Feeling Good

Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy is a book written by David D. Burns, first published in 1980, that popularized cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).

Burns’s mentor, Dr. Aaron T. Beck (considered the "father" of cognitive therapy; Dr. Albert Ellis is considered the "grandfather")... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feeling_Good:_The_New_Mood_Therapy

He currently draws from at least 15 schools of therapy, calling his methodology TEAM—for testing, empathy, agenda setting and methods. It's an approach he hopes will someday be as big a breakthrough as CBT was decades ago.

Testing means requiring that patients complete a short mood survey before and after each therapy session.

Without perfect empathy, he says, a therapist cannot help patients bring their resistance to change to a conscious level where it can be addressed.

For Burns, agenda setting is the key to therapeutic success. And the key to agenda setting is specificity: focusing on an upsetting incident or moment around which different methods can be tried

After more than a year of rewriting, Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy came out in 1980, then all but disappeared

Then in 1988, Burns got a call from a producer he’d met four years earlier on a Cleveland talk show. She’d just been hired by a show in New York and wanted him to appear in two days. The program was Donahue, the biggest daytime talk show of its time.

The next day, more copies of Feeling Good were sold than in the previous eight years.

Seven Questions for David D. Burns

I'd refer to Dr. Burns as a central figure in the development of Cognitive Therapy, but in his response to Question 3 he opposes joining schools of psychotherapy

David D. Burns (M.D., Stanford University, 1970), is an Adjunct Clinical Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus at the Stanford University School of Medicine and has served as visiting scholar at Harvard Medical School. His Feeling Good has sold over 4 million copies and is the book most often recommended for individuals suffering from depression

Seven Questions for David D. Burns

I use approximately 50 techniques, such as the Interpersonal Downward Arrow, the Paradoxical Cost-Benefit Analysis, the Daily Mood Log, the Externalization of Voices, the Acceptance Paradox, and more

I'm wonder if there's something you want help with in today's session?

I tend to think in terms of "Outcome Resistance" and "Process Resistance."

Outcome Resistance is radically different for each of the four common targets: depression, anxiety, a relationship conflict, or habits and addictions).

Process Resistance is quite different from Outcome Resistance

Process Resistance also differs radically for each of the four common targets: depression, anxiety, a relationship conflict, or habits and addictions.

Clients will sometimes have several forms of resistance operating all at once. That's because they may be depressed and anxious at the same time, and may also be struggling with loneliness or troubled personal relationships.

My colleagues and I have developed powerful new techniques that allow therapists to pinpoint and reverse each patient's resistance before using any techniques to solve the specific problem

Nearly all therapeutic failure results from what I call "Agenda Setting errors," or the complete failure of the therapist to set the agenda. Most therapists do not appear to know how to pinpoint and reverse therapeutic resistance-to head it off at the pass.

I've created brief, highly accurate scales that measure depression, suicidal urges, anxiety, anger, and relationship satisfaction, just prior to, and after, every single therapy session.