====================================================================== Post: 026145 Date: 19 Jun 1997 Subj: feeling good ---------------------------------------------------------------------- for my extended cyber family: my 'visually re-interpreted' version of excerpts from a book describing cognitive therapy parkinson and his disease [pd] have given me 'enforced' mulling and thinking time which in turn has given me an opportunity to learn and grow i have been struggling with clinical depression [cd] but have found this book to be of great help i sometimes wonder whether the whole of our society could benefit from some of these insights so you are my guinea pigs! your parkie sister in the other island paradise janet ---------------------------------------------------------- THE FIRST PRINCIPLE OF COGNITIVE THERAPY: (your thoughts create your emotions ...) ---------------------------------------------------------- you feel the way you do right now because of the thoughts you are thinking at this moment to illustrate this how have you been feeling as you read this? you might have been thinking, "cognitive therapy sounds too good to be true it would never work for me" if your thoughts run along these lines you are feeling skeptical or even discouraged what causes you to feel that way? your thoughts you create those feelings by the dialogue you are having with yourself about this book conversely you may have felt a sudden uplift in mood because you thought "hey, this sounds like something which might finally help me" your emotional reaction is generated not by the sentences you are reading but by the way you are thinking the moment you have a certain thought and believe it you will experience an immediate emotional response your thought actually creates the emotion ---------------------------------------------------------- THE SECOND PRINCIPLE OF COGNITIVE THERAPY: (... which, in depression, are dominated by negativity ...) ---------------------------------------------------------- when you are feeling depressed your thoughts are dominated by a pervasive negativity you perceive not only yourself but the entire world in dark, gloomy terms what is even worse - you'll come to believe things really are as bad as you imagine them to be if you are substantially depressed you will even begin to believe that things always have been and always will be negative as you look into your past you remember all the bad things that have happened to you as you try to imagine the future you see only emptiness or unending problems and anguish this bleak vision creates a sense of hopelessness this feeling is absolutely illogical but it seems so real that you have convinced yourself that your inadequacy will go on forever ---------------------------------------------------------- THE THIRD PRINCIPLE OF COGNITIVE THERAPY (... which contain gross distortions) ---------------------------------------------------------- this is of enormous philosophical and therapeutic importance our research has documented that the negative thoughts which cause your emotional turmoil nearly always contain gross distortions although these thoughts appear valid you will learn that they are irrational or just plain wrong and that twisted thinking is the exclusive cause of nearly all your suffering the implications are startling your depression is not based on an accurate perception of reality but is the product of mental slippage depression is not a precious, genuine, or important human experience it is a phony, synthetic counterfeit ---------------------------------------------------------- THE TEN DEFINITIONS OF COGNITIVE DISTORTIONS ---------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------- 1. ALL OR NOTHING THINKING ---------------------------------------------------------- you see things in black and white categories if your performance falls short of perfect you see yourself as a total failure ---------------------------------------------------------- 2. OVERGENERALIZATION ---------------------------------------------------------- you see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat ---------------------------------------------------------- 3. MENTAL FILTER ---------------------------------------------------------- you pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened like the drop of ink that discolours the entire beaker of water ---------------------------------------------------------- 4. DISQUALIFYING THE POSITIVE ---------------------------------------------------------- you reject positive experiences by insisting that "they don't count" for some reason or other in this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences ---------------------------------------------------------- 5. JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS ---------------------------------------------------------- you make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly suppport your conclusion you arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you and you don't bother to check this out [mind-reading] you anticipate that things will turn out badly and you feel convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact [the fortune teller error] ---------------------------------------------------------- 6. MAGNIFICATION [CATASTROPHIZING] OR MINIMIZATION ---------------------------------------------------------- you exaggerate the importance of things [such as your goof-up or someone else's achievement] or you shrink things inappropriately until they appear tiny [your own desirable qualities or the other person's imperfections] this is also called "the binocular trick" ---------------------------------------------------------- 7. EMOTIONAL REASONING ---------------------------------------------------------- you assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are "I feel it therefore it must be true." ---------------------------------------------------------- 8. "SHOULD" STATEMENTS ---------------------------------------------------------- you try to motivate yourself with "shoulds" and "shouldn'ts", as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything ["Musts" and "oughts" are also offenders] the emotional consequence is guilt when you direct "should" statements toward others you feel anger, frustration, and resentment ---------------------------------------------------------- 9. LABELING AND MISLABELING ---------------------------------------------------------- this is an extreme form of overgeneralization instead of describing your error you attach a negative label to yourself "I'm a loser" when someone else's behavior rubs you the wrong way you attach a negative label to him: "He's a goddam louse" mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly coloured and emotionally loaded ---------------------------------------------------------- 10. PERSONALIZATION ---------------------------------------------------------- you see yourself as the cause of some negative external event which in fact you were not primarily responsible for ---------------------------------------------------------- from Feeling Good - The New Mood Therapy by David D. Burns, M.D. published 1980 ====================================================================== retrieve any message with a "post number" from the list archives as follows: 1. send the following e-mail message (where xxxxxx = the post numbers): GETPOST PARKINSN xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx 2. to the pieNET listserver at: [log in to unmask] 3. and, bob's yer uncle, the listserver will e-mail them to you in minutes! janet paterson "http://www.geocities.com/janet313/"