237 – Heather Clague MD

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[00:00:00] Introduction

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Welcome to another episode of The Art of Living Proactively. Episode 237 with Heather Clague. Psychiatrist and team CBT practitioner. She explains how team cbt enhances traditional cognitive behavioral therapy methods. And she outlines how it incorporates structured empathy. Analyzes resistance to understand the positives of symptoms. And uses a wider variety of techniques. Heather describes how TEAM CBT helps people reframe thoughts to see possibilities. Become more proactive agents in their lives and make positive changes by first understanding the value of current behaviors that they have. And she talks about doing homework to catalyze real transformation. And she explains about techniques like something called a triple paradox for habits and reframing relapse as a practice. So we’re going to get into a lot of things around Team cbt how it differs to conventional cbt And a lot more so That’s all coming up in this episode with Heather Clague Hope you enjoy this week show Remember if you want to watch the video of the show you can see that on youtube The link will be in the show notes Please do subscribe, if you’re watching on youtube please subscribe on youtube. if you’re on a podcast player subscribe there, leave us a review that’d be Really helpful If you have any questions about the show please do If you’re We’re On youtube just leave some uh, questions in the comment section And hope you enjoy this week’s episode

[00:01:43] Tony Winyard: Welcome to another episode of

The Art of Living proactively, and my guest today, Heather Clague md. How are you, Heather?

[00:01:51] Heather Clague MD: I am good. Thank you.

[00:01:52] Tony Winyard: . And we’re in Cal, Northern California today, but not a northern, not a native, Northern Californian.

[00:02:00] Heather: Well, I’ve been here longer than anywhere else, so I’m like a honorary native

[00:02:05] What is TEAM CBT?

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[00:02:05] Tony Winyard: So today we are gonna, we’re gonna dive into something that; we touched upon C B T once before. I’m trying to remember the name of the guest that was talking about C B T, so Heather is, gonna be talking about something called team C B T. So some people probably aren’t even familiar what C B T is, and then one about team C B T.

So do you want to tell us a bit more about C B T maybe first.

[00:02:30] Heather: Yeah. Yeah. And Tony, I should, I guess we should say that we met at this recent team, C B T intensive in Bristol uk. And,, so I can’t wait to hear some of your thoughts about,, about the, the workshop, but T C B T is short for cognitive behavioral therapy. Um, so it’s the idea that. Our feelings are profoundly affected by the things we tell ourselves, our thoughts, and then the way the things that we do, our behaviors, you can think of them all influencing each other, but we don’t really have direct access into feelings.

So if we wanna feel better, we can put our energy into shifting the way that we talk to ourselves and shifting the behaviors that we have. Like an example would be, you know, if I’m afraid of public speaking, for example, I might tell myself, oh, I can’t do this. I’m a loser. Everyone’s gonna think I sound ridiculous.

And then I might avoid opportunities to actually speak in public. And so, for example, Tony, you came up to me after the intensive and said, would you like to be on the podcast? And of course, part of my brain was like, Hmm, you know, a little anxious about that, right? I could have said no, but instead I decided to say yes, in which case I get to have a new experience and find out that maybe it’s not so scary after all.

So when we’re in cognitive behavioral therapy, we’re retraining ourselves kind of the, to shape the thoughts that we have and the behaviors that we have, and it can really powerfully transform how we feel.

[00:03:51] How does it differ from regular CBT?

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[00:03:51] Tony Winyard: And so how does Team C B T differ to just regular C B T?

[00:03:56] Heather: Yeah. So team C B T is really an evolution in the world of C B T, David Burns. Um, I would say scanned the whole landscape of therapies and pulled in so many elements that constitute really good therapy.

[00:04:14] What does the acronym TEAM stand for?

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[00:04:14] Heather: So team is an acronym. Uh, the T stands for testing. So there’s a lot of measurement involved. Um, I have to say I’m a refugee from.

A long-term psychotherapy that really wasn’t very effective. Um, and then when I found Team CBT the idea that, you know, we’re gonna measure our progress, we’re gonna make sure that we’re helping you get in the direction you wanna go, has been super important. So that’s t for testing. E stands for empathy.

And so there’s a really structured way in which, um, Team therapists and really any of us can learn to be much more effective in how we empathize with someone. And again, David Burns has sort of put together what he calls the Five Secrets of Effective Communication, that this really powerful way to be present and connect with someone and help them feel warmly understood.

the A stands for analysis of resistance, and I think this is just in the incredible genius of David Burns, is to really understand, honor and respect our reasons for thinking and behaving the way we do. So before we try to change anything, we wanna understand what’s actually positive and good about our symptoms.

It’s very paradoxical, but when you have this mindset shift, suddenly. It’s much easier to free yourself of unwanted patterns because you understand what those patterns are trying to do, and then that gives you much more flexibility to accomplish those goals in other ways. I’m sure we’ll get into some specifics.

And then the M stands for methods, which are really kind of all the traditional cognitive behavioral methods, plus many more. There’s, you know, 50, a hundred methods. We can always find methods that will work to shift our thoughts and feelings, but when we, we go through the steps, We encounter much less resistance and so it becomes much easier to change and therapy can move much faster.

[00:06:01] What style of therapy did you previously do?

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[00:06:01] Tony Winyard: So you mentioned just now about that your previous experience with therapy wasn’t anywhere near as good. So what were you a therapist for a while before discovering this?

[00:06:13] Heather: I was, yeah, I mean, I’ve always had an interest in therapy and I was doing kind of eclectic, more psychoanalytically informed therapy, which to be fair, I think can be very powerful. But one of the downsides of long-term therapy is if you’ll . You and the patient stop holding each other accountable towards really deeply understanding what the patient’s goals are and actively working towards them.

Um, and so adding that in I think has, for me, has been really transformational. And

seen people make changes in months that in the past, or even weeks in the past might have taken years.

[00:06:46] Homework is an important aspect of TEAM CBT

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[00:06:46] Tony Winyard: Well, and one of the things that I picked up, I mean, I, I dunno much anything about therapy really. I’ve never, I’ve never been in therapy and I’ve certainly never trained to be a therapist. But one of the things that I picked up during the, the week, you know, course that we did, it seems that. The seems, c b t emphasizes that the, the client, the patient or whatever they’re called, has to do homework, which doesn’t seem to be something that so gets done in, in other forms of therapy from what I understood is, is that one of the big differences?

[00:07:19] Heather: Absolutely. So, um, the idea is that therapy is this active process, right? Like, it’s more like learning to play tennis or learning an instrument, right? You’re gonna go to the therapist who’s gonna, I mean, they need to hear your story. They need to understand you. I mean, there needs to be a positive connection there, but that doesn’t have to take.

Years and years, right? You can with a skilled therapist, you know, even within 15 minutes, often people can feel deeply understood, but then what the therapist is gonna do is help you catalyze your own changes and then you have to practice, right? Absolutely. ’cause we’re not, you know, you’re only with a therapist one hour a week, maybe only for a handful of hours, but those handful of hours can train you to do something very powerful that can really shift your life.

[00:08:03] Similar to it’s Stoic roots

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[00:08:03] Tony Winyard: What I found really interesting about that because I know that C B T has its origins in the ancient Greek philosophy of Stoicism. I’ve read a lot about Stoicism. It’s been something that’s fascinated me for many years. And one of the main tenets of Stoicism is not, you don’t just read about Stoicism, you act it.

You actually have to, you know, the famous Stoics like Epictetus and Seneca and so on, are always talking about, this isn’t something you just read, this is something you actively do on. And so that element of team C B T is so much more aligned with Stoicism.

[00:08:40] Heather: Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Exactly. It’s something you live and breathe. I mean, um, Yeah, I mean, I think it’s in, you know, I’m a psychiatrist as well and I, I do prescribe medications, but, um, I think both in some forms of psychotherapy and, and some forms of psychiatry, you know, there’s kind of a passivity that’s encouraged and in a way you think what’s a, a life well lived, right?

It’s a life where you’re the agent, you’re the protagonist, you’re doing things. Right. Your being, you’re manifesting. That’s what we wanna help people do. And the problem is that we can fall into thought patterns and behavior patterns that beat ourselves down and keep us from engaging in that vital way.

[00:09:17] Methods created by Dr David Burns

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[00:09:17] Tony Winyard: Hmm. So you mentioned about, you know, there’s many different methods and I think you said there was over a hundred or so. So are many of those methods used in all forms of C B T? I mean, how many of those have been created by David, which aren’t in other forms of C B T?

[00:09:35] Heather: You know, I, I’m not sure I can answer that ’cause I never did sort of standard C B T I came to C B T through David, but I, my impression is that he’s invented a tremendous number of methods. He’s an incredibly creative guy and he uses a lot of role-playing methods, which you can think of as kind of a behavior like you can do cognitive methods where you start to look at your thoughts and shift your mindset and then you could do a role play method where you actually speak from the perspective of this new mindset.

It’s very powerful.

[00:10:02] Who is Dr David Burns?

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[00:10:02] Tony Winyard: And I guess we should, we, we haven’t, we keep, we’ve referred to David a few times, but there’s probably people thinking, who is this David Guy? They keep talking about

[00:10:11] Heather: Right. So David Burns is himself a psychiatrist, um, who practiced like biomedical psychiatry and actually did research on antidepressants. And he was so underwhelmed by the impact of antidepressants that, um, he got very excited about, uh, cognitive therapy. Um, and he both worked with, um, Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck, and then sort of branched out on his own and has created his own, um, take on cognitive behavioral therapy.

[00:10:37] Tony Winyard: And, and that, um, Ellis and Beck were the actual originators of C B T, weren’t they?

[00:10:43] Heather: I believe so, yeah.

[00:10:45] When did you first get involved with TEAM?

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[00:10:45] Tony Winyard: So when did you first come into team C B T?

[00:10:49] Heather: I ca I think it was 2014. It was a hard time in my life. I had a sort of traumatic divorce, um, and I felt a little frustrated by the therapy I was doing. It hadn’t really helped change things for me. And I went to one of David Burns four day intensives, and I was blown away because he does, as you saw in our intensive, he’ll do live work with someone.

So he has someone come up in front of the group and he goes through a whole therapy session in about two hours, and you can see that someone’s mind state can completely shift in that time.

[00:11:18] Tony Winyard: Yeah.

[00:11:18] Heather: Um, and again, he has this very skillful way of, of empathizing so that people feel really heard and understood. And then he goes through what’s the positive reframe.

So he asks a question and he has you write out your thoughts and feelings at a specific moment in time when you were feeling upset. Um, and then he asks this magic button question and he says, now if you could press a magic button and it would take away all these negative thoughts and feelings, would you press it?

Right? And most people are thinking, like, for example, let’s say, an example of someone who at the conference had gotten up to do an example, a demonstration of something and hadn’t done it very well. It just sort of made a goof in front of 50 people and they’re telling themselves like, oh, I shouldn’t have done that.

[00:12:02] The Magic Button

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[00:12:02] Heather: I’m, everyone’s gonna think I’m such a loser. You know, I’m, I’m a terrible therapist. So, you know, we’d write that down on the daily mood log, which is a, a thought journal. And so then he asked this question so you could, and this person is feeling embarrassed and humiliated and insecure and inadequate and anxious, maybe depressed.

And they say, well, of course they don’t wanna feel this terrible feeling. So of course they’d press that magic button. But then we’d say, well, let’s slow down a second because I’d be hesitant to just wipe them away. ’cause I’m imagining there’s some positive things associated with these thoughts and feelings.

Can we take a look at that? people are pretty like confused, like, well, why? Why does feeling like a loser? How could that possibly be positive? Then you think like, what if you could never feel insecure? You could never feel the slightest bit inadequate? What would that be like? And people start to think, oh, right, what is, what is the fact that you feel insecure after having failed at something?

Show about you? Show about what you care about. People start to say, oh, right. It, it shows that I actually care about my reputation. I care about doing well in front of others, and I wanna wanna impress people. I wanna be able to effectively teach people things. Um, I have high standards, right? These are, these are really important and positive aspects in, in fact, it shows a certain kind of self-love.

It often shows a love and respect for other people, right? If you think about the emotion of, of being embarrassed shows you care about what other people think. That’s actually deeply respectful of other people.

And so rather than seeing our emotions as the enemy, we can see that our emotions are there trying to send us a message.

They’re trying to show us what we care about. They’re trying to guide our behavior, right? That anxiety, that performance anxiety, it might make you prepare more, right? So you have a better chance of, of doing, being more effective next time, right? You might prepare whatever skill you wanted to demonstrate, so the next time you demonstrate it, you’ll, you’ll be more effective. So this shift happens where it’s like, oh, right, I can actually don’t, I can befriend my emotions. And so then, then we’ll ask sort of the pivot question, like if, well, since these thoughts and feelings are so powerful, why would you wanna get rid of them? And is there an alternative? Which instead of trying to just get rid of our negative feelings, maybe we could just dial them down to a manageable amount so that we’re not so flooded and overwhelmed by them, but we can still hear their message, we can still be guided by what they have to tell us. And when someone’s gone through that, then it becomes much easier to use methods to change our thoughts because it’s our thoughts there that are driving our feelings, right? If you tell yourself, well, I’m a loser because I made a mistake in front of a crowd, well, that kind of thought is gonna create quite a bit of negative emotion,

[00:14:47] 10 common cognitive distortions

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[00:14:47] Heather: and we can start to look and say, well, is that thought distorted at all? And David Burns has mapped out 10 common cognitive distortions. Starting with all or nothing thinking, right? So maybe Tony, I can quiz you if you had the thought, I’m a loser because I, you know, made a mistake in front of a crowd. Why would that be an example of all or nothing thinking.

[00:15:09] Tony Winyard: Yeah, because clearly I wouldn’t be, I may have made a mistake once, but there could have been other times where I didn’t make any mistakes.

[00:15:17] Heather: Right, exactly. Right. It’s like suddenly the world is either losers or non losers as though there’s no shades of gray in between. Exactly. And we might be overgeneralizing as just as you said, maybe I made this mistake once, but it doesn’t mean I always make mistakes. Or we might be magnify, we might hone in on that one tiny mistake I made.

Whereas actually maybe there was other content in my presentation that was actually useful. And so once you start to look at the distortions, you can, the, the thought starts to kind of pull apart a little bit and you start to realize maybe there’s a more helpful version of this thought that’s more accurate and actually helpful.

[00:15:51] Tony Winyard: Yeah.

[00:15:52] Heather: Maybe it’s like, you know what? I made a mistake in that talk. I’m not perfect. And sometimes I make mistakes and I bet some people even noticed it, and maybe some people even judged me.

But you know, there were some things I did in that talk that were actually good and there was a lot I could build on and so I can practice more.

So the next time I do this, I’ll learn from those mistakes. And I’m grateful for my embarrassment ’cause it motivates me to work hard and try to do better next time.

[00:16:16] The book, Feeling Great

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[00:16:16] Tony Winyard: I’ve, I’ve been reading the, the book, well, I say the book because he is written a few books, but at the moment I’ve been over the last few days I’ve been reading The Feeling Great Book

[00:16:25] Heather: Mm-hmm.

by

[00:16:26] Tony Winyard: David Burns.

[00:16:27] Heather: Yes. Here it is. Feeling great.

[00:16:29] Tony Winyard: And, and one of the things that we’re that, that I wanted to talk to you about, because I know, I believe it started in a couple of weeks time, you’ve got a Feeling great book club,

[00:16:37] The Feeling Great book club

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[00:16:37] Heather: That’s right. That’s right. So, um, these techniques lend themselves really well to self-help. Some people don’t even need a therapist to kind of learn these techniques and transform their lives. And so in order to facilitate that and help that, my colleague Brandon Matts and I are leading the Feeling Great Book Club.

Over 12 weeks, we’ll go through the book, reading a few chapters per week, and then we, we will give folks a chance to ask questions. We’ll do some demonstrations of some of the methods, and then in breakout rooms people will get a chance to discuss it and practice the exercises

[00:17:07] Tony Winyard: Because one of the things that I thought was quite interesting about the book was, I mean, I’m, I’m listening to the audiobook version at the moment, but I’m, I think I’m gonna buy the, uh, the physical book as well. But as I’ve been going through it so far, and in regularly, he’ll present, um, a situation I.

Then ask you to think about what, how would you react to, you know, he’ll throw out something and he said, right, so write it down before you go on. And he’s doing that constantly throughout the book. And it’s very different to, to many books. It’s really getting you to think and participate as well in in it.

[00:17:40] Heather: Exactly. He, he’s, I mean, he’s David Burns has a wonderful sense of humor, and so he’ll tell you how important it’s to do the exercises in the book. Again, it’s not a passive thing. You can’t just read it or listen and have the transformation. You have to actually do the exercises, and so he says, okay, now before you keep reading, I want you to go back and do the exercise.

And then the next paragraph, he says, now did you do that exercise ? I bet you didn’t now go back and do that exercise. So, exactly. Doing the, doing the exercises in the book are really what make it so incredibly powerful.

[00:18:10] Tony Winyard: And so in that, in that book club, so you mentioned it’s 12 weeks and are there 12 chapters? I, I dunno how many chapters

[00:18:17] Heather: Oh, uh, there’s more than 12 chapters. We, I read like two or three chapters a week.

[00:18:20] Tony Winyard: Right. Okay.

[00:18:21] Heather: Yeah.

[00:18:22] Tony Winyard: It’s like a thorough examination of the book and how it works and,

[00:18:26] Heather: Mm-hmm. Exactly.

[00:18:29] Motivational Interviewing

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[00:18:29] Tony Winyard: ‘ cause funnily enough, I mean, we, so just before we started recording, we were talking about, um, motivational interviewing and we, we’ll come onto that in a minute. But, and there’s, um, connections between motivational and interviewing in Team CBT, but I’ve only done a book club once before, and funny enough, it was on a book called Motivational Interviewing in Nutrition and Fitness.

[00:18:48] Heather: Mm-hmm.

[00:18:49] Tony Winyard: It was about three years ago or something. I was doing a nutrition coach course and one of the recommended books on this course was was that book. And it was so, it had such an effect on me and I thought, I thought, wow, this is a really, really Like and find powerful many of the sort of techniques in that book.

So I got together with a few girls who were on the same course as me and we went through that book page by page over the course of a few months to really understand it and so we could, you know, use it more in, in our coaching. And so it’s quite funny that how . Team C B T or motivational interviewing, I suppose in some ways you could say comes from team C B T and we, I mean, what do you wanna tell us more about that?

[00:19:32] Heather: Well, that’s, so I don’t know a lot about motivational interviewing. Um, I know that David Burns will say that he thinks that he influenced the, the person who developed Motivational Interviewing. Um, I think what they share in common is this, again, deep respect for . What you’re doing now, before we try to change something, we wanna understand the function, the purpose, you know, of what you’re doing now.

It, it honors some value that you have. And if we don’t, if we don’t do that, it’s, you’re gonna resist, right? So we bring that, that resistance to conscious awareness. And once it’s in conscious awareness, it’s interesting, it often melts away. It’s like a, it’s like a deep empathy exercise really to kind of think about, um, how our symptoms are connected to our values.

[00:20:12] Tony Winyard: Well, I know there’s a few health coaches listen to this podcast and many people, many health coaches have read the book, motivational Interviewing in Nutrition and Fitness, and I, I would, yeah, I would urge or would certainly suggest that you check out this book either. Well, there’s two main books from, from David Burns.

They’re feeling good and feeling great. So what is the, the difference between them?

[00:20:37] The book, Feeling Good

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[00:20:37] Heather: Yeah, feeling good was his first book and you know, a huge bestseller and you know, it’s been shown that just having the book delivered on your doorstep is an effective treatment for depression, they did a randomized trial where they mailed the book to some people and it was so powerful, right, that they were able to see a a difference.

Even without actually measuring which fraction of people used it, um, I don’t believe actually having it on your doorstep is what made the difference. I think some people use the book, um, and then feeling great incorporates all the more recent developments, right? Where he’s got this analysis of resistance and, and more thoughtful ways of using empathy.

Um, so yeah, so it’s, so if, if you had to start somewhere, I would, I would recommend folks start with feeling great ’cause it is his more modern synthesis, um, of his approach. Um, and the, you know, he has different, he, he, you know, he has tools that work on like depression and anxiety, um, tools for relationship skills, and then tools for habits or addictions, which would probably fall in the realm of, of what health coaches are working on.

And there are two supplementary chapters that aren’t in the hard copy of the book, but you can get on his website. Um, uh, that are specifically for habits and addictions. And I think we, we learned about this in the last day of the intensive. Um, there’s a method in there that I really love. It’s called the, the Triple Paradox, right?

So we have someone come up with three columns, say, say you have a habit you wanna change, like Tony, is there any habit that you might wanna change health habit or get into bed on time or,

[00:22:08] What habits would Tony like to change?

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[00:22:08] Tony Winyard: There’s, when it comes to health, I have amazing discipline when it comes to business. I’m the opposite, so so if we started to talk about business habits, I could give you loads, but with health, I’m remarkably disciplined.

[00:22:22] Heather: Well, good on you. All right. Well then, uh, is there a business habit you’d like us to, to chat about?

[00:22:27] Tony Winyard: Yeah. I procrastinate too much when there’s so many things I could be doing to move my business forward, and I just don’t do them. Yeah.

[00:22:33] Heather: Oh, fantastic. Great. And was there a moment in time when you were procrastinating recently? I.

[00:22:38] Tony Winyard: Um, yeah, yesterday.

[00:22:40] Heather: yesterday. All right, cool. So, um, so in the first column, do you wanna write this down because I, we actually works much better if we do this in writing,

[00:22:49] Tony Winyard: Yeah.

[00:22:50] Heather: we would say. Um, all right. So, um, what are all the good reasons to procrastinate?

[00:22:58] Tony Winyard: Um, it can be fun just sort of doing other stuff and, yeah.

[00:23:03] Heather: Oh, yeah. What did you get to do when you were procrastinating?

[00:23:07] Tony Winyard: Mostly catching up with some friends on social. ’cause I had a busy weekend, so I was catching up with friends on Facebook. Um, but, but half the time I was just sort of like, doom scrolling. Yeah.

[00:23:20] Heather: Uh huh. Uhhuh. Uhhuh. Is that fun?

[00:23:22] Tony Winyard: It can be.

[00:23:24] Heather: Yeah. You get to, oh, you get to see what that next thing is gonna be.

[00:23:27] Tony Winyard: Yeah.

[00:23:28] Heather: It’s very enticing, isn’t it? Excellent. So you get to do, and, and do you get to just do whatever you feel like doing. You don’t, there’s like the part of your mind that’s telling you, you should, you get to just wave it away and

do what you feel like doing.

[00:23:43] Tony Winyard: was a Sunday, so, oh, well I don’t need to work today. I can just, you know.

[00:23:47] Heather: Okay, I can just relax. Yeah. Excellent. So we’ll do a quick version of this. If we were doing this for real, I probably would go into some more depths. ’cause there’s, you know, procrastinating can be delicious. , sometimes I get actually some of my best stuff done when I’m procrastinating. Um, so that would be the first column and then the second would be reasons why.

So you were procrastinating doing some business stuff, is that right?

[00:24:11] Tony Winyard: Well, there was some business stuff that I, it would’ve been a good idea to do yesterday. Really? Yeah.

[00:24:16] Heather: Yeah. And what kind of business stuff would it?

[00:24:19] Tony Winyard: It was more. Um, so I have a weekly session with my coach on Tuesdays and she, there was all sorts of things we agreed last Tuesday I was gonna do before our next session tomorrow, and I haven’t done any of them. There was a few of those things I really should have been doing yesterday. Yeah.

[00:24:35] Heather: Okay, great. Great. So what are all the reasons why it would be terrible to do those? Those things for your business coach, like why would be really unpleasant?

Why would be unpleasant?

[00:24:46] Tony Winyard: I’m, I’m not good with admin stuff. It’s, I just find it sort of tedious. Um, it’s, uh, yeah, it’s just, just something I don’t find enjoyable.

[00:24:57] Heather: Yeah. Okay. So it’s boring, it’s tedious. You don’t feel good at it.

[00:25:02] Tony Winyard: Hmm

[00:25:02] Heather: Absolutely. So we’ve got, so I’m, you’re starting to make me understand your procrastination a lot better here. Right? You get to do what you want, you get to chill out, relax with friends. That sounds lovely. Versus have to do this thing that’s so boring and tedious and you’re not good at, anyway, so these are the first two columns.

Now the last column will be, what does it show about you? That’s really cool and awesome that you have these reasons for procrastinating and for not doing your s o p.

[00:25:30] Tony Winyard: Well, I guess I enjoy life more. I don’t let

[00:25:34] Heather: Yeah.

[00:25:35] Tony Winyard: business be my… control my life.

[00:25:38] Heather: Yeah. Wonderful. Yeah. It sounds like you really value having some downtime. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. You’re not always like a workaholic. Always working

[00:25:51] Tony Winyard: No, not at all.

[00:25:53] Heather: and, and I heard you talk about catching up with friends. Is are friendship important to you?

[00:25:57] Tony Winyard: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

[00:25:59] Heather: Awesome. Okay, so, well, I guess I’m wondering, with all these good reasons to procrastinate, why would you want help in procrastinating less?

[00:26:10] Tony Winyard: Well, I, I’m, I’m a professional procrastinator, so I, I think I do it pretty well, but it doesn’t bring me much money in, so I, um, I need to procrastinate less and bring some money in.

[00:26:24] Heather: I see, I see. But, but it’s boring to have to do this homework.

[00:26:30] Tony Winyard: Yeah, it may well be, but you, life is not all fun and games.

[00:26:35] Heather: Oh, but you’re not really good at that administrative stuff anyway.

[00:26:40] Tony Winyard: No, I’m not. But you sometimes have to do things you’re not good at.

[00:26:44] Heather: Oh, Tony. Who’s winning right now?

[00:26:47] Tony Winyard: Well, I am

[00:26:49] Heather: Big or small?

[00:26:51] Tony Winyard: Probably big.

[00:26:52] Heather: Yeah, big or huge?

[00:26:54] Tony Winyard: I wouldn’t say it’s huge, but yeah, it is big

[00:26:57] Heather: Uhhuh. yeah, I mean, I, I, it sounds like maybe you might have some good reasons to not procrastinate, but still there’s, you know, this lovely Sunday where you can take a break and relax. Why would you wanna give that up?

[00:27:11] Tony Winyard: and in some ways I don’t want to give it up, but I’ve, I’ve done, it wasn’t, if it was just Sunday, then yeah, why would I want to give that up? But the problem was it wasn’t just Sunday.

[00:27:22] Heather: Hmm.

[00:27:23] Tony Winyard: other days as well.

[00:27:25] Heather: So let’s, we’ll, we’ll take a pause here. What was that like for you, Tony?

[00:27:30] Tony Winyard: Yeah. Well, it, I mean, and obviously I went through some of this a couple of weeks ago in the course. Yeah. But it gets me to, to really think, and it gets me to fight, you know, for why I should be doing these things and, you know, and so on.

[00:27:43] Resistance

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[00:27:43] Heather: Right, exactly. Right. So what I do as, as your coach or your therapist, is I step out of the role of telling you what you should do. Right. And it’s really up to you. I’m gonna, I’m gonna side with your resistance. I’m gonna take, I’m gonna side with. The part of you that doesn’t wanna do this and make sure it feels fully heard.

’cause once, once I can hold that for you. Well then, then you had more space to come forward and say, actually, this isn’t serving me very well. Right. This isn’t how I wanna do it. But that was, you’d leave our, our conversation with your own voice in your head, telling you why you wanted to do this.

[00:28:14] Tony Winyard: Yep. Absolutely.

[00:28:15] Heather: It also, what struck me, and again, we’re doing a really quick version of this, but you know, there was a little more flexibility kind of creeping in, right?

Like actually the moment in time for procrastination might not be Sunday, right? It might’ve been sometime in the week, . And what you might realize is one good reason not to procrastinate is you wanna be able to preserve Sunday and have a day off.

[00:28:34] Tony Winyard: Yeah.

[00:28:35] Heather: But again, if we were doing this together, I’d let you, you’d be the one who would come up with that so that it’s

You’re, you’re really kind of deeply honoring your own wishes. No one is coercing you or forcing you.

[00:28:45] Reframing relapse

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[00:28:45] Tony Winyard: Yeah. So yeah, I mean there’s, there’s so many things about the course that I really enjoyed because it made me think about things very differently. One, one of the things, I mean, and we haven’t touched upon it yet, um, I think it was on the last day and it, it was getting me to reframe what, getting everyone to reframe what a relapse means. And I thought that was just so. I’d never heard anything like that before, but it made so much sense and people wonder, listening, wondering what we’re talking about. So I forget the exact how it was termed. It was, um, there was something before the word relapse, wasn’t it? Or was it Reframing relapse. I forget what it was.

[00:29:25] Heather: Well, it was, it was sort of relapse anticipation,

[00:29:27] Tony Winyard: right, okay.

[00:29:28] Heather: right? Anticipating that we’re gonna relapse.

[00:29:31] Tony Winyard: So could you explain that?

[00:29:33] Heather: Yeah. Yeah. So these techniques are super powerful, right? Within a couple of hours. Often, you know, someone can have a transformative experience where they’re no longer believing that they’re a loser or that, you know, things are hopeless.

Um, but we know that old thought patterns are gonna come back, right? So we, we expect that, we anticipate that, and we help someone prepare for that. So that we, we, they, and again, we wanna . Record them in a sense, talking back to their negative thoughts. Right? Um, be able to convincingly defeat the idea that they’re, you know, things are hopeless or they’re a loser.

And then we have them imagine a moment in time when they believe that thought again. Right? They might be telling themselves, this didn’t work or this wasn’t real. Right? And so then we have them anticipate that too by talking, talking to that thought. You say, no, this is real. Like, I, I really feel differently.

Like I’m, I am not believing that I’m a loser right now, and I can see possibilities. And so they can, in a very kind and encouraging way, talk to their future self, right? When, when you fall back into the hole. So we just acknowledge that, you know, negative thoughts come and go. It’s not that that’s a problem.

We don’t have to get stuck there. We don’t have to get hooked on them and caught on ’em. We can learn to recognize them and so, You know, one of the distortions is the should statement, right? You should be better than you are. You know, you, you, you know, you, you should never make mistakes. You should always be happy.

And I’m trained enough now I can hear that sh of the should statement as it comes. Right. And I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m ready for it. I know it’s the, oh yeah. Right. That’s just my mind trying to encourage me in its own way. There’s something I care about here, there’s something important, and I can take a look at that content and not get caught up in, in punishing myself for beating myself up, but instead listen to what I deeply care about and then take wise action in that direction.

I.

[00:31:15] Tony Winyard: What I thought was so powerful about it, because relapse to me and I guess to many people is such a negative concept. That’s a negative word, and it completely turned it on its head, and it doesn’t necessarily need to be so negative, and I’d never thought about it in that way before. Yeah.

[00:31:32] Heather: Yeah. I love, right, exactly. If you think about, relapse is just a chance to practice, right? We’re building skills here. We’re building mental and emotional and heart muscles, right? So yeah, we almost want to relapse as often as you can, right? Because each time you do that, then you’re retraining yourself.

[00:31:47] The concept is similar to doing meditation well

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[00:31:47] Tony Winyard: And, and the thing that immediate, well, almost immediately came to my mind when, when they started explaining more about what it was and how it can work and you know exactly some of the things you just said. And one of the first things that came to my head was meditation.

[00:32:01] Heather: Mm-hmm.

[00:32:02] Tony Winyard: because I. Talk with so many people who tell me, oh, I can’t meditate.

I’m just, doesn’t work for me. My mind keeps wandering and they don’t realize, well, that is what meditation is all about. The more you realize your mind is wandering, that means it’s working because, you know, and it just, yeah. So it just, it really synced up with, with meditation for me, that whole concept.

[00:32:25] Heather: Absolutely. I mean, I think it’s that idea exactly that, that we expect our minds to do this, and it’s, that’s the transformation is expecting your mind to do that. Understanding compassionately why our minds do that is the mindset shift. A hundred percent. And then these are some te techniques that I, I mean, I, I think meditation is, Fabulous.

I highly recommend meditating. I think sometimes if folks are struggling with depression or anxiety, they might need something more than meditation, and it’s possible to get kind of stuck in some hard places. And this can give some support. Um, That I think it’s, you know, still a little different than meditating and the actual act of writing down your thoughts is already a very powerful way of, of getting less fused or kind of, you know, stuck on them.

Right? Suddenly your thought is you realize that you actually have agency around the thoughts that you endorse. Thoughts will just fly through your mind. But without training, we tend to just believe them and live in them as if they’re real. But when you write them down and you can notice, hey, this thought is distorted, right?

I, I actually can choose which kind of thoughts I wanna build up in my mind. Um, that can be very powerful, especially for feeling depressed or anxious or stuck.

[00:33:33] The 5 secrets of empathy

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[00:33:33] Tony Winyard: One of the things that we went over in a course, and I, I think it, I can’t remember if it was day one or day two, um, it was the, the five secrets. Can, can you remind me what, what yourself, because I, I remember it was powerful at the time, but now I can’t remember much about it.

[00:33:46] Heather: Yeah, so this is, this is David Burns’s, um, approach to empathy and, um, you know, I love David Burns dearly, and, uh, I think he has such a special and unique mind, and I think he’s so much brilliant than most of us. He can be a little impatient, so I don’t think he’s naturally empathic. Um, and so then, but he realized the value of empathy and so he put his just incredible mind to realize what’s happening when someone’s being empathic.

He had a student, uh, Sterling Morrie, who’s a now very, very well known C B T therapist in England who was working then as a student, and he saw Sterling Morrie making these incredible connections with students. So he had an example, and so he analyzed it and realized what are the specific things that Sterling is doing to form this connection?

And he distilled it into the five secrets. So should I go through those in detail? Would that be helpful?

[00:34:36] Tony Winyard: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

[00:34:37] Heather: Yeah, so the first, and this is the one that’s really requires what David says, is sort of the death of the ego, is that we have to find truth in what the other person is saying. So, so many times if someone comes at us and they’re angry or upset, They criticize us.

What do we wanna do? We wanna defend ourselves, but in a way that just proves that whatever they’re saying is true. Right? Someone says, you’re not listening to me, and you say, no, no, no, I am listening to you . It’s like, well, you’re demonstrating that you’re not listening. Right? Whereas if you might think I’m, I really think I’ve been listening, but if you slow down, think, you know, there’s something you’re saying that I haven’t been hearing.

Right then you’re demonstrating, I am really working to, to listen more deeply into what you’re saying. So that first secret is in some ways, probably the most important one is that we, we, we lower our defenses and we really try to see the world from the other person’s point of view and understand what they deeply try to communicate to us.

[00:35:30] Tony Winyard: Hmm.

[00:35:30] Heather: Then there’s four more secrets. One is empathy, which can be divided into thought empathy, where we just use their words and say their words back to them just to show that we’re listening and then we get what they’re saying. It differs from disarming ’cause we don’t have to agree with everything they’ve said.

But you can say, you know, what you’re telling me is you know that, you know you’ve been calling me several times and I haven’t returned your call and. Then I can imagine you’re feeling. Feeling empathy would be the next part of that. I can imagine you’re feeling frustrated and probably pretty angry at me.

So when we respectfully try to take a guess at what they’re feeling, I think people often feel very humanized. And if you think what goes wrong in most conversations is there’s no acknowledgement of each other’s humanity and each other’s feelings. So adding in, respectfully naming, feeling words can really do a lot to to, to soothe the conversation. Then the next secret would be inquiry, because we don’t actually know what someone is thinking and feeling. We can just take our best guess. So then we’d wanna check it out, say, am I reading you right? Can you tell me more about how you’re thinking and how you’re feeling? I really wanna understand, so we use inquiry to draw them out, and then there’s two more secrets that really can add human warmth.

One is an I feel statement where we share our feelings in a kind and respectful way. Right. Like, you know, I, I feel sad that I feel terrible that I haven’t called you back in a timely way. Right. And you’re real. And then the last would be stroking or validation. You’re really important to me. Um, you know, our relationship matters to me and I, I really respect that.

You’ve been so persistent in trying to reach me even when I haven’t called you back.

So these are sort of like notes on a scale. Um, it’s not like there’s some formula, but when we use these different techniques, it can just do so much towards bringing a conversation out of this conflict of, you know, people arguing over the content.

And in to we’re two human beings trying to understand each other. Um, what’s, what’s tricky is that this is very hard to do. If you’re criticizing yourself or you’re feeling defensive, , so often when we most need these skills, they’re, they’re not available to us because we get triggered or reactive. So, um, before teaching the Five Secrets, David Burns will do a lot to notice our tendency to blame the other person and our tendency to want the other person to change.

We want them to be the ones to understand when we can let that go. We could realize actually I’m the one who needs to understand me . If I can have, have my own back, if I understand why I didn’t call this person back, right, I’m not feeling guilty about that because I had a good reason, then that’s what lets me be really much more open and present to the other person’s experience.

[00:38:08] Advice for those stuck in reactive patterns

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[00:38:08] Tony Winyard: What, what advice would you give to someone who they may be stuck in reactive patterns and you know, that wants to turn their life around?

[00:38:17] Heather: Yeah, well, I’d probably start with the book Feeling Great. ’cause that book is, is really centered around looking at depression and anxiety and what are these stories that we tell ourselves, these thoughts we tell ourselves that kind of keep us in ruts, right? They tend to be kind of grim and limiting.

And again, by going through the, the, the exercise of measuring our feelings. Giving ourselves empathy by really writing down in detail what we’re thinking and feeling. And then using this magic button and the positive reframe to honor what’s important and valuable about our feelings, then that can open up and let us shift so that we can talk to ourselves in different ways.

We can gauge in new behaviors, and so that we have our own back. Right? We are, we really feel like we’re on our own, our own side, and our own team.

[00:39:00] Tony Winyard: Hmm.

[00:39:01] Heather: And then from there, that’s usually the place that I would start. And then from there we can look at habits, right? If we wanted to change habits. Again, it’s much easier if you’re coming to yourself in a kind and encouraging way than if you’re resorting to sort of punishing to self-talk.

And then especially, and then in terms of relationships, right? If we are, if we, again, if we have our own back, if we’re treating ourselves with kindness, it’s much easier to interact with others with kindness and to perceive them non defensively, and help diffuse other people.

[00:39:27] Proactivity and conscious choice making

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[00:39:27] Tony Winyard: Yeah. So how, I mean this obviously the title of the show is about the art of living practically so, so how, thinking about pro proactivity and sort of conscious choice making, How can that improve someone’s life and, and relationships like you just touched upon

[00:39:45] Heather: I think, you know, another big piece of this is that we never try to force anything on anyone, right? We offer an invitation, right? It’s like we don’t, we don’t give people advice just willy-nilly. It’s like, is there something here you’d like help with? So the first thing is I’d like to find out what someone specifically would want help with. And then that would guide me from there. If someone’s coming at this from a perspective of self-help and they wanna help themselves, then again, I think unless you don’t have any depression or anxiety, I’d probably recommend starting with feeling great and working through those exercises. And again, we have the book club that starts on September 13th.

So anyone who’d like to join us is very welcome. We have a very generous sliding scale and um, I think that would be a really great way to do a deep dive.

[00:40:27] Tony Winyard: Um, ’cause there’s, there’s one early in the morning US time and there’s one sort of later in the day as well, isn’t there?

[00:40:33] Heather: That’s right. There’s one at 8:30 AM Pacific Time, which would be I think 4:30 PM UK time.

[00:40:39] Tony Winyard: uk. Yeah.

[00:40:40] Heather: Yeah. Yeah. And we’ve got folks coming from all over the world, uh, joining us.

[00:40:44] Tony Winyard: And that’s what, 90 minutes?

[00:40:46] Heather: Yeah. It’s uh, 80 minutes,

[00:40:47] Tony Winyard: 80 minutes. And that’s for 12 weeks.

[00:40:50] Heather: 12 weeks, exactly.

[00:40:51] Tony Winyard: And then what time is the later one?

[00:40:54] Heather: The later one is at 5:00 PM US time, so that would be

[00:40:58] Tony Winyard: Oh, that’d be

[00:40:59] Heather: probably eight.

[00:40:59] Tony Winyard: for people in the

[00:41:00] Heather: Yeah. I don’t think that would work

[00:41:01] Tony Winyard: have listeners all over the world, so

[00:41:03] Heather: yeah, yeah,

[00:41:04] Tony Winyard: who that would be more appropriate for so

[00:41:06] Heather: yeah. Exactly. Yeah. We, we aimed it so that we could reach folks from all over the world.

[00:41:09] Tony Winyard: that Pacific time, it’s

[00:41:11] Heather: Yeah. Pacific. Yeah.

[00:41:12] Tony Winyard: Okay. And so if people want to find out more about the book club, where would they go?

[00:41:17] Heather: Well, you could just Google Feeling Great Book Club and I think we’ll be one of the top hits. Um, otherwise we’re, Brandon and I are both part of the Feeling Great Therapy Center. So if you go to FeelingGreatTherapyCenter.com/book-club, that will take you to the book Club page.

[00:41:33] Tony Winyard: And anyone who does want to join in on that, would they, would you recommend they have a copy of the book?

[00:41:40] Heather: Yeah, you’ll need a copy of the book. Either a, a Kindle version or a a paper version. Yeah. ’cause you’ll have to, you know, we, we will want folks to read the chapters so that they can be active in participating and doing the exercises.

[00:41:52] How to get more info on TEAM CBT

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[00:41:52] Tony Winyard: And so I guess anyone who’s listening and thinking, wow, this team C B T sounds pretty good and they want to know more, I guess again, the book is, is the best step or, or would there be other steps as well?

[00:42:02] Heather: Well, there, there’s a, David Burns has a wonderful podcast called The Feeling Good Podcast, um, which is just a wealth of resources. He’s got over 300. Um, episodes now, and he does a lot of live personal work on the podcast. So if you want to tune into the podcast and search for one of the live work episodes, you can see an example of David Burns going through this method with someone.

They’re quite powerful.

[00:42:25] Tony Winyard: And, and so staying with books is there, can you think of a book that’s really moved you for any reason?

[00:42:33] Heather’s Favourite book

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[00:42:33] Heather: Yeah. Um, well this would be outside of the CBT world I guess, but I’m recently reading the Gilead series by Marilyn Robinson. Um, it takes place in a small town in Iowa and the, the first one just called Gilead is the main character, is a, um, I. Um, he’s a reverend and he’s at the end of his life. And you know what I love about this book is it’s very, it’s spiritual in a way that very much aligns, I think with, with team C B T, which is this kind of valuing of our humanity apart from our achievements.

I mean, and we, like, it’s fun to achieve, we love achieving, but there’s something about each unique person that is so precious. And so this, you see this pastor struggling, kind of just being a human being and seeing how he has this gaze towards all the people in his life that is very tender and compassionate and you, you get a sense of people’s flaws and struggles and at the same time the beauty of what it is to be human and what it is to have a, a very short, precious human life.

Um, What’s cool about the series is she’s written one novel from a different perspective, uh, different characters in the story. So it’s like each novel tells the story from the perspective of someone else. So you get a window into all these different worlds. Very poignant

[00:43:49] The film Rashomon

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[00:43:49] Tony Winyard: Oh, okay. That sounds, well, it’s probably not the same, but you just reminded me when you described that of there was a Japanese film in the fifties called R Rush Han

[00:43:59] Heather: Rashomon. Yeah.

[00:44:00] Tony Winyard: Yeah, that was it. Yeah.

[00:44:01] Heather: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That, that, that’s a wonderful, right? ’cause everyone, it’s about a murder and everyone who tells the story ends up describing how they committed the murder

[00:44:09] Tony Winyard: Yeah.

[00:44:10] Heather: So, yeah, I love, I love this idea. I mean, again, I think it so fits with C B T that, you know, we collapsed down. We think there’s only one perspective, but actually you realize the world is so rich, right?

There’s so many ways of viewing something right? We can pick the way of looking at things that serves us, that empowers us, that allows us to experience the world and all this beauty.

[00:44:28] Tony Winyard: Yeah. What, for anyone who didn’t pick, uh, catch the title of that book, just look in the show notes there and there’ll be links to, to that book in a series. And, and I’ll put a link to, to Rashomon as well.

[00:44:38] Heather: And then.

I guess I would also just love to plug one of other David David’s books called Feeling Good Together because that’s his book where he explains about the five secrets and, and all the tools for using those. And, uh, my colleague Brandon Vance and I also have book clubs, um, for, to go through that book as well, um, which can really just be so powerful in terms of transforming relationships.

[00:44:59] Tony Winyard: I noticed actually on Amazon there was, as well as the, the book feeling great. There was a feeling great. I think it was like a workbook would, which, for the book club, would it be more useful to have the workbook or the actual book?

[00:45:11] Heather: So this book is specifically for feeling great. There is a feeling good workbook, but that doesn’t incorporate all of the latest, um, tools and the positive reframing. So for this book club, it would be feeling great.

[00:45:23] Heather’s favourite quote

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[00:45:23] Tony Winyard: Okay. Well, well finally, Heather, is there a quote that, resonates with you for any reason?

[00:45:29] Heather: Yeah. It’s a quote by Mr. Rogers. Uh, in a way you’ve already won in this world because you are the only one that can be you. I, I think so often we’re beating ourselves up, telling us we should be someone different than who we are. And what is so radially glorious is our, our uniqueness, our Eunice, right?

That, that we’re manifesting that sort of best self in the world. Um, and yeah, it’s quite magical to have someone see that in us and then for us to see that in ourselves.

[00:46:01] Tony Winyard: Hmm. Well, well finally, Heather, I mean, it’s been amazing to, you know, to get to know more about Team CTB , I mean, it’s certainly a journey I’m gonna be going on over the next year or two, I think. But if you could leave listeners with, We, we sort of touched upon being proactive before and, and how team, team C B T can play in that.

What, how, what, thinking around that sort of theme, what advice or how, what would you, what thoughts would you leave listeners with when it comes to being proactive?

[00:46:32] Heather: Well, you know, I, I guess being reactive, I’m gonna positively reframe being reactive. what’s great about being

Reactive is you don’t have to pay attention, right? You know that you’ll get slapped if, if something needs your attention is going wrong. So it is really useful to be able to be reactive and I’m glad that my body and my mind are able to react, you know, if I get sick, right, my immune system comes in and helps me.

So, so I wanna first just validate being reactive

[00:47:02] Tony Winyard: Okay.

[00:47:03] Heather: and at the same time how sad if we’re never paying enough attention to kind of invest in our health and our wellbeing and in our lives so that we are present, we are paying attention, we are seeing all the possibilities that are there. Um, Being proactive I think is really kind of one of the most loving things we can do, right?

’cause it says we’re paying attention to our wellbeing. We’re investing in it. It’s like putting compost in the soil. Um, I think it really creates so much possibility.

[00:47:33] Tony Winyard: Heather, it’s been a pleasure. Thank you.

[00:47:37] Heather: Thank you. Likewise. So much fun to talk to you./

[00:47:41] Next week-episode 238 with Dr Catherine Steele

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[00:47:41] Tony Winyard: Next week is episode 238 with Dr. Catherine Steele. And we discuss her background in psychology and occupational health and her current work in coaching academic research and writing and she provides an overview of health coaching as facilitating behavior change and supporting clients in enacting sustainable habits. And she emphasizes about empowering individuals to take charge of their health. Regardless of workplace wellness programs and. She advocates for a more proactive root cause approach to lifestyle medicine. And she also stresses modeling healthy living for children through education and overall conveying the importance of self-awareness, motivation, community support, and education, in making incremental changes for long-term health. so That’s next Week with Catherine Steele episode 238. If you’ve enjoyed this week’s show why not leave us a review and it will be really helpful in more people finding out about the show. Please do subscribe so you get the episodes every week and remember All episodes now are on youtube so if you are listening to this on a podcast player you can also watch the episodes on youtube and for those of you on youtube, Hit the subscribe button, that’d be great. Hope you have a great week.

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