268: "I want to be a mother!" (Part 1 of 2)
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
David Burns, MD
4.6 • 901 Ratings
🗓️ 15 November 2021
⏱️ 69 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The featured photo shows Dr. Carly Zankman
at the Big Sur with her 8 month old nephew, Micah
Podcast #268 : An Ectopic Pregnancy (Part 1 of 2)
October was Pregnancy & Infant Loss Awareness Month. We are dedicating this and next week's podcast to all the mothers and fathers who have lost infants or struggled with pregnancy complications and tragedies.
This will be the first of two podcasts featuring a live therapy session with Dr. Carly Zankman. Dr. Zankman, a 27 year-old clinical psychologist in our Tuesday training group at Stanford, is facing a serious crisis involving motherhood. She is struggling with the aftermath of a traumatic ectopic pregnancy and some intense fears that she may never get the chance to be a mother. In addition, she is 100% convinced that she can never feel happy or fulfilled in life unless she becomes a mother.
The featured photo for this podcast is Dr. Zankman at the Big Sur with her 8 month old nephew, Micah. You can see the love and joy in her face, and her intense desire to become a mother herself.
The session took place at my Tuesday training group at Stanford, and my co-therapist was Dr. Jill Levitt, the Director of Training at the Feeling Good Institute in Mountain View, California.
You can see Carly's Daily Mood Log (DML) and Brief Mood Survey (BMS) at the start of the session The DML reflected her feelings several weeks before, when she felt that her chances for pregnancy were greatly diminished, and the BMS reflects how she was feeling at the beginning of our session. As you can see, she was still moderately depressed and anxious, and her happiness and marital satisfaction scores were quite low, indicating that she was unhappy and somewhat dissatisfied with her relationship with her husband.
Carly was also anxious about being on the podcast, due to these additional negative thoughts:
- I'm not going to be able to describe what I've been through. She believed this 70%.
- There's a potential to be judged by people. She believed this 100%.
In today's podcast, you will hear the T = Testing and E = Empathy portions of the session, and in next week's podcast you will hear the A = Assessment of Resistance and M = Methods portion of the session, and hopefully Carly will be able to join us for a follow-up to see how she's been doing since the session.
The show notes for next week's podcast will include eight teaching points.
Rhonda Jill and I are all extremely grateful to Carly for her courage in sharing this intensely personal part of her life with us. She received, as you might imagine, incredibly support from all the members of the training group during and after her session, as others had struggled with similar fears as well.
Thank you for listening, David, Rhonda, Jill & Carly
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Feeling Good podcast, where you can learn powerful techniques |
| 0:11.6 | to change the way you feel. I am your host, Dr. Ronda Borovsky, and joining me here in the |
| 0:16.8 | Murrieta studio is Dr. David Burns. Dr. Burns is a pioneer in the development of |
| 0:22.3 | cognitive behavioral therapy and the creator of the new team therapy. He's the author of Feeling |
| 0:27.4 | Good, which has sold over 5 million copies in the United States and has been translated into over 30 |
| 0:33.2 | languages. His latest book, Feeling Great, contains powerful new techniques that make rapid recovery |
| 0:39.3 | possible for many people struggling with depression and anxiety. Dr. Burns is currently an emeritus |
| 0:45.2 | adjunct professor of clinical psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine. |
| 0:51.3 | Hello, Rhonda. |
| 0:57.6 | Hi, David. |
| 0:59.1 | And welcome everyone to episode 268. |
| 1:03.0 | This is a really exciting, they're going to do two really exciting episodes. |
| 1:07.1 | Their personal work with Carly Zankman, who's a beloved member of the Tuesday |
| 1:11.8 | training group that Jill Levitt, another, you know, our beloved teacher of the Tuesday |
| 1:18.8 | group with David, Jill and David did the personal work. And we've divided it up into two |
| 1:25.1 | episodes. And first, I want to say to everyone that you may or may not have known this, but October was pregnancy and infant loss awareness month. |
| 1:36.3 | And we are dedicating this podcast and next week's podcast to all the mothers and fathers who have lost infants are struggled with pregnancy |
| 1:45.9 | complications and tragedies because that is the topic of this week and next week's podcast. |
| 1:55.2 | I want to just say real quickly an endorsement from Sarah, who's also a member of our Tuesday |
| 2:00.7 | group, and she just called me |
| 2:02.9 | up and told me that she loved this week's podcast that came out, the week that we're recording |
| 2:07.6 | this, which was an Ask David podcast number 266. And she said, she loves the three of us together. |
... |
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