We address five questions submitted by listeners who listened to the recent series of podcasts on the Five Secrets of Effective Communication.

You definitely do NOT want to lose weight. You probably DO want to be thin and attractive, and in great physical condition, but you DON'T want to lose weight. Do you know why? There are only two things that you can do to lose weight--diet and exercise. And they both suck! David describes two new, powerful techniques he has created for resolving this dilemma--the Double Paradox and Devil's Advocate Technique. David and Fabrice bring these techniques to life for you. If you are interested in losing weight, make sure you do the two exercises on paper while listening to this podcast.

What do I do if I am using the Five Secrets and I feel angry? If I use the Disarming Technique, isn't there a danger that I might not express my own feelings? And isn't this the same as your "Hidden Emotion" Model, where we don't express our feelings due to excessive niceness? How would you use the Five Secrets if you're attacked in public by a narcissistic boss? Should you use the Disarming Technique? Won't that make you look weak? Should you only use the Five Secrets in one-on-one situations? Why is the Self-Monitoring technique rarely effective? How would you help young people who are being bullied in social media?

David and Fabrice discuss Inquiry, the third of the Five Secrets of Effective Communication. Inquiry means asking gentle, probing questions to learn more about what the other person is thinking and feeling. David encourages listeners (that includes you!) to try using Inquiry five times each day, even in superficial interactions with people in any setting, such as the grocery store, and gives examples of how to do this. Although this will not be the deepest application of Inquiry, the practice will give you a clear understanding of how this technique works.  

David addresses a question submitted by a listener after he heard the introductory podcasts on the Five Secrets of Effective Communication. He questioned the value of the Disarming Technique, and protested that every time he "turned the other cheek" he simply ended up with two sore cheeks! A great question, and David and Fabrice share their thinking. Many people, including therapists, are afraid of the Disarming Technique, thinking that something terrible will happen if they agree with someone who is criticizing them. They emphasize the value of questions submitted by you, the listeners, and also suggest giving specific examples when they are having trouble using the Five Secrets. Specifically, if you write down exactly what the other person said to you, and exactly what you said next, David and Fabrice will gladly analyze the interaction and show you what errors you made that caused a bad outcome, as well as how to correct those errors! David and Fabrice then discuss Thought and Feeling Empathy, the second of the Five Secrets of Effective Communication. The definition of Thought Empathy is repeating or paraphrasing what the other person is saying, so he or she will see that you listened and got the message. Feeling Empathy, in contrast, involves acknowledging how the other person is likely to be feeling, given what he or she just said. You can often follow this with Inquiry, asking if you got it right, and inviting the other person to tell you more about what he or she is thinking. Although David does not like formulas, they can sometimes help you get started. So here's the formula: Thought Empathy: Let me see if I got what you just said. You told me that A, B, and C. (A, B, and C would be what the person said to you, using his or her words.) Feeling Empathy: Given what you just said, I can imagine you might be feeling X, Y, and Z. (X, Y, and Z would be words from the Feeling Words list.) Inquiry: Did I get that right? Can you tell me more about what you've been thinking and feeling? These techniques are invaluable in therapy, and go back to the pioneering work of Karl Rodgers, who argued that therapist empathy is the necessary and sufficient condition for personality change. Although subsequent research did not confirm this idea, there is still little argument that empathy is absolutely necessary for good therapeutic work. In addition, skillful empathy is for everyone, and can greatly enhance your relationships with family members, friends, and colleagues, and strangers as well. For example, if you have a family member or friend who is feeling anxious, down, angry, or depressed, the skillful use of Thought and Empathy will almost always be far more effective than trying to help, rescue, or "fix" that person.   David brings Thought and Feeling Empathy to life with an example of a patient who criticizes his therapist, and then asks listeners, including you, to pause the podcast briefly so you can write down, from memory, what the patient just said. Most therapists who try this end up "forgetting" or editing out important portions of what the patient said. This irritates the other person, because you clearly did not "get it," and his or her attack or complaining will usually escalate. David and Fabrice discuss common errors therapists and general public make when trying to use Thought and Feeling Empathy. The most common error involves using the techniques in a robot-like manner, parroting back the other person's statements repeatedly, without using "I Feel" Statements. They illustrate this error with a humorous example. Other common errors when using Thought and Feeling Empathy include: Helping Rescuing Giving advice Correcting distortions Making interpretations Failing to acknowledge the other person's anger   David encourages listeners (that includes you!) to try using Thought and Feeling Empathy three times each day, even in superficial interactions with people in any setting, such as the grocery store, and give examples of how to do this. Although this will not be the deepest application of these techniques, the practice will give you a clear understanding of how these techniques actually work. David and Fabrice end this podcast with a powerful example of Thought and Feeling Empathy during an actual therapy session in David's weekly psychotherapy training group. The "patient" in the therapy is a TEAM-CBT therapist named Rhonda who became depressed and anxious after receiving some critical therapy from a participant in a therapy group she was teaching. Even if you are not a therapist, you can perhaps identify with the "ouch" we all feel when we are criticized by someone, and it hits a vulnerable spot. This is an almost universal human concern. It is so easy to feel hurt, depressed, ashamed, anxious, inadequate, and perhaps even a bit angry! David invited one of the therapists in the group to empathize with Rhonda, as a part of his training, but he ended up with a less than stellar grade. David, Fabrice and Rhonda explain the errors he made--which actually made her feel worse. Making errors is totally okay in a training and learning situation, as well as in real therapy sessions--as long as you get feedback and try to correct your errors with humility. This can actually deepen the therapeutic relationship. David then asked Dr. Jill Levitt to try to model empathy again, and to address Rhonda's concerns. Jill hits the ball out of the park and gets an A+ on empathy. David and Fabrice explain why her intervention was so effective, and why the Five Secrets have to come from the heart if they are to be maximally effective. Jill is a master therapist and co-teaches the weekly TEAM-CBT training group, along with David and Dr. Helen Yeni-Komshian. If you would like to hear more of Jill's fabulous empathy work, make sure you listen to the live therapy podcasts with Mark, the physician who felt like a failure as a father! Next week, Helen returns for the remaining Podcasts on the Five Secrets!  

David, Helen and Fabrice focus on the Disarming Technique, which is the first of the Five Secrets of Effective Communication. The definition of the Disarming Technique is finding truth in what the other person is saying, even if it seems blatantly wrong, or illogical, or exaggerated. And it's based on the Law of Opposites.  

Is there someone in your life who just  won't listen? won't open up? always has to be right? always has to get his or her way? doesn't seem to understand how you feel? doesn't seem to care? is relentlessly critical? whines and complains endlessly, but always ignores your attempts to help? Would you like greater intimacy and respect, and more rewarding relationships with the people you care about? If so, this podcast series on the Five Secrets of Effective Communication will be right up your alley. Although the Five Secrets have been introduced in previous podcasts, David and Fabrice will bring them to life with clear explanations and vignettes, and will give you homework assignments so you can practice them, one at a time, between podcasts. In the first two Five Secrets podcasts, David and Fabrice will be joined by Helen Yeni-Komshian, MD. Helen was David's student during her psychiatric residency training at Stanford roughly 15 years ago, and she now teaches David's at weekly psychotherapy training group at Stanford, and is on the adjunct faculty there. David, Helen, and Fabrice begin with a brief definition of each of the Five Secrets of Effective Communication. They emphasize the importance of intense desire if you really want to learn and master these techniques. They compare the Five Secrets to the notes on a musical instrument. Lots of dedication and practice will be necessary if you hope to use them skillfully and effectively in your relationships with the people you care about. The goal is to help you develop greater  satisfaction in your interactions with others and to resolve conflicts and arguments with others. Helen emphasizes that these techniques must be applied in a genuine fashion if they are to be effective. If they are used simply as techniques to manipulate another person, they will not be effective. David mentions that the Five Secrets exist on two levels. One the one hand, they are sophisticated and powerful psychological techniques that can change your life and your relationships with others. But on the other hand, they are profound spiritual techniques that require the death of the ego. And they also require us to relearn our usual knee-jerk habits of arguing, blaming, and defending ourselves when we're at odds with another person. These podcasts will be for mental health professionals and for the general public. We will give vignettes illustrating challenging therapeutic logjams that were resolved with the skillful use of the Five Secrets, as well as examples  how you can use the Five Secretes with loved ones, friends, colleagues, customers, and even aggressive or irritating strangers. The Five Secrets require lots of hard work and practice, in much the same way that learning to play a musical instrument will require lots of practice. In addition, when you practice you may initially find them difficult to use, and you may experience some failures. David, Helen, and Fabrice emphasize the spirit of "joyful failure" or "learning through failure," and urge you to check your ego at the door, since the rewards of the learning can be immense.  

How would you treat excessive worrying? a listener asks. David describes a new patient who had struggled with 53 years of failed therapy for excessive, relentless worrying, and describes how she was "totally and irreversibly cured" in just two therapy sessions, which was the "good news." The Hidden Emotion Technique was the key to her remarkably rapid recovery. David explains that the "even better news" was that her relentless worrying would come back over and over in the future, and that this was actually a really good thing! David also emphasizes the importance of using all the four models, along with a Daily Mood Log, when treating any form of anxiety: the Motivational Model, the Cognitive Model, the Exposure Model, and the Hidden Emotion Model. To learn more about how these four powerful treatment models work, you can listen to Podcasts 022 through #028. The DSM5 is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association. It is used to assign diagnoses to patients. David critiques the DSM5  diagnostic criteria for "Generalized Anxiety Disorder" (GAD) and emphasizes that while worrying exists, and can easily be treated in most cases, the "mental disorder" called Generalized Anxiety Disorder does not exist, and is simply a fantasy made up by the psychiatrists who have created the DSM. Soon, David and Fabrice will launch a series of five podcasts on the Five Secrets of Effective Communication, focusing on one technique each week. Say tuned, because these podcasts could change your life and show you the road to more loving and satisfying relationships with friends, patients, colleagues, and family members--and "enemies" as well!