I recently started reading your blog and wanted to let you and your readers know about a national Campaign for Love & Forgiveness. It can start with love of self. We have some great tools on our website.
Check out loveandforgive.org

Ooo, yes, I love it, I love it, I love it! And I’ve seen all three Austin Power movies and they are that much more entertaining when watching with a very loud-laughing brother-in-law! Anyway, I love the visuals. These are such wonderful ideas and yet another thing I can share with my CBT group. Our group was cancelled last week and I didn’t get to share your video about being the CEO in the boardroom. I’ll have to listen to that one again to refresh my memory cuz that was a good one, too. (and one I need to share!)
By the way, your hair is so cute, Therese. Did you darken it? Or maybe it’s just the lighting. Regardless, it’s adorable.
Love Valerie

Excellent! Only wish I had learned that technique about 20-some years ago! (I’m not kidding.)
I liked this idea as well as your previous “CEO” one — which by the way I used last week after a meeting with a supervisor. She gave me more directives, basically additional responsibilities for a project and I left our meeting worrying and thinking to myself, I can’t do that, blah, blah, blah. Well, then I clearly rememberd your CEO visual, did it, and VIOLA, the negative “I can’t” voice actually didn’t come back. I was soooooo happy and yes, quite surprised!
BB readers know that if we suffer from depression/low self-esteem, the meds are a help to us but not the only one — we also NEED these type of tools, a way of talking back/touche’, etc., because we often tend to be our own worst enemies with our self-talk….
Thenks, Therese, very helpful, as ever
R.

Great idea, Therese and thanks for making that video…. I wish someone had taught me that years ago, I might not have had so many recurrent depressions (I’m not bipolar, just the “vanilla” unipolar).
Also wanted to tell you that I tried the CEO technique last week after a meeting with an administrator who added more responsibilities to the project I’m working on. I left the meeting, and I heard myself thinking, You can’t do that, blah, blah, blah…. and I quickly remembered the CEO video and I tried it. It worked like a proverbial charm. Thank you soooooo much, Therese…..! That voice did not come back. And I felt empowered, much like a CEO, hee-hee.
Anyway, thank you again for taking the time to make that video for us. Great idea. Many of us BB readers take meds but goodness knows, that is not the whole enchilada, we need ***tools***, especially for dealing with the negative self-talk. This one naming the voice or the CEO to listen and dismiss the voice are excellent.
R.

Therese:
When you are done with your starring roles as a book editor and a blogger (because, as you know, everyone has an average of five careers), I think your next step is to be a comedienne. That routine, simple as it was with the paper bag puppet, had me ROFLMAO.
(And it was still educational!!)
And hey, with your recent appearance on Fox News, maybe your fourth career will be to be a talk show host like Ellen DeGeneres. Naturally your first show will have Debbie, Al and Ed as guests ;-P

Oops, I thought my first comment didn’t go thru…. well, now I’m on here twice. Sorry…!
R.

Therese
Speaking as one of the two or three people who has not sat through an Austin Powers movie, I have to stretch my imagination a little to keep up. Some months about I started referring to anxiety demon. Giving it a name helped me deal with it. It made it something separate from me and it attacks me. Why a demon? Probably has to do with all those episodes of BtVS.

Richard: IMHO, our inner battles ARE against demons; we’re alll dragon slayers. Tink about it: Demons are ugly, right? What could be uglier than the inner voices we all hwar reminding us of the terrible negative things anyone ever said to us? And, not too get TOO fundamentalist her, since demons are from the devil, that fits as well. Remember that whenever Christ encountered someone who was ill or in need of His intervention here on Earth, He spoke to the demon inside that person and cast it out in order to effect His healing of that individual. And since His message to each of us is one of unconditional love, anything from the opposite end of the spectrum can’t be from Him, if you follow my logic.

Therese: I can’t wait to make a puppet of my fther! (He’s MY inner critic! Telling him to shut up already will be a real TREAT!

Therese, you make me laugh like a hyena. I love the ‘mini-me’ idea. I must say that your ‘mini-me’ is quite well-behaved. Could I send mine to you for training in manners. My ‘mini-me’ is grumpy, gruff, cusses, and obstinate. He doesn’t care about punishment. I’d get arrested for ‘mini-me’ abuse if I decided he needed to behave. That said, since I am bigger and meaner than him I just scare him into submission. Does that count ?

Naming the ‘speaker’ makes great sense to me and sort of demystifies the rightness and power any of the mini-me’s that might plague us from time to time. I wasn’t wild about Freud’s take on why things were going on in people but I did appreciate the names he had for the aspects of who we are psychologically. So, I may not get a paper sack or a balloon and paint my face on it (or a soccer ball – remember Tom Hanks?) but I am gonna name that tune – when that silly, sad or stupid mini-me begins to chime in. Good one, Therese.
Frank,