the cover. Toward the end of his life, Wittgenstein appears to have become more or less homeless, and he died from prostate cancer. His doctor said he could live in his home, where he was befriended by the doctor's wife in his final days. His dying words were, “Tell them that I had a wonderful life.” He died on April 29, 1951, just a few hours before my wife was born in Palo Alto, California. Surprisingly, she is the only person I've ever met who understood Wittgenstein's thinking entirely the first time I explained it to her. She “already knew” what Wittgenstein, the greatest philosophical genius of the 20th century, spent a lifetime figuring out! Reincarnation is pretty “out there,” and fairly silly, to my way of thinking, but sometimes it can be fun to think about it! Here is my understanding of how the thinking of the “later Wittgenstein” actually developed. His first book, which is nearly impossible to understand, was called the Tractatus Logico Philosophicus. It is a series of numbered propositions, which he compared to climbing up a ladder, rung by rung, as you read the book until you got to the roof at the top of the ladder. Then you could throw your ladder away and give up philosophical thinking, since he thought his book contained the solution to all the problems of philosophy that had tormented him since childhood, as mentioned previously. The philosophy of language in the Tractatus is based on the thinking of Aristotle and Plato, who thought that the function of language was to name things that exist in the real world. Plato's idea was that our real world consists of imperfect examples of a “Platonic Reality” which consisted of “perfect” representations of everything. So, for example, Plato believed there could be a perfect “table,” a perfect “lamp,” and so forth. In other words, he thought there was an ideal essence to the concept of a “table.” And, I suppose, there might also be a “perfect” version of you! The early Wittgenstein also thought that the logic inherent in our sentences reflected the logic inherent in an external reality. If that doesn't make much sense to you, join the club! But that's kind of what Plato and Aristotle were promoting, at least in my (David's) understanding. When Wittgenstein's Tractatus was debunked, he was devastated, and desperately wanted to find another way to solve the problems of philosophy, since they started tormenting him again. It was much like a relapse of OCD or some other emotional problem. In fact, he thought of philosophy as a kind of mental illness that needed treatment. Here's an example of the types of philosophical problems that tormented him. Do human beings have free will? Do we have a “self?” Is the universal “real?” Of course, we THINK we have free will, and it SEEMS like we make “free decisions” all day long, but is this just an illusion? For example, some people would argue that we cannot have “free will” because we “have to” follow the laws of science that govern everything, including how the brain works. So, since we “have to” do what we are doing at every moment of every day, we must not have free will! Here is an argument that we do NOT have “free will.” When a powerful storm or hurricane destroys a portion of a city, and people die, we see this as a tragedy, but we don't get angry at the hurricane because it does have “free will.” It is just obeying the laws of physics that govern the forces of wind, air pressure, heat and cooling, and so forth. A storm cannot behave in any other way. So, the argument goes, we are also following the laws that govern the functioning of our bodies and brains, and so we cannot do other than what we do, so we, too, have no “free will.” We THINK we are acting freely but it is an illusion, so our brains are obeying the laws of the universe at every moment! For hundreds of years philosophers have struggled with this puzzle, and many people still wrestle with this problem today. It was one of the problems that drew me to philosophy. Impractical for sure, but still tantalizing. Another way to express the free will puzzle is via religious thinking. I was taught when I was growing up that God is omnipotent (all powerful), omnipresent (present everywhere) and omniscient (all knowing.) So, God knows the past, present, and future. And if God knows the future, then God knows what we will do at every moment of every day, and we are helpless to do otherwise. Therefore, we have no “free will,” even though we “think” we do! This free will problem can definitely be unsettling, with troubling moral consequences. If we do not “free will,” then are serial killers really responsible for, or guilty, or accountable for their actions? If we do not have free will, then wouldn't that give us license to do whatever we want whenever we want? Clever arguments for sure! We may “feel” like we have the freedom to do whatever we want at almost any moment of any day, but are we fooling ourselves and living in some gigantic hoax, or illusion? Are we total slaves with the delusion that we are actually acting “freely?” How do we resolve this problem? Well, one day Wittgenstein was walking past a soccer game at the park, and the soccer ball hit him on the head. He wasn't hurt, but had the thought, “What if the function of language is NOT to name things (like trees, or lamps, etc.) that exist in some “external reality,” like Plato and Aristotle thought? What if language actually functions as a series of “language games,” with rules, just like the game of soccer? Then the meaning of any words would simply be the many ways the word is used in different real world situations. In fact, that's what you find in the dictionary when you look up the meaning of a word. The dictionary doesn't ever give you some “correct” or ”pure” meaning, since most words have many meanings. This would be the opposite of the philosophy of Aristotle and Plato who argued that there were “true” meanings for every word, noun, or concept. What if, instead, words had NO true or essential meanings, and their meanings were simply embedded in the context in which they are used in ordinary, everyday language? If so, this might mean that philosophical problems emerge when we try to pull words out of their ordinary meanings, which are always obvious, and put them into some metaphysical realm where philosophers argue about “ultimate truth.” Let's say we wanted to find out if humans have “free will.” Well, not being sure if there is such a “thing” as “free will,” we could look up “free” and “will” in the dictionary. (I know this sounds incredibly obvious and almost ridiculous.) What does “free” mean? Well, we could talk about the many ways we use “free.” Political freedom means that in some countries you cannot contradict the leader (the dictator) without the danger of being thrown in prison or even murdered. But in other countries, you are, In fact, free to express your own ideas and opinions, without fear of punishment. Free also means getting something without having to pay for it, like a seventh bottle of soda is free at the local grocery store if you purchase a six pack. Free can also mean “available.” I am starting up my Sunday hikes again, and I might say, “If you are free this Sunday morning, meet at my front door at 9 and we'll go for a hike and have a dim sum feast afterwards at a Chinese restaurant on Castro Street in Mountain View, California, Now notice that when you talk about “free will” you have taken this word, “free,” out of the familiar contexts in which we find it, and given it some type of metaphysical “meaning.” But in this metaphysical, philosophical arena, it has no meaning. So, instead of trying to “solve” the so-called “free will” problem, we can dismiss it as nonsensical, and ignore it as having no practical meaning, and move on with our lives. We can say, “I just don't understand that problem! I don't know what you're talking about when you ask the general question of whether we have something called ‘free will.'” That either works for you, or it doesn't work for you! Your choice. It does work for me, but it took me months of thinking until I suddenly “got it.” My way of describing this philosophical error is “nounism.” You think that nouns always refer to things that could “exist” or “not-exist,” just like Plato and Aristotle thought. So, you ponder and try to figure out if this notion of “free will” exists or does not exist. But it's arguably a meaningless question. That's why I say, and Wittgenstein might say, I have no idea what you're talking about. Today we'll discuss the free will problem and how it might relate to our field of psychotherapy. Next week, we'll deal with another thorny problem: Do we have a “self?” Or is that also just some kind of illusion? I (David) wrote these show notes before the show, and we have had fairly extensive email exchanges, with a variety of points of view on whether or not we have something we can call “free will.” First, I'll put a great email by Matt, followed by a comment by Fabrice. Here's Matt's email first: Subject: Re: question Yes, that's getting very close to what I'm trying to communicate. I don't believe you are 'slow' or 'super lame', either. In fact, quite the opposite. I suspect I'm failing to do an adequate job of disarming your claims that 'free will' and 'self' are words taken out-of-context and, therefore, can't be shown to exist or not-exist. I apologize, as I am pretty excited about the potential to help people, suffering with self-blame and other-blame, by realizing that we and others don't have a 'self' or 'free will'. I believe we have a brain that makes decisions and creates experiences, including the experience of having a 'self' and 'free will'. I believe that the experience of 'making' a decision is an illusion, as is the idea of a static, unchanging 'self' that controls decision-making. I asked you to pick a movie and you said, 'Green Mile'. You acknowledged that this movie title simply 'popped into my head'. That's correct. Your 'self' didn't control what you selected, using 'free will'. Your brain just came up with that movie title. There was no 'self' that made a decision to choose that word. I agree that we have a brain which is incredibly powerful. I'm claiming that we don't have an auxiliary 'self', with extra super powers, controlling our brain. We can make decisions, but we don't have 'free will', meaning, the ability to control those decisions. I do think you have some resistance to seeing through the illusions of 'self' and 'free will', all of which say awesome things about you, e.g. morality and justice. I'm not trying to convince you, one way or another, and I don't expect to. I'm more interested in the listening audience, as many people are significantly relieved when they realize that we are more the victims of our biology and circumstance rather than defective 'selves' lacking 'willpower'. To put a slightly finer point on the subject, when people say they have 'free will', they don't mean that 'decisions are made'. Obviously, decisions are made. You decided to keep reading this email, for example. Or you didn't. I'm not sure. Either way, a decision was made. When people say they have 'free will', they are saying that they (really, their 'self') are/is free to decide whether to continue reading this email, and that this power goes above and beyond what their brain is doing, according to the laws of physics. I am claiming that this is a ridiculous and dangerous thought, for which there is no evidence. You're saying these terms haven't been defined. I'm pointing out that they already have been, intuitively, by anyone who thinks, 'I shouldn't have done that', or 'they shouldn't have done that'. These thoughts require a belief that they 'could have' done something different, that they had free will. Aside from rage and guilt, let's examine the narcissism and excessive sense of confidence a patient might have, if they believe that they can simply 'decide', through sheer 'willpower', not to beat up on themselves anymore. Or a patient who believes they can simply 'decide' to always use the 5-Secrets, rather than criticize and blame. Can they? I've never seen that happen. That's why I assign homework. I know that the goal is to rewire the brain so they can feel and perform better, later. We can't simply decide to feel good all the time. We all drift in-and-out of enlightenment. If we want to increase the likelihood that we will be able to set aside self-criticism or communicate more effectively, we have to practice new thoughts and behaviors. If we do, we will develop greater skills at defeating negative thoughts and communicating effectively. Otherwise, our brains will do, in the future, what they are programmed to do, now. It's because we lack 'free will', that we must do homework. Similarly, you couldn't simply 'decide' to be the world's best ping-pong player. You realized you would have to work hard to re-wire your brain, if you wanted to have a chance at that. Let's use the murderer/cat example: A cat tortures and kills mice for the same reasons that a murderer does: their brains are programmed to do so. Murderers don't have a defective 'self' that is failing to express 'free will' adequately, when they murder. They're doing precisely what the atomic structure of their brain caused them to do, according to the laws of physics, in that moment, when presented with those precise stimuli. We don't have to judge or punish the cat or the murderer's 'self' and insist they should have used their 'free will'. We can accept that neither creature had the ability to decide differently from what their brain decided, in that moment. That is where the therapeutic element of this realization comes into play. I think it's important on a lot of levels, to stop blaming cats for being cats and murderers for being murderers. Similarly, if a patient doesn't want to do homework, will it do any good to blame them and think they're bad and should decide differently? No, it helps to accept them where they are, and to accept ourselves where we are, with open hands. Realizing nobody has a 'self' operating their brain and making decisions that are better than their brains' decisions doesn't mean we have to let all the murderers go or trust our cat with a new mouse companion. We can still be aware that their brains are programmed to murder. We would still be motivated to do whatever is necessary to protect society and mice. The difference is the attitude towards the murderer. We aren't trying to 'punish' or 'get vengeance' but to protect and, instead of 'labeling' them as having a 'bad self' or even being a 'murderer', but someone who has murdered and, left to their own devices, likely to do so again.  Instead of judging and demanding vengeance, we would see a murderer as the victim of their biology and environment. Instead of condemning them as permanently evil and bad, we could recognize that their brain is currently wired to do bad things and they might still learn new ways to interact with others. Perhaps they're not hopeless cases, after all. From the other side, if I ever committed murder, and sentenced to death, I wouldn't want to be feeling defective, thinking what a bad self I have and guilty/ashamed for not flexing my 'free will' in the heat of the moment. Instead, I might feel a sense of relief, purpose and meaning, that I was protecting others by being put to death. Alright, enough out of me! Thanks, Matt And now, the response from Fabrice: Matt's thinking is exactly in line with mine. I don't know if the topic came up in your discussion, but some people argue that actually someone could have done something differently than they did, because there is some randomness in Nature. But that argument doesn't hold water because even if the decision “made” by their brain is different, it has nothing to do with their will but only with the Heisenberg principle. Cheers! Fabrice Nye fabrice@life.net David's wrap up comment. Matt and Fabrice have quite a different view of “free will” and the “self.” They are arguing, very thoughtfully and persuasive, that we do not “have” a “self” or “free will.” People have been involved in this debate, as I've mentioned, for hundreds of years, taking one side or another. My own thinking is different, and reflects my understanding of Wittgenstein's thinking. They have take these words out of the contexts in which they exist in everyday language, (which is a huge temptation) and involved in a debate about abstract concepts which have no meaning. Very few people, it seems, were able to grasp this idea when Wittgenstein was alive, or even today. So, if what I'm saying makes no sense to you, be comforted, since it seems likely that 99% of the people reading this, or listening to the show, will agree with you! And that's still a puzzle to me. It is not clear to me why so many people still cannot “see” or “get” this idea that words do not have any pure or essential “meaning” outside of the context of everyday use of language. The best psychotherapy example I can use is the fact that nearly all depressed individuals are trying to figure out, on some abstract or philosophical level, whether they are “worthwhile” or “good enough,” or whatever. This seems to be a “real” problem, and so they believe that they are not sufficiently worthwhile. This belief can be so convincing that many people commit suicide, out of a sense of hopelessness and self-hatred. But there is not such thing as a human being who is more or less “worthwhile.” Of course, your actions can be more or less worthwhile at any moment, and we can evaluate or judge our specific behaviors. Yesterday, we had our first recording session in a video studio we have set up for our Feeling Great App. We had a lot of fun and recorded some (hopefully) interesting stories we'll publish on our two new YouTube channels. I really appreciated the colleagues who made this possible. It was a relief for me because I tend to have performance anxiety, which impairs my ability to speak naturally and with emotion. But this time, there was no anxiety at all, so it was fun. Did this make me or my colleagues more worthwhile human beings? No! But it did show that we'd become a bit more effective and communicating messages that will trigger healing and understanding in our fans, and hope that includes you! When you “see” this, perhaps for the first time, it can be incredibly liberating, since you no longer have the need to have a “self” that's “special” or worthwhile. And, as some of you know, my beloved teacher and cat, Obie, taught me that when you no longer need to be “special,” life becomes special. When your “self” dies, you inherit the world! There's no funeral, only a celebration! Feel free to contact us with your thoughts, ideas and questions! Thank you for listening today! Rhonda, Matt, Fabrice, and David

Season 1, Episode 31, Release Date: 5-28-2024 Drawing into self to Survive and Thrive with Ruth Culver   Ruth Culver is an Integrative Hypnotherapist, IFS Practitioner, and Internal (IFS) Constellations She also created and leads workshops on IFS intuitive Drawing, and "Drawing into Self," Internal Constellations, and her "Survive and Thrive Spiral."   Ruth spoke about her work in hypnotherapy, and how IFS allows up to really understand a system so we can get permission from protectors before rattling exiles (very similar to how IFS can also aide EMDR).   Also, Ruth said that for some of her clients, the Ventral Vagal state did not feel like they were "tolerating" difficult things, it felt more as if they were "accepting" and feeling OK through the difficulties.   We spoke about "freeze" state, and how this felt like active energy, which is sometimes missed in descriptions. Ruth said, "This is very different than collapse, it is more a thought of, I got to do something about this, but I can't"     I (David) questioned if each part has their own autonomic nervous system of their own. Ruth's answer was that yes, and they are all reacting to a larger nervous system in the body. "The parts take on their roles in response to this larger nervous system."   When we check in with parts, in IFS, we are in effect reprograming each of their nervous systems. In this way, repetition is very important. In some ways, this feels a lot like reconsolidating the part's memories.   We spoke about spirituality, and Ruth shared that her journey has been more about being rather than doing. She shared that she has been involved with family constellation work, which really started through absorbing some of the practises of South Africa, and how they were interacting with ancestors.   Ruth shared how family constellation work was tuning into somatic energy, where there would be a group of participants and they would help represent family members and ancestors. Ruth broadened this to include internal parts of systems as well.    Ruth shared how you could feel a connectedness within the group and a form of synchronicity. Almost as if the group was a jazz band, listening and improving with one another! Again, Ruth shared how IFS brings a lot of safety to this technique.   We spoke about the similarities of this practise to Psychodrama, and Ruth shared that she believes "Constellations goes one step further." There is more unconsicious work being done, and less containment (not guiding participants how to act or what to say). Therefore, good preparation becomes vital.   Ruth said she creates safety by (1) slowing things down, and (2) staying curious. When exiles show up, it is OK because we can see them, and ask them to wait. As Cece Sykes says, "we can send them little golden threads." We can say to them, I might not be able to get to you right now, but I see you. This can be very healing!   We spoke about "Drawing into Self" and how healing it could be to have parts express themselves through color and movement on a page. This taps into preverbal and nonverbal modes of communication, and then we can do IFS through the intuitive drawing.    When we share this with partners, we also learn how to really listen to what someone is sharing. Ruth has put together many protocols for this. She has found that this externalizes parts.   She also has workshops on her Survive and Thrie model. "Its all about safety and connection."

Paul Auster, il più europeo degli scrittori americani La direttiva europea sull'ecocidio Elezioni europee, la deriva leaderistica dei partiti italiani In Italia mancano sempre più medici I David di Donatello e La chimera

393 Marina Dyck on TEAM for Insomnia Today we feature Marina Dyck, a TEAM-Certified Clinical Counselor in private practices in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, Canada. She works with individuals and families struggling with trauma, anxiety, depression, and relationship issues. She combines the latest research in neuroscience, powered by TEAM-CBT, and what she calls the "whole person" approach. Marina describes her innovative TEAM-CBT treatment for patients with trouble sleeping. Many of them toss and turn at night, unable to turn off their anxious and agitated brains, so they ruminate over and over about problems that are bugging them. Sound familiar? Here's David's quick, step by step overview of Marina's treatment approach, which is based on the steps of TEAM and the Daily Mood Log. Step 1. Let's imagine you're the patient (or the shrink), so you start with a brief description of the Upsetting Event at the top of the Daily Mood Log. It could be something as simple as ”Lying in bed for several hours, unable to get to sleep because I keep ruminating about a report I have not finished for work,” or some other problem. Step 2. Identify your negative feelings and estimate how intense each one is on a scale from 0 (not at all) to 100 (the worst.) For example, you may be feeling: Sad, down: 80% Anxious, panicky: 95% Guilty, ashamed: 70% Inadequate, incompetent, inferior: 90% Alone: 100% Discouraged: 80% Frustrated: 95% Angry, annoyed: 100% Step 3: Record your negative thoughts and how strongly you believe each one from 0% to 100%. For example, you may be telling yourself: I have to get to sleep! 100% If I don't get to sleep, I'll never be able to function tomorrow. 90% I should have completed my report for my boss today. 100% I should get out of bed and work on it. 90% There must be something wrong with me. 100% etc. etc. Step 4. Identify the distortions in these thoughts, like All-or-Nothing Thinking, Fortune-Telling, Should Statements, Emotional Reasoning, Magnification, and more. Now, if you're a shrink, after you've empathized, do the A = Paradoxical Agenda Setting or Assessment of Resistance. If you're a general citizen, you can do Positive Reframing. In other words, instead of trying to make your negative thoughts and feeling disappear entirely by pushing the Magic Button, you can ask two questions about each negative thought (NT) or feeling: How might this NT or feeling be helping me? What does this NT or feeling show about me and my core values that's positive and awesome? Example. In the current example you are 95% anxious and panicky about your report for work as well as the fact that you can't relax and fall asleep. Could there be some positives in your anxiety and panic? For example, these feelings might show Your intense commitment to your work. They may be a reflection of your high standards. Your anxiety, while uncomfortable, has probably motivated you to work hard and achieve a great deal. Your anxiety may protect you from danger and keep you focused on what you have to do to succeed and survive. Your anxiety could be an expression of your respect for your boss and for the company you're working for. Your desire to do a good job is probably a reflection of one of your core values as a human being. You could make similar lists for other feelings as well, like feeling down, guilty, discouraged, angry, and so forth. At that point, you can set your goals for every negative feeling. For example, you might decide that 15% or 20% might be enough anxiety and panic, and that 15% shame would be enough, and so forth. You can record your goals for each negative feeling in the goal column of your Daily Mood Log. This is much easier than if you try to reduce them all to zero by pressing the Magic Button. And even if you could, then all of the positives you listed would go down the drain, right along with your negative thoughts and feelings. Instead, you can aim to reduce them to some lower level that would allow you to relax while still maintaining your core personal values. Now we're ready for the M = Methods portion of the TEAM session. You will enjoy this portion of the podcast. Marina led Rhonda in three classic TEAM methods: The Paradoxical Double Standard Technique, the Externalization of Voices, and something Marina calls Distraction Training, which is actually a mix of Image Substitution, self-hypnosis, and relaxation training. Essentially, you focus on something positive and relaxing, as opposed to ruminating about all you have to do. This approach will come to life when you listen to the podcast, and I think you will agree that it IS innovative and significantly different and from 99% of what is currently sold as “insomnia treatment!” Marina emphasizes that you, the client, will have to agree to spend 15 to 20 minutes per day doing written work with the Daily Mood Log, or all bets are off. In addition, I would like to add that you and your shrink (or you and your patient) will have to find effective ways to combat each patient's ruminations and negative thoughts, because we're all quite different and our problems will usually be unique. In fact, that's why I (David) have created way more than 100 methods for challenging distorted thoughts. But here's the basic idea: When you learn to CHANGE the way you THINK, you can CHANGE the way you FEEL as well as the way you SLEEP! Thanks so much for listening today, and happy dreams! Marina, Rhonda and David  

392 The Empty Nest Cure Featuring Jill Levitt, PhD   Plus BIG NEWS! The Magical Annual Intensive  Returns this Summer  at the South San Francisco Conference Center August 9 -13, 2024 You can Review the Exciting Details Below Or click this link!   Today we are proud to feature our beloved Dr. Jill Levitt. Jill is the Director of Clinical Training at the Feeling Good Institute in Mountain View, California, and co-leader of my Tuesday evening psychotherapy training group at Stanford. She is a dear friend, and one of the world's top psychotherapists and psychotherapy teachers. Today, Jill joins us to discuss the so-called “Empty Nest” syndrome. According to Wikipedia, this is the “feeling of grief and loneliness parents may feel when their children move out of the family home, such as to live on their own or to pursue a higher education.“ Jill emailed Rhonda and me to explain why she thought a podcast on this topic might be of some value. She wrote, Recently, I was working with two different women around the same age who were having similar feelings of guilt and shame about the choices they made around parenting versus working. Jane is a 60 year old high level executive with two boys who was super successful and is now retired. She is telling herself, “ I did not do enough for my boys. I should have worked less. I should have spent more time with them. I was selfish, and worked because I enjoyed it. I should have done more for them. I'm a terrible mother. Stephanie, in contrast, is a 60 year old stay-at-home mom of four adult kids, and now that her last kid has left for college, she is telling herself: I should have had a career. I have done nothing with my life. I am a smart woman so I should have done more. I am inferior compared to other women who have contributed to society in some way. Jane and Stephanie both struggled with feelings of guilt, shame, sadness and inferiority, and they were both telling themselves that they should have made different choices. I'm sure your life is very different from their lives, but you may have also looked in to the past and beaten up on yourself for what you should or shouldn't have done. Or, you may be beating up on yourself right now with shoulds, telling yourself that you should be better, or smarter or more successful or popular than you are. In fact, according to the late Dr. Albert Ellis, these “Should Statements” are responsible for most of the suffering in the world, and there are several different types, including: Self-Directed Shoulds, like “I shouldn't be so klutzy and shy in social situations. These self-directed shoulds trigger feelings of depression, anxiety, inadequacy, inferiority, guilt, shame and loneliness, to name just a few. Other-Directed Shoulds, like “So and so shouldn't be such a jerk!” Or, “You have no right to feel the way you do!” These other-directed shoulds trigger feelings of anger, blame, resentment, irritation, and rage, and can easily escalate into violence, and even war. I'm sure you can see that both women were struggling with Self-Directed Shoulds. What can you do about these shoulds and the unhappiness they trigger? Jill explains how both women experienced rapid recovery when she used simple TEAM methods systematically, including empathy and Positive Reframing as well as other basic techniques like the Double Standard Technique and the Externalization of Voices, and more. I, David, then described a woman he treated who fell into a depression when her two daughters went off to college. And she was perplexed, because she'd always had a super loving relationship with them, just as she'd had with her own mother when she was growing up. When I explored this with her, a Hidden Emotion suddenly emerged, as you'll hear on the podcast, and that also led to a complete recovery in just two sessions. Then Jill had a sudden “eureka” moment and realized that the Hidden emotion phenomenon was also central to the anxiety that one of her two patients was experiencing. One of the neat things I (David) really like about TEAM is that we don't treat people with formulas for “disorders” or “syndromes.” These three woman all had the same “Empty Nest Syndrome,” but the causes and the cures for all of them were unique, as you'll understand when you listen to this podcast. Our 400th podcast is coming up soon, and we want to thank all of you in advance for your support and encouragement over the past several years, which we all DEEPLY appreciate! We'll be joined by a number of our podcast stars from the past 100 shows, as well as our beloved founder, Dr. Fabrice Nye! And we have one VERY special event coming up this summer that might interest you if you're a shrink. I (David) have done very few workshops over the past five years because of the pandemic as well as the intensive demands of developing our Feeling Great App which will be available soon. The most fantastic work of the year was always the summer intensive at the South San Francisco Conference Center. Well, guess what! We're bringing it back this year. The dates will be August DATES, and it will have the same magic it has always had, but with some cool innovations. It will be Thursday to Sunday noon, 3 ½ days instead of four, but it will include two fantastic evening sessions, so you will get a MASSIVE amount of teaching. It will be sponsored by the Feeling Good Institute in Mountain View for the first time, Jill and I will teach together, just as we do in the Tuesday group. Of course, Rhonda will be hosting the event as well! There will be many expert helpers from the FGI to assist you in the small group exercises throughout, so you will LEARN from actual practice with immediate expert mentoring and feedback. There will be a live demonstration with an audience volunteer, as in earlier years, plus your chance to do live work in small groups on the evening of the third day. This is always the top rated event during the intensive. You can attend in person if you move fast (seating will be limited to around 100 or so) or online (for half price or so.) That will give people from around the world the chance to attend without the extra cost and time to come in person. The online people will have leaders guiding you in the same exercises we will do with the in-person group. You'll get intensive TEAM training in the high-speed treatment of depression and anxiety, so you can really “get it” all at once and see how all the pieces of this amazing approach fit together. You'll also have the chance to do your own personal work and healing, which is arguably the most important dimension of professional training. There's a whole lot more but I'm running out of steam. For more information, click this link! Here are the details: High-Speed CBT for Depression and Anxiety— An Intensive Workshop for Therapists with Dr. David Burns and Dr. Jill Levitt Join in person or online! Dates (3 ½ days) Thursday, August 8: 8:30am-8:30pm Friday August 9: 8:30am-4:30pm Saturday August 10: 8:30am-9:00pm Sunday, August 11 8:30am-12:00pm PT Location South San Francisco Conference Center (10 minutes from SF Airport) Cost In Person $895* Early Bird Price (only 100 seats) Online $495* Early Bird Price To receive the online price, you must enter the discount code: OnlineOnly when purchasing The $100 price increase for live and online starts on 6/3/24  Rhonda, Jill, and I hope to see you there! And thanks for listening today!

I (David) have always found Formula One to be an intimidating sport. Vaguely European, with weirdly shaped cars racing at break neck speeds around bizarrely shaped tracks, without a guide, it's hard to know what's going on. Eugene meanwhile has been an auto racing aficionado since his early childhood and can talk F1 shop for days. In this episode, we walk through the sport of Formula 1 through the lens of beginners, discussing everything from the sport itself to its business model, driver personalities, why its paradoxically an ultra elite sport with such broad, global appeal, and how the Netflix series Drive to Survive has expanded its reach, especially here in America. I ask Eugene how it is that as someone with a generally mellow personality he is so into a sport centered around hyper ambitious, ultra competitive people, and I share how after spending a week learning about the sport I became a fan. As always, thanks for listening!   Threads @davidchang99 X @davidgchang whatjustpodcast @ gmail . com   “There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.” ― Ernest Hemingway

Why Do We Resist Accepting Ourselves Other People, and the World? The Five Most Common Reasons! Rhonda and David are joined in today's podcast by Dr. Matt May, a super popular and loved guest on our show, to discuss the resistance findings in David's recent survey on acceptance and resistance. The following is a summary of some of the statistical findings, but the actual podcast dialogue was wide ranging and tremendously engaging, and won't require a lot of statistical smarts! We also discussed the vitally important difference between healthy and unhealthy acceptance. Healthy acceptance is accompanied by feelings of joy, lightness, and liberation. Unhealth acceptance is accompanied by feelings of unhappiness and despair. Unhealthy acceptance is characterized by Should Statements and self-punishment for your failures and shortcomings. Healthy acceptance is an expression of self-love. The group brought the five most common reasons to life with engaging stories. Why should you accept yourself? We are not saying that you "should," and it's really a decision. However, the statistical models the I (David) developed indicated that healthy acceptance can trigger a 49% reduction in negative feelings and a 39% boost in positive feelings, which is tremendous. Matt told an inspiring story about two strategy for training the dolphins at SeaWorld. One strategy involved trying to shape the behavior of the dolphins with little shocks, in much the same way that some people train horses. Sadly, the dolphins went to the bottom of the pool and appeared depressed, not moving much. It was a complete failure. Then they tried a radically different strategy--they gave a new group of dolphins fish to reward them for doing the things the trainers wanted them to do. This strategy was tremendously successful. So, the question is whether you want to shape your own life with frequent shoulds and self-criticisms, which can have the effect of electric shocks every time you fail or screw up or fall short of your goals, or whether you want to shape your life with love and rewards. Some of us have discovered that acceptance is way more fun and vastly more effective! Quick Bottom Line The typical survey respondent endorsed 1/3 of the 12 Resistance Scale items, and seemed to believed that Acceptance would be foolish and lead to a life of misery and mediocrity. The actual causal impact of the Non-Acceptance and Resistance scales on positive and negative feelings was massive and appeared to be in the exact opposite direction. Findings The respondents in the Resistance survey endorsed an average of 33.8%. (+/- 0.1%) of the items, ranging from 0 to all 12. The most commonly endorsed was, “Acceptance is easy for rich and famous, but hard if you're struggling just to pay the bills.” 47% (+/- 2%) endorsed this item. The least endorsed was, “If I beat up on myself, people will love me more,” although 25% (+/- 1%) of the people endorsed this item, so it was fairly popular. The high scores on the resistance scale items is also pretty consistent with my experiences over the years—the people in the study, and the people I've worked with, have expressed MANY reasons to beat up on themselves. You can see the list of the 12 Resistance Scale items below. I have bolded the five most often endorsed. As you can see, many people surveyed believed that acceptance is fine for people who are rich and famous, but terribly painful and foolish for people who struggle with real problems. Many respondents were convinced that acceptance leads to pain, robs you of motivation and does not make sense in a the world that's falling apart. If I accept my flaws and shortcomings, I'll end up with a second-rate life. If I accept my flaws and shortcomings, I'll lose all my motivation to learn If I beat up on myself and work my ass off, people will love and admire me. It would be tremendously painful to accept my flaws and shortcomings. That would be like giving up and having to live with a heavy load of inadequacies. Life has many real disappointments and losses. I don't want to feel happy and chipper by “accepting” all those negatives when the world is falling apart all around me. That just doesn't make sense! I haven't achieved many of my goals in life. I think it would be kind of pathetic to suddenly accept myself and feel enormous joy that I haven't really earned or deserved. I've often fallen short, and I've made a lot of mistakes in my life. Are you saying that I should be happy about that? Hell NO! I am never going to accept myself as just another average or below-average person. That would be awful! If I accept my flaws, failures, and shortcomings, I'll just be like everyone else. I won't be special, and I won't have the chance to become special. If I admit that I often fail and screw up, people will think less of me. If I've done things that have hurt others or if I've violated my moral values, then I deserve to suffer. Acceptance is fine and easy for people who've enjoyed tremendous success, but it's really hard if you're struggling to pay the bills, or if you feel like you haven't succeeded at much. What did the analyses show about the impact of resistance and non-acceptance on how we feel? The Resistance scale had powerful direct causal effects on the Non-Acceptance scale and accounted for a whopping 46% of the variance is the Non-Acceptance scale. In other words, the more intense your resistance, the more you will fight against accepting your flaws. The causal effects of the Acceptance and Resistance scales on negative and positive feelings were massive. They can reduce positive feelings by as much as -48% and increase negative feelings by as much as +47%. Or, to put it differently, the statistical models predict that healthy self-acceptance will not lead to misery and isolation, but can dramatically reduce unhappiness and boost feelings of joy and self-esteem. The total effects of Singleness and Income on positive and negative feelings were relatively small, by comparison. In addition, about half of the causal effects of Singleness and Income are indirect and mediated by their causal effects on the Resistance and Non-Acceptance scales. The direct effects of Singleness on the positive and negative feelings scales were -4% (positive feelings) and +6% (negative feelings). The maximum direct effects of income on negative feelings were +4% (positive feelings) and -9% on negative feelings). To experience this boost if you're in the lowest income bracket (

Overcoming Loneliness Part 2-- A Master Class on the Feared Fantasy Technique Featuring Dr. Orly Marmur This is the second of a two-part series on loneliness, featuring the courageous personal work of Dr. Orly Marmur with Drs. David Burns and Jill Levitt as co-therapists. After Orly shared her story, we worked on helping her learn to use the Five Secrets, especially the Disarming Technique and Inquiry, to develop closer relationships with others. Jill described the philosophy of this approach as learning to be ”interested” in others—encouraging them to talk about themselves—rather than trying to be “interesting" or "impressive," which is usually a losing battle. We also worked with the Feared Fantasy technique to help Orly deal with her fear of rejection. Essentially, we explained that we would enter an Alice-in-Wonderland Nightmare World where there were two weird rules:. If you think people are judging you or looking down on you, they really are! In this Nightmare World, people are not polite but get right in your face and tell you all the negative thoughts they're having about you. We asked Orly to describe the worst criticisms she thought her friends might have about her. Here's the list: We're not really interested in you. You don't really say or create anything interesting. You are by yourself. We have families. You're not funny enough. You're not fun enough. You're too intellectual. You're too political. You're a liability. Orly bravely took the role of herself to kick things off, and Jill and David played the role of the “friends from hell,” and verbalized these criticisms to Orly. At first Orly struggled to respond effectively to the critical statements. She got stuck defending herself at times, and forgot to express interest in the critic and the specific criticisms. David and Jill modeled more effective responses, using the Five Secrets of Effective Communication, including The Disarming Technique (finding truth in the criticisms), Inquiry (ask for more information with a spirit of curiosity) Thought and Feeling Empathy (acknowledging how the critic was thinking and feeling) “I Feel” Statements (sharing feelings like sadness, shame, and loneliness in an open, respectful way) and Stroking (expressing positive regard for the critic, even in the heat of battle). Orly did a fantastic job, as you'll hear on the podcast, and we did some role reversals to refine certain responses. The goal of the Feared Fantasy is not so much to prepare for rejection in the real world, since very few people would ever say these things in such a harsh and open way. The Feared Fantasy “Monster” actually exists primarily in your own mind. But since most of us never think about the thing we fear, we don't realize or discover that the monster has no teeth. That is to say that by engaging with your greatest interpersonal fears, you discover that if someone were to attack you with over the top vague criticisms, you would survive, and it would reveal something terrible about the other person, not about you! The Feared Fantasy Technique brings this to life in a dramatic, emotional, and vivid way. At the end of the session there was a dramatic reduction in all of Orly's scores on the Emotions Table of her Dailly Mood log. Her Unhappiness dropped from 40 to 0 Anxiety dropped from 100 to 5 Shame went from 85 to 0 Worthlessness dropped from 95 to 0 Loneliness fell from 100 to 10 Self-consciousness fell from 8 to 5 Hopelessness fell from 100 to 5 Stuck and defeated fell from 100 to 0 Resentment fell from 90 to 0 Disappointed in myself fell from 100 to 0 As you can see, there was a dramatic reduction in all of her scores. We asked Orly what the most important healing elements during the session were. What techniques were that were most helpful. Orly said that the empathy from Jill and David was really  important as she felt heard and accepted. The Feared Fantasy Technique also made a huge difference, as it taught her what she wanted, which was to feel intense feelings without doing anything about them. Orly felt that this is the continuation of earlier work that made her realize that she struggles with Emotophobia (which means “the fear of feeling your emotions), and she wanted to increase her capacity to simply feel. Rhonda, Jill, and David want to give a shout out and virtual hug to Orly for a most fantastic session and learning opportunity for all of us. Teaching Points Here are a few teaching points for therapists as well as the general public. The secret of meaningful relationships is to be interested in others instead of trying to be “interesting” or impressive. You do not need to add more accomplishments to the list in order to feel close and loved by others. The Disarming and Inquiry Techniques (which are parts of the Five Secrets of Effective Communication) are extremely important in calming troubled relationships, if used skillfully, because they open the door for the other person to be heard and validated, and hopefully interested in healing and repairing the relationship. When you use the Feared Fantasy Technique, you discover that the rejecting “monster” you feared has no teeth, and you may also discover that you are the one who created it. In other words, the “monster” you've feared was always just the projection of your own self-criticisms! The Feared Fantasy is an intense method that can be helpful when the patient feels “trapped” or intensely afraid of rejection. However, it requires a strong foundation of trust between the therapist and the patient, especially when you respond to the “monster's” criticisms with acceptance and vulnerability. The more “over the top” the criticism is in the feared fantasy, usually, the more successful the method is, because you discover two things: 1) that the extremely harsh criticisms reveal something negative about the critic, rather than about you, and 2) specific criticisms (e.g., “you haven't read enough books”) are very easy to agree with and disarm and do not have to hurt your ego! Rhonda pointed out that during the early empathy phase of the session, Jill and David did “very basic, simple empathy” without any attempt to cheerlead or “help.” Very few therapists can do this, and most therapists don't even realize that their empathy / listening skills are poor. The use of David's empathy scale at the end of every session with every patient can be extremely eye-opening for therapists who are brave, because you will see how your patient really sees you and rates your empathy skills. Effective therapy is highly individualized and rarely or never formulaic. Orly started out by asked for help with symptoms of PTSD that started the day of the horrendous slaughter of many Israeli citizens by the invading Hamas fighters. But the session evolved into something entirely personal involving Orly's relationships with herself and with other people. In the end, Orly worked on accepting herself, connecting with others, and reducing her own perfectionism and perceived perfectionism, a therapeutic agenda that emerged as David and Jill empathized and collaborated with Orly. This led to Orly feeling less lonely, isolated, and numb, and more able to feel her feelings! Follow-up (many weeks later) Orly reported that she has felt “calm and quiet” since her session. She has definitely attempted to use the Disarming and Inquiry Techniques in several relationship situations, but said that the most important change has been her feelings of “inner calm and peace of mind.” She said that she is no longer so invested in doing for others or attempting to show people that she is there for them. She simply lets things unfold naturally and is now able to let go and accept it when things she hoped for don't happen. This may be related to reducing her underlying beliefs around perfectionism and perceived perfectionism that were targeted in the feared fantasy work that she did during the session. Instead of thinking that she has to be impressive in order to be loved, she has learned to accept herself, which is arguably the greatest change a human can make! For those who might be looking for a bottom line, I (David) might summarize Orly's subtle but remarkable change as a boost in acceptance of self and the world—a result that is easy to explain, but difficult for most people to comprehend, and even harder implement in our own lives. A big thanks to you, Orly, for teaching all of us through your own courageous personal work as the New Year unfolds and hopefully offers more world peace and increased love and connection. Thanks for listening! Warmly, Rhonda, Jill, Orly, and David  

Hola, Sneakers! Welcome to the podcast that regrets its individuality! This week: [scratching sound of needle being taken off record] Sorry, folks, quick post this week as we recorded on Friday, went to see a comedy show after recording, and I – David- am going down to the States with Lezah in ten minutes. So […]

369 The Invisible Racism We All Deny, Featuring Drs. Manuel Sierra and Matthew May Today we're joined by Drs. Manuel Sierra and Matthew May on the sensitive topic of racism. Manuel Sierra MD is a child and adolescent psychiatrist practicing in Idaho, one of the places where he grew up (he also spent time in Oregon). He was a classmate of Matt May during his residency training days at Stanford, and they remain close friends today. Rhonda begins today's podcast with this mail we received from Guillermo, one of our favorite podcast fans: Guillermo asks: How do you respond to family or friends who make racist comments? Hello, Dr Burns Not sure if you have addressed this in any of the podcasts (I don't recall it being a topic) but: I was recently in a group chat with some cousins, and I read some really disappointing racist comments about a particular group. Many people ignored it (as I did) and a couple AGREED with the comments. How can we balance not judging not just any people but our longtime friends and family about overtly racist actions/comments and the thinking that it is not the event but our thoughts that create our emotions? I don't care about “judging them” (in the sense that I don't think it is my place to “change” their views) but just hearing/reading comments like this bothers me when they come from people close to me. When I see it on tv or the internet, I don't get affected because I feel it is beyond my control. I don't believe they will change their views so do I just remove them from my life? I apologize, the topic is too wide, but I've been thinking about this. Sincerely grateful for all you do, Guillermo Manuel kicked off our answer to Guillermo by saying that he has been personally familiar with racism within families and communities, and says that he and Matt have talked about this topic “a lot.” He explained that: Although I am proud of my Mexican-American heritage, I was born and grew up in Oregon and Idaho, where I'm currently practicing. I encountered considerable racial bias when I was a kid, and later in life as well. I clearly cannot speak for all Mexican-American people, I can only speak for myself and what I've personally experienced, and I am extremely aware of how difficult the current times are. My grandparents didn't teach my mom Spanish. She was a single mom, and we lived in a small town in Idaho. I also have family through marriage who live on Native American lands. In grade school I began hearing jokes about Mexican Americans, and this was very awkward, painful, for me. I also got ridiculed for not speaking Spanish.  Even my grandfather asked me, “why aren't you speaking Spanish?” There were also gangs where the racial bias got worse and frequently turned violent. After learning more about Manuel's experiences, we modeled various ways of talking to a friend or family member who has made hurtful racist comments. Manuel cautioned that it might be best to do provide the feedback individually, and not in public, so as not to shame the person. In addition, this can reduce the chance for social posturing and responding in an adversarial way. Matt agreed and emphasized the importance of combining your “I Feel” Statement with Stroking. For example, you might say something like this, assuming the racial slur comment came from a relative or person you like, Jim, as you know, you're one of my favorite people, but I want you to know that when you said X, Y and Z, it really upset me, because it sounded like a put down to people who are (Mexican, Jewish, Moslem, gay, or whatever). I (David) like this approach because it sounds respectful and direct, but not judgmental or condemning. Rhonda modeled an excellent alternative response which included this type of add-on: “And I'm going to request that you not say that again in my presence. “ I (David) would prefer not to add the directive statement at the end, which could, in theory, rankle some individuals with coercion sensitivity, because it might sound scolding. However, that's just my take on it, and it's not some kind of gospel truth. If you want to push your assertiveness and stick up for yourself, it might be effective, and was effective recently for Rhonda because the relative she said this to stopped making similar racial comments in her presence. I would suggest ending any kind of response to the person who made a racial slur with Inquiry, asking them about their racial feelings as well as the fact that you are criticizing them. Do they feel hurt, angry, anxious, or put down? You might also ask something along these lines--Have they always had negative feelings about this or that racial or religious group? Manuel described an experience in medical school when an attending doctor was supervising a group of medical students in how to do a particular medical procedure quickly, and said this to him, “You can be like a Mexican jumping bean!” Then Manuel asked himself, “Should I say something?” Which of course incurs the risk of retaliation from an authority figure in a position of power. Manuel mentioned that just because you're working in a prestigious medical setting, this does not protect you from racial slurs. He described hearing people comment on how he and several Mexican-American classmates probably got into medical school because of their ethnicity, implying they weren't sufficiently intelligent or on par  with their classmates. He also mentioned an incident during his internship when he checked in on a patient wearing his white lab coat with stethoscope around his neck, and the patient asked him if he was there to pick up the trash and could he please get the doctor.  Manuel humbly replied that he could pick up the trash, and he was the doctor. I asked Manuel how he felt when hearing these types of belittling and patronizing racist comments. He said that he felt annoyed, embarrassed, angry, put down, anxious, and alone. He described one of his best friends growing up who was white. However, this fellow grew up poor as well, so they easily formed bond because they'd had similar class-based experiences. His friend sometimes lived in all-black neighborhoods and had also felt out of place at times, not accepted, and targeted. I asked Manuel how he felt describing these intensely personal experiences on the podcast today, knowing so many people would be listening. He said, “It's anxiety-provoking. My mouth is dry, my heart is racing, and I'm afraid I'll sound like an idiot!” We discussed the differences between being unintentionally or intentionally offensive with racist comments, and also mentioned the related topic of bullying which, of course, is intentionally hurtful. Manuel said that an example might be calling me names or saying terrible things about my mother, or making threats to hurt your family, or your mom. Often the bully is trying to get you to fight, so you'd be beaten up. The bully's goal is to humiliate you in front of others and make you feel bad about yourself. Manuel introduced us to some of the approaches he uses when working with kids who are bullied. I'd like to hear more on this topic but we were running out of time. We could address bullying on a future podcast with the same crew, since Manuel and Matt both have a lot to offer on that sensitive and exceptionally challenging topic. Let us know if you're interested in hearing more. The response to bullying has to have two dimensions. First, your thoughts, and not the bully's statements, create all of your moods. So, you can use the Daily Mood Log to record and modify your inner dialogue. The goal would be to support yourself and not buy into the notion that you are somehow “less than” or a loser or coward just because someone is trying to bully and exploit you in a sadistic fashion. The cognitive work is based on the idea that ultimately, only you can bully yourself. The words of the bully cannot affect you unless you buy into them. But then it's your own beliefs that are the source of your emotional misery. Second, your verbal response to the bully can also be helpful to you, or it can serve to make the situation worse. But these techniques, based in part of the Five Secrets of Effective Communication, can be challenging to learn, especially during the heat of battle, so considerable practice is vitally important. The goal of changing your thoughts as well as the way you respond is not to blame you for the problem, but to give you some reasonably effective coping skills, perhaps similar to the verbal karate I mentioned in my first book, Feeling Good. At the end of the podcast, we did a survey among the four of us on whether meanness and aggression and exploitation is one of the inherent and genetically based drives in human nature, along with our more loving impulses and drives, or whether humans are basically good and all the hostility and killing is the result of adverse influences along the way. There was a sharp difference of opinion, and you can listen to the podcast to find out what everyone thought! We were, of course, just speculating, as this question is partly scientific and partly philosophical. I asked Manuel how he felt at the end of the podcast, and he said he was feeling a lot better. He was powerful and informative, and I was grateful he could appear with our team and teach us from the heart today! I hope you enjoyed today's program as well. Thanks for listening! Manuel, Matt, Rhonda, and David

A Strange Paradox-- The Incredible Impact of Compassion + Accountability Featuring Adam Holman, LCSW We want to remind our listeners about the upcoming Mexico City TEAM intensive from November 6 – 9, 2023, organized by Level 5 TEAM therapist, Victoria Chicural, and Level 4 TEAM therapist Silvina Bucci. The Intensive will be held in a beautiful part of Mexico City (Sante Fe) at the Hotel Camino Real. There will be lots of opportunities to practice every aspect of TEAM-CBT along with many excellent, internationally renown TEAM-CBT trainers. I (David) will do a keynote address on Day 1,  On Day 2 Rhonda and I will do a live TEAM demonstration with a volunteer attending the conference. On Day 3 everyone will have the opportunity to practice the TEAM model from start to finish.  And on Day 4 Leigh Harrington and I will answer questions about the TEAM treatment model. This promises to be an Intensive not to be missed!  To learn more and register, please visit their website: https://teamcbt.mx, Today we are joined by Adam Holman, LCSW, whose podcast 288 on April 22, 2022 was a big hit. He shared his strategies for working with kids with video game addictions, and his no-nonsense, patient-focused approach made good sense and resonated with many of our podcast fans. Today, he talks about what he calls a “Strange Paradox,” which is: If you treat people like they're fragile, they act and behave like someone who's fragile. If, in contrast, you hold them accountable, with compassion, they will discover their strengths. He began by commenting on hearing David talk about how therapists often get hypnotized by our clients without realizing it. When that happens, we buy into the clients' beliefs that they're helpless and hopeless. And, I (David) might add, worthless. When that happens, we start to treat them as if the beliefs are true, further proving to them that they're helpless, hopeless, and worthless. This became incredibly evident after Adam had a unusual encounter with a child  while on a hike with his partner near Prescott, Arizona. The child was shrieking in terror at the top of his lungs. As they got approached the child, they saw that he was paralyzed by fear of a swarm of flies near his head. They also realized that his family had already walked past, and were about 45-seconds down the trail, hoping that he would become brave and walk through the flies and catch up with them.  But that clearly wasn't happening. Adam walked past the flies and stood next to him before saying, “I know you're scared, that's okay. I just walked past the flies and it's safe. You can walk through.” Then, the boy immediately stopped crying and walked past the flies on his own. The boy willingly chose to walk past them the moment that his suffering was acknowledged. He heard the message that there was nothing wrong with him or the fear that he was feeling. In other words, the acknowledgement of his fear send the message: “It IS scary, and you can do it. You're capable of doing scary things.” And he immediately found his courage and became capable. Adam continued: My partner and I began thinking about the suffering that the boy had experienced in that moment, and how little he needed in order to become strong and courageous. We felt close to the boy, and talked about our own suffering, and our parents' suffering that was passed on to us. We cried for three hours that day and began to think about all the suffering in the world. It felt incredibly relieving, I felt so connected to all of the people in my life, and naturally began thinking more about the suffering experienced by my clients. I realized that with many of them, I've just given in to listening without holding them accountable. I had been standing next to them, but I was treating them as if they could not walk past the flies.  . . . I loved your podcast on stories from the 60's, especially your experience when you were crying for hours when driving through the Nevada desert. All the same kinds of feelings bubbled up in me. I saw that his parents were just doing what they'd learned to do; to try to discourage the uncomfortable feelings by walking away from them. Unknowingly, this was sending the message that he isn't strong enough and that he is weak for feeling so fearful. Like many of us, they had learned that it's not okay to suffer, that experiencing feelings like fear is not acceptable. This, ironically triggers more suffering because you learn to avoid and fear your negative feelings, and you don't gain the courage to sit with your painful feelings and the feelings of others You can say (to the little boy), it's okay that you're suffering and afraid, and that's not a problem. I related to that boy. My dad was very critical, and would berate me for feeling anything other than happiness. Feelings like fear or sadness were signs of weakness, and eventually I stopped realizing that I was even feeling them. Then my feelings came out in the form of a lot of anxiety that I was avoiding, and the avoidance of that anxiety didn't allow me the opportunity to see that I had strengths. Rhonda, Adam and David discussed the role of tears in healing. Rhonda mentioned the immense value of exposure in recovery from anxiety, as opposed to avoidance, and the importance of making her patients accountable. David mentioned that our field is based on the idea that your negative feelings, like depression, or fear, show that there's something “wrong” with you, like a “mental disorder,” so you need to be fixed, by some pill, or some new school of psychotherapy. But if you're trying to “fix” someone, you're giving them the message that they're “broken.” TEAM, in contrast, is based on the opposite idea, that our negative thoughts and feelings will always be the expression of what's right with us, and not what's wrong with us. “Getting this,” which may not be easy at first, can paradoxically open the door to rapid change, just as we saw with the frightened boy that Adam encountered on the hike. Finally, Adam discussed how he ended up applying what he realized to a client he had been working with. The client was diagnosed with “Treatment-Resistant OCD,” and had years of therapy and medication that had not brought him to much relief. Adam had been working with him for a few months and they were able to recognize some outcome resistance. Outcome resistance is when the client has one or many good reasons not to give up their symptoms. Specifically, this client had an intense fear of rejection, and was making sure that his appearance was absolutely perfect in order to prevent rejection. Adam discusses sadness and frustration over the term “Treatment Resistant”, noting that it often keeps people feeling more stuck. Once the client saw this, he decided that they wanted to go forward and let go of his compulsions and agreed to include exposure in his treatment. This would mean that he would have to let his appearance be imperfect, and allow himself to feel anxious. Thinking back on the treatment, Adam realized that he had been providing listening and support without making the patient accountable and insisting on exposure. The next session, Adam recognized that just like the boy, he needed to treat his client with compassion and accountability. Adam re-invited the client to address the OCD and offered the gentle ultimatum, reminding the client that in order to go forward, we're going to have to do exposure. The client agreed, then started to hesitate as a result of his fear when he realized that the exposure would be taking place right at that moment. Adam messed up his own hair and invited the client to do it along with him. Adam reiterated that getting over it requires the use of exposure. The client then messed up his hair, and expressed feeling anxious for a few minutes before erupting into laughter. Then the client proceeded with his day without fixing his hair. He also decided to do more exposure on his own after session without giving into the anxiety. When he returned for the next session, he explained that his compulsions were gone for the first time in his life. The moment he was treated with compassion and accountability, he also found the strength to recover. So, what's the bottom line? When working with your own fears, or the fears of your clients or friends, two things are required. First, respect and compassion can help you accept your fear without feeling broken, or ashamed, or less than. And second accountability can give you the courage to confront your fears for the first time, and make the magical discovery that the monster really had no teeth! This is one form of enlightenment, going back 2500 years to the teachings of the Buddha on the “Great Death” of the “Self.” Thanks for listening today! Adam, Rhonda, and David

TEAM for Troubled Couples A New Twist! Today we are joined by a favorite guest, the brilliant Thai-An Truong. Thai-An is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) and Alcohol and Drug Counselor (LADC). She is the first Certified TEAM-CBT Therapist and Trainer in Oklahoma. She has found TEAM-CBT to be life-changing professionally and personally and is passionate about training other therapists in this “awesome approach.” In her private practice, Thai-An specializes in the treatment of trauma and OCD. To learn more about her TEAM-CBT Trainings, visit www.teamcbttraining.com Thai-An has been featured on many Feeling Good Podcasts focusing on Depression and social anxiety (Live demonstration, 187) Postpartum Depression and Anxiety ( 218) How to Get Laid (Ep. 264) OCD ( 283) Grief (Ep 344) Now Thai-An adds an important dimension to the TEAM Interpersonal Model—working with trouble couples, as opposed to working with individuals with troubled relationships. She also describes a new way to use Positive Reframing to reduce patient resistance to giving up David's famous list of “Common Communication Errors,” and she adds five new errors to the list. At the start of the podcast, Thai-An described a woman who complained that her husband often “shuts down” when they are communicating about a sensitive topic, and she wondered why. Thai-An decided to invite him to join the session so his wife could find out why. This really opened things up, and the wife discovered that her husband shut down because he was feeling inadequate when she pointed out all the things that were wrong with the house, and he was taking her comments as criticism. However, the more he shut down, the more she complained, and this pushed him away even further since her criticisms intensified his feelings of inadequacy. Thai-An then used Positive Reframing to help her see why he shut down. One of Thai-An's new ideas was to use Positive Reframing to cast our list of “errors” on the “Bad Communication Checklist” in a positive light, just as we do with the negative thoughts and feelings of people who are using the Daily Mood Log. By siding with the patient's resistance and listing all the good reasons NOT to change, nearly all patients paradoxically let down their guard and powerful urges to oppose change. Instead, they open up and become receptive to the many methods for challenging distorted thoughts. Thai-An has observed the same phenomena with troubled couples. When they see the GOOD reasons to why they or their partners use dysfunctional ways of communicating, they paradoxically let down their guard and become more willing to use the Five Secrets of Effective Communication. She says: Positive reframing started to open them up to each other, and helped them see each other in a more positive light. At the same time, they discovered that they shared the same values. Voicing the good reasons to maintain the communication errors as well as the cost of change (e.g., it'll be hard work, I'll have to focus on changing myself, it'll be vulnerable) allowed each partner to melt away their resistance to change. David comment: This is an excellent example of a “double paradox.” Once again, instead of trying to “help,” which often triggers intense resistance, the therapist sides with the resistance, and this paradoxically triggers strong motivation to change! Thai-An reminded us that it's important to go through the TEAM structure before moving forward with tools to help the couple change. For testing, she asks both partners to complete the version of David's Brief Mood Survey that includes the Relationship Satisfaction Scale, and asks both to complete the Evaluation of Therapy Session at the end. She makes sure both partners rate her empathy toward them at 20/20 (perfect scores) before proceeding to the next steps. During the Assessment of Resistance, she begins to work with David's Relationship Journal to get a specific moment in time of conflict. Then when they do Steps 3 and 4, where they identify their own communication errors and their impact on their partners, she does positive reframing of the bad communication errors, which you can see here, along with five new errors that Thai-An has listed below.   The Bad Communication Checklist* Instructions. Review what you wrote down in Step 2 of the Relationship Journal. How many of the following communication errors can you spot? Communication Error (ü) Communication Error (ü) 1.      Truth – You insist you're "right" and the other person is "wrong."   10.   Diversion – You change the subject or list past grievances.   2.      Blame – You imply the problem is the other person's fault.   11.   Self-Blame – You act as if you're awful and terrible.   3.      Defensiveness – You argue and refuse to admit any imperfection.   12.   Hopelessness – You claim you've tried everything and nothing works.   4.      Martyrdom – You imply that you're an innocent victim.   13.   Demandingness – You complain when people aren't as you expect.   5.      Put-Down – You imply that the other person is a loser.   14.   Denial – You imply that you don't feel angry, sad or upset when you do.   6.      Labeling – You call the other person "a jerk," "a loser," or worse.   15.   Helping – Instead of listening, you give advice or "help."   7.      Sarcasm – Your tone of voice is belittling or patronizing.   16.   Problem Solving – You try to solve the problem and ignore feelings.   8.      Counterattack – You respond to criticism with criticism.   17.   Mind-Reading – You expect others to know how you feel without telling them.   9.      Scapegoating – You imply the other person is defective or has a problem.   18.   Passive-Aggression – You say nothing, pout or slam doors.     * Copyright ã 1991 by David D. Burns, MD. Revised 2001.   Thai-An Truong's 5 Additional Communication Errors: Shut down—You shut down and ignore the other person or give them the silent treatment. Avoidance—You hide your feelings and avoid talking about hard topics, or disconnect through some form of escape. Rejection—You make threats to leave – “I'm done with you,” or “I can't deal with this anymore,” or “I want a divorce.” Control—You insist that the other person “needs” to behave or communicate differently, or “should” or “shouldn't” behave the way they do. Invalidation—You tell the other person they shouldn't feel the way they feel. Here's how Thai-An did the Positive Reframing with this couple. First she asked the wife, “Why might your partner suddenly want to “shut down” and stop communicating during a conflicted exchange?” She also asked, “What does this do for the person who is shutting down?” This is the list of positives they came up with. Shutting down . . . Keeps me safe and protects me from more criticism Protects my partner from hurtful comments I might make. Shows that I value our marriage and my partner's feelings. Shows my love for my partner, and for myself. It shows that I'm feeling hurt and want to be appreciated. Guarantees that I won't make things worse. Shows that I want to protect myself from becoming overly vulnerable and getting invalidated again. Shutting down feels less risky than sharing my feelings. Once she saw why he shut down, she realized the negative impact of her complaints, and began to provide more genuine words of appreciation to him. He said that this meant so much to him and made all the hard work worth it. Her common communication errors included “truth” and “making complaints.” He realized, again through positive reframing, that she also wanted validation, that raising children can be hard, and that she ALSO wanted appreciation for how well she was keeping up with the home and the care of their children. So, when she wasn't getting validation and appreciation from him, she was even more likely to complain to try to voice her perspective. Once he was able to stop shutting down, and instead began to make more disarming statements, use feeling empathy, and stroking, she was much less likely to complain. They also realized they had the same values of wanting healthier communication and to provide a safe and happy home for their children. Was this effective? Both went from 10/30 and 11/30 on the relationship satisfaction scale (shockingly poor scores) to 26/30 by the end of the relationship work together (extremely high scores indicating outstanding scores on my Relationship Satisfaction Scale.) Thai-An provided us with a cool Positive Reframing document for all of the communication errors. You can check it out if you CLICK HERE. I (David) pointed out that Positive Reframing can also be used in conjunction with the Relationship Journal in another way. In step one of the RJ, you write down one thing the other person said, and you circle all the many feelings they were probably having, like hurt, alone, anxious, angry, sad, unloved, and many more. In step two you write down exactly what you said next, and circle all the feelings you were having. This would be an ideal time to do Positive Reframing of your partner's negative feelings, so as to shift you perception that the other person is “bad” or “to blame” or some negative interpretations that you may be making. This reframing might be helpful in the same sense that my technique, Forced Empathy, can sometimes cause a radical shift in how you see the person you're at odds with. Announcements On January 4, 2024, Thai-An Truong will be offering a 14-week training program in TEAM couples therapy for mental health professionals. The class will meet weekly from 11:30 to 1:30 East Coast time. To learn more, please go to Courses.teamcbttraining.com/relationships There will be a 4-day TEAM-CBT Intensive November 6-9, 2023, in Mexico City, at the Hotel Camino Real.  To learn more, please go to:  https://teamcbt.mx/welcome Thanks for listening today! Let us know what you thought about our show! Thai-An, Rhonda, and David

AI and Psychotherapy— Doomsday or Revolution? Featuring Drs. Jason Pyle and Matthew May Today we feature Jason Pyle, MD, PhD and our beloved Matthew May, MD on a controversial, exciting and possibly anxiety-provoking podcast on the future of AI in psychotherapy and mental health. Will AI shrinks replace humans in a doomsday scenario for shrinks? Or will AI serve shrinks and patients in a revolutionary way that sees the dawning of a new age of psychotherapy? You are all familiar with Matt, due to his frequent and highly praised appearances on our Ask David segments, but Jason Pyle, MD, PhD, will probably be new to you. Jason joined the Evolve Foundation as Managing Director in 2022 to focus his work on the mass mental health crisis and the rampant diseases of despair, which afflict tens of millions of Americans. The Evolve Foundation is a private foundation dedicated to the advancement of human consciousness. Evolve is active in philanthropy and venture investments in the mental health fields. Jason is an accomplished biotechnology executive with over twenty years of executive management and technology development experience. He is committed to developing healthcare technologies and bringing science-backed healing to the most important problems of our generation. Jason is a veteran who served as a US Ranger, and earned an Engineering degree from the University of Arizona. He received both his MD and PhD in Neurosciences from the Stanford University School of Medicine, where he met Matt May and they became close friends. At the start of today's podcast, Matt and Jason reflected on their long friendship, starting as classmates at the Stanford Medical School 20 years ago. The following questions were submitted by Jason, Matt, and David prior to the start of today's podcast. Jason's Questions: How important is the role of therapist rapport with patients? If it is important, how might AI accomplish or fail to accomplish this? Given the limitations of AI, what parts or pieces of the therapeutic process might it best serve? One of AI's potentially best features is that it can interact with a person anytime/anyplace, how could this be useful to augment the current therapeutic paradigm? We talk a lot about patients using AI, but how could therapists use it to better serve their needs? Matt's Questions about AI: What is AI? How does it work? If therapists strengths tend to be their weaknesses and vice-versa, what might we expect to be the strengths and weaknesses of an AI therapist? How do these expectations match up with what David is seeing in the data? Is AI safe? Can it be made to be safe? What would be the best case scenario for AI, in therapy? David's question about AI: Will AI replace human therapists? Jason kicked off the discussion with a brief description of AI and machine learning, and outlined four potential roles for AI in psychiatry and psychology: An AI therapist full replaces the human therapist An AI helper augments human therapist, acting as a 24 / 7 therapist helper in a myriad of ways involving ongoing support for patients between therapy sessions and support for patients during crises. AI helps the therapist with rudimentary tasks like record-keeping, recording, and summarizing sessions. AI can study transcripts of therapy sessions for research purposes, rating what procedures were done as well as degree of adherence to the therapeutic methods, and the skill of the therapist. The ensuing dialogue was illuminating and exciting. In fact, I got so engrossed that I stopped taking notes, so you'll have to give it a listen to find out. However, one thing that was interesting and unexpected was highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of AI. For example, a patient with social anxiety might benefit greatly from armchair work, focusing on ways to combat distorted negative thoughts, but will still have to interact strangers in social situations to conquer this type of fear. David and Matt nearly always go with the patient out into the world for interpersonal exposure exercises, and find that the presence and trust and “push” from the human therapist can be invaluable and necessary. It is not at all clear that an AI therapist working via a smart phone could have the same effect, but that might require an experiment to find out. Jumping to conclusions without data is rarely safe or accurate! Maybe an AI “helper” could be very helpful to individuals with social anxiety! Jason raised the question of whether AI could replicate the trust and warmth and rapport of a human therapist, and whether the warmth and rapport of the therapeutic relationship was necessary to a good therapeutic outcome. I (David) summarized some of the findings with our Feeling Good App showing that app users actually rated the “Digital David” in the app substantially higher on warmth and understanding that the people in their lives. And now that we are incorporating AI into the Feeling Good App, the quality of the empathy / rapport from our app may be even higher than in our prior beta tests. We have not done a direct comparison between the rapport of human therapists and the rapport experienced by our Feeling Good App users. Many people might jump to the conclusion that human shrinks have better rapport than would be possible from a cell phone app, but this might be the opposite of the truth! In my research (David), I've seen that most human shrinks believe their empathy and rapport skills are high, when in fact their patients do not agree! In my research on the causal effects of empathy on recovery from depression in hundreds of patients at my clinical in Philadelphia, and also in more than 1300 patients treated at the Feeling Good Institute in Mountain View, California, it did not appear that therapist empathy had substantial causal effects on changes in depression. The late and famous Karl Rogers believed that therapist empathy is the “necessary and sufficient” condition for personality change, but most subsequent research has failed to support this popular belief. I (David) believe that AI therapists are likely to outperform human shrinks in rapport, warmth, trust, and understanding, but it remains to be seen whether this will be sufficient to make much of a dent in the patient's symptoms of depression, anxiety, marital conflict, or habits and addictions. Other techniques are likely to be required. However, we may have new data on this question shortly, as we will be directly studying the effectiveness of AI empathy on the reduction in negative feelings. We might be surprised, as our research nearly always gives us some unexpected results! Rhonda gave a strong and appreciated pitch for the idea that there is something about a person to person interaction, like a hug, that will never be duplicated by an app. If this is true, or even believed to be true, then there will likely never be a complete replacement of human shrinks by AI apps. But once again, you can believe this on a religious, or a priori, basis, or you can take it as a hypothesis that can easily be tested in an experiment. We do have very sensitive and accurate tests of therapists' warmth and empathy, so “rapport” can now be measured with short, reliable scales, making head to head comparisons of apps and humans possible for the first time. At one time, it was thought that AI would never be able to beat human chess champions, but that belief turned out to be false. The podcast group also discussed some of the potential shortcomings of an AI shrink. For example, the AI does not yet have the insight of how to “see through” what patients are saying, and takes the patient's words at face value. But a human therapist might often be thinking on multiple levels, asking what's “really” going on with the patient, including things that the patient might be intentionally or unintentionally hiding, like feelings of anger, or antisocial behaviors. At the end, all four participants gave their vision, or dream, for what a positive impact of AI might have on the world of mental illness / mental health. Rhonda had tears in her eyes, I think, over the suggestion that an effective and totally automated AI therapist would be scalable and might have the potential to bring ultra low-cost relief of suffering to millions or even hundreds of millions of people around the world who do not currently have access to effective mental health care. And I would add the individuals who now have access to mental health care, often cannot find effective treatment due to severe limitations in therapists as well as all current schools of therapy. Jason described his vision for an AI shrink as the helper of human therapists, extending their impact and enhancing their effectiveness. Jason is super-smart and wise, and I found his vision very inspiring! I have trained over 50,000 therapists who have attended my training programs over the past 35 years, and one thing I have learned is that most shrinks, including David, have tons of room for improvement. And if a brilliant and compassionate AI helper can enhance our impact? Hey, I'm all for that! Thanks for listening today! Let us know what you thought about our show! Jason, Matt, Rhonda, and David

Hey guys, thanks for waiting! Reed, Albert and I (David) are back with a new off-Heddels podcast called Neverrong and we thought you might want to hear about it. Neverrong is a fashion and culture show where we breakdown a topic that's trending in the world today and explore where it came from, where it's going, and how much carbon it's probably putting into the atmosphere. This is our first episode on Trucker Hats, but you can find a bunch more on our Substack and on Spotify, Apple, etc etc. Thanks for your support over the years!

We're taking a Sabbatical! After an incredible run of insightful conversations and incredible guests, the Manage 2 Win team will be taking a well-deserved sabbatical from the podcast for a few months. Join David as he takes a moment to express his gratitude to all the listeners who have been with us on this journey. Your support and enthusiasm have been the driving force behind the success of Manage 2 Win, and we couldn't have done it without you. David also extends a special thank you to the exceptional guests who have graced our show, generously sharing their experiences and wisdom. While new episodes may be on hold for now, the Manage 2 Win archives remain readily available for your continued inspiration. Dive into past episodes and revisit the timeless insights and practical advice shared by our esteemed guests. As we bid you farewell for now, we encourage you to stay connected and engaged with the Manage 2 Win community. Follow us on social media, join our mailing list, and keep an eye out for updates on our return. Thank you for being a part of the Manage 2 Win family. Your support means the world to us. Until we meet again, keep striving for excellence on your leadership journey. Bye for now!   Spotify Apple Podcast Google Podcast Manage2Win ------- This Manage 2 Win Podcast episode is brought to you by Habitly.  I (David) review Habitly best practices regularly, and teach these essential people skills to clients weekly.  This advice has changed my life, and made millions for our clients. I started developing Habitly content in 2004.  Habitly's powerful best practices have now been taught to thousands of people worldwide.  For instance, you can learn how to Create time in your day;  Get more from meetings;  Stay calm;  Achieve significant targets;  and Become a great leader.  Simply study and apply the expert knowledge provided in Habitly courses and micro-learning episodes. Whether you're just out of college, or someone with over 20 years work experience, learn the habits of highly successful people on Habitly.  Test drive Habitly for 7 days on us!  This includes full access to the entire Habitly knowledgebase – www.habitly.com.

Would you like to overcome every challenge facing your business? In this episode, Eric Holtzclaw, Chief Strategist & Dojo Master at Liger, shares how he helps businesses get closer to true customer needs – not wants – and overcome any problem. David, our host, likes to say, “Great leaders ask great questions.” Yet, few leaders dive deep enough to get to the core of an issue. Eric has a system to learn the true reason someone is behaving the way they do – customers, employees, other leaders, vendors, (spouses?)…  Learn Eric's ROWR system to strengthen relationships and increase profits.    Another reason to join this conversation is to learn how to comprehend your clients better than the competition. Then your sales and marketing efforts can maximize results.  Eric Holtzclaw is the author of the book “Laddering: Unlocking the Potential of Consumer Behavior” where he shares his expertise on guiding businesses to find their identities and core values, craft their visions, and establish their brands.  Learn the 5 WHYs. Practice this strategy and you'll gain insights you're currently missing. Spotify Apple Podcast Google Podcast Manage2Win ------- This Manage 2 Win Podcast episode is brought to you by Habitly. I (David) review Habitly best practices regularly, and teach these essential people skills to clients weekly.  This advice has changed my life, and made millions for our clients. I started developing Habitly content in 2004. Habitly's powerful best practices have now been taught to thousands of people worldwide. For instance, you can learn how to Create time in your day; Get more from meetings; Stay calm;  Achieve significant targets; and Become a great leader. Simply study and apply the expert knowledge provided in Habitly courses and micro-learning episodes. Whether you're just out of college, or someone with over 20 years work experience, learn the habits of highly successful people on Habitly.  Test drive Habitly for 7 days on us!  This includes full access to the entire Habitly knowledgebase – www.habitly.com.

Life can be a lot like Chutes and Ladders, the classic children's board game, says Richard Moran, author of a new book, NEVER SAY WHATEVER: How Small Decisions Make a Big Difference (McGraw Hill; April 11, 2023).  Each time you say “whatever” you slide down a chute, but each time you make a decision, you have the potential to climb a ladder and move forward.  Moran, host of the syndicated show “In the Workplace,” observes that “whatever” has become a flippant remark that is essentially a dismissal of responsibility.  David, our host, and Richard agree that “whatever” is a “four-letter word,” similar to the F-word, S-word, N-word and others.  It's toxic, disrespectful, and can be irresponsible.  Moran takes this a step further.  He believes at work using the “w” word can be a career killer with short-and long-term consequences.  And in personal relationships it's toxic.  It almost always defers or eliminates a decision or a choice that should be made. But the w-word is a habit.  A bad one.  Join this discussion if you're tired of Gen Z or any other generation dismissing your ideas, concerns, and/or commands as a leader with “whatever…”  Moran has data to back up his conclusions, and ways to overcome this bad habit.  Join this podcast to learn more.   Moran has served as a CEO, a college president, a venture capitalist, and a top-level consultant.  He has worked for or with some of the world's leading organizations including Accenture, Apple, News Corp, American Airlines, PG&E and many others.  He prides himself on his matter-of-fact manner of consulting and believes that many parts of the business world are needlessly complicated. Moran holds a Ph.D. in organizational behavior but his work is not academic.  Research is important, but he believes what is just as critical are the observations one can make by being in the “trenches” of business.  His observations are candid, humorous, and true.   Spotify Apple Podcast Google Podcast Manage2Win ------- This Manage 2 Win Podcast episode is brought to you by Habitly.  I (David) review Habitly best practices regularly, and teach these essential people skills to clients weekly.  This advice has changed my life, and made millions for our clients. I started developing Habitly content in 2004.  Habitly's powerful best practices have now been taught to thousands of people worldwide.  For instance, you can learn how to Create time in your day;  Get more from meetings;  Stay calm;  Achieve significant targets;  and Become a great leader.  Simply study and apply the expert knowledge provided in Habitly courses and micro-learning episodes. Whether you're just out of college, or someone with over 20 years work experience, learn the habits of highly successful people on Habitly.  Test drive Habitly for 7 days on us!  This includes full access to the entire Habitly knowledgebase – www.habitly.com.

There's an old saying, “The devil is in the details.”  This was not the direct advice of Russ Hawkins, our guest today, but he is a master of your metrics. Russ is the President and CEO of the leading data technology company, Agilence.  He has spent over 35-years in the technology industry, helping established organizations and small start-ups reach their full potential by driving change from the "inside." In this podcast, Russ shares candidly how to help your people reach their full potential.  A lot of their performance rests on you, their leaders.  We have a saying, “There are no problem employees.  When there's an ongoing problem with a team member, then the issue is with leadership.”  Russ provides valuable insights in this podcast on people and metrics.  High energy, good tips, great opportunity to learn from a master.  Hope you join us! These days Russ is responsible for developing the overall strategy and leading the growth of SAAS Analytics & Reporting company Agilence, which helps retailers, grocers, and restaurants improve their operational effectiveness and uncover preventable losses using the data already in their hands. Spotify Apple Podcast Google Podcast Manage2Win ------- This Manage 2 Win Podcast episode is brought to you by Habitly.  I (David) review Habitly best practices regularly, and teach these essential people skills to clients weekly.  This advice has changed my life, and made millions for our clients. I started developing Habitly content in 2004.  Habitly's powerful best practices have now been taught to thousands of people worldwide.  For instance, you can learn how to Create time in your day;  Get more from meetings;  Stay calm;  Achieve significant targets;  and Become a great leader.  Simply study and apply the expert knowledge provided in Habitly courses and micro-learning episodes. Whether you're just out of college, or someone with over 20 years work experience, learn the habits of highly successful people on Habitly.  Test drive Habitly for 7 days on us!  This includes full access to the entire Habitly knowledgebase – www.habitly.com.

How would you respond to a disappointed boss that yelled at you after a significant failure? Many leaders would look for another place to work.  Tim Lupinacci made a different decision 30 years ago.  He became a self-professed “leadership junkie” to improve his leadership skills.  On this podcast, Tim discusses some of his best habits and ways to achieve significant things through others.  Today, Tim is CEO and Chair at Baker Donelson, where he leads over 1,300 individuals in 22 offices across the Southeastern US.  The firm is one of the nation's top 100 law firms, and it has a strong HR practice for other leaders.  Of particular interest to us, is that Tim recently launched a non-profit called “Everybody Leads.”  It's focused on empowering individuals in underserved communities with basic leadership skills and confidence to better lead themselves, lead others, and lead in the community. Whether you're a new leader or seasoned veteran, Tim has a perspective you can gain from.  Join this discussion to learn more about how Tim's journey can help you, and his nonprofit might be something for you to consider supporting. Spotify Apple Podcast Google Podcast Manage2Win ------- This Manage 2 Win Podcast episode is brought to you by Habitly.  I (David) review Habitly best practices regularly, and teach these essential people skills to clients weekly.  This advice has changed my life, and made millions for our clients. I started developing Habitly content in 2004.  Habitly's powerful best practices have now been taught to thousands of people worldwide.  For instance, you can learn how to Create time in your day;  Get more from meetings;  Stay calm;  Achieve significant targets;  and Become a great leader.  Simply study and apply the expert knowledge provided in Habitly courses and micro-learning episodes. Whether you're just out of college, or someone with over 20 years work experience, learn the habits of highly successful people on Habitly.  Test drive Habitly for 7 days on us!  This includes full access to the entire Habitly knowledgebase – www.habitly.com

Would you like insights from a top sales leader?  This is not a Microsoft-endorsed podcast, but our guest Helen Fanucci is a highly successful Microsoft sales executive who wants to share her best practices with you. Most sales managers think, “My team better make quota, or I'll lose my job.”  It's pretty simple.  However, Helen's sales leadership approach is to shift your focus intentionally and pragmatically from traditional deals and dollars to the ambitions, success, and well-being of each member of your team.  This means the sales professionals on your team are your first, middle, and last selling priority every day for sales management.  They are your number one customer! Part of the reason for this change is the hybrid work revolution that began back in 2020.  Sales management is even more important in our innovation economy, yet simultaneously the most challenging. Why?  Because the workforce power structure has been flipped upside down, putting every top seller in a position to write their own ticket.  Helen's solution is her system to Love Your Team, including 17 crucial conversations every sales manager should be having regularly with their people.   Join this podcast to learn more. Helen Fanucci is an MIT-trained engineer who has built her reputation and career managing teams responsible for billions of dollars of quota.  She developed the Love Your Team system of sales management over a 25-year career on the front lines at top tech companies including Apple, Sun Microsystems, IBM, and Microsoft. Helen's first book is a hit:  Love Your Team, A Survival Guide for Sales Managers in a Hybrid World.  She also hosts the Love Your Team podcast, which focuses on retaining top talent and building high-performing teams. Spotify Apple Podcast Google Podcast Manage2Win ------- This Manage 2 Win Podcast episode is brought to you by Habitly.  I (David) review Habitly best practices regularly, and teach these essential people skills to clients weekly.  This advice has changed my life, and made millions for our clients. I started developing Habitly content in 2004.  Habitly's powerful best practices have now been taught to thousands of people worldwide.  For instance, you can learn how to Create time in your day;  Get more from meetings;  Stay calm;  Achieve significant targets;  and Become a great leader.  Simply study and apply the expert knowledge provided in Habitly courses and micro-learning episodes. Whether you're just out of college, or someone with over 20 years work experience, learn the habits of highly successful people on Habitly.  Test drive Habitly for 7 days on us!  This includes full access to the entire Habitly knowledgebase – www.habitly.com.

“Your thoughts do not define who you are,” our guest, Matt Tenney of The Mindfulness Edge, advises us.  What does that mean? Matt appealed to us as a guest because his agent communicated he had leadership lessons from a prison and a monastery.  That sounded intriguing.  Matt does have a four-step leadership system that can help many leaders. But it's what he learned in prison that I found most useful. Matt also explained how he starts every workday with 20-25 minutes of mindfulness, exercise, time with his family, and then blocks off his calendar until 11:00am.  Only urgent needs from clients get his morning time.  Makes you wonder…  What's Matt doing until 11am each workday?  Coffee and hot tubs? No. Matt sets aside every workday morning for “asset building.”  WOW!  Love it. What would happen if you did not look at email or answer texts/IM, etc. until 11am, and you invested that time into asset building? Listen to this podcast to learn more. Are you wondering what Matt shared about his time in prison?  You should.  It's powerful.  I can say so myself because I'm applying his Mindfulness Edge in my life.  (David) Listen to this podcast.  Good conversation.  Plus, two tips that can change your life. Spotify Apple Podcast Google Podcast Manage2Win ------- This Manage 2 Win Podcast episode is brought to you by Habitly.  I (David) review Habitly best practices regularly, and teach these essential people skills to clients weekly.  This advice has changed my life, and made millions for our clients. I started developing Habitly content in 2004.  Habitly's powerful best practices have now been taught to thousands of people worldwide.  For instance, you can learn how to Create time in your day;  Get more from meetings;  Stay calm;  Achieve significant targets;  and Become a great leader.  Simply study and apply the expert knowledge provided in Habitly courses and micro-learning episodes. Whether you're just out of college, or someone with over 20 years work experience, learn the habits of highly successful people on Habitly.  Test drive Habitly for 7 days on us!  This includes full access to the entire Habitly knowledgebase – www.habitly.com.

Integrating TEAM-CBT with Martial Arts Training! Podcast Episode 330, Featuring Dor Star Our guest today is Dor Star. Dor is an educational counselor (MA) and a level 2 TEAM practitioner who works with children in Israel who have emotional and interpersonal problem. He works with children as young as four years old, but most of his work is with children ages seven to twelve years old. The children he works with experience various challenges and difficulties such as: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), learning disabilities, tantrums, outbursts of anger, all kinds of anxieties, social difficulty, bullying and much more. His work is unique because he works mainly in small groups (4-6 participants) using martial arts and sports as therapeutic tools. In his work Dor uses the TEAM model with some adaptation, because of the children's ages and sports methods, with great success! In fact, one can say that he discovered for himself, and for his patients, a new way to use the TEAM model. He also teaches sports and martial arts trainers who are interested in entering the field of child therapy. Dor describes his first encounter with TEAM-CBT, which blew him away, but he was initially frustrated because he was thinking of his conventional ways of dealing with kids VS TEAM. But after a few weeks he discovered that he could use the TEAM structure to improve his approach, and wow, did he ever start to shine, as did his results with TEAM. Today's podcast was really a breath of fresh air! Dor began with T = Testing, and describes how he developed simple assessment tools to rate how his children (aged 4 to 11) were feeling at the start and end of his classes, but also how they felt about him. He uses simple questions like “Did I understand you today? How well did I listen?” He also asks them, “How much fun was the session,” and “How did you grade yourself?” Then they grade him on a scale from 0 (the worst) to 10 (the best.) So, it's quick, easy, and . . . shocking. Dor says: “I found out that I wasn't nearly as effective as I thought. Sometimes the kids thought the class was fun, but I got really low grades on Empathy, as well as how depressed, anxious and angry they were feeling at the start and end of each group session. Essentially, I discovered that I wasn't achieving almost any of my goals for my kids. This was disturbing at first, and I had to let my ego die. But I decided to try to view it as valuable information that I might be able to use to learn and grow.” For example, I had one of the most amazing sessions with an 11 year who was smiling the entire time. I was absolutely certain it was one of my best sessions ever. But when I asked him for my grade, he gave me a 3 out of 10! When I asked why, he explained that at the start I didn't introduce myself or ask him about himself! So, in this simple but compelling way, Dor has used the T = Testing to transform the entire way he works with kids! I believe he's had the same experiences I've had with the T = Testing component of TEAM. Dor has made his patients his teachers, and this has led to some amazing and revolutionary developments in his approach. Dor emphasizes the importance of E = Empathy, and says that “the Five Secrets of Effective Communication” are incredible! For example, if they're having a rage attack, or a temper tantrum, you can tell them they are absolutely right in the way they're thinking and feeling.” He also uses what he calls the Five Ways of Love. Verbally expressing respect and liking Giving service: tying a child's shoes, giving them some water during the training. These small acts can create feelings of trust and connection. Spending time with them, paying attention to them. This is especially important because so many are angry and try to push others away. They are good at getting other people to reject them and not want to spend time with them. Giving gifts, something they can take home and show to their parents. Making physical contact with them during the martial arts training, playing with them, having fun. I (David) would note that physical contact might be something to be careful with. Of course, when you are teaching martial arts, it may be perfectly justified and desirable. I came from the psychotherapy perspective, and I have been trained that ANY touching of a patient other than shaking hands at the initial and final sessions is grounds for a malpractice suit as well as an ethics charge. Dor also made some really illuminating comments on the A = Assessment of Resistance (formerly called Paradoxical Agenda Setting.) At the initial evaluation, he talks to the teachers, parents, and students. The agendas from teachers and parents are things like “he has an anger problem” or a problem paying attention in class, or whatever. However, 90% of the time, the children frequently are unaware of those agendas, or have no interest in the goals of the teachers and parents. Instead, he finds out what the children want to work on, and finds this to be the most and only effective way to approach the treatment. He says that it is fairly easy to set goals with children of any age, even as young as 4 years old, but those in the 8 to 11 years of age are the most difficult. He said that the children's goals may be to learn how to hit back when they are being bullied in school, or to have fun and make friends with other kids. I was delighted to hear about Dor's methods of setting goals with his kids and have felt strongly along these lines for many years! I say, Kudos, Dor! He also described doing a Cost-Benefit Analysis of crying when being bullied, and also helps his children see the positives in their symptoms using Positive Reframing. Dor explains: For example, I worked with a child who was bullied at school. In order for the work to be effective, I asked that the boy who bullied him be included in the group as well. After seeing the bullying happening in real time, I had two private five minute sessions with each child while the other kids played. In these sessions I used empathy techniques and received a score of 10 I started fooling around with the TEAM-CBT Agenda-Setting techniques. The goal was for the child who suffers from bullying to choose to behave in a different way. The child said he was willing to do it to prove to me that he is strong and to get back at the kids who beat him. I then talked to the bully boy and asked him if he was willing to help me work with that boy. He was happy to do it because he wanted him to stop crying all the time and get punished for it. After that the M = Methods part was really easy and fun. I hade the bully train the kid =whom he'd bulled. Two meetings after that they were best friends. In my experience (and I have done this process several times) the bully is the best therapist for a child who suffers from bullying! After Dor described his approach to helping kids who are being bullied, he said that if the parents or authorities step in to help it can make things worse because they child is placed in the role of being a baby, which may intensify the bullying. David asks: Dor, is a safety plan for the child important? Can the child always learn to deal with the bullying on their own? Any details or examples would be great! This was Dor's answer: I didn't address it enough, but you can't provide good therapy without providing good education. That's why I like working in schools because I can easily talk to the teachers. It is clear that we as adults need to talk about values and set boundaries, and in severe cases we may need to intervene and provide a safety net for the therapeutic process. But I feel that it is my job as a therapist to give my patient the tools to deal with their problems on their own. And bullying, like any problem in a relationship, is about guilt. And as soon as I stop blaming the other and start trying to improve myself and treat the other and his wishes with respect the change begins to happen. David: I agree strongly with what you just said! My research when I was in Philadelphia years back strongly supported the notion that blame is one of the main causes of relationship conflicts. Dor continues: In another case of mine, I worked with a child who complained that whoever was sitting on him was yelling at him and throwing things at him. I wasn't sure what could be done and gave him all kinds of bad suggestions At this point a 10-year-old boy with autism stopped me () and asked him what he asked the boy who was bothering him. He said that the he was criticized for the exact same thing--he was making noises that disturbed the boy next to him. From there we continued with homework to find out what is bothering that child, to tell him that he is right, and to ask him if he is ready to stop hitting and yelling at the second patient and his behavior will change. It was a huge success. Dor continues to talk about the idea of specificity which is so central to TEAM-CBT: I discovered that the techniques we teach children should be direct and simple. In the past we believed in all kinds of indirect techniques that were supposed to somehow help the child. The idea is to stop using general definitions like "self-confidence" "concentration abilities" and "social problems." Instead, we can start being specific in our goals and techniques. Rhonda and I were thrilled to learn about Dor's terrific work adapting TEAM to working with very young people. I encouraged Dor to consider a book on TEAM for TOTS (or some other title) so other therapists can learn how to adapt TEAM to work with children with specific problems such as intense shyness, autism spectrum problem, ADHD, anger issues, and more. Several days after the recording session, Dor was already working on his book. Awesome! Thanks so much for listening today! Rhonda, Dor, and David If you wish to contact Dor, you can email him at: dorstra@gmail.com

The most important relationships to live out your company values are with your employees.  Can you state your company values from memory?  If not, why not?  Are you living them out daily?  How do you know? Aaron Burnett lives out his company's values every day.  As a result, people describe Aaron as “trustworthy,” “astute,” “imaginative,” and “scary smart.”  These are rarely adjectives used to describe marketing agency leaders after they have been in the industry for decades.  But Aaron walks his talk. Wheelhouse Digital Marketing Group is recognized by INC Magazine as one of the best places to work in the United States, and by both Seattle Magazine and the Puget Sound Business Journal as one of the best workplaces in Washington State.  The seeds of Wheelhouse were sown over 25 years ago on the banks of the Bohorok River in Sumatra.  You can read that story here.  However, if you want inspiration and ideas of how to supercharge your company culture, then join this podcast to hear what Aaron has to say.  This is an engaging, inspiring conversation about building a thriving culture that is infused with helpfulness, generosity, and joy. Don't miss it. Manage2Win: https://www.manage2win.com/podcast Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/41rIZOQO0BY9BF0LaamZHg Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-manage-2-win-podcast/id1451236899 Google Podcast: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9tYW5hZ2Uyd2luLmxpYnN5bi5jb20vcnNz  ------- This Manage 2 Win Podcast episode is brought to you by Habitly.  I (David) review Habitly best practices regularly, and teach these essential people skills to clients weekly.  This advice has changed my life, and made millions for our clients. I started developing Habitly content in 2004.  Habitly's powerful best practices have now been taught to thousands of people worldwide.  For instance, you can learn how to Create time in your day;  Get more from meetings;  Stay calm;  Achieve significant targets;  and Become a great leader.  Simply study and apply the expert knowledge provided in Habitly courses and micro-learning episodes. Whether you're just out of college, or someone with over 20 years work experience, learn the habits of highly successful people on Habitly.  Test drive Habitly for 7 days on us!  This includes full access to the entire Habitly knowledgebase – www.habitly.com.

Jerome Deroy was hired, but did not connect with the company's culture.  When he did, he found it lacking direction.  Do any of your employees have the same feelings about your firm? Honest, engaging storytelling that touches people's hearts changes relationships, professional and personal.  How well do you explain things to others? Did you know the human brain is hard-wired for story?  Scientific studies show us that we remember stories more than data, statistics, and numbers.  Yet most people in business try to convince others rather than use a story. Jerome and his Narativ team seek to change that.  They help companies activate behavioral change from the inside out.  Their methods of listening and storytelling can transform anyone's communication. In this podcast, Jerome shares aspects of the rigorous and precise Narativ method that gets to the emotional heart of a story to better communicate your company's value, a point your want to make, or the way a partnership can be a huge win-win for those involved. Join us to hear Jerome's tips.  There's got to be one here that can help you communicate more effectively with others. Jerome joined Narativ in 2007 after the founders, Murray Nossel and Paul Browde, handed him a shoebox full of notes and said, “We think there's a company in here.”  Jerome had recently left a position at BNP Paribas, Hong Kong, and come to New York to pursue a career in filmmaking. Instead, he jumped at the challenge — and transformed Narativ into the business it is today. For the last 13 years, Jerome has worked closely with clients as diverse as CIGNA, Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Janssen Pharma, and Warby Parker to craft business-relevant personal stories for sales, leadership, and team building.  He regularly lectures at Parsons New School of Design in New York City on The Art of Storytelling. Manage2Win: https://www.manage2win.com/podcast Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/41rIZOQ...    Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Google Podcast: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0... ------- This Manage 2 Win Podcast episode is brought to you by Habitly.  I (David) review Habitly best practices regularly, and teach these essential people skills to clients weekly.  This advice has changed my life, and made millions for our clients. I started developing Habitly content in 2004.  Habitly's powerful best practices have now been taught to thousands of people worldwide.  For instance, you can learn how to Create time in your day;  Get more from meetings;  Stay calm;  Achieve significant targets;  and Become a great leader.  Simply study and apply the expert knowledge provided in Habitly courses and micro-learning episodes. Whether you're just out of college, or someone with over 20 years work experience, learn the habits of highly successful people on Habitly.  Test drive Habitly for 7 days on us!  This includes full access to the entire Habitly knowledgebase – www.habitly.com.

Here's your chance to learn from a “Brain Geek.”  Wendy Swire wants to teach us how to rewire our brains to create laser-focused results as we move from “Saboteur” to “Sage Brain” thinking. Everyone knows the health benefits of having disciplined, positive habits or routines.  For instance, physical fitness, spiritual prayer – worship – meditation,  time with loved ones… but what about mental fitness? Science has now proven we can train our cognitive muscles to avoid, block, or more quickly recover from negative attacks within our brain.  Everyone has them.  We are actually wired to be negative as part of our survival instincts.  However, we are NOT wired to endure the constant onslaught of manipulative media and/or wounded people that pester us with negative messages thousands of times daily.  (If we allow them to…) Learn more about yourself on this podcast, and visit our Manage 2 Win page on Wendy's site to take a free 5-minute assessment.  Join this conversation to get glimpse on how you can be stronger, even a superpower, by growing positive neural connections to the 10 attributes of your positive “Sage Brain.”  Stop the “saboteurs” and negativity committee's attacks.  Recover more quickly. This is great stuff. Our guest, Wendy Swire, is the founder of Swire Solutions.  She is a global executive coach, author, applied neuroscience consultant, Founder of the DC Neuroleadership Group, and certified mental fitness coach.  Spotify Apple Podcast Google Podcast Manage2Win ------- This Manage 2 Win Podcast episode is brought to you by Habitly.  I (David) review Habitly best practices regularly, and teach these essential people skills to clients weekly.  This advice has changed my life, and made millions for our clients. I started developing Habitly content in 2004.  Habitly's powerful best practices have now been taught to thousands of people worldwide.  For instance, you can learn how to Create time in your day;  Get more from meetings;  Stay calm;  Achieve significant targets;  and Become a great leader.  Simply study and apply the expert knowledge provided in Habitly courses and micro-learning episodes. Whether you're just out of college, or someone with over 20 years work experience, learn the habits of highly successful people on Habitly.  Test drive Habitly for 7 days on us!  This includes full access to the entire Habitly knowledgebase – www.habitly.com.

Spending money on marketing can be like flushing cash down the toilet.  Mac Attram has a different approach:  Focus on joint ventures to build on the success of others. But how do you choose the right company for your joint venture?  How do you structure the agreement?  Joint ventures can be easy to sign, but might be agonizingly slow to launch.  What happens when a joint venture goes sour – how do you get out? These topics and more are discussed in this podcast.  Mac shares his system to grow your company 200% or more in 6-12 months.  He introduces how joint ventures can leverage six cornerstones of your company:   Marketing, Sales, Team, Systems, Finance & Mindset.  Joint ventures often enable you to grow all these 6 areas simultaneously. Mac Attram is the Founder & CEO of MindSpace Coaching, where he helps businesses grow more rapidly using his proven systems.  One of his favorite techniques is joint ventures, which is the main reason he is a multi-millionaire today.  Join this podcast to be introduced to Mac's proven system. Spotify  Apple Podcast  Google Podcast  Manage2Win   ------- This Manage 2 Win Podcast episode is brought to you by Habitly.  I (David) review Habitly best practices regularly, and teach these essential people skills to clients weekly.  This advice has changed my life, and made millions for our clients. I started developing Habitly content in 2004.  Habitly's powerful best practices have now been taught to thousands of people worldwide.  For instance, you can learn how to Create time in your day;  Get more from meetings;  Stay calm;  Achieve significant targets;  and Become a great leader.  Simply study and apply the expert knowledge provided in Habitly courses and micro-learning episodes. Whether you're just out of college, or someone with over 20 years work experience, learn the habits of highly successful people on Habitly.  Test drive Habitly for 7 days on us!  This includes full access to the entire Habitly knowledgebase – www.habitly.com.

Carey Smith grew Big Ass Fans from zero to $300 million over 18 years without outside investors.  He shares key parts of his story on this podcast. It's interesting to note that when he sold Big Ass Fans for $500 million, the company's stock appreciation rights program paid out $50 million to more than 100 loyal employees who shared Carey's work ethic with 15 becoming overnight millionaires. Every year, American entrepreneurs start more than 500,000 companies, but only 200 will ever reach $100 million in revenue.  Even many that succeed will later fail. One valuable tip from Carey is that he personally called each new customer to hear first-hand what they liked about their Big Ass Fan, and more importantly, learn what they thought could be improved.  Why did he do that? Because Carey believes in a “fail-fast” approach to drive revenue quickly.  He learned a valuable lesson that you can usually tell within a short time if an idea's going to work.  If it doesn't, then make the conscious decision to fail fast.  Carey tells his employees, “If you're not making mistakes, you're not working.”  Growth comes only from taking risks. Before Big Ass Fans, Carey spent more than a decade trying to grow another company, but its annual sales never rose above $1.4 million.  Carey admits he ignored warning signs and thought he should persevere a bit longer. Today, Carey leads Unorthodox Ventures, an Austin-based investment company he founded to provide everything venture capitalists lacked when they approached him near daily at Big Ass Fans.  Carey's team consists of experts who help founders become serial entrepreneurs by providing support for everything from engineering and marketing to customer service and logistics. Join this conversation to become introduced into Carey's success model. Spotify  Apple Podcast  Google Podcast  Manage2Win   ------- This Manage 2 Win Podcast episode is brought to you by Habitly.  I (David) review Habitly best practices regularly, and teach these essential people skills to clients weekly.  This advice has changed my life, and made millions for our clients. I started developing Habitly content in 2004.  Habitly's powerful best practices have now been taught to thousands of people worldwide.  For instance, you can learn how to Create time in your day;  Get more from meetings;  Stay calm;  Achieve significant targets;  and Become a great leader.  Simply study and apply the expert knowledge provided in Habitly courses and micro-learning episodes. Whether you're just out of college, or someone with over 20 years work experience, learn the habits of highly successful people on Habitly.  Test drive Habitly for 7 days on us!  This includes full access to the entire Habitly knowledgebase – www.habitly.com.

When people don't get your story right, they often buy from someone else.  Therefore, effectively communicating the value of your company's services is crucial to your company's profitability and growth. David Saltzman is a marketing guru who joins us to candidly share common mistakes too many leaders make in explaining what their company does, and what to do instead.  Most leaders describe themselves and their people as heroes.  However, this is less effective than being a guide to someone's desired destination.  David's company, The Saltzman Group, helps leaders craft stories that sell customers, employees, communities… he wants us to stop talking and start communicating.  David and David, our host, discuss ways you can create clarity that cuts through and gets noticed.  There are some great tips here! Our guest, David Saltzman, is a 20-year nationally-published monthly columnist, a certified StoryBrand consultant, and hosts the award-winning ShiftShapers Podcast.  His company, The Saltzman Group, also serves as a fractional CMO for companies in a variety of industries worldwide.   Spotify  Apple Podcast  Google Podcast  Manage2Win   ------- This Manage 2 Win Podcast episode is brought to you by Habitly.  I (David) review Habitly best practices regularly, and teach these essential people skills to clients weekly.  This advice has changed my life, and made millions for our clients. I started developing Habitly content in 2004.  Habitly's powerful best practices have now been taught to thousands of people worldwide.  For instance, you can learn how to Create time in your day;  Get more from meetings;  Stay calm;  Achieve significant targets;  and Become a great leader.  Simply study and apply the expert knowledge provided in Habitly courses and micro-learning episodes. Whether you're just out of college, or someone with over 20 years work experience, learn the habits of highly successful people on Habitly.  Test drive Habitly for 7 days on us!  This includes full access to the entire Habitly knowledgebase – www.habitly.com

Rarely do we get to speak with people who are saving lives.  Every day.  Navid Alipour and his team are some of these people.  Why?  His life was changed when his wife faced cancer. Join this discussion for hope.  David talks with Navid about two companies he cofounded, not just funded, CureMetrix and CureMatch.  The AI technology behind these ventures was developed by some of today's greatest minds to improve disease detection and cancer survival rates across the globe. Cancer is a vicious demon that consumes an estimated 1,670 lives a day in America.  It continues to be the second most common cause of death in the US, after heart disease.  A total of 1.9 million new cancer cases and 609,360 deaths from cancer are estimated to have occurred in 2022 (American Cancer Society). Navid shares candidly how he and his teams pursue these solutions.  Some are awaiting the U.S. government's full blessing, but are available to people worldwide today.  The stories are touching.  The hope is real. Although a primary focus of these companies is breast cancer, the impact of the seeds Navid and his cofounders have planted is sprouting into a crop of cancer fighting tools the world has never seen before.  Learn more about his story and their progress by meeting Navid on this podcast.  You might have a friend or colleague in the future who will benefit from you sharing what you discover. Navid Alipour is the Chief Executive Officer at AI Med Global, a company focused on Artificial Intelligence Technology that improves healthcare and helps save lives. AI Med Global is a roll-up of two companies Navid cofounded, CureMetrix and CureMatch. He is also a founder of AI focused VC fund, Analytics Ventures. Spotify  Apple Podcast  Google Podcast  Manage2Win   ------- This Manage 2 Win Podcast episode is brought to you by Habitly.  I (David) review Habitly best practices regularly, and teach these essential people skills to clients weekly.  This advice has changed my life, and made millions for our clients. I started developing Habitly content in 2004.  Habitly's powerful best practices have now been taught to thousands of people worldwide.  For instance, you can learn how to Create time in your day;  Get more from meetings;  Stay calm;  Achieve significant targets;  and Become a great leader.  Simply study and apply the expert knowledge provided in Habitly courses and micro-learning episodes. Whether you're just out of college, or someone with over 20 years work experience, learn the habits of highly successful people on Habitly.  Test drive Habitly for 7 days on us!  This includes full access to the entire Habitly knowledgebase – www.habitly.com.

Brendan Dell gets paid to position his clients to connect with top technology brands, including Expedia, ADP, HP, YC and 99 Start Ups portfolio companies.  Brandon's claim is to help people with their “$1B Pitch.” Brendan's course, $1B Pitch, examines the 8 elements of $1B pitches.  His podcast Billion Dollar Tech reaches founders, executives, VCs, and PE investors globally. In this podcast, Brendan provides high level insights into his work, and book, The 12 Immutable Laws of High-Impact Messaging.  Join this conversation if you'd like an introduction to Brendan's $1B Pitch. Spotify  Apple Podcast  Google Podcast  Manage2Win   ------- This Manage 2 Win Podcast episode is brought to you by Habitly.  I (David) review Habitly best practices regularly, and teach these essential people skills to clients weekly.  This advice has changed my life, and made millions for our clients. I started developing Habitly content in 2004.  Habitly's powerful best practices have now been taught to thousands of people worldwide.  For instance, you can learn how to Create time in your day;  Get more from meetings;  Stay calm;  Achieve significant targets;  and Become a great leader.  Simply study and apply the expert knowledge provided in Habitly courses and micro-learning episodes. Whether you're just out of college, or someone with over 20 years work experience, learn the habits of highly successful people on Habitly.  Test drive Habitly for 7 days on us!  This includes full access to the entire Habitly knowledgebase – www.habitly.com.

Would you like your employees to be better engaged, loving what they do, and being their best more of the time? Orrin Klopper, the CEO of Netsurit, has a solution for you: Support their dreams!  His company has implemented a Dream Programme based on Matthew Kelly's book, The Dream Manager.  This program and three acquisitions have catapulted Netsurit to $35 million in sales and 300 employees. Orrin attended 9 schools as a kid.  Only got expelled from 3.  So, 6 out of 9 is not a bad result…  More recently, his company did an acquisition of a company in NYC, and in his words, “…we made every mistake possible.”  Yet, he learned.  Orrin is an overcomer.  For instance, he has a master's diploma in Entrepreneurship from the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management. Now Orrin grows his company through acquisitions and has an incredibly strong company culture that adapts through different growth phases through an actionable framework.  Their Dream Programme helps too. Orrin is a passionate Microsoft Partner and is committed to serving both employees and clients by nurturing and realizing their dreams.  In addition to his role leading Netsurit, He is active in the Young Presidents' Association (YPO) and the Entrepreneurs' Organization. Great tips here for entrepreneurs looking to move past mistakes and bottlenecks to more rapid growth.  Join us! Spotify  Apple Podcast  Google Podcast  Manage2Win   ------- This Manage 2 Win Podcast episode is brought to you by Habitly.  I (David) review Habitly best practices regularly, and teach these essential people skills to clients weekly.  This advice has changed my life, and made millions for our clients. I started developing Habitly content in 2004.  Habitly's powerful best practices have now been taught to thousands of people worldwide.  For instance, you can learn how to Create time in your day;  Get more from meetings;  Stay calm;  Achieve significant targets;  and Become a great leader.  Simply study and apply the expert knowledge provided in Habitly courses and micro-learning episodes. Whether you're just out of college, or someone with over 20 years work experience, learn the habits of highly successful people on Habitly.  Test drive Habitly for 7 days on us!  This includes full access to the entire Habitly knowledgebase – www.habitly.com.

You have a company that is profitable, but you need funds to hire a superstar, acquire another company, or launch a marketing program...  Where do you get the money? You have funding options when you're a software company with recurring revenue.  One of them is John Gallagher, the CEO of Element SaaS Finance.  He leads a boutique growth finance company that invests in and lends to SaaS and recurring revenue companies. John talks with David about the challenges of growing a company.  Leaders get stuck doing everything, which causes growth initiatives to get set aside.  This podcast discusses the importance of strategy and how to work effectively with outside investors, whether they are on your board or not.  John discusses what he learned from working with Mazars Ireland, and Ireland Investments, one of Ireland's most prominent family investment offices.  He also has served as a SaaS CFO consultant to some of the fastest-growing software companies in Europe. John has been responsible for growing his company 150% year over year.  He and his team are helping entrepreneurs grow substantially.  Join this conversation to learn how financial people view your business, as well as a brief explanation of another finance model available to fund your growth. Spotify  Apple Podcast  Google Podcast  Manage2Win   ------- This Manage 2 Win Podcast episode is brought to you by Habitly.  I (David) review Habitly best practices regularly, and teach these essential people skills to clients weekly.  This advice has changed my life, and made millions for our clients. I started developing Habitly content in 2004.  Habitly's powerful best practices have now been taught to thousands of people worldwide.  For instance, you can learn how to Create time in your day;  Get more from meetings;  Stay calm;  Achieve significant targets;  and Become a great leader.  Simply study and apply the expert knowledge provided in Habitly courses and micro-learning episodes. Whether you're just out of college, or someone with over 20 years work experience, learn the habits of highly successful people on Habitly.  Test drive Habitly for 7 days on us!  This includes full access to the entire Habitly knowledgebase – www.habitly.com.

Have you posted a YouTube video that has 1.4 million views?  Peter Anderton has (here).  It's on his two rules of great leadership.  The popularity of this post demands us to consider it. David interviews Peter about leadership, well beyond his TED talk, "Great Leadership Comes Down to Only Two Rules."  Do you have leaders complaining about their people?  How do you get your team pulling together and heading fully focused in the right direction so amazing things happen? Peter suggests we build beliefs about people, products, systems, situations…  These beliefs, often based on assumptions, can lead us to make disastrous decisions.  We lack clarity on truth, but feel we have complete understanding.  Oops.  Wrong approach. Peter Anderton is the Founder of Internal Alignment, where he helps leaders build processes so they can 10x their companies from inside out.  He and his team have worked with hundreds of companies, including giants like Jaguar Land Rover, 3M, Atkins, HSBC Holdings, Michels & Taylor, and Huntsman.  Their programs typically deliver 1000%+ ROI. Peter shares the single biggest predictor of consistently high-performing teams.  Join us for this and many other insights on how you can be your best. Spotify Apple Podcast YouTube Manage2Win ------- This Manage 2 Win Podcast episode is brought to you by Habitly.  I (David) review Habitly best practices regularly, and teach these essential people skills to clients weekly.  This advice has changed my life, and made millions for our clients. I started developing Habitly content in 2004.  Habitly's powerful best practices have now been taught to thousands of people worldwide.  For instance, you can learn how to Create time in your day;  Get more from meetings;  Stay calm;  Achieve significant targets;  and Become a great leader.  Simply study and apply the expert knowledge provided in Habitly courses and micro-learning episodes. Whether you're just out of college, or someone with over 20 years work experience, learn the habits of highly successful people on Habitly.  Test drive Habitly for 7 days on us!  This includes full access to the entire Habitly knowledgebase – www.habitly.com.

Some consultants and leaders use diversity to divide.  Dr. Lauren Tucker believes another approach is more effective:  Focus on inclusion.    Dr. Tucker is the Founder and CEO of Do What Matters.  She is an entrepreneur who works with other entrepreneurs.  She talks candidly with David about how traditional diversity efforts often hurt the very people they are intended to help, and good intentions have not led to sustainable impact.   Dr. Tucker believes inclusion means all your employees feel invested in the mission of your company and success of the work.  One challenge is to achieve a win-win where diversity is a solution, not a problem to be fixed.  But if you want to go for inclusion, how do you build on your company's strengths with a strategy that reduces cultural resistance to change, and enables you to achieve sustainable inclusion and representation goals faster?  It's not easy, but it is doable.  Part of the problem is the toxic media and political environment today that seeks to divide people by fear.  Join David and Dr. Tucker as they discuss how inclusion efforts fail and succeed in your company.  Spotify  Apple Podcast  Google Podcast  Manage2Win   ------- This Manage 2 Win Podcast episode is brought to you by Habitly.  I (David) review Habitly best practices regularly, and teach these essential people skills to clients weekly.  This advice has changed my life, and made millions for our clients. I started developing Habitly content in 2004.  Habitly's powerful best practices have now been taught to thousands of people worldwide.  For instance, you can learn how to Create time in your day;  Get more from meetings;  Stay calm;  Achieve significant targets;  and Become a great leader.  Simply study and apply the expert knowledge provided in Habitly courses and micro-learning episodes. Whether you're just out of college, or someone with over 20 years work experience, learn the habits of highly successful people on Habitly.  First 7 days free, including access to the entire Habitly knowledgebase – www.habitly.com.

As a CEO, Melissa Widner has led two companies to successful acquisitions that provided over a 10X return to investors.  Do you need money to grow your company, without giving up equity?  David talks with Melissa about funding your company's growth and the challenges financial folks see in entrepreneurs.  Every startup leaders have a different journey, but there are key similarities that separate high-growth visionaries from those who get stuck.  Money for growth can be a tipping point. Melissa has a deep understanding of the entrepreneur's journey and the importance of growth capital.  If you're looking for alternative methods to finance your next big move, then join this conversation! Melissa Widner is the CEO of Lighter Capital, the pioneer and leading provider of revenue-based financing to SAAS companies.  Previously, she was the Managing Director of NAB Ventures, the venture capital arm of National Australia Bank, where she invested in and served as a director for several global fintech companies, including Lighter Capital. Melissa served as a general partner at SeaPoint ventures, a US-based venture capital firm focused on mobile technologies and SaaS enterprise software solutions.  She is an active angel investor who served on the board of the US-based Alliance of Angels, one of the longest-running and most active angel groups in the world.  She was a lecturer on the subjects of Venture Capital and Entrepreneurship at the University of Washington's MBA program. In 2009, Melissa relocated to Sydney with her Australian husband.  She is the co-founder and chair of Heads Over Heels, an organization that works with women entrepreneurs leading high-growth companies.  She served on the boards of AIC (The Australian Investment Council--formerly AVCAL), and currently serves on the board of the Shore Foundation and Heads Over Heels.  She is the proud mother of four boys. Spotify Apple Podcast Google Podcast Manage2Win ------- This Manage 2 Win Podcast episode is brought to you by Habitly.  I (David) review Habitly best practices regularly, and teach these essential people skills to clients weekly.  This advice has changed my life, and made millions for our clients. I started developing Habitly content in 2004.  Habitly's powerful best practices have now been taught to thousands of people worldwide.  For instance, you can learn how to Create time in your day;  Get more from meetings;  Stay calm;  Achieve significant targets;  and Become a great leader.  Simply study and apply the expert knowledge provided in Habitly courses and micro-learning episodes. Whether you're just out of college, or someone with over 20 years work experience, learn the habits of highly successful people on Habitly.  First 7 days free, including access to the entire Habitly knowledgebase – www.habitly.com.

Yikes! Do I REALLY have to share my feelings?  Last week, we featured Part 1 of a live therapy session with Keren Shemesh, PhD,  a licensed clinical psychologist who began having intense panic attacks when her mother and father visited from Israel.  Today, we feature the exciting conclusion of that session, with follow-up. If you are interested, you can listen to the follow-up with Keren and Jill who joined us st the end of today's podcast. They comment on the session as well as the details of what happened following the session. I (David) raised the question of why so many of us have trouble being honest and open with our feelings, especially anger. Jill suggested that it might be due to the false dichotomy people see, contrasting aggression with love. But you can be honest and loving at the same time, including when you express feelings of anger. Of course, we make the Five Secrets of Effective Communication sound easy, but these powerful tools actually require an enormous level of skill as well as commitment. Part 2 of the Keren session: M = Methods We began the Methods part of the session with a bit more Paradoxical Agenda Setting, and listed some really GOOD reasons NOT to open up more to her mother. I want to protect her because it may be hard and upsetting to her. I'm not used to being vulnerable with my parents. I don't want to rock the boat or change the status quo. I'm not sure I want a closer relationship with my mother. NOTE: David and Jill were thinking that we often resist intimacy because we have negative pictures in our mind of what real closeness is. For example, if you think it means something yucky and upsetting, you obviously won't want to get “close.” Jill tried to finesse around this by suggesting Keren might aim for a more “honest” relationship instead of a “closer” relationship. There are things about me that they've rejected, like the fact that I don't really want children. And I'm not so sure I want to make myself vulnerable and get rejected again! I'm afraid I'll get swallowed up and enmeshed. We asked Keren what kinds of feelings she was hiding from her mother. My feelings of nervousness and intense anxiety, and the intense somatic symptoms, like the knot in my stomach. I am scared for her future, since she is not in good health and she's not taking care of herself. I have feelings of anger and resentment about the fact that I'm not the kind of daughter they wanted. I'm sad about her health and seeing her struggle. I feel hurt when I think how I have failed them and let them down. I sometimes feel like I don't really belong. At this point, I became so absorbed in the session that I stopped taking notes, so you will have to listen carefully to the recording of the session which was fascinating. I do recall, however, that we began working on communication, using the Five Secrets of Effective Communication (LINK), as well as tips on how to proceed, taking it one step at a time and not trying to do it all at once, and role playing practice. Then we did some Externalization of Voices with the thoughts on Keren's Daily Mood Log, using several strategies: Self-Defense, the Acceptance Paradox, and the CAT, or Counter-Attack Technique. You can see the Daily Mood Log she completed after the session, based on the work we did in the session, at this LINK. Keren's end-or-session Brief Mood Survey and Evaluation of Therapy Session In addition, Keren and Jill will be with us to record the follow-up. T = End-of-Session Testing You can review Keren's BMS and EOTS (Patient's Evaluation of Therapy Session) at the end of the session at this LINK. Keren's end-or-session Brief Mood Survey and Evaluation of Therapy Session As you can see, her depression score fell to 1, indicating substantial improvement, while her suicidal thoughts and urges remained at 0. Her feelings of anxiety vanished, but her feelings of anger remained fairly elevated, falling from 7 to 4. We would not expect further improvement in this dimension until she's had the chance to share more of her feelings with her mom. Her feelings of happiness only increased from 10 to 13, again any further improvement would not be expected until she's had the chance to do her “homework” following the session. However, her satisfaction with her relationship with her mom increased from 19 to 26 out of 30, which is substantial, while still leaving some room for improvement. On the EOTs, you will see that our Empathy and Helpfulness scores were perfect, along with our scores on the Satisfaction with Session, Commitment to homework, unexpressed Negative Feelings, and honesty scales. Here's what she like “the least” about the session: “Nothing. This has been a powerful experience.” Here's what she like “the best” about the session: “This has been empowering. The hidden emotion is like a blind spot. I know it is there, but I cannot see it. I loved when David pointed to my avoidance, and I am glad we focused on the hidden emotion. Jill and David were able to see the depth in situation and I feel seen and understood.” Follow-Up We exchanged a number of emails following the session, and will also talk to Keren and Jill live on the podcast so you can catch up on what happened. But here is an excerpt from one of Keren's emails: Here is what has happened so far: On Friday morning, she made some comments about my gray hair and that the fridge gasket was not properly clean. I got really annoyed, but did not say anything. To be honest, I was too angry to use the 5 secrets and needed time to cool off. About after half an hour later, on our way to the acupuncturist, I told her that I love having her over and that it is special to me that we spend time together. She thanked me for everything that I am doing for her on this trip. Then I added: "this morning, when I came to check on you, you commented on my hair and then you told me to clean the fridge gasket..." I was going to follow up with 5 secrets, but before I was able to finish, she interrupted me and said "Gosh, I am so critical! I am sorry, I didn't mean it that way. I can see now why your sister gets upset with me. I can't believe myself." I told her that I love her honesty and while her criticism comes from a caring loving place the how and when she says things sets tone. This was a breakthrough because even though I did not finish using the 5 secrets I got through to her and felt heard. It was encouraging for me to feel that I could be understood and accepted by her.  I have clients who say that they love the 5 secrets, but like to call it the 3 secrets because they find it effective enough to use only 3. (I still encouraged them to use all 5). I can see now what they mean, I did not finish my 5 secrets spiel and got some good results. I believe that my conservation with my mother will further trickle during her stay. Perhaps because there is a lot to cover, or perhaps it's the way we communicate. In either case, I feel good about having the talks that I previously dreaded. I have not had any panic attacks since, but I don't think they have completely gone. I believe they will be there to remind me to address certain emotions that need addressing.. . . I will keep you posted and may even send this to the group. Just need to think about it a bit longer. Responses from the Tuesday Group who observed our work with Keren Here are just a few of the comments from the 35 therapists who observed the session. This is part of the feedback we get on the quality of our teaching at the end of every Tuesday training group. Please describe what you specifically disliked about the training/ Nothing. The live work was fascinating to watch. David and Jill were masterful as always! This was a truly moving and inspiring and helpful session. I can't think of anything I didn't like about it. Nothing I disliked. I think I would have liked to see Keren do more deliberate practice with the 5 secrets with grading and more roleplaying. Conceptualization was a bit hard to follow. Please describe what you specifically liked about the training. Thank you for such an authentic, moving, beautiful session. And tour-de-force demonstration of TEAM therapy. Observing David and Jill as co therapists in service of Keren was an amazing learning opportunity! The power between them was exponential and felt like they successfully addressed every angle. . .  I had not considered using EOV and loved how effective that was in crushing Keren's thoughts. I also loved how Jill finessed gently guiding her to address Hidden Emotion, having clear conviction that this was where the "action" was. I can understand what Keren said that she wants to be closer but does not want to be enmeshed. I think that it helped us in our work with immigrants and those who live away from where they were born. The discussion about the desire to be a parent or not, was another aspect of the work that I really respected. Excellent class tonight! Keren's gift to the class was priceless and David and Jill's masterful teaching was outstanding as always. Thank you!!! I got to feel closer to her and to several group members through their sharing. David touched me with the notion that opening up to one's parents is an important gift that many of them don't get to receive. Thanks for listening today! Rhonda, Keren, Jill, and David

Today's guest, Sam Citro Alexander, is an admitted Food Lover and Nutrition Nerd who's bitewell team is on a mission to make healthy eating easy, convenient, and accessible for all. Sam and her team says they tried about 1,000 different food and nutrition apps, but concluded none helped people eat well.  Instead, most healthy eating platforms focus on cooking and preparation although the average American only cooks 1 meal a day. Food is part of the fuel for your employee performance.  Companies have varying degrees of support for employees on mental health, physical health, emotional health… but most Americans fail to consider how their diet affects their personal and professional lives. Bitewell is an app that captures how we really eat.  Our snacks, the food we order out, our iced lattes, what we cook…  Why track it?  Because this enables us to consider making small changes to WHAT we eat and tracking how it affects us. Join this conversation to hear how Samantha Citro Alexander decided to leave her exciting role as the Chief of Staff to Jane Lauder at Clinique, NYC, part of The Estée Lauder Companies to start bitewell.  She has also been the Director of Integrated Marketing (Smashbox, LA), where she co-created Jefacon, a women's empowerment and leadership summit celebrating the Beauty of Being a Boss. Why leave her high profile job at Clinique for the entrepreneurial grind?  What has she learned?  Join this fun, energetic, informative discussion to find out. Spotify Apple Podcast Google Podcast Manage2Win ------- This Manage 2 Win Podcast episode is brought to you by Habitly.  I (David) review Habitly best practices regularly, and teach these essential people skills to clients weekly.  This advice has changed my life, and made millions for our clients. I started developing Habitly content in 2004.  Habitly's powerful best practices have now been taught to thousands of people worldwide.  For instance, you can learn how to Create time in your day;  Get more from meetings;  Stay calm;  Achieve significant targets;  and Become a great leader.  Simply study and apply the expert knowledge provided in Habitly courses and micro-learning episodes. Whether you're just out of college, or someone with over 20 years work experience, learn the habits of highly successful people on Habitly.  Test drive Habitly for 7 days on us!  This includes full access to the entire Habitly knowledgebase – www.habitly.com.

Brad Harris is a rare Ph.D. leader who can articulate how fantastic leaders succeed in plain English.  He shares the power of failure, how to learn from it, and then to thrive. Brad and David have a very insightful discussion about how top leaders organize their time.  What is their tipping point to maintain their strategic focus?  How do they learn from mistakes?  To be candid, David came away from this discussion inspired to change part of his weekly schedule to achieve more than he has than in the past. What if you could get that ONE idea that helps you break into new territory?  Brad gives you many opportunities in this conversation to break through that glass ceiling that's holding you down.  Don't miss this conversation! Brad is the Professor in the Department of Management and Human Resources at HEC Paris.  Brad has received multiple teaching awards and was named a top “40 under 40 Business School Professor” by Poets and Quants.   He has co-authored two books, Scaling for Success: People Priorities for High-Growth Organizations (Columbia, 2021) and 3D Team Leadership: A New Approach for Complex Teams (Stanford, 2017).  Brad's work has been cited in leading popular press outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Harvard Business Review, NBC's The Today Show, Inc.com, and Fast Company. Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/41rIZOQO0BY9BF0LaamZHg Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-manage-2-win-podcast/id1451236899 Google Podcast: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9tYW5hZ2Uyd2luLmxpYnN5bi5jb20vcnNz Manage2Win: https://www.manage2win.com/podcast ------- This Manage 2 Win Podcast episode is brought to you by Habitly.  I (David) review Habitly best practices regularly, and teach these essential people skills to clients weekly.  This advice has changed my life, and made millions for our clients. I started developing Habitly content in 2004.  Habitly's powerful best practices have now been taught to thousands of people worldwide.  For instance, you can learn how to Create time in your day;  Get more from meetings;  Stay calm;  Achieve significant targets;  and Become a great leader.  Simply study and apply the expert knowledge provided in Habitly courses and micro-learning episodes. Whether you're just out of college, or someone with over 20 years work experience, learn the habits of highly successful people on Habitly.  Test drive Habitly for 7 days on us!  This includes full access to the entire Habitly knowledgebase – www.habitly.com.

When the Hidden Emotion isn't Hidden! Today's podcast will feature a live therapy session on September 13, 2022 with Keren Shemesh, PhD,  a licensed clinical psychologist and certified TEAM-CBT therapist. The entire session was recorded and will be presented in two consecutive podcasts. The two co-therapists are Jill Levitt, PhD, a clinical psychologist, and Director of Clinical Training at the FeelingGoodInsititute.com. Part 1 of the Keren session I will summarize the work that Dr. Jill Levitt and I did with Keren according to the familiar sequence of a TEAM-CBT Session: T = Testing, E = Empathy, A = Assessment of Resistance (formerly Paradoxical Agenda Setting), and M = Methods, with a final round of T = end-of-session Testing. In today's podcast, we will include the T, E, and A. In Part 2, we will include M = Methods and the final T = Testing. T = Testing Just before the start of the session, Keren completed the Brief Mood Survey (BMS) which you can review at this link: Keren's Pre-Session BMS As you can see, her depression score was only 3 out of 20, indicating minimal to mild depression. There were no suicidal thoughts, and her anxiety score was 10 out of 20, indicating moderate anxiety. She was also moderately angry (7 out of 20) and her happiness score was 10 out of 20, indicating very little happiness. Her relationship satisfaction level with her mother was 19 out of 30, indicating lots of room for improvement. However, she rated “degree of affection and caring” at 6 for “very satisfied,” which is the highest rating on this important item. We will ask her to take the BMS again at the end of the session, along with the Evaluation of Therapy Session, so we can see what the impact of the session was on her symptoms, as well as how empathic and helpful we were during the session. These ratings will be important, because the perceptions of therapists can be way off base, but the perceptions of our patients will nearly always be spot-on. Keren also brought a partially completed Daily Mood Log, which you can see at this link: Keren's Daily Mood Log (DML) at the start of the session As you can see, the upsetting event was her mother's visit from Israel. She had moderately to severely elevated negative feelings in nine categories, along with 17 negative thoughts, along with her rather strong beliefs in all of them. Most of her thoughts were of a self-critical nature, with lots of Hidden Should Statements as well. E = Empathy At the start of our session, which took place in front of our Tuesday evening training group at Stanford, Keren described her struggles like this: On Wednesday I woke up at 3 AM with panic attacks, one after another, and no way of getting back to sleep. I get somatic symptoms, I felt weak, nauseated, with no strength, almost paralyzed, and emotionally unstable. This was four days after my mother arrived form Israel. In the last 20 years, she and my dad visited me only once, on my graduation. I always had to visit them in Israel every year and was frustrated they none came to visit me in the Bat Area. On my last visit in May, I expressed my frustration about them not visiting me. They took it to heart and made plans to come for the Jewish high Holidays. My mom arrived first a few days ago and It's my first time alone with her. She's a Jewish mom and she stresses me out. Of course, I was really excited when she first arrived, but after four days I feel overwhelmed. This is SO MUCH WORK! I feel sad. I'm afraid I won't be able to function. I just cannot seem to enjoy my time with her. I feel fragile, but I'm hiding it. She's 73, and the signs of aging are obvious now. She needs more care, and it's tough to see her aging. Dad has always been super athletic, and he's in great shape, but she doesn't exercise or take care of herself. She's frustrated about aging and is angry with us for not accepting her as she is. I don't want to seem unhappy. I'm overwhelmed and just feel bad! David and Jill empathized, and Jill emphasized how much her parents must love her, coming from such a great distance to be with her, but also acknowledged how hard it must be for them and for Keren to be living at such a great distance. Jill pointed out that one of the issues Keren may be struggling with is the belief that their time together should be fun and conflict-free, since the time is so precious. Keren continued: My biggest problem is that I feel I cannot be me when I'm around them . . . . They want me to be a different version of myself. . . . They want me to be a mother, and they want grandchildren. But I'm in the 5% of women who don't have any interest in having children. I'm 46 years old now, and I guess I could see myself adopting, but having a family is a big job, and I've never had the passion. So, I feel like I'm a disappointment to them. But we never talk about it. I sometimes feel invisible and unseen when I'm around them. They'd be so much prouder of me if I had children they could brag about. Keren also shared her frustration and anger with her mom for not taking better care of her health. Since her mom has been in town, Keren has arranged all kinds of fun activities for them to do together, but Keren's joy is dampened by the many unspoken feelings she is constantly trying to hide, for fear of conflict and upsetting her parents. A = Assessment of Resistance Keren gave us an A+ in Empathy, so we went on to the Assessment of Resistance phase of the session, where we set the Agenda. Keren's goal was to get over her panic attacks, and we discussed three possible treatment strategies with Keren: The Hidden Emotion Technique: This technique would be based on our hunch that Keren's panic attacks are the direct result of the many feelings she is consciously, and subconscious trying to hide and sweep under the rug. Dealing with the self-critical thoughts on the Daily Mood Log she provided at the start of the session. LINK Using Forced Empathy to help her see the world through her mother's eyes, as we did in a fairly recent podcast with Zeina, another member of our Tuesday training group who was in conflict with her mother. Keren expressed considerable enthusiasm for options 2 and 3. I (David) pointed out that she appeared to be ignoring / avoiding the first option, and raised the question of whether that meant it might be the most productive, but scariest, of the three options. Keren conceded that this rang true, and wanted to start out with learning to express her feelings more openly and directly, but in a respectful and loving way. In next week's podcast, you'll find out what happened! Part 2 of the Keren session: M = Methods We began the Methods part of the session with a bit more Paradoxical Agenda Setting, and listed some really GOOD reasons NOT to open up more to her mother. I want to protect her because it may be hard and upsetting to her. I'm not used to being vulnerable with my parents. I don't want to rock the boat or change the status quo. I'm not sure I want a closer relationship with my mother. NOTE: David and Jill were thinking that we often resist intimacy because we have negative pictures in our mind of what real closeness is. For example, if you think it means something yucky and upsetting, you obviously won't want to get “close.” Jill tried to finesse around this by suggesting Keren might aim for a more “honest” relationship instead of a “closer” relationship. There are things about me that they've rejected, like the fact that I don't really want children. And I'm not so sure I want to make myself vulnerable and get rejected again! I'm afraid I'll get swallowed up and enmeshed. We asked Keren what kinds of feelings she was hiding from her mother. My feelings of nervousness and intense anxiety, and the intense somatic symptoms, like the knot in my stomach. I am scared for her future, since she is not in good health and she's not taking care of herself. I have feelings of anger and resentment about the fact that I'm not the kind of daughter they wanted. I'm sad about her health and seeing her struggle. I feel hurt when I think how I have failed them and let them down. I sometimes feel like I don't really belong. At this point, I became so absorbed in the session that I stopped taking notes, so you will have to listen carefully to the recording of the session which was fascinating. I do recall, however, that we began working on communication, using the Five Secrets of Effective Communication (LINK), as well as tips on how to proceed, taking it one step at a time and not trying to do it all at once, and role playing practice. Then we did some Externalization of Voices with the thoughts on Keren's Daily Mood Log, using several strategies: Self-Defense, the Acceptance Paradox, and the CAT, or Counter-Attack Technique. You can see the Daily Mood Log she completed after the session, based on the work we did in the session, at this LINK. Keren's end-or-session Brief Mood Survey and Evaluation of Therapy Session In addition, Keren and Jill will be with us to record the follow-up. T = End-of-Session Testing You can review Keren's BMS and EOTS (Patient's Evaluation of Therapy Session) at the end of the session at this LINK. Keren's end-or-session Brief Mood Survey and Evaluation of Therapy Session As you can see, her depression score fell to 1, indicating substantial improvement, while her suicidal thoughts and urges remained at 0. Her feelings of anxiety vanished, but her feelings of anger remained fairly elevated, falling from 7 to 4. We would not expect further improvement in this dimension until she's had the chance to share more of her feelings with her mom. Her feelings of happiness only increased from 10 to 13, again any further improvement would not be expected until she's had the chance to do her “homework” following the session. However, her satisfaction with her relationship with her mom increased from 19 to 26 out of 30, which is substantial, while still leaving some room for improvement. On the EOTs, you will see that our Empathy and Helpfulness scores were perfect, along with our scores on the Satisfaction with Session, Commitment to homework, unexpressed Negative Feelings, and honesty scales. Here's what she like “the least” about the session: “Nothing. This has been a powerful experience.” Here's what she like “the best” about the session: “This has been empowering. The hidden emotion is like a blind spot. I know it is there, but I cannot see it. I loved when David pointed to my avoidance, and I am glad we focused on the hidden emotion. Jill and David were able to see the depth in situation and I feel seen and understood.” Follow-Up We exchanged a number of emails following the session, and will also talk to Keren and Jill live on the podcast so you can catch up on what happened. But here is an excerpt from one of Keren's emails: Here is what has happened so far: On Friday morning, she made some comments about my gray hair and that the fridge gasket was not properly clean. I got really annoyed, but did not say anything. To be honest, I was too angry to use the 5 secrets and needed time to cool off. About after half an hour later, on our way to the acupuncturist, I told her that I love having her over and that it is special to me that we spend time together. She thanked me for everything that I am doing for her on this trip. Then I added: "this morning, when I came to check on you, you commented on my hair and then you told me to clean the fridge gasket..." I was going to follow up with 5 secrets, but before I was able to finish, she interrupted me and said "Gosh, I am so critical! I am sorry, I didn't mean it that way. I can see now why your sister gets upset with me. I can't believe myself." I told her that I love her honesty and while her criticism comes from a caring loving place the how and when she says things sets tone. This was a breakthrough because even though I did not finish using the 5 secrets I got through to her and felt heard. It was encouraging for me to feel that I could be understood and accepted by her.  I have clients who say that they love the 5 secrets, but like to call it the 3 secrets because they find it effective enough to use only 3. (I still encouraged them to use all 5). I can see now what they mean, I did not finish my 5 secrets spiel and got some good results. I believe that my conservation with my mother will further trickle during her stay. Perhaps because there is a lot to cover, or perhaps it's the way we communicate. In either case, I feel good about having the talks that I previously dreaded. I have not had any panic attacks since, but I don't think they have completely gone. I believe they will be there to remind me to address certain emotions that need addressing.. . . I will keep you posted and may even send this to the group. Just need to think about it a bit longer. Responses from the Tuesday Group who observed our work with Keren Here are just a few of the comments from the 35 therapists who observed the session. This is part of the feedback we get on the quality of our teaching at the end of every Tuesday training group. Please describe what you specifically disliked about the training/ Nothing. The live work was fascinating to watch. David and Jill were masterful as always! This was a truly moving and inspiring and helpful session. I can't think of anything I didn't like about it. Nothing I disliked. I think I would have liked to see Keren do more deliberate practice with the 5 secrets with grading and more roleplaying. Conceptualization was a bit hard to follow. Please describe what you specifically liked about the training. Thank you for such an authentic, moving, beautiful session. And tour-de-force demonstration of TEAM therapy. Observing David and Jill as co therapists in service of Keren was an amazing learning opportunity! The power between them was exponential and felt like they successfully addressed every angle. . .  I had not considered using EOV and loved how effective that was in crushing Keren's thoughts. I also loved how Jill finessed gently guiding her to address Hidden Emotion, having clear conviction that this was where the "action" was. I can understand what Keren said that she wants to be closer but does not want to be enmeshed. I think that it helped us in our work with immigrants and those who live away from where they were born. The discussion about the desire to be a parent or not, was another aspect of the work that I really respected. Excellent class tonight! Keren's gift to the class was priceless and David and Jill's masterful teaching was outstanding as always. Thank you!!! I got to feel closer to her and to several group members through their sharing. David touched me with the notion that opening up to one's parents is an important gift that many of them don't get to receive. Thanks for listening today! Rhonda, Keren, Jill, and David

As America's mainline colleges and universities continue their 50+ year descent into political indoctrination and teaching anything but career skills, leaders are wondering what they're getting when hiring recent graduates. Today's podcast is with Dr. John Jackson, the President of William Jessup University, the 3rd fastest growing institution of its type in the nation.  Prior to Jessup, John has been an entrepreneur, a journey he wrote about in one of his many books, Pastorpreneur. David and John have a candid conversation about the state of education in America today, and how that is affecting our economy.  The situation is not all bad, but it has never been so dire.  What's a leader to do?  Listen in and hear some great insights. John has served as the executive director of Thriving Churches International.  He is the founding pastor of LifePoint Church in Minden, Nevada, and was the executive minister of the American Baptist Churches of the Pacific Southwest (now Transformation Ministries) where he served more than 270 churches in four western states. Dr. Jackson holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Educational Administration and Organizational Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara; M.A. in Theology (Christian Formation and Discipleship) at Fuller Theological Seminary; and a B.A. in Religion (Christian History and Thought) from Chapman University. Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/41rIZOQ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0 Manage2Win: https://www.manage2win.com/podcast  ------- This Manage 2 Win Podcast episode is brought to you by Habitly.  I (David) review Habitly best practices regularly, and teach these essential people skills to clients weekly.  This advice has changed my life, and made millions for our clients. I started developing Habitly content in 2004.  Habitly's powerful best practices have now been taught to thousands of people worldwide.  For instance, you can learn how to Create time in your day;  Get more from meetings;  Stay calm;  Achieve significant targets;  and Become a great leader.  Simply study and apply the expert knowledge provided in Habitly courses and micro-learning episodes. Whether you're just out of college, or someone with over 20 years work experience, learn the habits of highly successful people on Habitly.  Test drive Habitly for 7 days on us!  This includes full access to the entire Habitly knowledgebase – www.habitly.com.

How can you stand out in the incredibly crowded markets of today? Seven years ago, Sri Chellappa understood the Human resources area needed more than administrative strategies. For an area as crowded as this, he thought it was necessary to redefine the HR processes and develop a strategy that would help managers streamline HR processes and harness employee potential. So, he did. Sri is the President and Co-Founder of Engagedly, an INC 5000 company. With his team, strategy management software redefines performance management, employee engagement, and development to enable organizations to build highly engaged and high-performance teams. He has over 20 years of leading organizations in technology and consulting in the United States, is a Forbes contributor, a Top 50 Tech visionary, and is recognized as a Titan 100 in the St. Louis business district. The story of how Sri and his team broke into the crowded HR market is worthwhile. Don't miss the advice he gives on how to develop best practices for your team. Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/41rIZOQ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0 Manage2Win: https://www.manage2win.com/podcast ------- This Manage 2 Win Podcast episode is brought to you by Habitly.  I (David) review Habitly best practices regularly, and teach these essential people skills to clients weekly.  This advice has changed my life, and made millions for our clients. I started developing Habitly content in 2004.  Habitly's powerful best practices have now been taught to thousands of people worldwide.  For instance, you can learn how to Create time in your day;  Get more from meetings;  Stay calm;  Achieve significant targets;  and Become a great leader.  Simply study and apply the expert knowledge provided in Habitly courses and micro-learning episodes. Whether you're just out of college, or someone with over 20 years work experience, learn the habits of highly successful people on Habitly.  Test drive Habitly for 7 days on us!  This includes full access to the entire Habitly knowledgebase – www.habitly.com.

Ask David: Featuring Matt May, MD Can hypnosis be used for evil? Can you fall out of love? Why does cheerleading fail? In today's podcast, we discuss three intriguing questions from listeners like you: Can hypnosis be used for evil? Matt says no, David mainly agrees, but isn't entirely convinced. Is it possible to fall out of love? This can and will happen. What can we do about it? Empathy vs. Cheerleading: What's the difference between cheerleading and genuine empathy with someone who's upset? Can hypnosis be used for evil? David and Matt describe their experiences, both as kids and later as shrinks, with hypnosis. David and Matt both used hypnosis early in their careers, especially in David's one-session treatment for smoking cessation, which Matt also used. But as their TEAM-CBT skills have grown, both of them use it much less frequently. It can be used for many purposes. In a recent podcast # (link) with Dr. Jeffrey Lazarus, we learned that it can be used for warts as well as a wide range of psychosomatic problems, like Irritable Bowel Syndrome and tics, as well as bedwetting, school phobia, performance anxiety, and more. Matt strongly believes that agenda setting (also called Assessment of Resistance) is just as important in hypnosis as in TEAM-CBT. You have to first bring the patient's subconscious resistance to conscious awareness and melt it away using paradoxical techniques in order to optimize the chances of success with hypnosis. Matt pointed out that hypnotic states can be quite powerful, and can even be used for surgery, but emphasizes that people will never td what they genuinely don't want to do when hypnotized. He says that hypnosis is really a form of willful collaboration between the hypnotist and the hypnotic subject. Although stage hypnotists seem to have some kind of “Svengali” power over the volunteers who come up to the stage to be hypnotized, these people are actually subconsciously volunteering to act silly and have fun in front of the audience. This doesn't mean they are faking it, but it does put these shows into a slightly different perspective. David described many goofy things he did as a teenager after he purchased a book called “25 Ways to Hypnotize Your Friends” at a magic store in Phoenix for 25 cents, and found that the techniques actually worked with many of his friends. He sometimes had a lot of fun giving post-hypnotic suggestions, and that he and his friends found hypnosis to be incredibly exciting and fascinating. Once he hypnotized a friend named Jerry and told Jerry that after he woke up, every time he heard the word, “TV,” he would shout out “Boing” in a loud voice without realizing it. In addition, his subconscious mind would keep track of how many “TVs” he heard, and then he'd should Boing that exact number of times. David explains: Then we went to the local Dairy Queen a few blocks away all ordered at the window, one by one. When it was Jerry's turn to order, and the lady asked him what he wanted, we all started saying “TV, TV, TV” as fast as we could, and Jerry would shout out “boing, boing, boing” in a loud, confident voice! She said, “I didn't quite get what you want to order,” and when Jerry tried to order, we did it again. It seemed incredibly funny, and fun, but in retrospect I WAS using hypnosis to kind of take advantage of someone, so you might say it CAN be used for evil, perhaps. However, Jerry didn't seem to mind, and we all thought it was a pretty exciting adventure. When I was a senior in high school, one of my teachers said that hypnosis was dangerous and told me to stop hypnotizing my friends, so I got scared and gave it up until I became a psychiatrist years later. Like anything, hypnosis is just a tool, and it can be helpful for suggestible individuals, but we have more than 100 techniques in TEAM-CBT, because no one tool has the answer for everybody and every problem. David and Matt both agree with anxiety, depression, and anger are very much like self-induced trances, since you are giving yourself and believing messages (hypnotic suggestions) that aren't actually true. For example: The depression trance: “I'm no good. I'll be depressed forever.” The anxiety trance: “Something awful is about to happen. I'm in incredible danger.” The anger trance: “You're no good!” Psychotherapy can be seen as an attempt to get each patient to “wake up” from the trance that has trapped them. In David's opinion, politicians sometimes put their followers in trance-like states, getting them to believe repeated suggestions that are blatantly untrue. We saw this in WWII, where Hitler essentially “hypnotized” an entire nation to believe some horrific lies and to spur them to unspeakably horrific actions. Of course, as Matt has pointed out, you have to WANT to be hypnotized, so possibly the German people wanted to see themselves as superior human beings who had been victimized unfairly by evil forces that needed to be eradicated. So, killing and the abuse of him beings became the focus and purpose of the nation. Is this possibly also happening today? And is that why narcissistic leaders want to control the media, so they can control the “hypnotic messages” that people get, and why they lash out in such a hostile way at anyone who dares to challenge or contradict them? Is it possible to fall out of love? A podcast listener says she often falls out of love with her husband, but after they talk things over, and resolve their differences, she falls in love again. She wants more on this topic, so Matt, Rhonda and David discuss the pitfalls of pursuing perfect, romantic love. David reminds us that some of the most successful marriages are in India, where the parents decide who you will marry. David said that when he was in private practice in Philadelphia, 60% of the patients he saw did not have a loving partner, and most were trying to find someone to love. That's why this is one of his favorite topics. Then Matt, Rhonda and David contrast healthy vs unhealthy love, and Matt created the following table that contrasts them. Perfect Love By Matt with a little editing from David Unhealthy Love Healthy Love You rush to put the other person on a pedestal without knowing them. You fantasize that they are perfect and wonderful in every way. You take your time getting to know each other in a curious, vulnerable and respectful way, recognizing that neither of you is perfect. You believe that you need the other person and couldn't be happy without them. You're confident and content on your own but also enjoy the company of the other person. You selfishly focus on getting what you want from the other person. You focus on what you can give the other person, and what you can do, to improve the relationship. You imagine you will be in love forever. You accept that relationships require careful tending and nurturing, and realize that there will be moments of conflict, disappointment, and hurt feelings, which can sometimes be intense. You tell yourself that you'll never and should never have any conflicts or disagreements. You see conflict as opportunities, in disguise, for greater understanding and closeness.   Cheerleading vs. Empathy Rhonda describes a recent traumatic experience which was profoundly disturbing to her. However, when she tried to tell a friend how upset she was, her friend did “cheerleading,” telling her that she shouldn't be so upset, that she'd feel better again soon, and so forth. Rhonda said it was very annoying to be on the receiving end, and her friends efforts to cheer her up actually made her feel worse. Then, when two friends simply used the Five Secrets of Effective Communication to “listen,” it was a great relief. David recounted a similar experience when his beloved cat, Obie, disappeared in the middle of the night, and was likely killed by a predator animal in the woods behind his house. When David told his Tuesday group what had happened, one member of the group similarly tried to cheer him up, which triggered an angry rebuke from David, who told her NOT to try to take his grief away. He said, “My grief is my loving connection to Obie, who was my best friend in the whole world. I will grieve his loss for the rest of my life. And to this very day, I talk to Obie, as well as my good friend Marilyn Coffy who passed away recently, every time I go out slogging. This is not a problem that I need help with, but a gift of love.” We've touched on the codependent urge to cheerlead that so many people, including shrinks, have. For example, our podcast on “How to help, and how NOT to help,” covers this topic pretty thoroughly. However, we decided to focus on cheerleading again today, since it is such an important topic, and is a bit of an addiction that many people have. The following is a chart we discussed during the podcast, and you might find it helpful. Cheerleading vs. Empathy by David , Rhonda, and Matt Cheerleading Empathy You're trying to cheer someone up to make them feel better. You are not trying to cheer them up. Instead, you acknowledge how they're thinking and feeling, and you encourage them to vent and open up. You don't acknowledge the validity of the person's negative thoughts and emotions. In fact, when you try to cheer them up, you're essentially telling that they're wrong to feel upset. It's a subtle put down, or even a micro-aggression. You find the grain of truth in what the person is saying, even if you think they're exaggerating the negatives in their life.   Paradoxically, when you agree with them in a respectful way, they will typically feel some relief and support. The effect is irritating to almost everybody who's upset, because you aren't listening or showing any compassion or respect. You're telling them that you don't want to hear what they have to say. Cheerleading is condescending. Listening and acknowledging how they feel is a form of humility and an expression of respect. You're trying to control the other person. You're telling them how they should think and feel. There's no acceptance. You're sitting with open hands and not trying to change or control the other person. You're just trying to understand and support them in their suffering. Cheerleading is cheap and easy to learn. You're like a used car salesman, trying to promote your product. Empathy is difficult and challenging to learn because you have to let go of the idea that you know what's best for other people. Listening requires going into the darkness with the other person, this requires courage and vulnerability. You say generally nice things about someone, like you're “a good person,” or “a survivor,” thinking those formulaic words will somehow change the way the other person is thinking and feeling. You might also say, “don't be so hard on yourself,” or “think of all the positive things in your life,” or “you'll be fine.” You focus on the other person's specific thoughts and zero in on exactly what they're saying and how they might be feeling, rather than throwing vague, general positives at them. These positives are simply an annoying attempt to distract the person from their genuine feelings. You encourage the person to share and experience their negative thoughts and feelings. You believe your role is to “help,” “fix” or “save” the other person, who is broken. Your role is to be with the other person in a loving way without trying to help or save them. You are being self-centered because you're essentially preaching the gospel and exclusively promoting your own ideas. You are being other-centered, focusing entirely on what the other person is saying. You're talking “at” the other person. You are NOT talking AT them, you are being WITH them. When you empathize, you give the other person zero, and zero in, instead, on how they're thinking and feeling. That's why I (David) call Empathy the “zero technique.” But, paradoxically, when you give them “nothing” you are giving them “everything.” In case you're interested in honing your own empathy skills, you can take a look at the Five Secrets of Effective Communication (link). To develop these skills, you might want to read Feeling Good Together (link), but make sure you do the written exercises while reading. Otherwise, you'll only get intellectual understanding of them, whereas skill is what you actually need, and that can only be developed with practice! Sadly, most people, including therapists, believe that their empathy skills are already excellent, but that is rarely valid! In fact, there's a ton of room for improvement in ALL of us! We thank you for joining us today. Please keep your excellent questions and warm comments coming in. Rhonda and David want to thank Matt for his frequent, brilliant, and heart-warming appearances on the Feeling Good Podcast. Remember that we're still trying to grow our show, and recent hit 6 million downloads. We are currently getting around 160,000 downloads per month, which is terrific. It would help us a lot if you give a five star review for our show wherever you get your podcasts, as that might boost our ratings. We love our fans and thank you for listening!

Smashing Shyness-- Shame-Attacking and Beyond Come to our Full-Day Workshop on Sunday, October 2, 2022 For therapists and lay people alike Click here for registration and more information Today we interview our beloved Jill Levitt, PhD who will be joining me in teaching the upcoming social anxiety workshop on October 2nd. Jill is the co-leader of my weekly psychotherapy training group at Stanford, and is the co-founder and Director of Training at the Feeling Good Institute in Mountain View, California. Social anxiety was one of the most frequent problems that patients sought help for when I was in private practice in Philadelphia. Because of my own severe and persistent social anxiety since childhood, it's my favorite problem, too. Whatever you've had, I can tell you that I've had the exact same thing, too, and know how sucky it can be. I can show you the path to freedom from that affliction, and what a joy that will be! According to the DSM5, there are at least five types of social anxiety: Shyness Public Speaking Anxiety Performance Anxiety. This a broad category that can include athletic or musical performance, or any time you have to demonstrate your skills in front of people who might judge you. For example, I had a severe camera phobia since I was a child, and only got over it a couple years ago! Test Anxiety Shy Bladder / Bowel Syndrome In addition, other negative feelings typically go hand-in-hand with social anxiety, such as shame and loneliness, as well as depression and feelings of inferiority and even hopelessness. This workshop will focus on therapists looking for training. However, the general public are also included, since you will get the chance to practice and work on your own fears during the workshop. I (David) have noticed that feelings of social anxiety, especially performance anxiety, are almost universal among therapists, at least judging from those who attend our weekly TEAM-CBT training group at Stanford. So, come to heal yourself AND to learn how to heal your patients and loved ones. We will be covering not one, but four treatment models for social anxiety in the workshop: 1. The motivational model: Nearly all anxious individuals resist exposure, which is a crucial part of the treatment. Most therapists also resist exposure for a variety of reasons, thinking the patient is too fragile, or the technique will be too dangerous or upsetting for their patients. This is unfortunate, since this pretty much dooms the treatment to failure, especially if you are aiming for a “cure” rather than endless talk and hand-holding. 2. The Cognitive Model. Although usually not completely curative, the Daily Mood Log is essential to treatment, so you can find out exactly what patient are thinking and feeling at one specific moment when they were feeling anxious. I present the case of Jason, a young man feeling shy and anxious while standing in line to check his groceries one Saturday morning at the local grocery store. Many cognitive techniques are incredibly important and useful in the treatment of social anxiety, including Explain the Distortions, the three types of Downward Arrow (uncovering) Techniques, the Double Standard Technique, Externalization of Voices, the Feared Fantasy, and more. Although these methods are helpful and illuminating, they will rarely or never be quite enough for a complete cure. For that you will need: 3. The Exposure Model. In the workshop, we will be teaching: Smile and Hello Practice: In today's podcast Jill discussed the purpose of this technique, how to introduce this technique to your patients, and how to implement it. This is an example of the many techniques we will teach on October 2. David provided a dramatic example of how this humble technique changed the life of a young man from India. Flirting Training Talk Show Host Rejection Practice Feared Fantasy: We role-played how I used this humor-based technique in my work with Jason Self-Disclosure Survey Technique Shame-Attacking Exercises. We will also explain how to use several techniques crucial to the reduction of the patient's resistance: Dangling the Carrot Gentle Ultimatum Sitting with Open Hands Fallback Position However, many therapists have intense resistance to making patient accountable with these techniques that are absolutely central to TEAM-CBT, thinking they are cruel or crude or narcissistic, or some such thing. In the podcast, Jill illustrates a beautiful and gentle but firm way of introducing these techniques to patients, and emphasizes that they are actually ethical, therapeutic, and necessary for a good outcome. She also emphasizes, and I totally agree, the importance of going with the patient into the real world to do the Exposure Techniques. I have used extreme exposure techniques on hundreds of occasions when treating anxious colleagues on Sunday hikes for example, urging them to stop hikers we meet and disclose their own shyness, for example. The advantages of doing this type of thing in the real world include the ability to coach the “patient” with the best examples of how to use whatever technique you're advocating, and to be there to support the patient during and after the experience. 4. The Hidden Emotion Model. This technique is often extremely helpful in the treatment of any form of anxiety, but is perhaps less often used in the treatment of social anxiety. I can think of one example when it was extremely helpful. This was a woman whose boss kept pressuring her to give presentations about their company locally and to groups in other locations as well. She opted out because of her social anxiety. But lurking behind her symptoms were her feelings of resentment about being asked to do too much. Once she brought these feelings to conscious awareness, she decided to discuss his expectations, her feelings, and her compensation with her boss. This worked well, and her public speaking anxiety magically disappeared. Although this pattern is not common, it is always worth consideration in your treatment plan, because family and friends often pressure people with social anxiety to confront their fears, and this typically does trigger feelings of resentment and resistance. We also discussed two Self-Defeating Beliefs that are nearly universal in individuals with social anxiety: the Spotlight and Brushfire Fallacies. In the podcast, I give examples of several techniques that were life-changing for patients. Jill emphasizes that one of the underlying treatment themes is how to “wake up” from your trance so you can learn not to take yourself so seriously and begin to have fun and enjoy yourself and others way more. Improvement is not the goal of treatment. The goal of treatment is word that many mental health professionals fear and resent: CURE! In the podcast, I describe the difference between a 100% cure for any form of anxiety, and a 200% cure. Do you know the difference? I give an example of my own fear of heights when I was in high school. Of course, that's a phobia, and not a form of social anxiety, but you can also have a 200% cure for social anxiety, too! In a 100% cure your fears go to zero. You are no longer particularly anxious about talking to strangers, or public speaking, for example. In a 200% cure, you come to LOVE the very thing that terrified you in the past. Rhonda, Jill and I think this will be a powerful one day experience. We will focus on a common problem that is usually treatable fairly quickly, and often with fabulous and life-changing results. We hope you can join us! For registration information, please go to: CBTforSocialAnxiety.com Thanks! Jill, Rhonda, and David