From Feeling Good to Feeling Great

You may be aware that my books, Feeling Good and Feeling Good Handbook, have sold over 5 million copies worldwide, and are still popular, though Feeling Good was released 40 years ago.

One of the reasons why books are tolerant of research by Dr. Forrest Scogin and colleagues at the University of Alabama School of Medicine. They report that if you simply give people who are seeking treatment moderate to severe depression a copy of Feeling Good, more than 50% will improve significantly within four weeks that they no longer want or need treatment. Significantly, these patients did not receive psychotherapy or anti-depressant medication during those four weeks. Three-year follow-up studies showed that they never went back but actually continued to improve by following their first "bibliotherapy" with Feeling Good! That’s why Feeling Good is still a high-quality book and a best-selling book on depression.

Now why did I write another original authentic poem Feeling Good? The positive experience was about behavioral psychotherapy (CBT), which was a turning point in the history of psychiatric and psychiatric disorders. When I was writing Feeling Good, there were only a handful of understanding therapists in the world, and we were considered ignorant people. Since the publication of Feeling Good, CBT has become the most popular and widely studied psychiatric treatment in history.

But while CBT was scary, it wasn't perfect. In fact, outcome studies and all current forms of depression treatment show that less than half of patients experience a 50% reduction in depression after months of treatment. And 50% improvement is not good at all. Patients do not want to feel less stressed, they want a complete elimination of their symptoms and a significant increase in the feeling of happiness and happiness again. And many - no doubt most - simply do not find it in any of the current treatments.

My clinical experience (more than 40,000 times the treatment of depressed and anxious patients) and I published a study 40 years ago on how treatment really works provided important clues as to why some patients are improving, while others are not. The answer seems to involve an important but overlooked dimension that Freud calls the “refusal” of treatment.

Resistance means that most of us have mixed emotions when it comes to change. On the other hand, we may yearn for change, but it seems that we are opposed to change. A mysterious Jesuit, Anthony DeMello, puts it this way: "We long for change but we hold on to the norm."

Maybe you’ve felt it yourself! We say we will stop procrastinating, or we really want to lose weight, or that we should stop beating ourselves up with negative thoughts, but that doesn't seem to be happening.

Here is the shocking news. Fifteen years ago, in my work with my weekly psychotherapy team at Stanford, I believe I finally found the cause of the "resistance," the puzzle Frud tried, but failed, to solve. And want to know something absolutely amazing? Your symptoms of depression and anxiety, as well as your refusal to change, are not the result of what is bad for you, but what is good for you.

Depression and anxiety are not, in fact, “mental disorders” caused by “chemical imbalances in your brain,” but they are symptoms of what is best and most terrifying for you and your basic values. And the moment you "suddenly see this," your resistance will suddenly disappear, and your recovery will be just a stone's throw away.

You can learn all about these powerful techniques in my new book, Feeling Great! (September 2020) It's not just for therapists, but for anyone who needs a little psychological search to overcome depression and anxiety and feel good! And that, I’m sure, is the “solution” we almost all want!