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Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Skills: Counselor Toolbox Podcast with Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes
Hi everybody and welcome to today’s presentation on cognitive behavioral therapy skills. Like the other presentation we did on assert not assertive community treatment acceptance and commitment therapy, this is also based on just providing information about skills that can be used not providing a an evidence-based practice obviously we couldn’t cover that in a full hour or in just an hour so over the next hour we’re going to define cognitive behavioral therapy and its basic principles a lot of us are familiar with this but it’s going to be a good review and it also may highlight some nuances that you didn’t know about will identify factors impacting people’s choice of behaviors explore causes and impact of thinking errors and identify common thinking errors and their relationships to cognitive distortions so why do we care well as therapists we want to help people figure out the best way to live a happy healthy meaningful goals driven life for some people that’s going to mean using some cognitive behavioral interventions that can be in addition to mindfulness that can be in addition to a lot of other things but it’s important to help people understand that the way we believe things to be the way we interpret things is going to affect our reactions so for example think about a situation you know you’ve walked into and maybe you walked into it with a small child and it was a different situation it was a new situation but you know it was no big deal you walked in it was not a threatening situation to you because you were like hey I got this the little kid walks in and goes oh wow there are a lot of people walking around here this is really scary same situation two different perceptions you probably didn’t have much of a stress reaction going on whereas the little child probably had this fight-or-flight thing going on grabbing on to your hand like please don’t let go Atlanta Airport be a perfect example if you’ve ever taken a little kid through Atlanta Airport it gives you an idea about how people can perceive things differently and when you enact that fight-or-flight reaction you’re going to have all those stress hormones you’re going to have all the either anxiety or anger or whatever that goes with it it may serve to exhaust the person and leave them to feel hopeless and helpless so what we want to do is help people see that but we also want to help them see that when they’re depressed when they’re tired when they’re sick things are going to seem a lot worse a lot of times because they don’t have the energy to perceive it differently I mean when you’re sick it’s overwhelming to think of going through Atlanta Airport so this is what we really want to help people start understanding is it’s two sides of the same coin they interact if one is you know kind of going wonky is going to affect the other one the good thing is if one’s going really good the other one’s going to go really good if you’re having really positive thoughts you’re probably going to feel pretty good there’s an activity and I think we’re going to talk about it later it’s called the coin flip activity and I asked client clients to flip a coin in the morning and in the morning if it turns on heads then they have to be the most positive Pollyanna all day long look for the silver lining and everything smile walk with their head up hold those nonverbals up and see how they feel at the end of the day besides a little sore because there’s muscles they’re using they haven’t used in a while if it lands on tails they can just be their normal selves which generally if they’re seeing me means that they are depressed anxious stressed out angry something in the negative realm then we talk about how did things seem different on the days when you were feeling better when you were walking taller when you were smiling even our nonverbals it doesn’t even have to be sickness it can be our nonverbals that can make us feel or make our body feel heavy tired and make it seem like it’s a whole lot harder to deal with life a person who perceives the world generally good and believes they have the ability to deal with challenges as they arise that good old self-efficacy will be able to allow their stress response system to function normally so if they’re like you know what I can deal with whatever life throws at me I’ve got it and maybe I need help with it maybe I’ll need to ask for support but I’ve got it it’s not going to completely overwhelm me people who see the world as hostile unsafe and unpredictable you know for a variety of reasons whatever happened to make their scheme as such that they don’t believe that people or the world is trustworthy are predictable they are always on guard they’re always kind of like a hamster in a cage have you ever had a hamster hamsters don’t recognize you and go hey that’s my own or human contact score hamsters go run under their little house and you just kind of open the cage and stick your hand in there and flip over their house and you’re like come here and give me cuddles and you’re like you know 200 times bigger than they are so the little hamster is like freaking out this is what it’s like for people and obviously I’m exaggerating but this is what it’s like for people who have a negative perspective a negative view or a hostile view of the world so kind of keep that little hamster in your mind cognitive behavioral therapy we have core beliefs those things that are in our heart when I talk with my clients about honesty step one and that’s what they’ve got to do to start recovery is get honest with themselves first and then other people we talk about head heart and gut honesty do you think it’s right does it seem like the right thing to do does it feel right in your heart you know does it make you happy it doesn’t make you feel good and then the spidey senses is your gut saying and or is your gut fine if one of those is saying this might not be the right choice and we need to think about what’s going on so you have those core beliefs and I put them in the heart just because that’s the middle of the head heart and gut but you have core beliefs about yourself whether you’re good with you’re bad whether you’re effective at certain things yada yada you have core beliefs about other people same thing good bad effective predictable and you have core beliefs about the future and a lot of that goes with locus of control but also your past experiences if the world in the past is seemed unfriendly and uncontrollable and you’ve perceived it that way then you’re going to expect the future to be uncontrollable so what we want to do is help people look at their schemas and their core beliefs about themselves others in the future and figure out kind of what they want it to look like these schemas are going to affect your behavior and your thoughts and your feelings and you know you can pick wherever you want to start it doesn’t matter because all three inter interface with one another so if you haven’t let’s start with negative thoughts if you have negative thoughts then you might feel anxious angry stressed dysphoric which will affect your behavior you’re going to do different things than if you have positive thoughts about something you feel excited and energized you’re going to have different behavior the best thing example I can give you is if you’ve ever done public speaking or had to present something some people really detest public speaking it’s just terrifying for them to get up in front of a group of people so their thoughts are I’m going to trip up I’m going to forget what I’m going to say I’m going to make a fool of myself I’m going to you know it can go on forever that when you get on a roll you can get on a negative roll and go on forever or positive hopefully get on that roll with those thoughts you start holding onto those thoughts remember like we talked about in a CT the other day when you hold those thoughts and you kind of mush them around in your mind and you come to believe them that you’re going to make a fool of yourself and it’s going to be awful you’re going to start feeling terrified likely which is going to likely affect your behavior if you go out on the stage and you’re terrified you’re going to probably stutter you’re probably going to get foggy headed you’re going to have that fight-or-flight reaction so there’s an adrenaline rush and you start sweating and you can’t focus and you can’t concentrate you really want to away as opposed to somebody like me who loves public speaking and I’m just like cool I get to go out there and try to engage however many people are in the audience it’s a game for me because when I can actually see your faces I really enjoy trying to figure out and make eye contact with people and figure out what it is that they’re there for what is it that’s going to make them tick what resonates with them so my behavior as you can kind of see right now when I go out there I’m excited and I want to engage people and it’s a fun experience for me again just like the airport the same experience for two different people and two very different interpretations and reactions to it so what effects and I don’t like the term rational but when we’re talking about CBT irrational comes up a lot I like to replace it with helpful because every behavior in its own weird sort of way is or probably was rational at one time that being said we’re going to get back to that stress affects our behavioral choices if we’re under stress we can have negative emotions negative emotions will affect our thoughts if we’re feeling sad we’re probably going to look at the dark side if we feel sad we’re going to look at the bottom falling out if we’re happy we’re probably going to look for that silver lining physical factors if you’re in pain sick sleep-deprived poorly nourished so your body can’t produce the neurotransmitters it needs to or heaven forbid intoxicated you’re probably not going to make the same decisions as you would if you were comfortable healthy well rested nourished and not intoxicated any of those things can go to really impact how you perceive a situation or how you react in a situation especially the intoxication whereas in your non intoxicated State in your sober state you may think that you want to do something but then you’ve got that filter that goes really not not a good idea in an intoxicated State or even in a manic state if you’re you know if you have somebody with bipolar that filter kind of goes away so the behaviors that someone may normally not do because they have a rational filter that goes you know punching this guy outs probably not the best idea right now the filter goes away when you’re sleep-deprived you’re less generally people are less patient generally people don’t have as much of a filter think about watch your children if you have children or your grandchildren or even yourself I know myself when I’m sleepy I am giddy as all get-out and things I wouldn’t normally say because they’re you know stupid I’ll just come out and say anyway and my kids just roll their eyes or like mom you’re overtired could go to bed uh but that’s okay you know I’m okay with that in that situation now if I acted that way at work it would be a worse thing environmentally if you’re introduced to a new or unique situation and you perceive it as stressful because the unknown we know can be stressful then you may not make as rational of a choice or as helpful of a choice because you may be trying to escape same thing as exposure to UNPROFOR bellowing for a word here but UNPROFOR ball is the best I could come up with we all prefer certain situations some people like I said would rather do just about anything then get up in front of a lecture hall of a hundred and fifty people and talk but if they have to do it then they’re going to be under stress which may affect how they do things so we want people to understand that their perception and their feelings is affected by a lot of other things not just you know an emotion here or a particular memory there’s a lot that goes into it and social if peers your family convey irrational thoughts as necess very standards for social acceptance people may tend to cling more to it to those unhelpful thoughts and unhelpful behaviors you know in CBT they say irrational because quote nobody wants to associate with those people you know who are those people and why can’t we associate with them there are a lot of things if you think back think high school you know high school is pretty rough if we’re going to talk about having irrational thoughts and cognitions if you have to be part of this particular group in order to be accepted you have to do this you have to do that but do you do you really so those kinds of all-or-nothing statements are cognitive distortions and while they may have served a purpose in some way shape or form in the past we need to encourage our clients to take a look at them now and go are they still helpful ways of thinking is it still helpful for me to think that I am only successful if I live in a million-dollar house in a gated community and do this that and the other or can I be can i define success a different way or do i define success a different way and lack of supportive peers to buffer stress so we had those peers that caused stress by talking about the half dues and categorizing and lots of attributions but then there’s also having not having somebody to go you know does this make any sense because sometimes we are our own worst enemies and if we go to a friend and we go you know this is what I’m thinking and I think I have to do this in order to be acceptable in order to be loved or or you know whatever the case may be most people are not going to use those exact phrases a good friend is probably going to listen and go yeah you’re right or no no that’s way off so supportive peers are essential to reminding us to consciously regularly check in with our cognitions to make sure that they are hopeful and rational so a note about irrationality and this is mine this is not from CBT the origins of most beliefs for rational and helpful given the information the person had at the time and their cognitive development their ability to process that information so concepts and schemas and core beliefs that people formed when they were five are probably going to be very egocentric you know the person is going to feel like everybody sees it my way because this is how I see it you know just like a five-year-old does a five-year-old doesn’t think well you know let me take Johnny’s perspective no he assumes that Johnny sees it the same way so it’s going to be egocentric it’s probably going to be focused on only one aspect of the situation because small children can’t focus on multiple aspects and it’s probably going to be dichotomous it’s all-or-nothing mommy loves me mommy hates me and it could be personalized you know everything a lot of kids think that everything has to do with them so if something happens something bad happens many times children will take it personally or be afraid it’s going to happen to them again you know if hurricane katrina hurricane andrew those sorts of things you know we saw a lot of trauma in children and they developed very real fears about thunderstorms and about hurricane season and if you’ve watched florida hasn’t had a notable hurricane in years now but there’s a lot of stuff that goes into that but people who were really young during some of those really bad hurricane seasons perceive those situations differently okay so we need to help people understand that if we especially if we use the term irrational those thoughts you formed when you are knee-high to a grasshopper and they made perfect sense to you back then but now that you’re an adult you’ve got more experiences and you’re able to take different perspectives your brain is more developed let’s take a look at it and see if you can look at different perspectives and come up with something that’s a little more helpful maybe a different way of perceiving this situation the irrational irrationality or unhelpful nosov Fox comes when those beliefs are perpetuated without examination so something a belief that you formed when you’re five you’re still holding when you’re 35 and you’ve never questioned it you’ve never gone you know does this make sense is this helpful to getting me toward where I want to be most of us don’t you know we form these attitudes and beliefs when we’re you know growing up when we’re in elementary school middle school high school from watching TV from being around our peers from being around our family in our community and we get all this input of the way things should be and a lot of times people don’t stop to question and go and go well does this really make me happy is this really what I want and they can be irrational if they continue to be held despite causing harm to the person so the person continues to hold this belief even though it is causing them a generally emotional cognitive harm is making them miserable we need to look at why what’s motivating them to hold on to that belief why is that belief so important and how can we make it so they can live a happy values-driven life emphasis on the happy how can we make it less harmful sometimes it’s more productive for clients to think of these thoughts as unhelpful or helpful instead of irrational sometimes when I say irrational to clients and you know I’m the same way if somebody says you’re being irrational I’m like oh I’m not it elicits this instantaneous defensive reaction it’s like when you tell them they’re being resistant they’re like I am NOT rien resistant so helpful or unhelpful and then we talk about why it is unhelpful towards getting them toward their goals basic principles of cognitive behavioral therapy we teach or help clients learn to distinguish between thoughts and feelings I can think something is scary I’ll probably feel it but if I have an automatic you know feeling I walk into Atlanta Airport and I see yeah I went to an airport in New York I can’t even remember which one it was because my plane was diverted and I got off and I walked out there and I have never seen so many people packed in his place like sardines before in my life I was just completely overwhelmed that was kind of an automatic feeling now that was a feeling based on you know who knows it was overwhelming to be surrounded by that many people so then I had to separate the thoughts and go okay what am I thinking that’s making me feel so overwhelmed and at that point you know I didn’t know how to get to my gate and all that other sort of stuff with traveling I don’t travel well but encouraging clients to stop and go okay why am I feeling this way what are my what thoughts do am i having that are contributing to these dysphoric feelings CBT helps people become aware of the ways in which thoughts can influence feelings in ways that are sometimes not helpful we have hecklers in our gallery the automatic tapes that we play thing memories that we have whatever you want to call them that when you try something when you are just going through daily life you hear these voices in the back of your head and obviously not real voices but that are saying you’re never going to make this or if you would have just blah blah blah then you’d be a better person helping clients become aware of those thoughts and how they’re negatively influencing their feelings and keeping them kind of stuck is a huge part of CBT we help them learn about thoughts that seem to occur automatically without even realizing how they may affect emotions again those thoughts from the they’re saying you’re not good enough you’re not smart enough and nobody’s gonna like you where did that come from and do you believe it you know maybe it came from somebody when you were in high school so was that a valid was that a valid source maybe it came from somebody yesterday on Facebook was that a valid source taking in those thoughts and then figuring out is this something I’m going to hold because it makes me happy or is this something that I’ve got to deal with because I’m having a negative reaction constructively evaluate whether these automatic thoughts and assumptions are accurate or perhaps biased the other thing to remember is a lot of our clients not all of them but a lot of them hold themselves to a standard there’s like up here and they hold everybody else to a standard that’s down here so they are a failure if they don’t achieve this but everybody else is successful as long as they achieve this so encouraging them to take a look at how accurate and biased or unbiased are the thoughts and like I said they may be their own thoughts they may be telling themselves these things evaluate whether the current reactions are helpful and a good use of energy or unhelpful and a waste of energy that could be used to move toward those people and things important not impotent important to the person road-rage you’re in the car you’re driving somebody cuts you off okay natural reaction fight or flight reaction you’re just like slam on the brakes do whatever you got to do aversive maneuvers you’re good so you could let it go at that point ago got lucky on that one and keep driving most people not all but most they found that 80% of drivers have reported at incidences of road rage which is a really high number but most people will start getting all fired up and irritated and grumpy and we and just rageful and so my question would be I hear that and I hear that it made you angry in retrospect did screaming at the person as you pass them at sixty miles an hour in your car with the windows rolled up really do any good did it do any good at all what else could you have done with that energy if you wouldn’t have expended it all yesterday we had to wait for the vet to come by and my daughter just completely wore herself out worrying about when when the vet was going to get there what he was going to say about her donkeys and was beside herself so by the time it got to evening and it was time for her to go to her martial arts class she didn’t have the energy to go she’s like um wiped out I just want to go to bed in retrospect we’re looking back and saying okay now tell me what it was that you were so stressed out about and let’s talk about whether that was a realistic and helpful line of thought to perseverate on all day long and what could you have done differently because she didn’t bother to mention any of that to me yesterday and then developed the skills to notice interrupt and correct these biased thoughts independently causes of these thinking errors information processing shortcuts when we form schemas and we encounter a situation that reminds us of something in the past like when I go to my grandmother’s house I have a schema I have a belief system I have you know stuff that I know about my grandmother’s house so when I go to my grandmother’s house it’s kind of a shortcut to know what to expect when I walk in how to behave how to do different things and it helps me plan and predict if you’re using outdated or dichotomous all-or-nothing schemas it may cause thinking errors because you may be now incorrectly processing current events mental noise some of us have it a lot of us have it not everybody think about trying to focus and study for a final exam in the middle of a really busy sports bar okay this is a cause of thinking or you’re going to miss important things you’re not going to be able to focus you’re not going to necessarily attend to the correct things because there’s just so much else going on your attention is drawn in 17 different directions and or the brain’s limited information processing capacity due to age we talked about that before young kids think all or nothing they think dichotomously egocentric ly middle school-aged kids and older start developing the ability for abstract thinking by the time we get older you know as adults theoretically we’re able to you know think pretty well think pretty clinically about different events but if we’re in crisis when someone is in crisis and it could be like what we think of clinically as crisis or it could be they’re just completely overwhelmed and burned out and have been burning the candle at both ends for three months they’re not going to process information quite as well they’re not going to take in all this stuff because they’re just like shell-shocked have you ever seen teachers in the hallway of like an elementary school Oh at the end of the second nine weeks they just kind of stand there with this blank look on their face they’re not processing as much as they were the first day of school and you know God loved them they have a lot to deal with but it’s important for us to help our clients understand that there are some times that they are going to have to really stop and focus write things down so they can remember or they can make decisions a little more clearly my guess is most of us have times in our life where we’ve been able to think through complex problems but then there are other times where you just can’t keep it all in your head and you’ve got to put it on a whiteboard maybe that’s just me but we want clients to understand that they are not broken they’re not faulty they’re doing the best they can with the tools they have and the knowledge they have and our job is to help them see where some of this might have gone a little awry other causes of thinking errors emotional motivations I feel bad therefore whatever I’m thinking must be bad if I’m scared that means whatever it’s coming on the other end of the phone is bad news moral motivations I did it because it was the right thing to do and that can be an excuse for doing wrong behaviors as well it can also be you know you can argue on the moral one social influence well everyone else is doing it so it must not be bad set that again a lot of times and this is where the frames approaching the motivational interviewing really is really helpful f stands for feedback about the reality of what’s going on is everybody really doing it let’s look at statistics you know not subjective information let’s look at objective information so the impact of these thinking errors it makes people want to fight or flee when they get upset and we use upset as kind of this all-encompassing garbage term emotionally they get depressed or anxious we don’t want to feel that way anxiety and anger are flee or fight fight or flee it’s our body saying there’s a threat you got to do something depression is your body going I give up I just I don’t I don’t even have the energy to do it anymore behaviorally some people withdraw they shut down we all know people when they get frustrated when they get overwhelmed when they start feeling hopeless or helpless they just kind of withdraw from everything and everyone addictions numb that out so they don’t have to feel the dysphoria sleeping problem and changes when we start being on that constant fight-or-flight hyper-vigilant sort of thing going on the body is always sort of turned on which means you’re not going to sleep as well then the circadian rhythms get messed up which starts causing exhaustion and lethargy and then everything seems harder because you’re sleep-deprived and then you start thinking more negatively and more hopelessly you see where this is going it’s a downward spiral and eating changes some people eat a lot more because they’re eating comfort foods some people eat a lot less because their stomach is so tore up from the stress they can’t even think about holding anything down physical stress related illnesses fibromyalgia gastrointestinal problems headaches neck aches back aches you know the whole gamut of it when you start feeling bad when you start hurting generally it gets frustrating after a while and that frustration makes it kind of raises the bar brings you up a little bit so you’re that much closer to kind of just kind of being overwhelmed you don’t have as much of a cushion as you would if you were happy healthy well nourished not in pain and socially a lot of times we will get irritable or impatient with other people or withdrawal when we’re having these negative cognitions these thinking errors that are keeping us in a dysphoric state these effects of thinking errors contribute to fatigue and a sense of hopelessness and helplessness which intensifies thinking errors this is an important concept that I want my clients to understand and I want to drive home in this presentation so thinking errors what are they emotional reasoning feelings are not facts and we want to help people to learn to effectively identify feelings and separate them from facts so if somebody says I’m terrified okay that is a feeling what are the facts supporting that feeling why are you terrified what is the evidence that you are in some sort of danger right now you know and danger may not be the right word for your client at that particular point in time but what’s the evidence that there’s a threat in what ways is this similar to other situations maybe it’s triggering something from the past that was really really scary or you know you were too little to be able to handle it but you can handle it now and how if you dealt with similar situations like this in the past we want to help people just step back and get some distance between their feelings and their thoughts and try to figure out you know which thoughts are helpful and productive and even if a sought makes people anxious or angry it can be helpful it may be telling them hey dude you need to get your butt up and get out of there if it’s helpful it means it’s moving them toward where they want to be happy healthy safe and values-driven life so happy and helpful developed a stress tolerance skills when people use emotional reasoning they feel emotions which then they start attributing finding the facts to support those emotions instead of looking at all the facts we want to help them learn to tolerate their distress so they can kind of let that subside for a second they can accept their feeling they can name it they can say I’m scared I’m stressed I’m angry and whatever but they don’t have to act on it right then they can tolerate the distress for a minute without having to try to make it go away and emotional regulation skills they can feel a feeling without having to make it go from zero to 120 you know if they feel sad they go I feel kind of sad instead of grabbing on to it and going I wonder what I feel sad about I must feel sad about all these sad things now I’m really going to be really really sad and devastated so we want to help people learn how to regulate their emotions identify them accept them whatever word you want to use and tolerate them because feelings are there for a reason they’re there to tell you your brain thinks something’s going on now thankfully we have that higher-order cognition stuff going on so we can contradict our own brain and we can go you know maybe that’s not true in this situation cognitive bias negativity mental filter whatever you want to call it people who focus on the negative they walk in they get up in the morning and they look outside and it’s partly cloudy they get to work and they said instead of saying there was it was very light traffic they said there was a fair amount of traffic everything is always the flip side of what somebody who’s really optimistic would say so asking them what’s the benefit to focusing on the negative in what ways is this helpful to you you know some people say well it keeps me from getting disappointed because I know it’s going to end up negative anyway so we can trap challenge that know that whatever it is they think they know and see if there have been exceptions when it hasn’t turned out that way what are the positives to this situation I give the example a lot of you know I wash my car or it rains and maybe I wanted to go out on a run that day but I can perceive it I can look at the positives you know the rain washed my car for me so I don’t have to do it now score it watered my garden all the better it knocked down some of the pollen out of there even better I can find and I can encourage people to find positives in a situation yes there are negatives there are negatives to every situation if you want to find them you’re going to find them but if you want to find the positives you can too which takes us down to what are all the facts there’s the positive and the negative and the neutral I told you earlier about the coin toss activity having people toss a coin and on the heads days they act like it is just the greatest day to be alive and see how things are different when they do their journal because you know I have my clients do I’m sort of a mindfulness check-in in the morning and in the evening and preferably at lunchtime how are they feeling what’s their emotional state what’s their energy level on the happy days a lot of times it can be less and sometimes they need a little coaching throughout because some of those old patterns kick in but I want them to start challenging some of their automatic thoughts that we’re going to talk about in a minute disqualifying or minimizing the positive most of us can probably say we’ve had a bunch of clients that do this they are more than happy to tell you about all the things that they mess up but then when they do something right they minimize it encouraging people to hold themselves to the same standard they would hold everyone else to and I know I talked about that earlier ask them things like would it minimum would you minimize this if it was your best friend’s experience your best friend came to you and said I just got into such-and-such college would you say awesome or would you say anybody can get in there how would that go ask them what is scary about accepting these positive things that you might have actually had an accomplishment for some people it means that it might mean other people expect more of them for other people they just don’t know how to accept the positive they don’t know how to accept compliments they don’t know how to be the center of attention and they don’t like it and then we want to look at why that is sometimes we disqualify the positive because it fails to meet someone else’s standards so as people might that be true here you know I know when I was growing up and going through college and going through school and everything got my doctorate but I will for always be ever and always being not a real doctor because a PhD is not an MD and I’m like really so is it somebody else’s standards or can I feel good about having a PhD egocentrism my perspective is the only perspective I’ll being egocentric but it doesn’t work most of the time so encouraging people to take alternate perspectives maybe you’re texting with someone and they say something that is not that you interpret as not the nicest thing and this happens on text message a lot and they get upset now an egocentric thinking error would say that purse is just grumpy today someone that’s taking other perspectives would stop and go back and read the text and go I wonder if maybe this could have been taken some other way you know cuz obviously their reaction is not what I intended so egocentrism if you hold on to that I don’t understand anybody else because you know I don’t see a problem with anything personalizing and mind-reading this is when you assume that everybody’s frowning because of something you did your boss walks down down the hallway and looks at you and grimaces and continues to walk on oh I must have done something wrong no maybe he just got out of his senior management meeting that was five hours long and he’s got to go to the bathroom you know there could be a hundred different explanations for why that happened so encourage clients to ask themselves what are some alternate expla nations for this event that doesn’t involve me you know why might this have happened because if they hold on to that I must have done something wrong but as soon as their boss calls them up and goes hey can you come to my office for a second you know where their thoughts are going to go I’m getting fired I’m going to get laid off I don’t know what it was that I did wrong but he walked by me two weeks ago in the hallway and grimaced and I’m just I’m the worst person in the whole world but where did that come from so encouraging people to not necessarily assume they know what’s going on in someone else’s mind and not automatically attributing every person’s negative behavior to something they did how often and then ask them how often has it really been about you now think about the last 10 times you’ve taken something personally how many of those 10 times has it really been about something you did versus something with the other person then the availability heuristic remembering what’s most prominent in your mind so asking clients what are the facts ah the most obvious one that we talk about is plane crashes you know it is way dangerous to fly on a plane because you hear about all those plane crashes well yeah you hear about the few plane crashes but you don’t hear about the 20,000 everyday that land safely so you remember it and it seems more dangerous because that’s what is in your mind that’s what is available to you that’s what you’ve based your thought processes on because maybe you didn’t know that 20,000 planes or more fly and land just perfectly every day this can also be true with people remembering what’s most prominent in your mind sometimes and this can be very very true in domestically violent relationships if somebody falls in love with someone and that person is just the greatest person since sliced bread for the first four months and then the cycle starts and there’s this little tiny sliver of the honeymoon period after the battering cycle and the person’s like that’s the person I fell in love with that’s what I remember and they try to focus on that that’s most prominent in their mind and they ignore the rest of the stuff so we need to encourage people to really look objectively at the facts magnification are you confusing high and low probability outcomes what are the chances that this is going to happen how many clients have we worked with that have gone to the doctor and got in a physical or gotten a test run and then the doctor had to call them back and this could be true for you too and the doctor had to call them back two or three days later when the tests came back from the lab and that whole three days they were just in a panic because they were afraid they were going to get some terminal diagnosis so thinking about high and low probability outcomes another instance or example of magnification is somebody that thinks this is the end of the world whatever it was I think I’ve told you before my little story about um tripping when I was walking down the hall at work and falling and yeah it was embarrassing my folders went everywhere and yeah but in that big scheme of things will it matter that much from now you know are people gonna think oh she is such a clutch she must be a ditz too no I mean they may have thought that at that time I don’t know but you know in six months nobody’s going to remember and then ask them in the past when something like this has happened when you’ve had to get a test done and you’ve had to wait on results or if you’ve done something that was embarrassing and you didn’t think you thought everybody was going to remember it forever how did you tolerate it how did you learn to deal with it building on those strengths that they already have all or nothing thinking errors these are things like love versus hate I love them or I hate them it’s all or nothing she does this all the time or she never does it if I’m going to do it I’m going to do it perfectly or I’m not going to do it at all thank you all good intentions or all bad intentions you know sometimes we do things with good intentions that have some bad repercussions so did we do it with all bad intentions are all good intentions and the answer is neither most of the time life is kind of in that middle ground gray area encouraging clients to look and find examples where something hasn’t been one of the polls when have they done something that they’re proud of that wasn’t perfect or when again when has somebody else done something that they were proud of that wasn’t perfect remembering that with availability heuristic remembering how often something really happens how long it’s been since you’ve seen that behavior and remember that sometimes good times are amazing but how frequent are they compared with the bad times another thinking error is a belief in a just world or a fallacy of fairness I just asked clients identify for good people you know who’ve had bad things happen and in in reality we all have bad things happen good people do bad people do in between people do attributional errors and this is the pet of mine you know labeling yourself not a behavior so global versus specific and I am stupid versus I’m stupid at math I don’t have good math skills it’s not about me it’s about my skills I can change skills stable I am and I always will be will be versus it’s something I can change it’s something I can learn internal it’s about me as a person versus it’s about a skill deficit or something I could learn or change and there’s you know lots of information on attributions out there on the internet if you need a refresher on it but we find that a lot of people who have dysphoria have negative global stable internal attributions so questions for clients remember the beliefs equal thoughts and facts plus personal interpretation another way of saying it is reality is 10% perception is 10% reality and 90% interpretation so what are the facts for and against my belief is the belief based on facts or feelings does the belief focus on one aspect or the whole situation does the belief seem to use any thinking errors what are alternate explanations what would you tell your child or best friend if they had this belief how would you want someone to tell what would you want someone to tell you about this belief so if you’re telling somebody about this what are you hoping they’re going to say in return and finally how is this belief moving you toward what and who is important to you or moving you away from what or who is important to you now they can do a worksheet and have all of these or you can pick one or two of these questions that are most salient for your clients but they can have kind of at their fingertips so as they’re going through the day and something happens they can ask themselves ok what’s an alternate explanation or you know whatever it is this salient for that client irrational thoughts how do these thoughts impact the clients emotions health relationships and perceptions of the world you know this is what we want to ask them how is this thought impacting you globally how may have this thought have been helpful in the past where did it come from how does it make sense from when you formed it in the past when you’re dealing with it ask the person if the thought is bringing you closer to those that are important are there any examples of this thought or belief not being true and how can the statement be made less global less all-encompassing so it’s about a specific incident a specific situation less stable which means you can change it and less internal which means it’s not about who you are as a person but maybe something that you do or a skill that you have so we’re going to go through some of these thoughts real quickly here mistakes are never acceptable and if I make one it means that I’m incompetent well never is kind of stable and I am incompetent is kind of global that’s also that extreme all-or-nothing thinking so you can see where these cognitive distortions end up leading to unhelpful beliefs when somebody disagrees with me it’s a personal attack well there’s personalization if I ever heard it before maybe it’s not about you maybe they’re having a bad day and you just happen to be the unlucky target or maybe they’re disagreeing with you because they have a different point of view and it’s not a personal attack it’s just their point of view if someone criticizes or rejects me there must be something wrong with me personalization all-or-nothing thinking global stable and internal something wrong with me as a person to feel good about myself others must approve of me now this is one we’ve talked about external validation before and we can’t control other people so to feel good about yourself how can you do that besides having necessarily requiring other people to approve of you to be content in life I must be liked by all people Wow I’ve never met anybody who’s liked by all people I’ve never even met anybody who’s been hated by all people but it’s important to help clients see how this is really dramatic to say all people and in order for them to be content then everybody has to like them I mean I like to be liked but if everybody doesn’t like me you know that’s pretty understandable my true value as an individual depends on what others think of me I would really challenge this one this is all you know also very personal internal I would challenge people to look at and say it so your child’s value as an individual it depends on what other people think of him or her most people would say no but the perspective thing nothing ever turns out the way you want it to okay all-or-nothing thinking and probably availability heuristic if something bad just happened then they may be focusing on that which causes them to focus on all the other bad things in the past that have happened not focus on that is okay you know bad thing happen but look at all these good things I won’t try anything new unless I will be good at it this fear of failure fear of rejection it just really paralyzes a lot of people when they get stuck with that thinking area that they have to be perfect I am in total control anything bad that happens is my fault well that’s egocentric and personal if they think they’re in total control that’s their perception of how the world is they think if they’ve got everybody on marionette strings and that anything bad in the world that happens is their fault how powerful are they I feel happy about uh if I feel happy about life something will go wrong it happens sometimes but let’s look at times when you’ve been happy that something hasn’t gone wrong you know let’s get rid of that all-or-nothing thinking it’s not my fault my life didn’t go the way I wanted could be true but it seems like that’s making you unhappy so what do we do about that if I’m not in an intimate relationship I’m totally alone no again that’s pretty extreme I’m either in an intimate relationship or I am alone and a loner and you know it’s just me and my 17 cats which follows with there’s no gray area so encouraging people to really look at what these beliefs are saying is important thoughts impacts behaviors and emotional and physical reactions emotional and physical reactions impact thoughts and interpretations of events so if you do something and you and it’s pleasurable and you have a great physical reaction you know let’s take bungee jumping or skydiving if you go out there and it’s scary but you do it and you’re just like whoa what a rush your interpretation of that is probably going to be good which means you’ll probably do it again if you go out there and it’s just the most horrible experience you’ve ever had you’re probably not going to do it again and your interpretation of it is going to be not good which is going to make it hard to understand why other people would do it irrational thinking patterns are often caused by cognitive distortions so let’s just look back at some of those because there’s a lot fewer cognitive distortions or general ways of thinking about the world than there are thinking errors because there’s lots and lots of thinking errors cognitive distortions are often schemas which were formed based on faulty inaccurate or immature knowledge or understanding and by identifying the thoughts the hecklers you know the automatic tapes that are maintaining our unhappiness the person can choose whether to accept those thoughts or change them.
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Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Skills | Counselor Toolbox Podcast with Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes
hi everyone and welcome to today’s presentation on acceptance and commitment therapy skills over the next a little while we’re going to discuss the goal of a CT will explore yet again what is mindfulness we’ll talk briefly about how act differs from other mindfulness based approaches and what’s unique to act then we’ll move on to just talking about destructive normality who knew had experienced avoidance finally we’ll move into therapeutic interventions that are common and act talking about how to confront the clients agenda which is generally clients come in and they want us to take away the problem and act wants us to really confront that and say are we talking about taking something away or just changing the way we perceive it and then we’ll work on thinking about control as the problem too often people try to control their depression control their anxiety and the harder they try to control it the more out of control it seems and we will end by exploring the six core principles of Act why do we care as usual not every intervention fits every single person so what we want to do is try to find a host of tools that we can have in our toolbox to present to clients that will build on their strengths if we hear something that sounds like a CT or CBT or experiential interventions we will know that that’s kind of where we want to go in order to help clients learn how to deal with life on life’s terms in a way that’s meaningful to them you can’t stop the waves but you can learn to surf you can’t stop bad things from happening you know sometimes bad things happen and it just sucks but you can learn how to deal with that in a way that is less counterproductive to your health and happiness distracting oneself from distress is akin to constantly running away from one’s own shadow I thought about that for a few minutes and it’s kind of meaningful in the attempt to control the negative thoughts and feelings we are at a loss for control in other life situations if you’re constantly running from that shadow you’re not focusing on anything else that’s going on around you which means other things can kind of deteriorate and will cause additional distress even if you figure out how to be able to get away from your shadow so the act acronym accept your reactions and be present it doesn’t say change them it doesn’t say judge them it just says accept them it is what it is choose a value direction and then take action that all seems pretty simple but it’s not if it was our clients would already be doing it act is but based on relational frame theory which is a psychological theory of human language which was developed largely through efforts of Stephen C Hays of the University of Nevada Reno and Dermot Barnes Holmes at the national university of ireland Maynooth rational frame theory argues that the building block of higher cognition or reasoning is relating that is our ability to create links between things so that’s a whole bunch of technical mumbo-jumbo for when we see things we articulate it in terms that are meaningful to us that’s scary that’s wonderful that’s amazing that is very depressing that is whatever words you use are the way that it’s going to get kind of conceptualized and stored in your memory so if you conceptualize something as all-or-nothing then you may end up perceiving the world in all-or-nothing terms so what we want to do is look at that language and say is this the best way to think about this you know one of the examples that I’ve used before is labeling an event or a behavior instead of a person children and I truly believe children are not bad children make bad choices children do bad behaviors but children are good but that’s my own you know humanistic sort of approach to to life and recovery and all that kind of stuff helping people see that and we’re going to look at some more examples of the way our language can really affect how we interpret something contextual lists seek to understand the complexity and richness of a whole event through appreciation of its participants and features now think about functional contextualism contextual lists say in this context when we when my son was little we would go to different places and at home he knew what the rules were he knew we didn’t touch the TV he knew everything that the way it was supposed to be but when we went to my grandmother’s house he had never been there before and she had a TV and she had other things and she had knickknacks and stuff we didn’t have so this was a different situation so the little scientists in him went off and he walked over to the TV because he was trying to figure out in this context in this situation how am I supposed to function functional contextualism see where I’m going here he walked over to the TV and he pointed to it and he looked at me and he said no touch I said that’s right Shawn no touch he reached out and he touched the TV and he looks at me and he goes timeout I said yep buddy timeout and he titled over to the corner and sat down he just wanted to make sure that those rules still applied and it wasn’t anything you know I wasn’t like well he’s doing that to be spiteful or he was just trying to figure it out and as soon as he figured it out he didn’t bother the TV again so what I want you to get from that is the fact that people will behave differently in different situations and the reason they behave differently in different situations is because there are different variables in play I behave differently when I’m presenting then I do when I’m high out with my friends at the gym and I’m sure you behave differently at work than you do at home than you do when you’re going out for a night with your friends you know on the town it’s all about context and what is the most functional choice of behavior at that point in time so humans learn language through interactions with the environment we need to focus on the changeable variables in the context some things aren’t changeable at my grandmother’s house we couldn’t just take the TV out well we could have but that wouldn’t have been practical so we needed to work on the changeable variables in the environment we want to help people create general rules to predict an influence psychological events such as thoughts feelings and behaviors changeable variables in the environment can include triggers it can include how to interact with different people you know maybe somebody has issues with authority figures that will affect how they interact with people at work versus maybe how they interact at home so we want to take this into consideration when somebody talks about having an anger management problem well I want to know about that problem but I want to know about it in every single context when we were talking about personality disorders we talked about a pervasive pattern of behavior so this pattern of behavior existed in multiple settings so I want to know what was the context what were the variables controlling that behavior in each setting since it generally presented as a disorder we can figure out that the behaviors and the choices that were being made in those contexts were probably unhelpful or inappropriate the goal of act is with most of our other interventions is to create a rich and meaningful life while accepting the pain in it inevitably goes with it there’s going to be times that things just suck and I’m sorry it happens you know people go away you’ll have losses you will have disappointments but they don’t last forever it’s important we help people understand when they’re creating this rich and fini meaningful life all right maybe things are not going the way I want them to right now but let’s get back to basics who is important to me who is it important to me that I’m around that I support that is in my life you know it could be kids it could be family it could be your best friend it could be all of the above then what is important to me what are my values you know if I have to choose between different things what things are important that for me to have in my life is it important for me to have a roof over my head some people would say yes some people would say you know I can crash on my friends sofa or I really don’t want to have the confines and regulations of living in some sort of formalized housing and that is definitely a choice and what experiences are important to me is work important to me is travel important to me what is important and how could I move toward those goals because we want to have our decisions based on values trip values driven decisions a CT is a good abbreviation because this therapy is about taking effective action guided by our deepest values in which we are fully present and engaged the other thing with a CT we want to remember is just like a lot of other things our values may change over time yes what was important to you when you were 20 likely is not exactly the same as what’s important to you today when you are older than 20 we’ll just leave it there what’s mindfulness consciously bringing awareness to the here and now experience with openness interest and receptiveness mindfulness does not require meditation and this is one thing that I really want to drive home to some of my clients because I’ve had situations where I start talking about mindfulness and clients are like no I won’t or I can’t meditate and try to contradict them and confront them and challenge the resistance but that’s not where they are right now so I said okay how else can we be mindful how else can we help you become aware of your here and now one of the things that we used to do in my residential program every morning and every evening clients had to fill out check-in sheets they had to identify how they were feeling emotionally mentally physically socially spiritually and in general so I mean that was a lot of thinking right there and then they had to identify what stage of readiness for change they were in and why and they had to identify what behaviors they were exhibiting that supported that theory and finally they had to identify three good things that they did during the day or three things that they wanted to do during the day if we were talking about in the morning we wanted clients to start becoming aware of themselves instead of just getting up and being on autopilot because we’ve talked about vulnerabilities we’ve talked about understanding that some days you can handle more than others encouraging clients who are by all rights in early early recovery early or late phases of detox I mean they’re not feeling so hot so I want to know how they’re feeling because then we can start talking about okay you feel sluggish today how can we help you with that because there are going to be times when they’re in recovery when they are out of treatment and you know two years down the line when they wake up and they’ve got the flu and they feel like crap and they feel sluggish but they’ve got stuff to do so let’s learn how to deal with that now so anyway we’re not going to require them necessarily to meditate some people think is the greatest thing in the world and if they can meditate great because there are so many beneficial aspects to meditation some of our clients who have anxiety disorders who have ADHD or who have extensive trauma histories may have difficulty at least in the early phases of treatment with meditation with quieting their mind it’s really really scary for them because that’s you know they spend most of their life just trying to keep their mind busy so they don’t mentally go there wherever there is facets to mindfulness living in the present moment so again how are you doing right now and for a lot of our clients they look at you may go fine and if you’re in recovery circles you know that fine is an acronym you can look up what it means but it basically means you’re not fine that’s just a knee-jerk response we want to ask them in the present moment emotionally how are you feeling cognitively how are you feeling and physically if you can get those three you’re going to have them really focusing more on the present moment encourage them to engage fully in what they’re doing rather than just getting lost in their thoughts so if they’re out on a walk have them pay attention to what’s going on have them pay attention to the birds to the leaves to the kitty cats that are hiding under the trailer whatever it is that they see they hear they smell sometimes we would have clients go out on walks around we had a I think it was a three acre campus having them go out on a walk and come back and then they would talk about as a group what they saw heard smelled etc and it would be amazing that you’d send ten people out and you’d probably get six or seven different perspectives of what was out there you know there was a lot of overlap but there were inevitably things that one person noticed that nobody else did mindfulness also means allowing your feelings to be as they are rather than trying to control them I have a friend right now who’s really stressed out and it’s stressing him out that he’s stressed out and I’m like you know what let’s just think about it this way you’re stressed out by everything that I know about that’s going on in your life you have a reason to be stressed out let’s accept it it is what it is where do we want to go from here instead of trying to say he shouldn’t be stressed or calling him he called himself whiny I’m like not so much you know a lot of people couldn’t handle that so as a therapist or a coach or a friend we want to encourage people to just accept identify and accept their feelings mindfulness skills are divided into four subsets acceptance it is what it is cognitive diffusion I can separate myself from my emotions I don’t have to be my emotions contact with the present moment how am I feeling thinking doing right now and the observing self I love the observing self because this is the fly on the wall this is the fly that’s sitting over there that’s watching you going girl what are you thinking how does a CT differ act can be used in a wide range of clinical populations and settings because it’s not a manualized protocol that you have to go well I don’t know if my clients can actually handle this part it is a technique it allows therapists to create and individualize their own mindfulness and techniques or even create co-create them or create them with clients you can go online and if you type in mindfulness you will come up with literally hundreds of worksheets activities and ideas so if you get stuck try looking at those explore from there one of the ones I learned and I think we talked about it in the last session was the name five name five things that you can think of or that you see right now that are hard you know the wall the floor the chair having people really pay more attention to what’s going on in their environment you remember that a game that a lot of us used to play back before their iPhones when we’d go on long car trips and you look at the billboards and you’d find billboards to fit each the alphabet whatever keeps you occupied but it made you to be more aware of what was you know going on at least visually around you what is unique to act act does not have symptom reduction as a goal the ongoing attempt to get rid of symptoms and this is really important so just bear with me while I read it to you for a second the ongoing attempt to get rid of symptoms actually creates a clinical disorder the private experience which is labeled as a symptom anxiety produces a struggle with that symptom so you’re trying to control your anxiety and you’re getting frustrated because you can’t control your anxiety which makes you feel helpless which increases your anxiety about the fact that you can’t control your anxiety does that make any sense no a symptom by definition is something pathological and something we should try to get rid of but in reality everybody feels anxiety we are born with the fight-or-flight reaction it’s a normal feeling it’s what you do with it that can be pathological so identifying the feeling saying all right my body or my brain is perceiving that there’s a threat right now okay let’s take a look at that enact the aim is to transform our relationships with our difficult thoughts and feelings and learn to perceive them as harmless maybe uncomfortable transient psychological events the thought that I can’t do this anymore that’s a feeling that’s a valid thought now do we need to hold on to that and four separate on it or can we just let it go out the window destructive normality I love this term act assumes that the psychological processes of a normal human mind are often destructive and creates psychological suffering for us all sooner or later act postulates that the root of this suffering is human language itself now some of the things that we’ve talked if you think back to the abandonment class and some of the other classes a lot of our schemas are formed in early childhood where we are thinking in concrete terms where we are learning and relating in concrete terms all or nothing focusing on one aspect so the verbal representation of whatever it is that is scary or threatening tends to be not as functional when you’re an adult and you have more skills and more independence and more ability to survive on your own so it’s this language that tells you I must do this all the time I should have done that that can cause suffering memories perceptions and schemas are created through analyzing comparing evaluating planning remembering and visualizing all of these processes rely on human language think about a time when you are when you were a kid you’re thinking about it right now most likely you’re using words maybe not out loud but you’re talking to yourself you’re like I remember that time when you know I was six and daddy took me on the toboggan across across the field you know you used words with that and I remember how much fun it was so now I think of snowboarding in tobogganing as fun because that’s the only Association I really have for it think about this I am stupid remember when I was talking about a child versus a child’s behaviors versus I have the thought that I’m stupid so if you think to yourself I am stupid and really think about that for a while and keep telling yourself that it’s pretty depressing if you think to yourself all right I am having the thought that I am just a dummy right now that’s different because thoughts come and go I can let a thought go another example that our clients may experience I can’t go on I just I can’t go on like this versus you know right now I’m feeling like I can’t go on a feeling can come and it can go I can’t come and go I’m either here or I’m not and you know I really want me to stay here for a while longer so it’s Bert we’re looking or we’re talking about attributions we’ve talked about those before global internal stable attributions I am stupid it’s about me its global I’m stupid about everything I didn’t say I was stupid about parallel parking I said I was stupid its global its internal it means it’s part of me so if I get rid of it and I’m getting rid of part of me what do I do with that as one of the reasons I don’t like labeling disorders as because people say I am depressed you have depressed feelings you have symptoms of depression right now but are you depressed and I’ve got to be really careful with my language because I’ll fall into that trap because it’s just shorter to say I am depressed or I am an addict but then people tend to personify that and I don’t want them to do that experiential avoidance act asserts that human language naturally creates psychological suffering by setting us up for a struggle with our thoughts and feelings through experiential avoidance there’s a problem I’m feeling anxious I don’t want to feel anxious my solution I need to figure out how to get rid of anxiousness or I need to avoid anxiousness and in my attempt to control it I end up making it worse instead of just accepting that it is and eventually it’ll just kind of peter out or making a choice to do something and we’re going to talk about the act matrix at the end of this presentation the more time and energy we spend trying to avoid or get rid of unwanted private experiences that’s thoughts and feelings anything that’s going on in our head the more we are likely to suffer quicksand think about the old movies where somebody fell into a pit of quicksand and the more they struggled the more they sank this is what’s happening with our clients the more they struggle with their anxiety with the tools they have at that present point in time the more they’re gonna sink so what we need to help them do is just accept okay let me chill out for a second I’m in the quicksand let me think about what I’m going to do with addiction the more people struggle to try to control their drinking to try to control their addiction the more they obsess about it the more they think about drinking the more they think about the pornography which makes them want to do it it gives them this really strong desire and then they get frustrated especially if they do relapse or engage in the behavior then make it frustrated they feel depressed they feel worthless they want to go back to that behavior because it’s a numbing avoidant behavior and that creates this whole dynamic of failure beginning failure anxiety and depression are the same way when people feel them often they want to try to get rid of them so they try to pretend that they’re not anxious or depressed they try to confront the anxiety or the depression unfortunately a lot of times they confront it in not so nice ways so encouraging clients just to accept without judgment and that is so hard act interventions focus around two main processes developing acceptance of unwanted private experiences which are out of personal control when something happens whatever it is loud noise goes boom and you startle that’s an anxiety reaction now am I going to get upset because I jumped and I startled or am I gonna say I jumped and I startled moving on back to what I was doing people who are struggling with their anxiety will often get frustrated and get stuck on the fact well I shouldn’t have jumped that was stupid that was an irrational reaction it was what it was it happened your body responded and when we think about it there’s a loud noise you’re not expecting startles probably a pretty functional response we just let it go because then your cognitions your higher-level reasoning kicks in and says no there’s nothing to be worried about car backfired or something and a commitment and action toward living a value life that is not getting stuck in this never-ending quick and so the first step confronting the agenda the client’s agenda of emotional control is gently and respectfully undermined I like that I’m going to undermine you but I’m gonna do it respectfully well we want clients to understand and we need to come to an understanding of if we’re going to use this technique is that controlling depression controlling anxiety while doing the same things it’s not going to happen so we need to try a different approach clients identify the ways they’ve tried to get rid of or avoid unwanted private experiences this is commonly called creative hopelessness which I really don’t like creating hopelessness but it highlights the fact that what you’ve done in the past has not worked so let’s see what we might be able to think of that might work and bring you closer to the life you want questions we asked of them did it resume reduce your symptoms in the long term and of course I’m hearing dr.
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Cosmos Laundromat - First Cycle. Official Blender Foundation release.
Excuse me? Excuse me, sir? Excuse me? Oh, come on. Do you have a moment, sir? I’m kind of in the middle of something here. Yes? Thank you. I’ve come a long way for you, Franck. My name is Victor. Hi. And you are…. You are Franck. You are so much more than just a sheep, aren’t you? Oh yeah? How would you know? Look at you. You’re an adventurer, Franck.
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Happiness is all in your mind: Gen Kelsang Nyema at TEDxGreenville 2014
Translator: Adrienne Lin Reviewer: Hannah Ximenes Alright, my friends. Hello. (Audience) Hello. So I want to start off with a few questions. And I know a lot of other presenters have already asked you questions, and they’ve been kind of hard questions. But the questions I’m going to ask you are very, very simple. And I promise you’ll be able to answer these.
00:42 - Alright, are you ready?
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Free software, free society: Richard Stallman at TEDxGeneva 2014
Translator: TED Translators admin Reviewer: Ｖ字龍 N/A Free software is the first battle in the liberation of cyberspace. Who controls your computer? Is it you or is it some big company that’s really controlling it? What is a computer? A computer is a universal machine. It will do any computation you want it to because you give it a program that says what the computation is that you want.
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Reprogramming your brain to overcome fear: Olympia LePoint at TEDxPCC
Translator: Queenie Lee Reviewer: Peter van de Ven Ten, nine, eight, seven - pressures are good - six, five, four, three - valve timing nominal - two, one, we’re good to go; lift off! 5,000 miles, no excessive vibrations. 10,000 miles, temperatures are good. 15,000 miles, 17,000 miles - yes, we are in outer space! (Cheers) (Applause) That was me - an award-winning rocket scientist sitting in Mission Control.
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Making a Stanford Education Affordable
[Music] When I initially applied to Stanford and was telling my family and some of my classmates in high school everybody was really proud of me and really excited but there was always that question of that’s going to be pretty expensive right? Are you are you prepared for that? Actually, my best friend would always say, “I’m so shocked that you are applying to Stanford. It’s just so expensive.
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#WelcomeToStanford
[MUSIC]. I remember when I was a freshman coming to Stanford. I, was pretty jittery. I was really nervous. And I was just thinking, wow, I do not know anybody out here. And that can be pretty intimidating. >> Stanford was just like the great unknown. No one in my family had gone to college so there was no preparing for a college speech, what it meant to live in a room with a stranger you don’t know.
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Un-Stuck: David Shaner at TEDxGreenville
Translator: TED Translators admin Reviewer: Reiko Bovee I know what it’s like to be stuck. Today I would like to share with you a lifetime of experience where I have been trying to understand the condition of what I call “stuckness”. Being stuck is when your mind and body are functioning separately. It’s like living your life with your emergency brake on. It’s been my great pleasure for over 40 years to be a student of Koichi Tohei Sensei who in 1953, brought the martial art of Aikido from Japan to this country.
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Moscow Metro reveals avant-garde poetry of Vladimir Mayakovsky
Today is the Poetry Day. It is very pleasant for us to mark this day with new special train, dedicated to famous Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky Each wagon has its own color scheme. It depends on which aspect of Mayakovsky’s life it is dedicated to It was made in order to distinguish wagons better. All of the artwork artwork is based on the original photos from the Mayakovsky Museum It took two months to make illustrations and posters.