Horrific World Events: Can TEAM-CBT Help Us? Part 1 of 2 Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy

Horrific World Events: Can TEAM-CBT Help Us? Featuring Live work with Meina Today, we see lots of horrific events, and violence and hatred seem to be on the upswing. There are the repeated and horrible mass shootings in the US, the horrific war in the Ukraine, and the extensive protests that are rocking Iran. Those problems are real, and terrible in reality. So, maybe the TEAM-CBT model, with its emphasis on our interpretations of reality, and our relationships with others, might seem like irrelevant and useless tools. Or are they? Let’s check it out. Sometimes, as you’ll see, things can a take sudden and unexpected change in direction in TEAM-CBT if you follow the energy. There is no “formula” for treating anything. We treat humans, not diagnoses or problems. But we do go through the T, E, A, M model in a systematic way so we can find out what, if anything, each patient wants help with, and then design an individualized plan to make that happen, if possible. Part 1 T = Testing Today’s guest, whom we’ll call Meina for protection, migrated to the United States from her mother country, Iran, as a young woman, and she’s definitely upset. In fact, her mood scores are among the most severe that I’ve seen recently. Her depression score of 15 out of 20 indicates severe depression, and her anxiety and anger scores of 19 and 20 out of 20 indicates extreme anxiety and anger. You can see Meina’s Daily Mood Log at the start of the session as well, with nine categories—depression, anxiety, guilt, loneliness, humiliation, hopelessness, frustration and hatred all estimated between 90 and 100 out of 100, again confirming the most extreme upset a human being can experience. As you might expect, her happiness score was 0 out of 20, indicating no happiness at all, and her Relationship Satisfaction Scale score, thinking of her husband, was only 19 out of 30, indicating considerable marital distress. What’s causing those feelings? Well, let’s take a look at her negative thoughts and how strongly she believes them: I’ll always suffer because of being born in Iran: 90% My heart will stop from feeling so much hatred. 80% There’s nothing I can do to help (the women who are protesting.) 100% It is pathetic that I can’t stop feeling so angry. 90% I’m going to get sick because of these feelings. 90% Many young women will be tortured and killed. 100% I’m going to lose all my friends because I’m so angry. 70% My marriage will also be negatively impacted. 100% E = Empathy In the empathy phase of the session, Rhonda and David simply listened, as Meina described terrifying memories of the being a child during the Iran Iraq war, and being left alone to care for her younger sister when her parents were away every day, and bombs were coming down all over the city. She said that on many occasions she was so scared that she wanted to commit suicide by jumping out of the window of their apartment in Iran. And now, all those terrifying memories have come flooding her mind again, triggered by the events in Iran, as well as her fears and run-ins with the “morality police” when she was a young woman. She expressed profound connection with the young women who are now fighting the intense suppression of human rights in Iran, all in the name of religion! Once their car was stopped, and a policeman put a gun to her mother’s head because she had not covered her hair properly. She also described the attempts always to separate the girls and the boys to prevent any type of dating or romantic behavior, and the constant fear of being imprisoned if you did the wrong thing. Meina tells us: I saw friends who were beaten up, and was humiliated for eating an apple. I was arrested for wanting to go to parties to listen to music. I lived in constant fear of being tortured and had panic attacks by night and by day. . . I left Iran when I was 22 and have never gone back, for fear of ending up in prison. . . Then, when I fina