Episode #74 

How To Use Mind Over Mood Book

Do you struggle to get your negative thoughts and feelings under control?

One of my favorite CBT resources is 'Mind Over Mood: Change How You Feel By Changing The Way You Think'.

In this episode, I will share with you some simple tips and suggestions for getting the most out of this great resource.

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Full Episode Transcript

Hi, my name is Dr. Julia Osborn. I'm a Doctor of Psychology and a licensed clinical social worker specializing in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. I'm here to help you bring the power of CBT into your own life and learn the tools that will help you be happy and feel like you can manage things that come your way. So as always, I wanted to start off with reading an email I received from one of my listeners.

I always appreciate when you guys reach out and I got permission from Kylie to share this with you. So it says:

“Hey, Doctor Julie,

I've been wanting to write this email for quite some time. I first found your CBT podcast on Spotify after having a teenage patient with anxiety tell me she didn't really read a lot and would prefer a podcast learn from. I'm not techy and did not at the time listen to any podcast, but as we do, I wanted to get this young person some help. So when searching for a podcast with good information on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, I listened to a lot of crappy podcasts - poor content, scattered, no techniques given to help before finding yours. It was like a dream! I couldn't believe these were here for free and I had not been aware. Needless to say, I began listening to episodes and then even listen to the ones I thought may not be as relevant to me or my practice. What a surprise that every episode is relevant and has useful techniques and thought challenges against the current electrical pattern.

“I quickly recommended these to every patient that I thought would be able to derive benefit and gave specific podcasts I wanted them to start with. If you look at your podcast followers, I hope there is a dense population in North Georgia now. Thank you for your candid nature, your practicality, your honesty, and your laugh. The slight chuckle at the end of certain statements always makes me smile. I was heartbroken to listen to the most recent episodes and hear your awful experience receiving care initially surrounding your eventual ovarian cancer diagnosis. I apologize deeply.

“As a member of the medical community, I've initiated a podcast of my own that addresses how people can navigate the medical system without insurance, even if they have insurance. I only have two episodes, but I'll include the link in case you ever have the need to know the information. I hope to have new episodes out at some point, but I'm being kind to myself for Doctor Julie and realizing it's okay to have two episodes out in limbo until I can get myself ready for the next one. If my goal is truly abdomination out there, it's there again.

Thank you so much for allowing me to be part of your listening followers. I've learned so much for myself, my family, and my patients. If I can ever be help navigating in the right direction with your care, please feel free to message me or email me. Include my information below.”

Sincerely, Dr. Kylie Smith, who is in Georgia, so very grateful. Her podcast, if you're interested, is www.buzzsprout.com/181-5941. So I thought, how cool is that, other than being a wonderful email that she's doing a podcast to help people deal with what I went through, trying to get help with my insurance company. And if you don't have insurance, so that might be a really cool podcast to check out. But I definitely want to thank Dr. Kylie Smith again for reaching out and your kind words. And I'm so glad you're finding my podcast helpful for your patience. So that's really fabulous.

So today I thought I would start addressing specifically ways for you to use the Mind Over Mood book that I know I talk about on every podcast I have because that's the workbook my clients use. Dr.

Greenberger, Dr. Pedestrian, the authors. Dr. Greenberger is the psychologist that trained me back in the day when we both worked at the University of Irvine. I was fortunate enough that my training was with him, and I used his book not just because I love it, but it's just really a great book.

It's easy to follow. It's not too technical. I know when people are feeling depressed, anxious, overwhelmed, like sometimes your reading comprehension goes down. And so a lot of the books out there, I feel, are more clinical. And this one, I've even had people almost quote, complain that it's too simple.

But I'm like that's what we want. We want to keep it simple. We want to learn the tools and have them help us. So today, if you don't have the book in front of you, that's okay. If you decide to get the book again, it's called Mind Over Mood Change How You Feel By Changing The Way You Think by Dr.

Dennis Greenberger and Christine Pedestrian. If you go on any of my podcasts and you click on an episode, scroll down a little bit. There's actually a link to the book. So don't worry about it. If you don't have a pen or pencil to write it down, you can just order it off there.

It'll take you directly to where you can get it and you'll be good to go. So I'm going to focus on chapter five, which I thought would be a good way. I know we're a little past the new year, and it's about setting personal goals and how you can notice improvement. Right. So it's important to think about with therapy, what are my goals?

And to be specific. So versus I want to have a better marriage, I would say to you, what does that mean? Is that communicating? Do you want to try to have more fun together? Do you want to find more time just to do things together, find something in common that you guys will both enjoy?

You want to be really concrete because having a better relationship is just too broad. So if it's about I want to communicate better. What does that look like? Maybe you guys will read a book together and talk about what you're learning. Maybe you listen to some of my podcasts on communicating.

Maybe you'll find a time once a week to sit down and kind of review how you feel things are in the relationship, what issues you want to focus on. So you want to make your goals a little concrete, and I'm going to discuss a little more how to do that. And then you also want to have a frame of reference to notice the improvements you are making. I find it very common that my clients tend to poopoo away how far they've come and they're very focused on where they haven't gotten yet. Right.

So if you think of a scale from one to ten, if you started down at zero and you're at five, that's excellent. But you're focused on not at ten yet. And every step you take, every change you make, every tool you're using is part of getting better and having improvement. So it is important along the way to notice your improvement and give yourself some kudos, whatever that might be. If you want to reward yourself is great.

Just want to say, hey, you know what, this is working. I'm going to keep going along. Or maybe this isn't working 100%. I need to reevaluate my goals, maybe be more specific what's working, what isn't working. So again, I'm going to talk about that with you guys as well.

So those are the two things in chapter five called Setting Personal Goals, noticing improvements that I thought would be a helpful tool to get started with on your journey of self improvement and feeling better. So again, you want to think about what are some goals. So I just recommend maybe picking like two don't have so many that you can't reach all of them, and then you don't feel like you're having any success. You want to set yourself up for success, right? So picking one or two goals is pretty reasonable.

And once you reach those goals, you can always add to them or set new goals. But we want to be realistic in our goal setting. People make all these new goals, maybe for the new year, and they are so high in expectation that we tend not to reach them. So an example, a lot is getting healthy, working out. So people are like, I'm going to go to the gym five days a week for an hour.

And I'm like, no, let's do two days a week for 20 minutes. And if you stay longer or if you add on, that's just success. But I want you to reach that goal of two days a week for 20 minutes. So you feel good. What happens with these gym memberships, right?

Is everybody joins up and then people get frustrated and don't come, and then you keep paying the fee and they're making all the money. So let's not do that this time. And let's actually make use of whatever our goals are and make them realistic so we feel good about them and we feel successful because that's going to motivate you, right. That's going to create positive thinking that, you know what, I set some goals. It might have not been easy, but I've reached them.

I'm going to continue with where I'm at or I'm going to add to them versus there I go again. I didn't reach my goal. I'm a loser. I'm not good enough. I'm never going to get to where I want to.

And those are all your hot thoughts, right. Your thoughts that aren't 100% true. But thinking that way, which makes you frustrated, affects your behavior, which is probably not taking care of yourself for working on your goals and whatever your physical corrections are. Right. So there is going back to the whole CBT that our thoughts create our moods, affects our behavior, fiscal corrections, and then our environment.

So breaking things down, we're going to get started with setting the goals. So as I said, think about some goals, one or two that you want to reach. If it's only one, that's totally cool as well, and it can be something or you want it to be a goal that you can observe or measure. So that's why having just a couple of them is more manageable. And you want to actually write them down on a piece of paper or maybe on your phone, whatever works for you so you can go back and look at them.

So the thing I love about this chapter and you'll see if you have the book that there's this matrix that they created and it talks about the advantages and disadvantages of not reaching your goal. And why this is really helpful is because I know I've talked to you before about we have a lot of unconscious thoughts every day. Right. So we have 80 or 90,000 thoughts a day that's going through our mind. A lot of them, most of them we don't know.

But a lot of those unconscious thoughts may be the disadvantages of reaching your goal that actually keep you from reaching your goal. Right. So some people were like, what do you mean disadvantages? Because we always think goals are positive and reaching them is all good. But why don't we reach our goals?

That's something we need to look back on and say, why didn't I reach that goal? Why didn't I stick with that? It was really important to me. Right. So what you want to do is on a piece of paper, write down your first goal.

So I'm going to pick the typical one for the first of the year, which is getting in shape and losing weight. All right. Just for an example. And so first we're going to write down what are the advantages of reaching this goal. Right.

So some of the advantages would obviously be healthier. I would feel good. Maybe I feel more confident. I want to fit into my jeans that are hanging up in the closet. I would enjoy getting out.

And if you're comfortable going to the gym, being around, maybe seeing some of my old friends starting a class. So these are all these advantages to reaching the goal. So then you might say, what would be a disadvantage? Well, a disadvantage would be I can't eat my vanilla ice cream every night that I like. I can't have my special treats that I normally eat.

I'm going to have to maybe get up a little earlier in the morning if I want to go to the gym or wherever I'm going to do, go run around the block so I can get to work on time. I don't have any other tools to deal with, giving me some comfort when I'm stressed out. So these disadvantages, we're not usually thinking about them, but I'm telling you they're getting in the way of reaching your goal, which is totally normal. So you want to step back from it and say, okay, what are the disadvantages if actually reach this goal? Because that's where we want to start balancing out.

The second part of this matrix is the advantages of not reaching this goal. So the advantages of not reaching the goal, of losing weight and getting healthy is that I don't have to make any changes, right? I can just keep doing what I'm doing, and I can have my sweets or my comfort food at night. I don't have to get up early. I can just keep doing the same old thing.

And I don't have to challenge myself or maybe even feel a little stressed out at the beginning. And then the fourth Quadrant here is disadvantages of not reaching the goal. So what are the disadvantages, right, is that I'll continue to maybe have some health issues. If that's my problem, I'll continue to be uncomfortable. I'm really probably not going to feel good about myself.

I'll probably still be frustrated. Maybe I'm not fitting in the clothes that I want to fit in, or I can't really do the things that I want to do, whether it's just my weights in the way or a lot of times if you're overweight, you might have issues, maybe walking or there's extra pressure on your knees or physical things you might want to do. You might feel like that might get in the way. So I know you don't have this in front of you, so I just wanted to go over it. So you write down your goal, and then you're going to write down the advantages and the disadvantages of reaching your goal, and then the advantages and disadvantages of not reaching this goal and then have that in front of you to really look at and decide, is this a goal that I really want to work on?

Now, what that sounds good or what other people will want me to do, or other people give me kudos. This needs to really be personal. This needs to be something you want for yourself because you're the one that has to address it probably on a daily basis. Right. And it's all good.

I'm not trying to make it sound negative, but I want you to pick something that really means something to you, not the should. Right. That I should do it. Other people want me to all that kind of stuff, what's important to me. And then if you decide that this is what you want to do, I want you to come up with a really good plan.

Right. So when am I going to start this? How am I going to start this? What's going to work for me? And think about things that might get in the way with my mantra that I use.

Making decisions based on what's best for you and how you feel can really help you reach your goals. Because most of the things in life that are good for us, we don't feel like doing. So if you ask yourself, when the alarm goes off, Do I want to go to the gym? You probably say no. And instead if you say what's best for me, that's going to help you get up and get going.

So think about some strategies that when your mood or your thoughts get in the way of what's best for you, I'm going to use Dr. Julie's mantra, right? Or I'm going to put my alarm clock across the room. So to actually get out of bed, to turn it off, I'm going to lay out my workout clothes in the morning so I don't have to think about it and just get moving. Or if I'm going to go to a class, I'm going to find one that I'm interested in and one that works good with my time so I don't feel stressed.

You can come up with I could go on and on. You come up with all different ways to be able to reach your goal. You got to find what works for you. With all my clients, I give a lot of people the same ideas, and they pick and choose what's going to work for them. Right?

So think about that again. One or two goals is plenty. And then you want to also think about, as I was saying, other than the plan, what are some things about me that's going to help me reach my goals? So I would also take another piece of paper and write down some of your qualities, your strengths, your values, different experiences that can give you hope about actually reaching your goal. So thinking about past successes as well as obstacles you've overcome.

And what are the positive qualities about yourself? Maybe you have a good sense of humor. You're really good at planning things. You're a good time manager, your spiritual beliefs. Maybe you have a real drive to learn new things.

Who are some people that support you? Is my physical health really that important to me? And if it is, I can use that as a motivating factor. What are some motivations and what are some positive aspects about yourself that's going to kick this new goal in and get you moving and keeping you on track? So going back to what I was saying before is don't poop away your success because you haven't reached your full goal yet.

But think about, again, past successes or obstacles that you've overcome that's that giving yourself the Pat on the back. And like, you know what, I've done this at other times in my life, or I've done this in other situations, or I've given other people advice how to do what I'm suggesting. I can kind of practice what I preach and take that as a success for myself. So writing down what's going to help you reach your goals can be very helpful. And then the third thing, as I've talked a little bit already, but is what are the signs of improvement?

Right. So if you're using the book Mind Over Mood on page 37, they actually have a list, which I'll go over a couple of them about signs of improvements. You want to think, what are my signs of improvement? Because it can be a personal thing. So they have a bunch of things to check.

So, for example, I'm sleeping better. I'm feeling more relaxed. I smile more often. I wake up and get out of bed at a regular time. I'm not avoiding activities.

Other people tell me I seem better, I feel more confident, I'm more hopeful for the future. I'm more appreciative and grateful. So those are some signs of improvement. What's it going to look like to you that you're getting better? So you can write those down at the beginning, right.

And then just go back kind of as a little check Mark and go, oh, yeah, you know what? I am getting out of bed and getting to places on time. My relationship is better. I notice I'm smiling more. You know what?

I'm focusing more on gratitude. I'm doing my gratitude list in the morning and at nighttime like I wanted to. So think about what are the signs for you, right again, to make it as personal. It's nice if other people maybe compliment you and say, hey, you know what? You're looking good.

That's a nice thing. But you don't want to rely on that to show a sign of improvement because then you're dependent on other people noticing. And you don't want to do that. You want this to come from within to kind of summarize everything I've said. You want to remember that setting personal goals for your mood or behavior, those changes can help you know where you are headed.

And then again, keep you on track and you can see your progress and you also want to remember that improvement usually comes in baby steps, right? So small signs of improvement. You want to look at it, don't look for the huge things. So again, if it's safe, it's a weight thing. I tell people if say you want to lose £50, that can be overwhelming, right?

So I say, hey, let's just focus on the first five or the first £3, and then we'll get to the £3 loss. Let's add another three to go. So we want to make it small. So again, we set ourselves up for success. And change usually comes in small steps, not big.

You can think of other things you've changed in your life or relationships you've improved or whatever going through College, right? Those are small steps. It takes years to finish and then you get your degree. So again, let's be realistic about this, all right? You may have some mixed feelings about making changes because again, there are advantages and disadvantages, right?

So keep your reasons for your goals in mind so that will help keep you motivated. You want to remember, why am I doing this? Having people in your life that supports you and having people who have the same personal qualities or maybe past experiences or you guys share your own value, the same value strengths. These can motivate you to keep going. You want to learn new skills.

All these things can help you reach your goals. So have some positive people in your life as well. I used to go to classes, spin classes back in the day, and I didn't plan on it, but I actually developed friendships. But I loved also showing up. So I went at the same time on certain days and then tendency of the same people were there.

And so we were really motivating to each other. We're like, wow, you're looking good, or hey, good for you for showing up. And we created this relationship. So I wasn't even looking for and I'm still friends with these people today, even though I'm not at the class anymore. So just showing up on a regular basis, you can end up finding people with similar values and likes and it can be fun.

And sometimes that person might call, hey, Julie, come to the gym today and I wasn't thinking about it, but you're going to be there, I'm going to go, right? Or hey, I don't feel like going to class, but maybe you're one of your classmates calls you and says, come on, let's meet for a cup of coffee. And then we'll go to class together. So find people that can also motivate you and you can give back as well. And it's important also to pay attention again and notice the early signs of improvement.

So having your list of things that you can check and looking for, the positive changes that start small and grow bigger over time can keep the motivation going and also remind you why have I chosen to do this and why is it good for me? And once you reach that goal, it might be being healthy is a lifelong goal, right? So what are the things that I'm going to just continue to do but other goals you might reach and then you can find a new one and you can add on and you can add on. So this is all part of the cognitive therapy, right? Is setting goals, having some measurable tools to know how you're doing, finding people's support, being mindful of how you're thinking.

That goes back to what are the advantages and disadvantages of reaching my goal and what are the advantages and disadvantages of not reaching my goal? So I do love this exercise again because it's very different than just what are the advantages? Okay, let's go with that. What's getting in my way? What's gotten in my way?

What am I worried about? And then we can work on those going forward in the mind of remove book, learning the fall record, which I'm going to keep reviewing with you guys. I know I've done it before. There is a podcast you can listen to called the ABCs of CBT, But I'm going to always be reviewing with you Because it's something you always want to be working on. That what are maybe my thoughts that are getting in the way of me reaching these goals if I'm feeling stuck and what are my hot thoughts, my thoughts that aren't 100% true.

And how can I balance that out so I can get moving again, moving and grooving so I can reach my goals?

So I hope this was helpful and if you have any questions you'd like to ask or give me suggestions on topics, please reach out and email me at MyCBTPodcast@gmail.com.

You can also find me on Instagram, I'm on Facebook, my website is mycognitivebehavioraltherapy.com. There's some articles on there, there's videos, there's lots of good stuff. So whatever works best for you.

And if you do share an email with me, I'll always check back with you before sharing. Making the confidential if you want me to share your name so I don't want you to worry about that.

And if you enjoy this episode, please hit the Subscribe button to make sure you'll never miss an episode. And as I mentioned before, just click on the Mind Over Mood book under the transcribed podcast if you'd like to order the book to get more in depth, help walking through the book and we'll be doing that together as well.

So thanks for joining me. Stay safe. Until next time take care and remember to make decisions based and what's best for you, not how you feel.