February 12, 2008

Two Thumbs Down!

I’m a gardener.  I do landscaping for a living.  I know a rose when I see one.  Someone can tell me that it’s a tulip, but I know it’s a rose.  “The Resilience Factor” is cognitive behavioral therapy and nothing more and nothing new.  Right within the introduction the writers claim, “mastering these skills will lead you to more fulfilling relationships, to a more productive career, and to feeling excited and energized in life…and we have proof that the skills we teach work.  This book will show you how to increase what is right in your life as well as fix what is wrong….our research shows that everyone can increase their resilience – permanently – by learning the seven skills that we have developed and by putting them to use.  We guarantee that after reading this book and mastering these skills, you will have a better understanding of who you are and why you behave in the way you do than ever before.” 

I was so irritated by all these false promises that I couldn’t help writing in my book, “CALL NOW! Operator’s are standing by!!!” There wasn’t room to write the rest of what I wanted to write which is, “if you call within the next ten minutes, we’re going to send you these FREE kitchen knives and this FREE chop and chip vegetable dicer!  CALL NOW!!!!!”

The “seven skills” they are teaching is cognitive therapy.  They have taken CBT into organizations, corporations, and schools and are trying to pass it off as something they, Reivich and Shatte, have created.  They write that all people need to do is learn their ABC’s!  Well, actually it’s ACB’s but who in the heck is going to remember that?!  Adversity, Consequences, Beliefs.  They request that we look at the way we think about what’s happening in our life, the adversity.  Look at the consequences that this is causing, and change our belief system, look at things another way.  CBT.

As I read, I would say to myself, “This is Gottman’s work, Ellis’s work, Seligman’s, Beck’s, Frankl’s, and Baumeister’s!”  Sure enough.  Within the next page they would mention the names of the great psychologists that did the original work.  They didn’t expound on the master’s work, just mention the name and go on.  Some of their statements I found absolutely incredible.  On page 279 they state, “In fact, in 1995, when we were featured on Oprah, we asked a group of students who had recently been through our program; ‘What skills do you want to show Oprah and the world?’ (Oprah has a lot of clout with adolescents, and being on her show did more to increase our credibility in their eyes than anything we could have said.)  Real-time Resilience was the unanimous answer.” 

No….really?  The kids are on t.v. and they’ve been told what to say.  Do you really think they’re going to pull out their yo-yo’s and demonstrate those skills?  How about a basketball shoot?  Of course the kids are going to say “Real-time Resilience”!  I also want to see the longitudinal, cross cultural, double-blind study that proves that “Oprah has a lot of clout with adolescents”.  What a ridiculous statement to make when the authors are trying to sell me their seven resilience factors and prove to me that it works.

On page 232, the heading is, “Using the Skills of Resilience to Change the Way You Fight”.  “Some of the problems that lead to fights are solvable.  The fights are about a specific, controllable event, and, if your style of fighting is healthy…”  What in the hell is HEALTHY FIGHTING?  I recognized some of what they wrote as the Gottman’s work so I went to their website to find “healthy fighting”.  I couldn’t find that.  I found this instead:   

• Learn to repair and exit the argument. Successful couples know how to exit an argument. Happy couples know how to repair the situation before an argument gets completely out of control. Successful repair attempts include: changing the topic to something completely unrelated; using humor; stroking your partner with a caring remark ("I understand that this is hard for you"); making it clear you're on common ground ("This is our problem"); backing down (in marriage, as in the martial art Aikido, you have to yield to win); and, in general, offering signs of appreciation for your partner and his or her feelings along the way ("I really appreciate and want to thank you for.…"). If an argument gets too heated, take a 20-minute break, and agree to approach the topic again when you are both calm.

On Friday evening, January 11^th, in Dr. Hurst’s lecture, he said, “…it’s the absence of negative behavior, rather than positive behavior, that keeps relationships together.  Behaviors can be neutral, or positive, and you will probably stay in the relationship.  But if they are negative, then you’re not going to make it.  So even neutral behavior, you will probably stay in that relationship.  But once negative comes in, then the relationship is damaged.  It can just be neutral.  Positive is good.  If positive and negative were equal, [you] would probably still stay together.  The negative deteriorates the relationship.  The four horsemen of the apocalypse.  Gottman.  Criticism, contempt, stonewalling, defensiveness.  The more of that there is ends relationships.  It’s the number one predictor of divorce.  Negativity, it comes from these four horsemen, more than affairs, more than all kinds of things.  It’s the negativity.  Even relationships.  If your relationship with a friend, if they’re criticizing…or get real defensive and stonewall and things aren’t going well between the two of you, are you going to be friends for very long do you think?  Only if you’re a masochist.  If you like that kind of thing you might stay around”.  No mention of healthy fighting there either.

Even though I found the introduction of the book highly irritating, I truly worked very hard with the book to change my own defective cognitions.  I really wanted to like this book since Dr. Hurst verbally slapped me twice in class for not liking Compton’s Intro to Positive Psych.  As I read and did my own personal testing in the chapter “How Resilient Are You”, I kept getting more and more frustrated.  I was looking for my “Aha!” moment.  It didn’t happen until page 91.  “ABC Exceptions”.  “Sometimes your beliefs don’t matter quite so much.  Here we must contradict ourselves: In some cases, events are so severe that your reactions are driven by the event itself, not your beliefs about the event…the magnitude of the event dictates your beliefs, and questioning their accuracy or usefulness is not particularly useful…”  This is where they should have encouraged the reader to seek professional help.  Nothing was said. 

I got onto the net and typed in “resilience” and the University of Penn website came up.  There was a link for resilience research in children.  “The Penn Resiliency Project”.  Here it said, “A major goal of the study is to promote optimistic thinking to help children and adolescents respond to the daily challenges and problems that are encountered during the middle and high school years.  The PRP (Penn Resiliency Project) designed by …Karen Reivich, Ph.D., Martin Seligman, Ph.D….is a manual-based intervention comprised of twelve 90-minute group sessions.  The curriculum teaches cognitive-behavioral…skills and is based in part on cognitive-behavioral theories of depression by Aaron T. Beck, Albert Ellis and Martin Seligman.  Students are encouraged to identify and challenge negative beliefs, use evidence to make more accurate appraisals of situations and events, and to use effective coping mechanisms when faced with adversity.  In addition to the cognitive-behavioral components… adolescents and parents now attend several booster sessions in the years following the intervention.  The booster sessions review the critical concepts covered in the initial intervention.  We hope that these new additions to the PRP will produce longer lasting intervention effects.”

With a little math, the twelve 90-minute sessions equal the equivalent of Dr. Hurst’s 24 CBT sessions of 45 minutes each that he spends with his clients.  They also note that the original work was done by Drs. Beck, Ellis, and Seligman.  They also admit in this article that they were using cognitive-behavioral therapy and not something new about iceberg beliefs, ABC’s, or any seven skills that they have developed.  It’s CBT, plain and simple.  Furthermore, anyone that truly needs help is going to think that this book is going to cure them and when it doesn’t, it is only going to increase their negative beliefs that they’re a looser and they may become more depressed in the long run.  As the authors state so clearly on page 77, “Nothing erodes resilience more quickly than depression.  Nothing.”  The authors of the book also admit in this article on the Penn site that they worked in a group therapy forum and needed “booster sessions” that they hoped would “produce longer lasting intervention effects”. 

People need help to change their deep seated, fully ingrained, incorrect beliefs, the “icebergs”. It takes time, a lot of it.  No one can change their beliefs in the time it took me to read the book.  It’s almost like one of those hyped, enthusiastic, “let’s go conquer the world” seminars that leave you empty and tired within a few days time and you’re back to where you started…sitting on your icebergs. The Titanic detected an iceberg and it sank, just like the readers will.  I am on my third psychologist and it has taken me years to change my corrupt way of thinking.  I’ve read a lot of books and not one has made so many promises as this one and delivered so little. 

I’m going to do the “Amygdala hijack” and throw cold water on this publication.  The authors make too many promises to the readers, they are selling cognitive behavioral therapy under another name, they don’t give enough credit to the great psychologists that did the hard work in the first place, and the authors are calling it their own.  They don’t give enough time to the “ABC exceptions” and continue to coerce the readers into thinking that they can fly solo just with their book and become ‘healed’.  They admit on the website that they did group therapy sessions during their studies with the psychologist present, but nowhere do they mention seeking qualified help in their publication.  Nowhere. 

Yes, people need more resiliency.  Yes, we need to change our incorrect thinking patterns.  Yes, we need to become more positive and work with our character strengths and reach out to help others.  Yes, we need to do everything that they suggest in this publication, but it’s a lie to say that this book is going to accomplish all this for their readers.  It’s not going to happen.  By the time the reader gets done with the book they are going to feel more worthless, more depressed, and in need of more good psychological help.  It belongs on the “self-help” shelf at the local bookstore right next to Dr. Phil, which is another “Two thumbs down”.