On March 26, 2021, Dawn O’Meally was absolutely thrilled to be interviewed by Dr. David Burns, the author who has sold more than 5 million copies of Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy. During the Podcast, Dawn shared her 20 years of experience leading groups for her patients using Dr. Burns' workbook Ten Days to Self Esteem. Click here to read more from Dr. Burn’s and Dawn’s conversation.
GROUP OVERVIEW
Why is it so challenging to lose weight, cope with stress, manage emotions, or establish and maintain healthy habits?
Why am I so hard on myself and have unachievable, perfectionistic self-demands? Why do I procrastinate and self-sabotage when I know what I have to do? What can I do to deal with my worrying and anxiety?
The answers to these questions—and the path to lasting change in your life—lie in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), a well-tested collection of practical techniques for managing moods and modifying undesirable behaviors through self-awareness, critical analysis, and taking steps toward gradual, goal-oriented change.
During the eleven weeks, engaging, 1 ½ hour long group sessions of 11 Weeks to Self Esteem, utilizing the workbook 10 Days to Self Esteem by David Burns, MD, you’ll build a robust and effective self-improvement toolkit with the expert guidance of Dawn A. O’Meally, MSW, LCSW-C. Dawn has been facilitating 11 Weeks to Self Esteem program doing group after group since 2002. You will build a toolkit of CBT techniques, get to practice them with step by step guidance and support from Dawn, and begin to use the tools immediately. Upon completing this eleven-week program, you will be armed with resources and tools to examine your own thoughts, emotions, and behaviors and to set yourself on the path to a better life.
What is CBT? CBT illuminates the links between thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and physical health and uses those connections to develop concrete plans for self-improvement.
Built on a solid foundation of neurological and behavioral research, CBT is not simply about treating mental illness. It is an approach almost anyone can use for promoting greater mental health and improving quality of life. CBT can help you address a variety of common concerns. Some of these issues fall under the traditional issues seen by mental health professionals- for example anxiety, depression, and trauma. Others are stressors in that occur in everyone’s life, from everyday challenges like conflicts at work to potentially life-changing events like the loss of a loved one. Even with medical issues, such as insomnia, weight management, and chronic pain, CBT can be a powerful part of better understanding the problem and enhancing the healing process. Unlike other forms of psychotherapy, CBT places the power in the hands of the patient, who learns and practices an explicit skillset that lasts long after therapy might end.
During the 11-week program, you’ll learn how to better deal with:
• Stress: Humans are unique in that we can stress ourselves out with hypothetical events, things that never happen or might never happen. An individual's appraisals may be out of sync with reality, or out of touch with their actual coping skills. You will learn how CBT helps to uncover those negative thoughts, the common underlying thinking errors fueling the negative thoughts, and how to begin restructuring them so that your thoughts are rational and helpful- even in bad situations!
• Depression: People who are feeling depressed often engage in self- defeating, maladaptive behaviors, which exacerbate their depressed feelings. In the CBT group program, you will learn the difference 2 between healthy sadness versus clinical depression, and tools to help you process negative feelings so that you can make intelligent decisions about them. In doing so, you learn to be more in charge of your emotions vs. being derailed by them.
• Anger: Have you ever had a fight with someone that took place wholly in your mind? You will learn the difference between healthy constructive anger and unhealthy destructive anger, and how to avoid letting your emotions get away from you. You will learn how to effectively disarm and diffuse anger.
• Procrastination: You will learn about the ten characteristics of people who procrastinate. You will discover the hidden benefits of procrastination. You will learn how to attack procrastination with the Procrastination Cost-Benefit Analysis and with the Devil’s Advocate Technique. You will discover how to become a more productive and creative person by uncovering and attacking the thinking habits fueling the procrastination.
• Perfectionism: You will learn about several types of perfectionism, including about physical perfectionism, achievement perfectionism, perceived perfectionism, emotional perfectionism, romantic perfectionism, relationship perfectionism, and OCD. You will learn about the price you pay for being a perfectionist—along with the hidden benefits of this mind-set. You will learn about the differences between neurotic perfectionism and the healthy pursuit of excellence. You will discover the illogical thinking patterns that cause perfectionism. You will learn how to attack perfectionism with the Cost Benefit Analysis and the Daily Mood Log. You will explore a radical philosophical position based on accepting one’s flaws and shortcomings without a sense of shame.
• Self Esteem: The fact is that self -esteem and your circumstances are only indirectly related There is another intervening factor that determines self-esteem 100 percent of the time: your thoughts. You will discover the answers to these questions: When people say they have low self-esteem, what do they really mean? What are the consequences of low self-esteem? Can a person have too much self esteem? What is the difference between self-esteem and self-confidence? Should you base your self esteem on your looks, your personality, or your accomplishments? Should you base your self-esteem on love and approval? What are the hidden benefits of an inferiority complex? What is a worthwhile human being? What is a worthless human being? How can I develop unconditional self-esteem?
As you progress through the 11-week program, you will:
• Gain a comprehensive understanding of the complex relationship between cognitions, emotions, and behavior.
• See how a very empirical process can be applied to very emotional situations.
• Find success through analyzing situations in which you failed to achieve your goals.
• Ramp up your positive emotions and moderate the negative ones
To Sum it all up: 11 Weeks to Self Esteem is an in depth and enlightening group program for the motivated, critical thinker who would like to improve their quality of life. Dawn O’Meally’s presentation is genuine, warm, and engaging as she teaches the step by step CBT tools from Dr. Burns’ workbook. Her enthusiasm and commitment to offering this program over and over again is based upon witnessing the transformation she has seen countless times in participants that have completed it. When you combine Dawn’s experience and passion for teaching CBT strategies, Dr. Burns’ powerful workbook, along with your desire to improve your situation, you can create lasting change in your life simply with the power of your own mind.
CBT= Change Begins Today - Order your copy of 10 Days to Self Esteem by David Burns, M.D.
