Feeling Good Handbook, who has read it ?

[somuchlove]

Wondering who might have read the book Feeling Good Handbook?  :)oes it refer to BPD or just stress, anxiety etc?

I was thinking of purchasing it to read.  Wish it was an audio book.  

Our objective is to better understand the struggles our child faces and to learn the skills to improve our relationship and provide a supportive environment and also improve on our own emotional responses, attitudes and effectiveness as a family leaders

[pattyt]

I haven't read it but it's on my list of books to get.  I read somewhere that it's required reading for those doing DPT, and that some people can improve in their ability to regulate their emotions just by reading it. 

Wondering, too, if it's just for those with a personality disorder or for anyone needing guidance.

[vivekananda]

dunno about it... .   perhaps you could read it and tell us... .   ?

Vivek    

[lbjnltx]

Book Review: Feeling Good by David D. Burns, MD

[qcarolr]

I have a copy somewhere. My T gave gave it to me when I started CBT about 15 years ago. I often see the listing of the Ten patterns of distorted thinking that came from this book. My DD gave me a copy recently from her court ordered drug/alcohol class. She believes I am the one that needs to change my distorted thinking as she has no problems. If I will change then miraculously her life will become OK. I have been working on my own distortions (bipolar II disorder) for many years. Sure wish she could figure out what is her part in her relationships and take resonsibility. I will keep hoping.

qcr  

Here are the links to the articles about "Twisted Thinking" and "How to Untwist Your Thinking" from "The Feeling Good Handbook" by Dr. David Burns M.D. :

https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=56199.0

https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=56200.0

[Thursday]

For a short while I went to individual therapy with a T who was our family therapist and later became my SD's T. I was there because I was feeling overwhelmed by my SD's behavior and with trying to help her Dad figure out what she needed, what was wrong with her, etc.

I sat and talked about her issues and the T told me he was positive this was BPD and he gave me the Feeling Good Handbook, underlined the Ten patterns of distorted thinking.

The message was pretty clear, I was distressed because of my own patterns of distorted thinking. I think, until you work on this stuff, most people have distorted thinking and it was a great help to me to consider my own role in the family drama that was going on with SD or at very least, the way I was "thinking" my way to distress.

but here are the Ten Patterns of Distorted Thinking:


1) All-Or-Nothing Thinking – You see things in black-and-white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.

2) Overgeneralization – You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.

3) Mental Filter – You pick out a single negative defeat and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that colors the entire beaker of water.

4) Disqualifying the positive – You dismiss positive experiences by insisting they “don’t count” for some reason or other. In this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences.

5) Jumping to conclusions – You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion.

A. Mind reading. You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you, and you don’t bother to check this out.

B. The fortune teller error. You anticipate that things will turn out badly, and you feel convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact.

6) Magnification (Catastrophizing) or Minimization- You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your goof-up or someone else’s achievement), or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow’s imperfections). This is also called the “binocular trick.”

7) Emotional Reasoning – You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: “I feel it, therefore it must be true.

8) Should Statements – You try to motivate yourself with shoulds and shouldn’ts, as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything. “Musts” and “oughts” are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct should statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment.

9)  Labeling and Mislabeling – This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself: “I’m a loser.” When someone else’s behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him: “He’s a goddam louse.” Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded.

10) Personalization – You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event which in fact you were not primarily responsible for.

Just to give an example of how I had distorted thinking and how figuring this out could help me... .  

I was personalizing how disregulated my SD was in her behavior as having to do with me being involved with her father when in reality she has always been accepting of me. Her disregulation was entirely due to her own distorted thinking.

thursday