Exploring the Concept of Self and Inner Dynamics

Do we have a "Self"? Or "Personality"? What's the best way to combat Should Statements?  Is TEAM effective without a therapist?  What's the Difference between Positive Reframing and Positive Thoughts? 

Note: The answers below were written by David prior to the podcast, just to give some structure to the discussion. Keep in mind that the actual live discussion by Rhonda, Matt and David will often go in different directions with different information and opinions. So, please listen to the podcast for the more complete answers!

Questions for today’s Ask David Podcast:

1. Stefan asks if we have a “self” or a “personality.”
2. Slash wants to know how to combat a “Should Statement.”
3. Magellan asks about the effectiveness of TEAM without the guidance of a therapist.
4. Werner asks about the differences between Positive Reframing and the Positive Thoughts you record on the Daily Mood Log.

 

1. Stefan asks if we have a “self” or a “personality.” What is the so-called “Great Death” of the “self,” referred to in Buddhism?

Hi David,

I really love your work, both the books and the podcast you’ve created. Lots of great tools there. I think your down-to-earth approach is effective and great in de-mythologizing mental health care.

Still, one thing has been bugging me about your approach: the fact that you quite casually seem to discount the existence of the self. As a theologian I understand this position. In discounting the self as a construct, you’ll open the way to less resistance and more acceptance. I studied both Christianity and some Buddhism, and in that tradition the self is essentially something to let go of as an illusion. I think you called this the death of the ego, and it’s common in many mystical currents both within and without the major religious traditions.

However, by embracing this tradition in a therapeutic setting, I think there’s a great risk to gloss over long-held implicit beliefs or patterns in the construction of a personality that might hold people back from reaching their full potential. More specifically, I’m talking about schemas or Lifetraps (in the terminology of Jeffrey E. Young and Janet S. Klosko). I know Aaron Beck supports their work to address these “chronic self-defeating personality patterns” that are usually considered the be part of the self. What’s your take on their work?

Kind regards, Stefan

David’s reply

Hi Stefan,

Personality, like "self" is not a "thing," but just the observations that different people have different behavioral patterns. So, some are more outgoing, for example, while others are more introverted and shy and insecure.

The only meaning of "self" is the context in which the word appears. So, "behave yourself" simply means that you are misbehaving and need to stop!

Can you come to the Sunday hike is a question. It does not need the add on, "and do you plan to bring you 'self.'"

The only meaning of any word is the context, and many uses in the English language, or any language. Nouns do not always refer to "things." Words are just sounds that come out of our mouths.

I don't go into this much because few people "get it."

Thanks so much, Stefan.

Warmly, david

PS The above is my take on Wittgenstein's Philosophical investigations, published after he died in 1950. .

Second PS I had a random and fairly weak thought, but here it is. When doing my daily “slogging” a while back, I was going through a pleasant and familiar path and noticing how beautiful everything was, and had the thought, “This land is so valuable and expensive, and I’m SO GLAD I don’t have to own it. It would involve a nightmare of paper work, taxes and all kinds of worries. But I can just enjoy it without any of those burdens of ownership.

Then I thought of the “self,” and what a heavy burden it is to “have one,” and worry about whether or not it is “good enough,” or “inferior,” and so forth. Selves tend to be a bit overweight, and heavy to carry around. And how much more fun, beautiful, and rewarding life is without having to have a “self” to worry about.

Rhonda found this helpful after a time feeling confused about the "self," and Matt added this: "Right, and if we own the 'land' one day, and it changes, the next moment, is it the same 'land'?  Do we still own it?"

Matt’s "Self" Thoughts

Wittgenstein is one of my favorite philosophers due to the elegance of his solution to philosophical problems, which is to recognize that they are not, in fact, ‘problems’.  Instead of trying to answer the question, ‘is there a self’, ‘do I have a self’, he would point out that these questions are meaningless and can’t be answered.

One way to bring these questions into a form that could be useful and answerable, is to define the terms.  What is the ‘self’, and what can it do?  How would I know, if I had a ‘self’?  If the definition was in the form of a testable hypothesis, we’d be a step closer to arriving at a meaningful answer.

In some cases, this answer is incredibly meaningful, in terms of our mental state and relationships.  Let’s try on a few possible definitions of ‘self’ and consider some experiments that could be done to test whether these hold water.

‘Self’:  (from Meriam Webster):  one’s essential being, which separates them from others.  (I don’t find this definition useful, because now I just have to define what is an ‘essential being’?  What are we talking about?

‘Self’:  The subject of our experience; the thing that is thinking our thoughts, and feeling our feelings.  (This is also problematic for many reasons.  First, it’s based on an unproven assumption that experience requires an experiencer.  Descartes believed this but Nietsche retorted that this logic was highly flawed as it smuggles the ‘self’ into the equation without any justification.  Further, there are many ‘nondualistic’ philosophies that challenge the ‘separateness’ of ‘self’ and experience.  Meaning, the presence of thought doesn’t mean anything other than the presence of thought.  We ought to be skeptical of introducing additional complexity into the situation according to the principle of ‘Occam’s Razor’, that the simplest hypothesis that explains all the observations is more likely to be correct).

‘Self’:  The ‘CEO’ of your mind, the aspec of yourself that is directing your body, attention and decision-making.  (This is problematic in many of the same ways as the above definition.  It’s also the most readily falsifiable definition.  We can experiment with our ability to control our decision-making in a variety of ways, one of which is to see if you can ‘choose’, with your ‘self’ not to understand the words on this page.  Or to sit quietly and not think.  If our ‘self’ can’t use its ‘free will’ to control the brain’s activities in such simple ways, why would we imagine that we have a self, controlling our brain, at all?

In fact, most of us believe in a ‘self’, which, if we attempt to define it carefully, it can be proven NOT to exist.  However, this is an unacceptable conclusion for many people, even though it results in a form of enlightenment.  This form of enlightenement is slightly different from ‘self acceptance’.  It’s more like ‘waking up from a dream of a self’ than ‘acceping a flawed self’.

All that said, yes, it’s often incredibly useful to inspect our assumptions about our ‘self’, in terms of our ‘roles’ and ‘rules’ in our relationships.  David offers the ‘Interpersonal Downward Arrow’ to do this in a single session.  There, we might discover we are stuck in a belief system that is counterproductive, like, ‘we must be perfect’, ‘we should never have conflict’, etc.  There are countless ways people think about their ‘self’ which can be productive or a ‘trap’.  Obviously, if we had no sense of our identity, purpose, role, etc., it would be hard to know what to do with our ‘selves' on a day-to-day basis!

 

2. Slash asks how she can combat her “Should Statement.”

Hi David

I did some exercises and found I a believe that I should play guitar effortlessly or else I should enjoy the process of learning. My disadvantages are greater in CBA. Now what thought should I replace with so that I could have the advantages too.

Slash

David’s reply

Thanks, Slash!

It is a should statement.

Essentially, your “should” doesn’t make sense since there is no rule that says you should, must, or ought to enjoy something you don’t enjoy right now, so you are just putting pressure on yourself unnecessarily.

I once had a patient who had previously been treated briefly by Dr. Albert Ellis when he was in New York. He was on vacation, and was feeling depressed and telling himself that he SHOULDN’T be unhappy since he was on vacation. He thought he SHOULD be enjoying himself.

He said that the thing that helped the most was when Dr. Ellis said, “Where the F__K is it written that you are obligated to enjoy being on vacation?” (Ellis used that word a lot!)

He said he immediately gave himself permission to feel miserable on vacation, and instantly felt better! This is an example of what I call the Acceptance Paradox. When he accepted his unhappiness, instead of struggling in shame to make it go away, it disappeared.

I have a similar story. I used to have a keen interest in collecting coins from around the world, and when I was an intern at Highland Hospital in Oakland, I used to enjoy going to the local coin stores to see if I could find some interesting foreign coin to purchase for a few dollars. This was always exciting, but one day I was in the S & D Coin store just a few miles from our apartment, realized I was totally bored and had lost my interest in collecting foreign coins.

I told the friendly dealer, and he said, “Oh, don’t worry about it. Just do something else in your free time for a few weeks and your interest in collecting will probably come back.”

So, I did that, and that’s just what happened. Essentially, he was also giving me “permission” to feel the way I was feeling, and not the way I thought I “should” feel! And when I accepted my negative feelings, they ran their course and disappeared.

That worked for me, but there are a lot of methods in TEAM, and you sometimes have to try quite a few before you find the one that works for you, since we’re all different.

The “go to” method for Should Statements is called the Semantic Technique. Using this method, you could tell yourself, “Right now I seem to have lost interest in music. It would be great if it comes back again, and probably will. But it’s natural not to feel excited about music all the time.”

Notice that I used “it would be great if” in place of the “Shoulds.”

As an aside, we just completed a new class for the Feeling Great App entitled “Your PhD in Shoulds.” You might want to check it out.

There’s also a lesson on perfectionism at the end of the class.

Best, david

Cost-Benefit Analysis

If I make mistakes, then I am not talented enough to play guitar.(associating my self worth with talent of playing guitar.) Advantages of Believing This Disadvantages of Believing This 1.It will push me to work harder. 1.There is lot of internal pressure. 2.It will motivate me to try different things until I find any solution. 2.It makes me depressed. 3.It can help me to be perfect/achive skills like my idol guitarist. 3.It ruins my currently playing technique I want to master. 4.People will admire me. 4.It makes me stuck at particular point from where I am not able to move forward. 5.It shows that I am one cut above others. 5.It hinders my progress with respect to guitar playing skills. 6.People who think I am not enough I can prove it to them. 6.It makes me frustrated irritated. 7.It can help me to be confident. 7.Endless cycle which I feel I am stuck in the moment and cant get out of it.   8.The quest to achieve will take forever which will make me hopeless and which further decreases my tolerance to make mistakes/which will further make me vigilant to see my mistakes as fault which cannot be corrected.   9.My moral goes down.

 

3. Magellan asks: Can you do TEAM-CBT without a shrink?

Dear David,

Could you tell us about studies of the effectiveness of any written TEAM or other therapy materials offered without therapist guidance (for example when people are on a waitlist to see a therapist)?

I think I heard of one done with Feeling Good. I wonder if one may be done with Feeling Great.

Thanks,

Magellan

David’s response: We have impressive results with our app, which I can describe. It is completely automated without therapist guidance. It is kind of like my first book, Feeling Good, on steroids!

I also have precise data on waiting list controls. The waiting list do not improve until they start the Feeling Great App and then they experience rapid and dramatic changes with a couple days.

There's no doubt about the effectiveness of the app. Also, there's extensive research proving the effectiveness' o my first book, Feeling Good. There's no question about the effectiveness of these self-help tools. I have many questions about the effectiveness of human shrinks, however!

 

4. From Werner Spitzfaden: Positive Reframing vs Positive Thoughts

I periodically come across clients who get confused by the concept of the Positive Reframing vs Positive Thoughts on the DML.

The question they pose is if the Positive Reframe is similar to the Positive Thoughts on the DML?

After some explanation I focus on Positive Reframing as a way of seeing that even the most difficult and painful thoughts and feelings reveal something powerful and awesome about us and then ask if that's true about them. This focuses on Outcome Resistance.

The positive thoughts on the DML focus on defeating their negative thinking with 2 conditions needing to be present: their new positive thought needs to be believable and it has to drastically reduce the distress resulting from your negative thought.

This focuses on the early stages of Methods coming after looking at Distortions followed by the Straight Forward Technique. I would love to hear David's take on this.

David’s Response

Yes, Werner, you are right! The goal of Positive Reframing is not to “Cheerlead” or to persuade the patient that their negative thoughts are not correct, but rather to help them see why they may fight to hang on to their negative thoughts and feelings, because they are beneficial and helpful in many ways.

This is the latest list of questions you can ask when doing PR with a negative thought. Most will also apply to a negative feeling.

1. 1. What is the truth in this negative thought? (This is essentially the Disarming Technique applied to your own self-criticism)
   2. Why might this negative thought or feeling be healthy and appropriate, given my circumstances.
   3. Why might this negative thought or feeling be helpful to me?
   4. What does it show about me and my core values that’s positive and awesome?
   5. What might be some negative consequences of giving up this negative thought or feeling?

You were spot on about Positive Thoughts. To be helpful, they must fulfill two conditions.

1. 1. They must be 100% true. Half-truths and rationalizations are rarely or never helpful/
   2. They must drastically reduce your belief in the distorted negative thought.

Hey, Werner, we miss you like crazy in the Tuesday group and in our (now small and humble) Sunday hikes. Hope you’re doing well.