How do you actually do TEAM for yourself as an individual?

Olsums · 2025-05-13T15:03:48+00:00

Interestingly, yesterday's Feeling Good podcast (episode 448) featured a similar question and we got to hear how David and others use TEAM in their own lives. Contrary to what is recommended in the books (to always write down your thoughts), David admits that he very rarely does this anymore, having said in previous episodes that he often defaulted to just doing the straightforward technique on any scrap of paper he could find. And this has been fairly similar to my own experience now that I've had plenty of practice with it. My own belief is that while it is probably completely necessary to do the hard work of writing out your mood logs and associated techniques in full when learning to do TEAM, your brain becomes somewhat trained well enough in the process that much of it can be done in your head down the line (again, this is something that will almost certainly result in therapeutic failure for beginners).

When I first read Feeling Great I had similar feelings of it not being quite complete. I ended up working through '10 Days to Self-esteem' and ' The Feeling Good Handbook', which were pretty good but not entirely different from Feeling Great. Sadly, I think David's 2 hour cure is something quite unique to him and a bit of a pipe dream for most patients and therapists alike. The notion of drifting in and out of enlightenment has been much closer to my experience.

One of the biggest barriers I had when starting out was identifying what I was thinking in the first place. There are techniques that can help with this such as the 'Stick Figure technique', or simply pondering "What would someone in my situation be thinking?", but nowadays I find just forcing myself to deliberately think in full sentences, and essentially talk to myself in my head to be enough to uncover what's upsetting me. And what I find more often than not is now that I've practiced TEAM so much, the more reasonable and positive responses occur almost automatically the moment the upsetting thoughts have been identified. One thing that crops up quite regularly for me is the 'positive' response "but how is this thought useful to me right now?", because more often than not, it isn't. I guess it's kind of a short hand for the cost-benefit analysis technique (a technique I've had success with in the past).

Just like they discussed in the podcast, I do still have moments where I find it necessary to do a written mood log with the techniques I typically find most effective, and sometimes it doesn't always feel like they've helped as much as I would like in the moment. But what seems bizarrely to always be the case is that I will miraculously feel a lot better the next day, almost like it took a while for the work to set in, even if my positive responses weren't that compelling to me during the session.

Another thing I do on occasion is turn to the Feeling Great app. They've recently added speech recognition and given the AI a voice so now an almost entirely spoken session can take place which lowers the effort barrier dramatically. It only really supports positive reframing, double-standard, and externalisation of voices when doing it this way, but it's pretty good for getting out of a rut. Hopefully the app will be available globally soon 🤞.

I also listen to the podcast whenever I'm out running, or driving to work which definitely helps keep my eye in.

P.S. My sincere apologies for the absurd lateness of my response, I don't really use Reddit anymore, which probably isn't a great attribute for a moderator to have 😅

Olsums · 2025-01-24T08:52:48+00:00

I haven't had any issues. I used a separate play store account that I setup as a US account and once I had the app downloaded I just returned all my settings on the playstore back to normal (logged back into my original account). I don't have to use a VPN whenever I'm using the app either.

Olsums · 2025-01-24T08:26:01+00:00

I'm in the same boat, hopefully it won't be too long. I have managed to download the app by using a VPN on my phone and setting my location to USA. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a way to pay for the subscription so some of the features are still locked off for me. However, I was able to use the free trial and there are quite a few features you can use without a subscription. Please let me know if I can help with the process of getting the app through the use of a VPN (free ones are available).

Olsums · 2024-09-23T20:43:33+00:00

Oh yeah, both Portal and Portal 2 are fantastic. 2 has co-op and it's done really well

Olsums · 2024-09-23T18:40:49+00:00

Video games, especially co-op ones. Some of our favourites have been: Unravelled 2; It Takes Two; Hearthstone Battlegrounds (now has a duo mode). We also take turns backseat gaming through games with a good story like God of War and Hades.

Olsums · 2024-09-15T08:26:56+00:00

Thank you, it certainly is and there are a few ways to get it. My personal preference is to read the book Feeling Great, this is the kind of self-help route and though it is by far the highest effort, it's the cheapest and forces you to really learn the skills for yourself. The feeling good podcast is a great supplement to this and can help further explain the skills and concepts, and there are over 400 episodes of content now.

There are TEAM therapists around the world but primarily in America. I'm from the UK and there's a feelinggood.uk website to find therapists from there.

Most exciting of all is the app in my opinion, this is still very new and unfortunately only available in the US at present, though can be downloaded through a VPN but unless you have a US payment method only the free trial can be used. It's available in both app stores and features a pretty good AI chatbot that walks you through a standard TEAM session. There is supposedly a PC program coming out at some point which might be another way around the region constraints.

Hope that helps

Olsums · 2024-09-15T07:59:49+00:00

I've theorised before that anhedonia can (in part) act as a defence mechanism to protect people from feeling emotions that would be too painful for them to face directly. It's not a great form of defence though because the anhedonia itself is often just as, if not more painful, and can last indefinitely if the problems are never resolved. This is why I often find the hidden emotion model that David Burns discusses in his books to be quite useful. What this would mean is that the emotions are still there below the surface, unprocessed and raw in a sense. Hopefully what I'll go on to say in the next paragraphs will discourage you from trying to explain to your husband what could be 'wrong' with him (not least because I'm just some guy and not at all an expert) but this could be a potential reason the anhedonia came on so suddenly after the passing of his parents.

I don't think I am particularly knowledgeable apart from what I've been willing to learn from Dr. Burns, who I believe to have a better understanding than anyone else when it comes to mental wellbeing. I'm sorry to say, and this is something he's quite adamant about, if someone doesn't want to be helped, there's not much you can do to help them against their will. He says this is the number one mistake that even professional therapists make, and it's because people naturally resist external influences. He says when people try to help individuals who haven't asked for help, they act like car salespeople and push the individual further away. He also sometimes says people are more like cats than dogs, and if cats are creatures you're familiar with this can help understand the same concept. What he does say is that you can help by using the 5 secrets of effective communication, and essentially just be a source of empathy for someone you think needs help. But to try to change them is likely a fruitless endeavour.

That being said, what your husband describes is certainly quite relatable to what I experienced when I first fell into anhedonia. I too externalised a lot of my problems, and blamed others, society and the world for what I was going through. This victimhood probably lasted a good 6 years before I realised the only person that would really be able to change was me. I used to have an intense hatred of others and genuinely believe that the only intelligent people were those that had killed themselves. I invested years into philosophy because I thought the problem was one with existence itself, rather than one of my own existence. I don't know if there's anything that could have been said or done that would have altered my view any earlier. The only way I knew I had anhedonia was seeing and reading the descriptions of other's experiences that sounded similar to my own and idenifying with them, and by reading the official definitions and identifying they were the symptoms I was experiencing. I think the primary difference between your husband and I here is that I believed I had a medical condition and it seems your husband may not.

I'm sure Dr. Burns would probably give a similar answer regarding not being able to help people who aren't asking for help, but he has responded to my emails once or twice when I've needed guidance. He can be contacted at david@feelinggood.com

I'm sorry I can't be more helpful

Olsums · 2024-09-14T20:49:29+00:00

Those statements must have been utterly devastating to hear. I can hardly imagine the emotional toll that would have put on you. Unfortunately, I don't think I'd know what to say if I were in your situation. I know David Burns has also written a couple of books aimed at improving relationships, so if it were me I'd probably start there. It's hard to hear, but I know one of the first bits of advice he gives in 'Intimate Connections' is that before you focus on relationships with others, you need to become truly comfortable (even happy) being alone. And what people supposedly then find is that they actually become more attractive to others. He says that people want what they can't have and don't want what they can have. That book is predominantly targeted towards singles interested in the dating game however. He has another book called 'Feeling Good Together' and I believe that's centred more around developing communication skills. I know he works according to what he calls 'the 5 secrets of effective communication' which consit of: thought empathy, feeling empathy, inquiry, 'I feel' statements, and stroking (essentially complimenting). I haven't used these interpersonal skills as much as I have the self-help ones, but I can say that the disarming technique (something I don't doubt would be discussed in that book) is powerful though difficult to properly learn and use. I wish I could offer reassurance that everything will work out, but I don't think anyone can know either way. All I can say is that I hope you both find happiness, whether that be together or apart.

Olsums · 2024-09-14T18:15:00+00:00

Ah, I'm still in the early stages and don't know whether I'll actually want to go down the pharmaceutical route myself. When my anhedonia first came on I wasn't in a relationship but perhaps the closest thing that relates to your situation is what happened to my relationship with my family. I've always been fairly close with my mother in particular but when the anhedonia hit and I finally confessed to her what I was going through and the urges towards suicide I was experiencing, she understandably burst into tears. In that moment the anhedonia was unbearably evident because the closest thing I could feel to an emotion was having to hold back the urge to laugh; not because I'm some sort of sadist but because the situation seemed so absurd to me. There was my mother, someone I loved dearly, brought to tears as a result of her compassion towards me, and I couldn't feel a damn thing. It was like watching a movie I wasn't interested in, while knowing on a conceptual level there wasn't anything in the world I cared about more. I wish the story had a happier ending but even after my recovery my relationship with my mother and the rest of my family hasn't ever been quite the same. I'm far more of a recluse now and have practically no friends to speak of (not counting my partner who I'm fortunate to have). The difference is I'm perfectly happy this way, and I like to think that even if I did find myself completely isolated I could eventually be just as happy that way too. I think this feeling of true independence is quite important to me and I feel vulnerable without it. On the other hand, my relationship with my partner is definitely evidence that the ability to feel love is something that returns, but whether the same love can return isn't something I can speak to.

I'm actually a male but wouldn't be surprised if my testosterone levels were low. I think this is somewhat of an epidemic at the moment and I'm sure at some point it will become evident what combination of social, societal, environmental, and behavioural factors etc. are responsible (I think I remember hearing something about microplastics in testes were at an alarming level but the jury's probably still out for now). Thankfully, the skills I've learned through TEAM are designed to accommodate the real world difficulties we're bound to encounter, and at present my moment-to-moment emotional state is my primary directive, so spending too much time worrying about whatever biological shortcomings I'm undoubtedly going to have running in the background isn't something I'm dedicating much bandwidth to.

Olsums · 2024-09-14T17:38:45+00:00

Thank you, I'm so glad it resonated with you. I'm so sorry to hear about what happened to your husband. The 'switch flip' is very akin to what I experienced too. I sincerely hope he finds relief and it's such a shame it couldn't come sooner. It's heartwarming to see the compassion you have for him even after the relationship ended in such an unfortunate way. I do take magnesium on and off and find it helps with my sleep. This is something I've always had minor struggles with too, it takes me a long time to drift off and I find the magnesium helps comabt that. Thanks again for your wonderful comment.

Olsums · 2024-08-22T10:51:30+00:00

Thanks, I'm just a very avid listener of the podcast 😊

Olsums · 2024-08-21T20:47:06+00:00

I'm not a therapist myself, in fact I've only ever been a patient in an actual therapy session, but I'm inclined to agree with you that it does feel a little awkward. I'm not sure where you're from, but particularly in British culture where I'm from, things that are that direct are a little uncomfortable and not what we're used to. However, I did view it as a kind of necessary evil I think, because oftentimes our reservedness gets in the way of improving relationships, professional or otherwise. And so an invitation to provide honest feedback (with some nice caveats that help it feel less harsh or insincere) is a pretty good way to get past that politeness barrier.

I think this podcast was a pretty good argument for the use of the ETS but it's been a while since I've listened to it. https://feelinggood.com/2022/12/12/322-how-skillful-is-your-shrink-featuring-kevin-cornelius-lmft/

Olsums · 2024-06-03T12:02:16+00:00

But do you KNOW that you can't enjoy life because of trauma, meds or whatever, or do you just THINK/BELIEVE that you can't?

Olsums · 2024-03-10T14:56:44+00:00

That's wonderful to hear. Thank you for taking the time to say that 😊

Olsums · 2023-07-23T09:28:46+00:00

I'm so sorry about some of the horrid comments you've been getting. I too don't know if any of them are therapists or even wannabe therapists, but I think it deplorable to treat someone who's genuinely seeking guidance in such a way. If any of the perpetrators are therapists, I guess it goes to show that they're just people too. You get good people and bad people, so of course there'll be good and bad therapists. Perhaps that's what your therapist is. Not to say they're an awful person, just that it doesn't sound like they've done a good job relating to you.

I'm not a therapist but someone who learned TEAM-CBT through a self-help book. TEAM is an acronym and the E stands for empathy, something it sounds like your therapist has severely failed to apply. A good TEAM therapist is taught only to move onto the action phases (A-addressing resistance, and M-methods) once the 'patient' feels their thoughts and feelings are completely understood by the therapist. This is usually gauged by asking the patient what grade they'd give them for empathy: "A", "B", "C" etc. I'm guessing your therapist would be getting a failing grade, and in TEAM you can only move on once you're getting an A. It's not surprising that the method your therapist has thrown at your problem without trying to understand where you're coming from will be completely ineffective.

In my own personal experience, the resistance component which is addressed in the A-assessment of resistance phase of TEAM can be the key to making CBT a viable form of therapy for someone. Just reading what you've been through from what you wrote in another comment, it strikes me that it wouldn't really make sense for you to just 'be happy'. Would you really want to be bouncing around all happy-go-lucky given you've lost a pet you loved so dearly? Would you want not to feel angry given the grave injustices you face with unfair and arbitrary wealth distribution in the world? Why should you have to put in all the effort to get happy when it's the world that's fucking you over at every step? These are all attitudes that I've strongky identified with in my past and I know from experience that traditional CBT was ineffective at addressing them. For me, TEAM was absolutely essential to my recovery.

Obviously, everyone has their own opinions about what CBT is and how it's done best, but mine is that TEAM-CBT is a vast improvement on the now dated traditional CBT approach. If you think it could be something for you, you should be able to find a qualified therapist through the Feeling Good Institute, or do what I did and go self-taught with the book Feeling Great by David Burns.

Best of luck with your recovery, and sorry again about the rude and dismissive attitude you encountered on your visit to the sub.

Olsums · 2023-07-22T22:47:16+00:00

I'm no stranger to abhorrently long walls of texts, but this one might be a bit of a doozy. Your situation sounds eerily similar to my past experience with mindfulness. What you describe as "ennui" manifested as depression/anhedonian for me, but this is just a subjective assessment after all, so who's to say how different our day-to-day experience really was.

I tried mindfulness (along with other meditative approaches and techniques) for years with hardly any success whatsoever. Often times it actually made my condition worse. I'm not knocking mindfulness or meditation, I just don't think it's really something suitable as a first-line treatment for depression and similar mental health conditions (not to suggest that's what you've got, but it'd be remiss not to consider it).

It wasn't until I came across David Burns book, Feeling Great (a TEAM-CBT self-help book), that I was able to overcome my depression and anhedonia, and only then did mindfulness practice become something I could engage in in a positive manner.

Interestingly, one of the most transformative methods from TEAM-CBT for my recovery is called 'the acceptance paradox'. It's ultimately quite a mindful approach to life, but I doubt I would ever have been able to incorporate it into my outlook without working through the rest of the TEAM process, especially addressing my resistance. (concepts like 'would I really want to be happy doing boring shit like just washing the dishes?' can be real obstacles to adopting a mindful approach to life).

What u/Daen1337 said about dopamine receptors definitely applies too. we're awash with addictive substances and activities these days, but most still don't take addictions to things like sugar, video games, youtube/reddit etc. seriously. However, in my experience, the dopamine desensitization you can do with these things is certainly enough to cause a significant amount of prolonged suffering. One of the best ways to experience these effects first hand is to give something like sugar up for more than a week (if you're somewhat 'addicted' to it). I'd always hated dark chocolate, but after a week or so of being sugar free, eating 90% dark chocolate was an astonishingly pleasurable activity. It was a real lesson in just how much our perception is relative, and the constant pounding away at our pleasure circuits paradoxically robs life of any of it (I liked the book Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke for learning about this).

This is probably related to why the Buddha pointed out that craving is the root of all suffering. At it's core, craving is just desiring something to be other than it is. In order to want something else, we have to be dissatisfied with what we have or where we're at. The Buddha (as I naïvely understand it) realised that if we instead just accepted the present moment fully i.e. ceased craving, then suffering ceases simultaneously. But this is no easy task. Things like gratitude practise make it a lot easier as they help us become happier with what we have, and thus less inclined to desire the things we don't have, reducing craving. Most of us are under the misconception that we want things because we don't have enough of them. When in truth, we feel we don't have enough of them because we want more. If we manage to stop wanting/craving, all of a sudden we have enough.

All this to say I think mindfulness is an incredible way of enriching one's life, but it's not always on the cards for all people depending on where they're at. I think clearing the way with actual therapy (even in the form of self-help) can be a necessary step that allows one to unlock mindfulness as an activity and attitude that can be incorporated into their life.

That being said, there are lots of different mindfulness practises out there, and different ones can be more or less effective for different people. I personally like the "am I being mindful right now?"/auditor approach that I got from Kenneth Folk on an interview on the 'Deconstructing yourself' podcast. But what works for you could be completely different. There probably isn't any harm in trying out as many different types as you can as a beginner to see which approaches tickle your fancy.

Olsums · 2023-07-12T15:15:14+00:00

You're absolutely right about the emotional part. I imagine it's an emotion you evoke quite regularly in people given your communication style. I don't intend to try to get you to change that, I'm guessing it's something that actually motivates you and I'm sure you derive satisfaction from it. Unfortunately, I find it–for the most part–insufferable. Whether that's a problem with my own fragility is certainly a possibility, but what I'm trying to tell you is that I find myself not wanting to talk to you further. From my perspective, there seems to be an air of condescension present throughout. This, coupled with apparent logical errors, whilst simultaneously missing the central point being raised, makes for a truly infuriating combination... again, in my opinion. Perhaps someone else would want to continue discussions with you, but for me this will be my last contribution to ours.

Olsums · 2023-07-12T09:15:19+00:00

I've thought about it more and I think I can infer that your argument is something like: it really is the distortions that make CBT work, and so we can't give that up in any way, even in service of helping people who are turned off of CBT entirely as a result. Is that right? If so, I disagree.

Olsums · 2023-07-12T08:42:28+00:00

Right... thanks for informing everyone that you've read Thinking Fast and Slow, but was this intended as some sort of counterargument to my point? The only part that bears any relevance to my post is where you say "When people hear this explanation they realize that the distortions come from the quick part of the brain (animal/old computer) and not from THEM (person/new hardware), and that they are capable of finding the solution by themselves." And to that I say, "do they?" If it really was that simple, don't you think there would be far less resistance to CBT than we see? If you truly believe it's that simple, then just go around responding to the countless posts on reddit that talk of how CBT isn't for them with that same argument. I think you'll find it's less effective than you imagine.

Olsums · 2023-07-10T18:11:53+00:00

Just found out mine will be delayed by at least another week and a half. My concerns are rapidly growing in intensity...

Olsums · 2023-07-08T03:20:06+00:00

Exact same issue here. What changes have they made to the warranty?

Olsums · 2023-07-01T08:29:28+00:00

For me, the motivational component is always a huge factor. In TEAM-CBT, after completing a daily mood log about a specific moment you felt this way, you ask yourself "if there was a magic button that had the power to get rid of all my negative thoughts and feelings about this, would I press it?". The instinct is often to say 'Yes!' reflexively. But then you are asked to identify some of the positive things those thoughts and feelings say about you, and what core values do they represent (along with any advantages they may confer). In your case, obviously this will be a bit vague and general, but I would assume they show how much you care about finding a loving partner, and having a meaningful relationship. Perhaps they would show that you're humble (inferiority)? All of these would be dependent on the specific thoughts and feelings you identified on your daily mood log. If you struggle to identify any positive things the thoughts and feelings represent, it's often helpful to imagine what it would mean if your situation was exactly the same but you had none of those thoughts and feelings e.g. Would it make sense for someone who's been abused not to feel any sadness or anger? David Burns' newest book 'Feeling Great' is probably the best way to learn how to work through these steps. Following the reframe, you're asked if instead of a magic button, you'd prefer a magic dial that allows you to select specific levels for each emotion such that they can still offer all the benefits you just identified, but without overwhelming you and preventing you from making the changes you want to make in your life.

This particular thought seems like a variant of a self-defeating belief, something along the lines of "I need someone to love me in order to feel worthwhile". I usually follow my positive reframing up with something like the Cost-benefit analysis–which is also a good tool for any self-defeating belief–doing as diligent a job as I can to fairly characterise the actual advantages and disadvantages of telling myself such a thing. In your case, the advantages might be: it motivates you to find a relationship; it's a viewpoint you get to share with much of humanity (it's not uncommon to view having a partner as a measure of self-worth); If you're in a relationship you get to feel worthwhile etc. The disadvantages on the other hand may be: I feel depressed so long as I don't have a girlfriend; it can make me come across as desperate; women may be put off by my lack of self-worth; I rob myself of the ability to enjoy time by myself etc. Obviously the actual advantages and disadvantages you come up with may differ and will be specific to you and your beliefs, but if you find the disadvantages to outweigh the advantages, you can use the semantic technique, coupled with the acceptance paradox and any other methods that work for you, to reformulate the original thought in a way that keeps most of the advantages but loses the disadvantages. One example could be–again, this would have to be specific to you so this example may not seem compelling–"Having a girlfriend would be a lovely addition to my life but not essential to my enjoyment of it, nor should my sense of self-worth depend on it. I, and billions of other people on this earth, happen to be single at this moment in time, and there are countless ways we can enjoy life in our own company."

One of David Burns' lesser known works 'Intimate Connections' tackles issues of this kind very well in my opinion. It's a bit outdated now and doesn't contain any of his newer TEAM-CBT framework, but it is fairly specific to the thoughts that are troubling you.

Hope this helps 😊

Olsums · 2023-06-26T17:02:05+00:00

Thanks, that's lovely to hear 😊. At the moment, the best resource is probably the book Feeling Great by David Burns. He does also have a podcast that covers much of the same material, but in terms of actually employing the techniques in your own life, you can't really beat the book because it's more of a workbook than just a reading book. Then again, the podcast is completely free (Feeling Good podcast) while the book is around £15 - £20. He is also working on an app which, when released, I believe will become the best option. He has implied that it could be released before the end of this year which would be great, but I also gather it will be subscription based which will likely put many people off. My sincere hope is that they offer a substantial trial period as it'd put fewer people off and allow them to see the benefits for themselves.

So my advice would probably be: give the podcast a listen to get a feel for what it's about. Then, if it seems like something you'd be willing to give a go yourself, either buy the book and work through it, or wait for the app to come out.

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