The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The Selfish Path to Romance. Download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com and Amazon.com. This is Meryl. No, that's unacceptable. Listen, tell Warren, if we don't ship by Tuesday, we won't be in the stores by Mother's Day, and that's unacceptable. So don't give me any excuses. And do it. Do it. Just shut up and get her done. Oh, honey, you broke your phone.

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Can you imagine having that girl as your daughter or as your girlfriend or as your coworker or boss? We all have people in our lives who have anger management problems, or maybe they're depressed, or maybe they're anxious, or maybe they just have no direction in life, and they want some guidance and they don't feel like they can do it on their own. Well, they can turn to cognitive therapy. Cognitive therapy is a phenomenal therapy that allows you to learn how to think, learn how to make sure that your thoughts connect with reality so that you can guide your life better and you're not stuck with a lot of stinking thinking. And with me today to discuss cognitive therapy and stinking thinking is Dr. Jeff Reganbach. He's a cognitive therapist in the state of Oklahoma, practicing at Laureate Psychiatric Clinic and Hospital, and he has completed training with the Beck Institute of Cognitive Therapy and is certified with the Academy of Cognitive Therapy. Welcome to the show, Jeff. Hi, Ellen. Hi. Let's just say that somebody comes to you and they just are swimming in all these negative thoughts. You know, I'll never get anywhere. Nobody likes me. What am I going to do? There's nothing much I can do. Tell me a little bit about how their thinking is off-base many times, and what cognitive distortions are.

Sure, and actually, cognitive therapy is probably a little bit different than a lot of the other therapies out there, in several ways, but in one way, in the sense that there's a very high educational component. So a lot of people that come to cognitive therapy say they feel like rather than being in a group, they're more like going to class. And so before we can actually break down exactly what's going on with each person, we will do a lot of education. I've actually had patients say, "Boy, you talk more than any therapist I've ever known before." And that is true in the beginning. There is a lot of teaching that's necessary.

You're teaching thinking skills. You are teaching thinking skills, and you're teaching them how to read their own minds.

That's right, you use the phrase stinking thinking, and I think that's a phrase that a lot of our patients use. And the term cognitive distortion is really just a term to define very specific types of stinking thinking. And there are some pretty specific types of thinking that lead to some pretty specific feelings.

Yeah, such as should statements. I should do this. I have to do this, and I should always be a success. You know? I always have to get straight A's.

No, absolutely. Should statements are a really, really big one that a lot of people struggle with. That's when we say we should or we have to, or we ought to, or we must, or we need to. Those are kind of shoulds in disguise. Actually, there's two types of should statements. One type is when we can should ourselves, and when we do that, we almost always feel guilty. So if you're feeling guilty, there's probably a should of self under there. Okay, can you give me an example?

Yeah, sure. It can be a small thing, or it can be a deeper, more intense thing. I mean, I shouldn't have been late for that meeting, or I shouldn't have, you know, said what I said to my spouse that was really mean. I should have never had that abortion 20 years ago, or I should never have married this person. Or those sorts of shoulds always lead to guilt or regret.

And sometimes it's reality-based, and sometimes I know, in the case of abortion, they need to go back and rethink things.

Sometimes we can say that we shouldn't have done the things that we did, but the reality is that we did do them.

Yeah, and how do we move on from there?

Yeah, okay, so if we would identify things that, according to our moral value system, we really would say were wrong, then it might be a matter of forgiving ourselves and not beating ourselves up over time, or making amends. If you hurt somebody, if you were very cruel to a coworker, you need to make amends, absolutely.

Those kinds of things, or if you really didn't do anything wrong.

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or if you really didn't do anything wrong, then it's a way of learning to kind of reshape how you think about that, and recognizing what was your responsibility and what wasn't your responsibility, and—

to be able to let go of the honor and guilt absolutely—

yeah, earned versus unearned. I like that, and—

and actually, I got that from my favorite author, Ayn Rand, yeah. And what about another cognitive distortion, such as, What if I say, I know exactly what you're thinking about me now, Jeff, I know it, and I know it's not good.

Well, that's a distortion we call mind reading. Mind reading and fortune telling and another related one that we call magnification kind of go together. So mind reading is when you assume you know what someone else is thinking. Fortune telling is predicting what you think is going to happen.

I know that nothing good is going to come of this. So why bother applying for this job? Would that be an example of the fortune teller?

That would be an example of that. Of the four, you'll never—you have a messy room, you'll never amount to anything, you tell your kid.

That's right, both of those would be examples of the mind reading or the fortune telling type of statement. You know, in terms of applying for the job, if we predict that we're never going to get it, that's the fortune telling part. And if we predict all these reasons why they're not going to hire me because I'm overweight or I've got a gap on my resume or for whatever reason, that's the mind reading part. And then some people, especially those that struggle with anxiety, really take it to another level and go to the point that not only am I not going to get this job, but I'm not going to get any job, and I'm going to end up underneath a bridge sleeping in a cardboard box, right, kind of a thing. And those are certainly the kind of distortions that lead to anxiety.

And so cognitive therapy helps people undistort them, take out the distortion and see things accurately, and teaches them the skills to look for evidence on their own. So eventually, they don't need a cognitive therapist.

Absolutely, that is one of the number one beliefs of cognitive therapy, is that we want to teach patients the skills that they need to be able to face life circumstances on their own. And actually, research is starting to substantiate this, Ellen, that people that do cognitive therapy are much less prone to relapse into their old feelings of—

guilt or depression because they have the method to get themselves out of it—

because they have the skills that they need, that they can use the rest of their life, right, right?

So it's a wonderful gift to yourself to see a cognitive therapist, and if you're looking for one, you can go to the Academy of CT cognitive therapy.org, and there's a list of therapists from all over the world there. Now, quickly, what is an intimacy circle?

Intimacy circles technically have nothing to do with cognitive therapy themselves, but it's just the way that we used to talk with patients about relationships and let them examine their relationships. We use the definition of intimacy of into me see intimacy. Yeah, very good, drive intimacy and how closely we let people see into us, and it's just a way to kind of evaluate our relationships and try to recognize harmful patterns that might be stumbling people off.

So if there's somebody into me see that, if there's somebody too close to me that I don't want very close, I can put them in an outer circle, is that what you're referring to?

Absolutely. That's one of the things that a lot of people who do these exercises find is some people say my relationships are a complete mess, but some people say, as the example you just suggested, gee, I pretty much like how my relationships are. But there's this one person that I've let in too close. And so it's a romantic interest. Maybe it's a mother-in-law that won't get out of my business. I mean, whoever it is, this one person is getting in, and I'm giving them the power to ruin my life. And so, yeah, helping them come up with steps to take to move that person out into an outer ring. They don't have the power over their lives that they have—

that's interesting to an outer ring. I always use an example like that a little differently, but I did have the concentric circles. So when you ever talked about that, I took one of your seminars. It was wonderful to hear. And when you talked about how people use them, you know, this person's got to go in an outer ring, or this one can come in closer.