Reflecting on Blame and Challenging Negative Self-Talk

Jessica Malvicino Live Work With Jessica-- Living with Regrets

Rhonda and I recently did live work at a TEAM-CBT intensive in Mexico City. Our “patient” was a 40 year old mental health professional named Jessica with many years of unhappiness because of a decision she made when she was just 17. Perhaps you’ve also looked back on your life and thought, “If only I would have . . . “ done something I didn’t do,” as well as, “I wish I hadn’t done X, when I was young.”

Last week you heard the initial Testing and Empathy portions of the session with Jessica. Today you'll hear the Assessment of Resistance, Methods, and final Testing..

 

  Part 2 of the Jessica Session A = Assessment of Resistance

Jessica said her goal for the session was learning to accept life and move on, and not have such constant feelings of emptiness, with so many “I should have” thoughts running through her brain.

Although Jessica, like most people, said she’d press the Magic Button to make all of her negative thoughts and feelings disappear, we decided to do some Positive Reframing first, to see if there were some positives hiding in her negative feelings. We asked the following questions about a number of her negative feelings and thoughts:

1. Why might this thought or feeling be appropriate and healthy?
2. Why might this thought or feeling be helpful to you?
3. Why does this thought or feeling show about you and your core values that’s positive and awesome. ?

As you probably know, the goal of there are two goals for this paradoxical exercise: First, we want to bring the patient’s subconscious resistance to conscious awareness. Second, we want her to see that her struggling and suffering is NOT the result of what’s WRONG with her, but rather, what’s RIGHT with her.

The moment that people really “see” and “get” this, there’s often a sharp and sudden reduction in feelings of shame, and a strong burst of motivation to crush the negative thoughts at the heart of her misery.

Here are some of the Positives we listed:

SADNESS

My sadness shows my passion and love of dancing.

It shows my dedication to the idea of having a fulfilling career.

It shows that I’m a very loving person.

ANXIETY, WORRY, NERVOUSNESS

These feelings

• show that I’m responsible
• motivate me to complete tasks
• help me avoid procrastination
• make me vigilant and protect me from danger

SHAME

• These feeling show that
• I’m concerned about others
• I’m human
• I want to please others with my career
• I admire my mom and want to make her proud
• I want her to admire me
• I’m humble
• I want to feel close to others

ANGER

• These feelings show that
• I’m a caring and passionate person
• I have character
• I have a moral compass
• I’m feisty and strong
• I’m accountable
• My anger also empowers me

After listing these and other positives, Jessica decided to use the Magic Dial to reduce her negative feelings to lower levels, but not necessarily all the way to zero, as you can see in the goal column on her emotions table:

Emotions % Now % Goal % After Emotions % Now % Goal % After Sad, depressed, unhappy 90 20   Foolish 100 0   Anxious, worried, nervous 90 10   Discouraged 97 5   Bad, ashamed 95 0   Frustrated, stuck, defeated 100 5   Inadequate 90 0   Angry, mad, resentful, annoyed 95 10   Lonely 92 5   Other      

 

Then we went on to

M = Methods

These were some of the negative thoughts that Jessica wanted to challenge, along with the percent she initially believed each of them:

1. I’m a failure. 90%
2. My mom is to blame for not understanding the career path that I wanted. 90%
3. I was an idiot for not following my dreams. 100%
4. Nothing will truly fulfill my professional career. 100%
5. I have to “settle” for my professional career now.100%

She had many others ad well.

We used a variety of techniques to challenge and crush these thoughts, including the Externalization of Voices with Self-Defense, the Acceptance Paradox, and the CAT (Counter-Attack Technique), and used frequent role reversals to help Jessica get to “huge” wins when she was in the role of her positive thoughts.

Here you can see Jessica’s scores in the “% After” column. As you can see, her scores were extraordinarily low, which is terrific.

Emotions % Now % Goal % After Emotions % Now % Goal % After Sad, depressed, unhappy 90 20 0 Foolish 100 0 3 Anxious, worried, nervous 90 10 0 Discouraged 97 5 0 Bad, ashamed 95 0 0 Frustrated, stuck, defeated 100 5 10 Inadequate 90 0 0 Angry, mad, resentful, annoyed 95 10 5 Lonely 92 5 0 Other      

 

Typically, such drastic and sudden reductions in negative feelings not only indicate “recovery,” but the experience of feelings of joy and enlightenment.

At the end we asked Jessica two questions:

1. Are the scores valid, or is she just trying to please us?
2. If they are valid, what were the most healing and helpful aspects of the session?

As you listen to the end of the live session, you’ll find out what she said!

Rhonda and I hope you enjoyed the session with Jessica. We believe that live work with real people, and not role players who are pretending to be in therapy, is invaluable, and one of the best—and only—ways to learn many of the subtleties of rapid and effective treatment. And if you are a general citizen, and not a therapist, I hope your found our work with the brave and wonderful Jessica to be inspirational and educational, especially if you have also sometimes felt depressed, anxious, or ashamed, and if you have found that regrets about the past can put a real damper on your capacity to live and enjoy your precious present moments!

Our best teaching is usually through live work, and so we give you, Jessica, a warm thanks and salute for the great teaching YOU have done today!

Thanks for listening, everybody!

Jessica, Rhonda and David