Self-Help Review 8: Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy

Self-Help Review:
Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy
1980
By David D. Burns, M.D.

There is a sense among some people that, when it comes to certain ideas involving our personal and emotional lives, the older way of doing things is better. I remember watching "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure" and having the scene with Ted being analysed by Sigmund Freud sticking in my head. I thought, and I'm sure a ton of other people thought, "Wouldn't it be fucking awesome to be analysed by Freud?" Well, now I know that no, it sure as fuck WOULDN'T be "awesome" to be analysed by Freud, for the same reason that it wouldn't be awesome to have Henry Ford work on my Toyota. The field of psychology is still pretty new, and there is always rapid progress being made in it, from gimmicky, scientifically unproven techniques such as Neurolinguistic Programing (made famous by Anthony Robbins) to Cognitive Therapy, the technique taught in the book "Feeling Good." For Freud, if someone truly believed that they were a worthless, fucked-up piece of shit with no real reason to live, then "he must surely be right in some way." This way of thinking among therapists has thankfully disappeared, and Cognitive Therapy seems to be the best approach to fighting depression that I have yet seen.

Cognitive Therapy deals with the idea that thoughts control our moods, and not the other way around. This means that depression does not come before depressing thoughts, and even though you may not be able to control your emotions, you sure as fuck can control your thoughts, talk back to them, challenge them, and change them. By changing the way you think about a situation, it follows that your emotions will then change as well. When I first read that I thought that while it did make sense, there had to be certain situations which would prove that this idea was horseshit. To my surprise, Burns answered every single one of my criticisms, addressed them directly, and made me a believer.

There is a sample test early in the book to monitor what level of depression you're at. If you are even slightly depressed, it is recommended that you read the book, because depression, unless actively fought against, will not just "go away" on it's own. This is because thoughts create mood, and a low-level of depression is a sign that the patient has at least some cognitive distortions. A cognitive distortion is an error in thinking which causes depression, and every one of them can be proven false. There are ten listed in the book, and it is necessary that you memorize all of them so that you can immediately spot one once it shows up. Here they are, almost exactly how they appear in the book, but with my typical asshole examples included:

1. All Or Nothing Thinking: If you are working on something and it doesn't come out perfect, then you judge it to be a complete failure. "There's a typo on my otherwise flawless research paper. I therefore will probably flunk and deserve to be shot."

2. Overgeneralization: One negative event happens, and suddenly it is yet another part of a never-ending pattern of defeat. "I forgot to give him back his ten cents in change! I ALWAYS FUCK UP SOMEHOW!!!"

3. Mental Filter: You take a single negative detail and focus on it exclusively, ignoring any positive details and letting the negative color everything else. "My dick has an odd curve. It's ugly. No woman would ever want to fuck me. I'm disgusting. I'll always be alone and I can't bear the loneliness, so I might as well kill myself."

4. Disqualifying the Positive: Rejecting positive experiences by insisting they "don't count," so you can maintain your low self-image.
Her: "You got me so wet last night."
Him: "Anyone who isn't a complete retard could have done that. I'm nothing special."

5. Jumping to Conclusions: Making a negative assumption with no real facts to back it up. There are two examples of this one:
a. Mind Reading: You assume someone is thinking negatively of you, and don't bother to ask if there's a problem. "That homeless guy didn't smile back at me. I must be so horrible not even a bum would be my friend."
b. The Fortune Teller Error: You anticipate that something will turn out badly, and convince yourself that it's a fact. "I will definitely shit in my pants if I tell my boss that I need to take the weekend off."

6. Magnification and Minimization: Exaggerating the importance of things you fuck up on or shrinking the things you do right. "I had a booger hanging out of my nose...everyone in the club is going to think of me as the booger guy and now I'll never get a girlfriend" or "Everyone says my peach cobbler's are great, but they're just being nice. I know they really taste like possum asshole's coated in sugar." Also goes by the delightful name "The Binocular Trick."

7. Emotional Reasoning: Thinking that your negative emotions reflect the way things really are. "I feel like crap, therefore I AM crap."

8. Should Statements: Using "should," "must," or "ought" statements to try to motivate yourself. In reality, they are just a form of self-punishment. "I should stop eating so much pie. The fact that I don't makes me worthless."

9. Labeling and Mislabeling: An extreme form of overgeneralization. It's using a label such as "loser" or "fuck-up" as an estimation of your total self-worth, rather than addressing the actual error or mistake that took place. "I dropped her burger on the floor...I'm shit."

10. Personalization: Seeing yourself as the cause of some negative external event that you were not responsible for. "I asked her to pick up some stamps and she didn't. I'm a horrible friend who she obviously has no respect for."

The book suggests becoming as familiar with these distortions as possible, since being able to quickly and easily bust one out everytime you start thinking stupid shit will give you a powerful tool to pull you back into the real world. These are especially helpful if you decide to use some of the recommended charts and diagrams in the book, such as the "Daily Record Of Dysfunctional Thoughts", where you list something that bothers you, say how angry/sad it makes you on a scale of 0-100%, write down what thoughts automatically popped into your head when it happened, list whatever distortions are in those thoughts, write out a rational response to your automatic thoughts, then record your final degree of anger/sadness. Needless to say, this is some powerful shit, and psychologists using cognitive therapy recommend it to patients they are treating, along with a lot of the other techniques listed in this book.

The book is over 700 pages long, and there is a lot to digest. The most eye-opening section for me was the Prevention and Personal Growth section, where you take a 35 question test to pinpoint certain areas in your life which need work, and there are chapters dedicated to five of the seven areas specified. They are Approval, Love, Achievement, Perfectionism, Entitlement, Omnipotence, and Autonomy. The test shows just how much you depend on other's approval, love, etc., and how independent you are. There are no chapters dedicated to the Omnipotence and Autonomy sections, presumably because being deficient in either of these isn't as pressing as being a perfectionist or walking around feeling like you are entitled to certain things. What really opened my eyes was the analysis of people who are perfectionists. Perfectionists are basically setting themselves up to constantly be losers, since perfection does not exist. Even the most seemingly flawless and perfect thing in the world can be improved in some way, so by demanding perfection you are guaranteeing failure in everything you attempt.

Another thing which is addressed is the idea of "realistic depressions." Burns makes it very clear that sadness and depression are not the same thing, and that sadness is a perfectly normal and healthy reaction to certain events in our lives. Depression is NOT normal, not safe, and needs to be immediately taken care of. There is an interesting section regarding a dying woman suffering from depression. Even though there was no cure in sight for her sickness, and she would definitely die a painful death, her depression came from a cognitive distortion, and not the reality of her situation. Shockingly, her depression was cured and she lived out the remaining six months of her life freed from it. Reading that made all of the problems in my life seem excruciatingly petty, and if someone who knows they are going to die can be cured from depression, then I have no doubt in my mind that anyone can.

I have often entertained the thought of "If I could go back and tell myself something," or "If I could go back and give myself something," what would it be? I have come to the conclusion that my life is exactly the way it is supposed to be, however, one thing which certainly would have made my life easer would have been reading this book when I started that awkward transition from child to teenager. Since I wouldn't have had the patience at that time to actually read the book, I would also give myself the threat that if I didn't read it, I would have my balls shot off with a shotgun at the end of the month. Most Self-Help books are cheesy, slogan-filled pseudo-science which only pumps you up and leaves you stranded. This book actually has the research to back it up, and it stands as probably the only book that I have ever considered buying multiple copies of to give to certain friends and family members of mine. It's that good.

There is a sequel to this book, called "The Feeling Good Handbook." From what I've seen it's a larger book crammed with tests, charts, and other shit that you can fill out to solve your problems on your own. I may or may not read it, but the very nature of it seems to make a review pointless. Both of these books, by the way, came at the top of a study to determine whether or not Self-Help books actually worked. This kind of therapy has a name...it's called "Bibliotherapy," and since I like being independent and have a strong personal loathing of therapists, I feel that I should promote this. Anyhow, "Feeling Good" was the number one recommended book by therapists to their patients to help them cure their depression faster. This, in combination with one-on-one Cognitive Therapy and antidepressants, has had amazing results.

Finally, a confession. I did not read the last chapter. Sorry. It is just a list of every single antidepressant drug on the market at the time of the book's writing, and the author states that it is intended as a reference, not as a straight-through reading. I fucking hate pills and have no intention of ever taking an antidepressant, so I had no problem in skipping it.

A very interesting thing happened to me as I was finishing this book. I began to realize that there were real cures for a lot of shit that goes through people's heads. When someone finally has a dump truck come in to scoop away the mountains of bullshit piling up in their heads, what comes next? After thinking about it for half an hour it hit me that we will never reach an endpoint in our personal development. No matter how many of our problems we take care of, and no matter how many goals we achieve, there is always further to go. We will never, ever reach a point where we can stop and say "I have arrived." When that thought sunk in I was filled with the kind of excitement I can only compare to when I knew I was about to finally get some head after a long dry spell. Since the only endpoint we have in our lives is death, and since everything on our way there is just part of the "path," it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to be bothered by a lot of obstacles and setbacks on our way there. I can be great in a lot of things, but all of it is just practice. Everything we do is just a backstage rehearsal before death. I find absolutely nothing morbid about that. The only thing that took me down off of the high I experienced from that realization was when I had to deal with more crap at work, and that just reminded me that I still have a long way to go.

As if I have not made it clear enough, I recommend this book. Even if you're not a frowny son-of-a-bitch, it is still a fascinating psychology book with loads of interesting stuff to make your intellectual penis hard. It gives the reader a glimpse into the world of therapists, their relationships with their patients, the kind of stress they go through, and just how lazy a lot of them can be when they have the authority to simply write a prescription for an antidepressant. It does not make the bold, retarded statements like "there is never a reason for anger" like I've read in other books, and takes a hard, realistic stance when it comes to happiness and how to attain it. Psychology has come a long way since Freud, and there is finally proof that no matter how fucked up your life is, it is never entirely hopeless. The book hammers that point home, is well-written, and keeps you interested while helping you get your shit together. It's just a damn good read.

Too bad the title kind of sucks.