The key ideas

Feeling Great: The Revolutionary New Treatment for Depression and Anxiety

David D. Burns, 2020

Why do we hold on so tightly to the pain that torments us? David Burns believes that painful feelings often speak not of something broken but of our values, and that is why part of us resists change. The book shows how to acknowledge this resistance, turn the pain down to a fitting level and find a thought that really helps.

Who it is for

For those who have long known their dark thoughts by heart but just can't let them go. And for those who have read Feeling Good and want to know where Burns went from there.

What if your depression and anxiety were the expression of what's positive and beautiful about you rather than what's negative and broken about you?

Nine years of guilt

Karen tells a hall full of psychotherapists what has been tormenting her for nine years. One evening her twelve-year-old daughter asked to go out and play, and Karen let her, as she did almost every evening. Neighborhood boys shot the girl with an air rifle, thinking it wasn't loaded. The girl survived, but since then Karen can't remember a single happy moment and keeps telling herself she is a bad mom.

American psychiatrist David Burns became famous for Feeling Good, a book about how feelings come from thoughts. He wrote his new book about those for whom examining their thoughts didn't help. His conclusion sounds strange: part of a person may resist the very change they dream of. Burns called his approach TEAM. The letters stand for testing your mood at the beginning and end of a session, empathy, assessment of resistance and methods.

The author puts the main idea like this: we get stuck in pain not because of what's wrong with us, but because of what's right with us. If this story struck a chord with you, don't rush to blame yourself: few people dare to look honestly at their own pain.

A button you don't want to press

Biyu, a Harvard freshman, came from Hong Kong. At home she was one of the top students, and now she struggles to get B's and C's. Burns proposes a thought experiment: there is a magic button on the desk. If Biyu presses it, her depression will vanish. At first almost everyone says they would press it.

But the button will change only her feelings, and her grades will stay the same. That means Biyu would have to accept herself as an average student, and that seems to her like betraying her high standards and her family's values. As far back as Freud, this kind of unwillingness was called resistance. In Burns's view, nobody has really explained where it comes from.

With anxiety, the cause is different. Fran worries all day about her children, her husband and her work, even though everyone is fine. Deep down she believes that worrying keeps them safe. Burns calls this magical thinking.

Recovery also has a price. With depression it is daily written exercises, with anxiety it is facing your fear. In a conflict it is giving up blaming the other person, and with a bad habit it is giving up a favorite pleasure.

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About the author

David Burns is an American psychiatrist and the author of Feeling Good. For many years he taught psychiatry at Stanford University and trained psychotherapists free of charge.

All books by this author: David D. Burns

Terms from the book

  • Freud
  • Resistance
  • Marilyn
  • Sara
  • Placebo
  • Karen: A woman Burns and a colleague worked with at an open workshop in front of a hall of psychotherapists. Her name has been changed, like those of everyone in the book.
  • TEAM: Burns's approach, a development of cognitive therapy. The letters stand for testing, empathy, assessment of resistance and methods. It is the author's own method, and Burns himself writes that it still has to be tested by research.
  • Biyu: A student from Hong Kong, one of Burns's examples: she became depressed in her first year at Harvard when she stopped being the best.
  • Fran: One of Burns's examples: a woman who constantly worried about her family and her work, though there was no reason to.
  • Magical thinking: The belief that anxiety or a ritual protects you from disaster all by itself. For Burns, this is the main reason a person holds on to anxiety.
  • Positive reframing: Burns's technique: ask of each painful feeling how it helps and what good it says about the person. Every answer must be true and follow directly from that feeling.
  • Magic dial: Burns's image: a feeling isn't erased entirely but turned down to a level the person themselves considers fitting.
  • Melanie: A woman in a happy third marriage who had hidden two divorces for years. Burns worked with her in a recorded session.
  • Great Death: A concept from Buddhism: letting go of your familiar idea of your “self”. Burns uses it as an image, not as a religious teaching.

All terms

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