Dr. Jill Levitt, Dr. Karen Radella, and Jacqueline Ong share their transformative experiences from past summer intensives. They discuss personal growth, overcoming trauma, and the profound impact of Team CBT therapy. The upcoming intensive promises magical experiences for therapists, focusing on personal growth, vulnerability, and authenticity. Discover the power of embracing flaws, spirituality, and rapid emotional growth in therapy sessions.

Topics discussed include strategies for overcoming insomnia, dealing with guilt and self-blame from past addictions, and managing feelings of rage. The hosts provide practical advice and techniques for addressing these challenges, emphasizing self-acceptance and compassion for oneself and others.

Psychiatrist Jacob Towery and Medical Doctor Michael Luo discuss the 2nd Annual Social Anxiety Marathon, focusing on overcoming social anxiety through group exercises and real-world activities. They highlight personal growth, transformation, and the importance of vulnerability, rejection training, and pushing comfort zones to combat social fears. The event offers a unique approach to unity, connection, and lasting change in individuals struggling with social anxiety.

Marina Dyck, a TEAM-Certified Clinical Counselor, shares innovative TEAM-CBT treatment for insomnia. She discusses addressing negative thoughts, feelings, and rumination affecting sleep quality. The podcast explores overcoming work-related insomnia, fostering self-compassion, and utilizing therapy techniques for better sleep.

Jill Levitt, Director of Clinical Training at the Feeling Good Institute, discusses the 'Empty Nest' syndrome with examples of women feeling guilt and shame. Topics include self-criticism, retirement struggles, positive reframing, self-compassion, and therapy for transformative outcomes.

The podcast explores the evolution of therapeutic techniques in TEAM Therapy, harms of pornography, strategies for dealing with compulsive liars, navigating resistance in therapy sessions, and the development of the Feeling Great App. It also includes heartfelt gratitude, laughter, and a call for support.

Topics covered in the podcast include self-acceptance, handling resistance, dynamic job interviews, cognitive distortions and transgenderism. Dr. Burns and Dr. Baravsky discuss empathy for transgender individuals and offer insights on challenging beliefs and accepting oneself, with real-life examples and role-playing scenarios.

Featured Photo is Dr. Amy Huberman The Amy Story, Part 2: The Joys of Doing the Laundry! Amy and her exuberant son, Sasha, and wife, Alena Last week you heard Part 1 of the Amy session, which included T = Testing, E = Empathy, and A = Assessment of Resistance. Today, you will hear Part 2 of Amy's exciting journey from perfectionism to JOY. M = Methods We used a variety of Methods to help Amy challenge her negative thoughts, starting with the first, “I’m failing my patients.” We started with Identify and Explain the Distortions, then went to the Double Standard Technique, and ended up with the Externalization of Voices. As a reminder, you can see Amy's  Daily Mood Log at the start of her session here.. As an exercise, see how many distortions, or thinking errors, you can find in her first Negative Thought, “I’m failing my patients,“ using the list of cognitive distortions on the bottom of her Daily Mood Log. You’ll find the list of the ten cognitive distortions if you click here.  After you’ve identified each distortion, see if you can explain two things about it: Why is this distortion in Amy’s thought unrealistic and misleading? Why might it be incredibly unfair and hurtful? You’ll find my list of the distortions in this thought at the end of the show notes. But don’t look until you’ve made your list! These techniques we used were effective , as you’ll hear on the podcast, especially the Externalization of Voices. You’ll hear us doing role-reversals with Amy, and the method that “won the day” was the CAT, or Counter-Attack Technique, combined with the Acceptance Paradox. The Acceptance Paradox involves finding truth in a negative thought with a sense of peace or even humor. The CAT involves confronting the hostile voice in your head and tell it to go fly a kite, or other gentle but firm message You’ll enjoy seeing some striking changes in Amy, as her tears and feelings of intense self-doubt are suddenly transformed into joy and laughter. Those changes created strong feelings of joy for Jill and me as well. We both have incredibly fondness and admiration for Amy, and feel great joy as well when she feels joy. Here are Amy’s final scores at the end of the session. Emotions % Now % Goal % After Sad, blue, depressed, down, unhappy 80 25 0 Anxious, worried, panicky, nervous, frightened 80 20 0 Guilty, remorseful, bad, ashamed 90 5 0 Worthless, inadequate, defective, incompetent 100 15 5 Lonely, unloved, unwanted, rejected, alone       Embarrassed, foolish, humiliated, self-conscious       Hopeless, discouraged, pessimistic, despairing 90 5 0 Frustrated, stuck, thwarted, defeated 80 5 5 Angry, mad, resentful, annoyed, irritated, upset, furious       Other         The Joyous Dr. Amy! Sudden and dramatic change is pretty trippy, but it isn’t much good if it doesn’t last. And it won’t! Negative thoughts and feelings will always return, because no one can be happy all the time. That’s why some relapse prevention training and ongoing practice and refinement of what you’ve learned can be vitally important. In our follow-up session with Amy one week later she said she’d felt way better during the week, but did, in fact, have some relapses and had to challenge her negative thoughts again. She’d been helped a lot by the idea that it was okay to fail, to seek consultation, and learn, and that failing with patients gave us endless opportunities to learn and grow as therapists. And it was also okay not to have to listen so intently to the attempts of the negative self to put her down. In fact, our misery almost never results from our failures, but from telling ourselves that we “shouldn’t” ever fail, and from punishing ourselves mercilessly when we do. One of her most exciting statements in our follow-up session was that she discovered that even something as humble as putting the dirty clothes into the washing machine could be a joyous experience without that negative voice in her brain constantly hollering at her that she wasn’t good enough! Teaching points It was hard, at first, for Amy to “see” how distorted and unfair her negative thoughts were. She is an extremely intelligent, accomplished, and beloved colleague, and yet most of us cannot “see” or really “grasp” that we can be pretty mean to when we’re feeling down and anxious. I have often said that feeling anxious and depressed is a lot like being in a deep hypnotic trance, telling yourself and believing things that just aren’t true. For example, Amy is doing beautiful work with the great majority of her patients, and is doing the exact same thing with the patients who are responding beautifully as she is with the two who are stuck. So, when she tells herself she’s a failure, she’s clearly involved in All-or-Nothing Thinking. In other words, she’s thinking that if she’s not perfect, she’s a complete failure and a fraud. She also seems to have many Hidden Shoulds (e.g. I SHOULD be able to help every single patient quickly) and Mental Filtering (focusing only on the negatives) and Discounting the Positive (ignoring the positives, as if they didn’t count.) The techniques that were the most helpful for Amy were Positive Reframing: that’s where we pointed out the positive aspects of Amy’s Negative Thoughts and feelings. The Externalization of Voices with Self-Defense, the Acceptance Paradox, and the CAT. Be Specific: Amy was Labeling herself as a “fraud” and a “failure,” and she was Overgeneralizing from two patients to her entire self and career. Jill emphasized Be Specific. In other words, focus on and accept what’s real. What’s real is that Amy has been valiantly struggling to help two patients who are stuck. She can just accept that, and get some consultation and guidance from a colleague, which would probably help her get unstuck. So, instead of labelling yourself as “a failure” and “a fraud,” which are just mean, vague words, you can tell yourself that you have a specific problem—in Amy’s case, getting stuck with two very anxious patients. Then you can focus on getting some help in solving that specific problem—for example, by seeking consultation from a colleague. Jill said that’s what she does when she gets stuck. I used to do that every week, especially when I was first learning cognitive therapy. Getting stuck, then, can simply be an opportunity for growth and learning cool new tools. If we never got stuck, we’d never learn anything new! The very moment Amy stopped believing her negative thoughts, her feelings instantly and dramatically changed. That change happened suddenly, over the course of about 30 seconds, and you can SEE it in her face and hear it in her voice. But it won’t last forever! Jill pointed out that the belief at the root of Amy’s problem was Perfectionism, and the idea that “I should know exactly what to do with all of my patients.” That may be a pleasant fantasy, and it might even motivate us to work hard and achieve, but it’s also a recipe for misery! Follow-up Rapid recovery is great, but will it stick? You will hear excerpts from our brief follow-up session one week later for Relapse Prevention Training. The idea is that none of us can feel happy forever, and negative thoughts will creep back into our minds sooner or later. However, you can anticipate this and prepare for it by challenging your negative thoughts with the same techniques that helped you the first time you improved. That’s because the details will usually be different every time you’re upset, but the pattern of self-critical negative thoughts will usually be the same. And this DID happen to Amy, just as it will happen to you. But this was an opportunity for her to deepen her understanding of perfectionism and to refine and enhance her ability to respond to her negative thoughts. During the weeks following the recording of this podcast, Amy found that she experienced some resistance to using the counterattack technique. She began to feel like she was relating to her perfectionism as an enemy and attacking it—and in doing so, was discounting all the good in it, including the values that came shining through during the Positive Reframing. She found that a better fit for her, instead of the counterattack, was to disarm her perfectionistic thoughts by seeing the truth in them. In fact, you could view this as yet another form of acceptance. When she did this, the perfectionistic voice in her head naturally backed down and gave her the space to do what matters to her unencumbered by self-criticism. I thought it was cool when she described experiencing waves of joy while doing the laundry—an activity that had always felt like a chore to her before, when it was accompanied by thoughts like “I should have finished this laundry days ago.”   She discovered that without beating up on herself, something as humble as doing the laundry could be incredibly rewarding! After our follow-up meeting, I got a lovely email from Amy about the joys of giving up the need for perfection, and sent this follow-up reply to Amy: Thank you, Amy, you are the BEST! I did a four-day intensive in San Antonio years ago with a small group of about 25 therapists. As you know, I always BS and say “As the Buddha so often said . . . “ followed by something goofy or quasi-mystical or whatever, and most people seem to kind of like that and see it as fun or humorous or whatever. Well, I was doing that at the workshop, and at one of the breaks a woman approached me and said she was interested in my Buddhist remarks because she had been raised as a Buddhist in an Asian country where Buddhism is prominent. I panicked and thought I’d been found out and exposed as a fraud. She went on to say that their family gave up Buddhism, however, and she was sad. I asked why they gave up Buddhism, and she explained that her mother suffered from severe depression, and the Buddhists taught that’s because you think you “need” things, and if you’re a good Buddhist you won’t think that way and you won’t ever suffer. Since she suffered, she felt like a failure as a Buddhist, so the family gave up Buddhism. I told her that she might not be aware that there are actually two schools of Buddhism. There’s low-level Buddhism and high-level Buddhism. In low-level Buddhism, you’re not allowed to want or need anything, and you’re not allowed to suffer. That’s sounds like that was the school of Buddhism your family was raised in. But there’s another type of high-level Buddhism. In high level Buddhism you’re allowed to suffer and struggle, and screw up, and fail, and all sorts of stuff. She got animated and said, “I didn’t know that. Thank you so much. You’ve restored my faith in Buddhism, and I can’t wait to tell my mother!” Aside from my being elderly and half-demented, I hope that makes some sense in light of our work together with Jill! So, if you need any translation or explanation, Amy, I’m inviting you to join the high-level Buddhist therapist group where you’re allowed to screw up with some of your patients, or even many! Warmly, david Subsequent Follow-Up I forgot to tell you what happened to Amy’s two “stuck patients.” Well, she got some consultation about why these patients might be stuck, which is nearly always an Agenda Setting problem—the therapist is working harder than the patient due to the need to “help,” and this plays into the patient’s ambivalence. This struck a chord, and Amy was very excited to see her patients again, and both suddenly got “unstuck,” although in somewhat different ways. And that is why I call it the Acceptance Paradox. The moment YOU change, and accept yourself, your world will also change! Or, to put it differently. We often see the world as “different” or as “other,” thinking we are separated. The Buddhists see the world as “one,” and that is certainly true in therapy as well. Answers to the Quiz Question David’s list of Distortions in Amy’s Negative Thought: “I’m failing my patients.” 1.     All-or-Nothing Thinking. This is not realistic because Amy is not stuck with all of her patients. And even though she's still far short of her hopes for these two patients, they may feel they are getting lots of TLC and support from Amy. 2.     Overgeneralization. This is misleading because she’s overgeneralizing from her two failures to her “self,” and labeling herself as “a fraud and a failure.” She also overgeneralizing to the future, thinking things will never change or improve so she should get a new career. 3.     Mental Filtering. She only focusing on the two patients who are stuck. 4.     Discounting the Positive. She’s overlooking the fact that she’s going excellent work with a great many people, and has tremendous integrity, skill, and commitment to her patients. 5.     Magnification and Minimization. She’s kind of blowing things out of proportion, although it’s always good to focus on patients who aren’t yes improving. 6.     Emotional Reasoning, She FEELS like a failure so thinks she IS a failure. 7.     Hidden Should Statement. She thinks she SHOULD be perfect! 8.     Labeling. Same as Overgeneralization. See above. 9.     Self-Blame. She’s blaming herself instead of loving herself and focusing on getting she help she needs and deserves! Thanks for listening today! Rhonda, Amy, and David

Featured Photo is Dr. Amy Huberman The Amy Story Part 1: True Confessions of a “Fraud” and a “Failure” Part 2: The Joys of Doing the Laundry Amy and her exuberant son, Sasha, and husband, Poppy Today’s podcast, and next week’s podcast, include a single, two-hour session with Amy Huberman, MD. Amy is a psychiatrist in private practice in Baltimore, MD. She also serves on the volunteer faculty at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Amy specializes in brief, intensive psychotherapy to help people overcome struggles with anxiety, OCD, and trauma, but today comes to us to get some help with her own anxiety. Often doing our own work can be a vitally important part of our training and growth as mental health professionals. Amy has been upset because she is stuck with two of her patients, and she’s telling herself that she’s a “fraud” and a “failure.” Although her life is undoubtedly very different from yours, the root cause of her problem might be very similar to the source of your unhappiness, especially if you sometimes get down in the dumps and tell yourself that you’re just not good enough. My co-therapist for this session is Jill Levitt, Ph.D. co-founder and Director of Clinical Training at the Feeling Good Institute in Mt. View California. Jill also serves on the Adjunct Faculty at the Stanford Medical School and is co-leader of my weekly TEAM Therapy training group at Stanford, Tuesdays from 5-7:00 pm pst.  If you are interested in joining David and Jill's Tuesday group, please contact Ed Walton, edwalton100@gmail.com. That group is now virtual and therapists from the Bay Area and around the world are welcome to attend. It is free of charge. Rhonda Barovsky also runs a free weekly training group with Richard Lam, on Wednesdays, from 9-11:00 am pst, which is also free of charge. If you are interested in joining the Wednesday group, please contact Ana Teresa Silva, ateresasilva6@gmail.com.  Because the groups are virtual, they are open to therapists from around the world. Amy has been a member of our Tuesday training group, and is a highly skilled, certified TEAM therapist. Like nearly all the mental health professionals who come for training every Tuesday, Amy has incredibly high standards and is sometimes harshly self-critical when she feels she is not living up to them. At the same time, those high standards can be strongly motivating, and this can create strong feelings of ambivalence when it’s time to change. Sound familiar? If you’re struggling with perfectionism, you might want to check out these two podcasts! Part 1. The True Confessions of a “Fraud” and a “Failure” Amy opened by saying she was anxious and telling herself: I’m about to reveal my weaknesses and my inner self—This is something I’ve never done before in such a public setting. . . I also have to confess that I’m struggling with social anxiety right now. I’m afraid that my patients might see this and think, “I don’t want to work with her! I want to work with a competent psychiatrist.” I Included that because I am hoping you will appreciate Amy’s incredible courage and gift of sharing her true inner self today! Amy described the problem that’s been bothering her for several weeks. Although she specializes in the short-term treatment of anxiety, she has been struggling with two patients with OCD symptoms who have been stuck and not making significant progress for a long time. This has triggered feelings of shame and intense anxiety which have invaded Amy’s every moment when she’s NOT seeing patients, and has even prevented her from getting restful sleep at night. She keeps ruminating and beating up on herself. You can see Amy's  Daily Mood Log Amy here.. As you can see, she was feeling intensely sad, panicky and ashamed, and rated these three feelings as 80% on a scale from 0 (not at all) to 100 (the most severe). She was also feeling worthless and defective which she rated at 100%, as well as hopeless (90%) and stuck (80%). As you know, feelings do not result from the events in our lives (in Amy’s case, the fact that two of her patients were stuck), but rather from her thoughts, or interpretations, of those events. You can see on her Daily Mood Log that she was being intensely self-critical, telling herself that she was failing her patients, that she should refund their money, that she was not competent to practice psychotherapy and should find a new career, that she “should” know how to get them unstuck, and more, and finally that she was a fraud and a failure. Her belief in all of these thoughts was super high, ranging from 80% to 100%. And if you’ve ever felt down or inadequate, I’m sure you recognize the same types of thoughts in your own thinking, telling yourself that you’re a failure, or not good enough, and so forth. During the session, Jill and David went through the TEAM acronym: T = Testing We measured her negative feelings at the start of the session so we could measure them again at the end to see how we did. E = Empathy We listened and supported Amy without trying to “help” or “save” her. The goal was to understand her thoughts and feelings accurately, while providing a sense of compassion, warmth, and acceptance. This phase of the two-hour session lasted about 30 minutes, and Amy told us how she constantly ruminated about those two patients, asking herself “What am I doing wrong, what am I missing, what should I be doing differently?” She described these thoughts as a relentless “broken record in my brain.” She confessed that her deepest fear was, “What if they kill themselves and I was responsible for their deaths?” She said this fear was almost unbearable!” I pointed out that was also my deepest fear when I was in private practice—I was never upset by treating large numbers of severely depressed patients in back-to-back sessions, and it always made me happy, since I felt I had something to offer. But if I said something that hurt someone’s feelings, I found that pain almost unbearable until I saw the patient again the next week, and could talk things over and get back on a positive track. Jill pointed out that Amy’s ruminations showed that she was a highly responsible psychiatrist who cared deeply about her patients! And while that is certainly a positive thing, the intensity of her fears had invaded every minute of her life, making her life miserable, even when she was with her family. Amy said her fears have intensified since 2020, when she transitioned away from a traditional psychiatric practice involving long-term weekly psychotherapy and med-management, to focusing on short-term intensive psychotherapy using the TEAM model. Then we asked her to grade us at the end, thinking about three categories of Empathy: Did we understand how she was thinking? Did we understand how she was feeling? Did she feel cared about and accepted? She gave us an A, which triggered our move to the next phase of our work with Amy. A = Assessment of Resistance In this phase of the session, we pinpointed Amy’s goals for our session and  melted away her potential resistance to her stated goal of learning to give up that self-critical voice in her brain. We asked her to imagine we had a Magic Button, and if she pushed it, all of her negative thoughts and feelings would instantly disappear, with no effort on her part, and she’d feel jubilant and happy. She said she wasn’t so sure she’d do that. Most patients say YES, but Amy is familiar with the TEAM approach and knows that negative thoughts and feelings often result from some of our positive qualities. Our strategy at this phase of the session was paradoxical: Instead of trying to help, save, or rescue Amy, and instead of trying to persuade her to change, we took the role of her subconscious resistance to change. With her help, we listed some of the many positives in her negative thoughts and feelings by asking these two questions. What does this negative thought or feeling show about you and your core values that’s positive and awesome? How might this this negative thought or feeling be helping you and your patients? Here are just a few of the positives we found in her negative thoughts and feelings: The Positives in Amy’s Negative Feelings Feeling What this Shows Inadequacy Keeps me from being overconfident   Keeps me humble, so I’m open to what I may be missing   Shows I care about constant growth and learning   Shows I’m listening   Shows I care about my patients Anxiety Motivates me to think about things from other perspectives   Motivates me to work hard   Keeps me honest   Shows that I have high standards   My high standards have motivated me to learn a lot. You can do the same kind of Positive Reframing with all Amy’s negative thoughts and feelings, as well as your own. The list of positives would be long and impressive! After listing these positives, we asked Amy these three questions: Are these positives real? Are they important? Are they powerful? How would YOU answer these questions if you were Amy? She gave a strong yes to all three questions. At the end we pointed out that it might not be such a great idea to push the Magic Button to eliminate the negative voice in her brain, because then all these positives would also disappear. Instead, she decided to use the Magic Dial to reduce her negative feelings to some lower level where she could keep all the positives but suffer much less. Here you can see her goals for how she wanted to feel at the end of her session.   Emotions % Now % Goal % After Sad, blue, depressed, down, unhappy 80 25   Anxious, worried, panicky, nervous, frightened 80 20   Guilty, remorseful, bad, ashamed 90 5   Worthless, inadequate, defective, incompetent 100 15   Lonely, unloved, unwanted, rejected, alone       Embarrassed, foolish, humiliated, self-conscious       Hopeless, discouraged, pessimistic, despairing 90 5   Frustrated, stuck, thwarted, defeated 80 5   Angry, mad, resentful, annoyed, irritated, upset, furious       Other         As you can see, she decided to aim for fairly large reductions in all six of her negative feelings. These goals are not guarantees she will be able to reduce her feelings. In addition, the goals are not rigid, since she may be able to reduce them even further once she begins to challenge her negative thoughts. Our real aim at this phase of our work was to reduce her feelings of shame and failure so she could see that her “symptoms” were NOT the expression of what was WRONG with her, but the expression of what was RIGHT with her. Paradoxically, this often reduces the resistance to change and vastly enhances the possibility of rapid and dramatic change during the final, M = Methods portion of the session that you’ll hear next week, along with some follow-up information. The important thing we’ve hopefully accomplished is reducing Amy’s resistance so she can learn how to challenge and defeat the relentless and hostile voice in her brain that constantly puts her down whenever she fails to live up to her extremely high, and arguably perfectionistic, standards. End of Part 1 Thanks for listening today. Be sure to tune in to the exciting conclusion of the work with Amy next week! Rhonda, Amy, Jill, and David

Why Do We Resist Accepting Ourselves Other People, and the World? The Five Most Common Reasons! Rhonda and David are joined in today’s podcast by Dr. Matt May, a super popular and loved guest on our show, to discuss the resistance findings in David's recent survey on acceptance and resistance. The following is a summary of some of the statistical findings, but the actual podcast dialogue was wide ranging and tremendously engaging, and won't require a lot of statistical smarts! We also discussed the vitally important difference between healthy and unhealthy acceptance. Healthy acceptance is accompanied by feelings of joy, lightness, and liberation. Unhealth acceptance is accompanied by feelings of unhappiness and despair. Unhealthy acceptance is characterized by Should Statements and self-punishment for your failures and shortcomings. Healthy acceptance is an expression of self-love. The group brought the five most common reasons to life with engaging stories. Why should you accept yourself? We are not saying that you "should," and it's really a decision. However, the statistical models the I (David) developed indicated that healthy acceptance can trigger a 49% reduction in negative feelings and a 39% boost in positive feelings, which is tremendous. Matt told an inspiring story about two strategy for training the dolphins at SeaWorld. One strategy involved trying to shape the behavior of the dolphins with little shocks, in much the same way that some people train horses. Sadly, the dolphins went to the bottom of the pool and appeared depressed, not moving much. It was a complete failure. Then they tried a radically different strategy--they gave a new group of dolphins fish to reward them for doing the things the trainers wanted them to do. This strategy was tremendously successful. So, the question is whether you want to shape your own life with frequent shoulds and self-criticisms, which can have the effect of electric shocks every time you fail or screw up or fall short of your goals, or whether you want to shape your life with love and rewards. Some of us have discovered that acceptance is way more fun and vastly more effective! Quick Bottom Line The typical survey respondent endorsed 1/3 of the 12 Resistance Scale items, and seemed to believed that Acceptance would be foolish and lead to a life of misery and mediocrity. The actual causal impact of the Non-Acceptance and Resistance scales on positive and negative feelings was massive and appeared to be in the exact opposite direction. Findings The respondents in the Resistance survey endorsed an average of 33.8%. (+/- 0.1%) of the items, ranging from 0 to all 12. The most commonly endorsed was, “Acceptance is easy for rich and famous, but hard if you’re struggling just to pay the bills.” 47% (+/- 2%) endorsed this item. The least endorsed was, “If I beat up on myself, people will love me more,” although 25% (+/- 1%) of the people endorsed this item, so it was fairly popular. The high scores on the resistance scale items is also pretty consistent with my experiences over the years—the people in the study, and the people I’ve worked with, have expressed MANY reasons to beat up on themselves. You can see the list of the 12 Resistance Scale items below. I have bolded the five most often endorsed. As you can see, many people surveyed believed that acceptance is fine for people who are rich and famous, but terribly painful and foolish for people who struggle with real problems. Many respondents were convinced that acceptance leads to pain, robs you of motivation and does not make sense in a the world that’s falling apart. If I accept my flaws and shortcomings, I'll end up with a second-rate life. If I accept my flaws and shortcomings, I’ll lose all my motivation to learn If I beat up on myself and work my ass off, people will love and admire me. It would be tremendously painful to accept my flaws and shortcomings. That would be like giving up and having to live with a heavy load of inadequacies. Life has many real disappointments and losses. I don't want to feel happy and chipper by “accepting” all those negatives when the world is falling apart all around me. That just doesn’t make sense! I haven’t achieved many of my goals in life. I think it would be kind of pathetic to suddenly accept myself and feel enormous joy that I haven’t really earned or deserved. I’ve often fallen short, and I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life. Are you saying that I should be happy about that? Hell NO! I am never going to accept myself as just another average or below-average person. That would be awful! If I accept my flaws, failures, and shortcomings, I’ll just be like everyone else. I won’t be special, and I won’t have the chance to become special. If I admit that I often fail and screw up, people will think less of me. If I’ve done things that have hurt others or if I’ve violated my moral values, then I deserve to suffer. Acceptance is fine and easy for people who’ve enjoyed tremendous success, but it’s really hard if you’re struggling to pay the bills, or if you feel like you haven’t succeeded at much. What did the analyses show about the impact of resistance and non-acceptance on how we feel? The Resistance scale had powerful direct causal effects on the Non-Acceptance scale and accounted for a whopping 46% of the variance is the Non-Acceptance scale. In other words, the more intense your resistance, the more you will fight against accepting your flaws. The causal effects of the Acceptance and Resistance scales on negative and positive feelings were massive. They can reduce positive feelings by as much as -48% and increase negative feelings by as much as +47%. Or, to put it differently, the statistical models predict that healthy self-acceptance will not lead to misery and isolation, but can dramatically reduce unhappiness and boost feelings of joy and self-esteem. The total effects of Singleness and Income on positive and negative feelings were relatively small, by comparison. In addition, about half of the causal effects of Singleness and Income are indirect and mediated by their causal effects on the Resistance and Non-Acceptance scales. The direct effects of Singleness on the positive and negative feelings scales were -4% (positive feelings) and +6% (negative feelings). The maximum direct effects of income on negative feelings were +4% (positive feelings) and -9% on negative feelings). To experience this boost if you’re in the lowest income bracket ($200,,000.) Almost all of the 12 items were more strongly endorsed by younger individuals. Three items—Ri, R8 and R9—were more strongly endorsed by men at the p