The 3 Cs of Preferred Reality Formation

What initially looked like Clickbait on Psychology Today, turned out to be a good article:  

5 Types of Self-Talk That Guide, Heal, and Motivate

The content is quite important, especially the 3C trick to positive neuro-behavioral predictions. 

The 3 Cs are: Catch, Challenge, Change. But while Psychology Today wants you to challenge your irrational beliefs, I think it is more important to catch your "old" or "outdated" thought patterns and change them into your preferred beliefs.  

Catch yourself using a thought process that is problem-perpetuating or problem-flooded, such as "I want to get away from these people that are talking to me and bugging me."

Challenge the reasoning and the source of those thoughts: maybe by calling out the depression for what it is doing to you by thinking or saying "The depression is trying to remove me from people who want to help me by tricking me into wanting to remove myself."

Pretty Picture Because it Helps Make it Easier to Read

Change your thought pattern by replacing it with your preferred reality thoughts and actions: You could fight back against the depression by talking to the person who the depression wanted you to avoid, you could choose to push back by talking to someone you have already identified as supportive and helpful, or you could simply reframe the thoughts in your head: "Depression is a very strong influence right now and I need more practice and support to be able to fight back every time, it's okay that I leave and sleep, but it's not okay for me to let depression trick me into believing these thoughts are okay or from who I know I am." 

You don't have to win every situation to keep pushing back. What you need to do is start reframing thoughts and feelings to fit your new, preferred way of being in the world and keep practicing. Just like practicing almost anything, over time you will notice you are getting better at it.

Neuroplasticity and Narrative Therapy

Using a Narrative Therapy background and orientation, I help clients separate themselves from the problem, to place that problem within a social and cultural context and then to see how their own behavior has really been a way of dealing with and limiting the damage of the problem.  In this way I externalize the situation, changing a depression from being an internal weakness to an external disease that has infected the person.

I spent 8 years in Philadelphia at the Center for the Continuum of Care in the Addictions and the Treatment Research Center through the University of Pennsylvania. We focused on testing low-impact, problem-focused, harm reduction-based methods of treatment.  What I found through that process was that addictions, anxiety, depression and other issues of emotional regulation often are compounded by a person's cognition-behavior feedback system.  Someone believes they have depression, feels they have depression and then starts to identify their behavior as that of someone who "has" depression, instead of that of someone who is fighting depression. Once we have changed a person's orientation to the problem, changing their cognitive responses becomes easier.

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With the influence of the methods we used at the University of Pennsylvania and my brother's scientific work as a neuroscientist at the University of Colorado, I have developed a system of Neuroplasticity Enhancement and Retraining that allows people the freedom to create a preferred reality by giving them the awareness of their own ability to change their emotions by changing their active thoughts. It is similar to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy but without the messy homework of action.  Instead we do homework of thought practices and of logical exercise. 

In practice though, you should forget what I said above.  All of that junk is nice, but I've found that my real asset is my ability to connect with and join in a person's emotional and spiritual growth.  I really like people and love being a part of their change process. I find that by being very present, very emotionally available and by respecting a person for where they are at the moment I can help them feel the support and acceptance they need to move from that sticky, uncomfortable spot that necessitated reaching out for counseling.