Have you ever noticed how quickly stress can snowball? When your mind grabs onto a single negative thought, one moment, you're tired, and the next you're convinced you're failing, falling behind, or not enough. What if changing that internal dialogue could reverse that entire spiral? Today, I'm joined by someone who has spent over 40 years helping people break out of those spirals and reclaim their lives. Judith Belmont is a psychotherapist, speaker and author of 11 books, including her newest 110 CBD tips and tools, and she spent her career teaching people how to use their own thoughts as tools for resilience rather than triggers for burnout. Welcome to break free from the Burnout. I'm your host, Dr. Anastasia Chopelas, physicist turned energy healer. I'm here to help you make the quantum shifts to release the hidden blocks to your success. Your next breakthrough starts now. So welcome, Judy. I'm so happy you're here. Well, thank you very much for inviting me. You're most welcome. Everyone has such a personal story about how they found their way into helping others. What led you to CBT and the work you've done for so many years? I was always interested in why people do things and always like a sensitive child, and so I never doubted I'd be a therapist, never doubted it. It's always been my mission and my path. and then, I was very shy. I needed a lot of tools myself. but I really lucked out because after I went to grad school, I have a master's in clinical psychology. One of my first jobs was a part-time assertiveness training instructor. I was working at a youth guidance center in Massachusetts for 25 hours a week, and I needed another 15 hours to have my 40 hours, and I lucked into this job. They said master's in psychology. So I, this was back in the seventies. In the late seventies, so I. Answered the newspaper ad, of course this is way before computers and, I didn't really know what assertiveness training was, but I thought, they want a degree in psychology, so it must be something like I'm doing. I don't know, never even heard of the assertiveness training before, but it turned out, it changed my life because I learned the importance of practical hands-on tips and tools, which led me. In the rest of my career, in my practice, as well as speaking, as well as eventually writing books. Beautiful. So. As you were talking, I, I could identify myself 'cause I was also extremely shy and I think one year in high school I said maybe 10 words in the school. So I, I totally get it. And I'm also sensitive to other people, so having these tools probably would've helped me a lot. A lot more. Yeah. Definitely would've helped me. But that's why I'm so passionate about it, because, I wasn't naturally outgoing. I wasn't naturally confident when I was younger. Mm-hmm. And I learned to develop it through tools. Yeah. And that first job that I had, which was this part-time job that I just wanted to help make ends meet, ended up being life changing because I didn't really learn this stuff in my clinical psychology graduate program. They were more psychoanalytic and all about your past and whatever, and this was very refreshing to me. I'm always interested in knowing about the past to understand and have insight, but that doesn't necessarily help you today. And so that really became a light switch in my head. And so before we talk about burnout specifically, let's inform, our listeners to help understand what exactly is CBT and why it's such a powerful tool. Well, CBT is stands for cognitive behavior therapy. Cognitive means mind. Behavior is behavior, and basically the premise of cognitive therapy is, the quality of your thoughts determine the quality of your life. If you think in healthy ways, in positive ways, you're going to be more optimistic and more resilient. And if you think in irrational ways and ways that you have, what's called cognitive distortions, you're going to not have such a happy life. so for example, if I. I think, I'll, I'm such a failure, I'll never make it. That's filled with cognitive distortions. Failure. I'm labeling all or nothing thinking. So I'm identifying some cognitive distortions, some unhealthy thought habits. Mm-hmm. That create a lot of misery and a lot of depression and anxiety. However, if I said to myself, I examine self-talk and I did what's called cognitive restructuring. Up until now, I've had a hard time feeling successful. That's a lot more optimistic. That's a lot more positive. There's something you can do about it. It's not fortune telling that I'm always gonna be that way. It's having more control over your thinking, so it's not so irrational. Yeah. So it's not, not labeling yourself as one thing or another. Exactly, and then you don't label other people either. Oh, he's so lazy. like parents will do that. They're their kids. Oh, I have such a lazy kid. I have, whatever. It's, it's not healthy to label. It's that kid is so bad instead of that's bad behavior. They sit, they label the kid as bad. Absolutely. You a bad boy. But I wouldn't even label behavior as bad. It's not healthy behavior, it's not effective behavior. But the judgmental thing is in our heads and. It is, not really very helpful, so just identifying the way that we think can improve the quality of our lives, and we can also identify it in others, and we can help others. Let's say you're a boss and your employee says, She only cares about herself and I can't stand my coworker. let's, I'm just giving an example, and you might rephrase that as a role model. Sounds like you're really frustrated that she's not as helpful to you as you hope she would be. How does that help your modeling healthy ways of thinking? Well, it sounds like that person that said it that way is taking responsibility for his or her own behavior and allowing the other person to be who they are. Right. In a more healthy way, but in the other way it's judgemental and it's compartmentalizing someone as all or nothing. They're, they're lazy, they're bad, and even something like, oh, she stresses me out. my coworker stresses me out. Well, guess what? we're not talking about abuse or criminal behavior. No one can really do that. I am stressed by her. I am stressed when she speaks in a stern voice. being specific is much healthier rather than being a victim, you're a victor. Exactly when people tell me, oh, she made me so mad, and I said, oh, so you gave your power away, did you? And they go, what? Right, exactly. People, one of the songs when I was growing up was Blood, blood, sweat, and Tears. You make me so very happy. Yeah. And I thought, oh, I hope I meet someone that makes me so very happy. And what a great song. Well, as I grew older, I realized that's a very codependent song. It is. You're, you make me happy. You can make me suicidal, you can make me anything. So, how would you rephrase? I would, I would ask like my. Clients or people like at a training or a workshop? How can you rephrase it? I am happy when I'm with you. Okay. Maybe it wouldn't make a hit record, but that's more accurate. So we grew up with a lot of irrational thoughts like Ray Charles when I was very young, he was a kind of even before my time. I can't stop loving you. Well, guess what? That's not true. It's hard to stop loving you. I am trying to stop loving you, but that made a gold record, so I guess he knew something, but that's not exactly very rational. I think what you're saying is that we are bombarded with sounds and messages and sound bites that are really detrimental to our healthy way of thinking and Right. what's, what's widely accepted as. This is reality is actually not so healthy. So being able to be a thought detective, and identify some of the irrational shoulds that we have in our society. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Or maybe we grew up with, we can just be more of a, as I said, victor, rather than a victim. A lot of times people think in victim ways and they think they're at the mercy of other people and they're actually not. It's a choice, but a lot of times people don't realize it. And so CBT helps us understand some of these illogical ways of thinking, so you can choose healthier ways to narrate your situation and narrate your life. When I talk about those kinds of things in my programs, I talk about the energy of what they're saying. Because when somebody says, you make me so mad, you're lowering your energy.'cause you're giving your power away. And when the other person irritates you on purpose to watch you get mad, then they're stealing your energy. it's all negative h. all negative. Yeah, exactly. A lot of times people think, yeah, think positively, things are gonna work out. Sometimes things really don't work out and you can still work out even if things don't work out. So it's all about resilience, and that's what I focus on, is what's in our control. Not focusing on what's not in your control. Yeah, which is basically other people. So I've seen over and over again in my clients, especially high achievers and healers, that burnout rarely begins with workload. It begins with the internal pressure cooker, self-criticism, and over responsibility. Perfectionism, I'd love to explore how CBT speaks directly to these patterns. Absolutely. So, one of the cognitive distortions in CBT, there's different ones like fortune telling, like I talked about before, all or nothing thinking. One of them is shoulding, shoulding, I should be more like this. He should be more like that. And we become perfectionistic, when we think we should be better. And when we have irrational narratives about ourselves that we failed, we end up being perfectionistic 'cause we don't wanna fail one more time. So it is very anxiety provoking. And I never forget this client I had probably like 30 years ago. Mm-hmm. And she was in her thirties and she was in front of me. The coffee table was between us and she said, I had this many failures and I can't afford one more. And she was known at her job as being very perfectionistic. And I said, what were your failures and one was she dropped outta college? And the other one, I actually don't remember now. Okay. but I'll tell you, they weren't like a boatload of failures, but they defined her and that was her narrative that she screwed up and she can't afford to screw up anymore, and that causes so much perfectionism, anxiety because of the shoulds. And through therapy, she realized that she's beautiful no matter what and. A lot of times the road to success is paved with failure. Mm-hmm. Or paved with misgivings and paved with regrets, and it's all about how you deal with them. So she ended up going back to college. She ended up being easier on herself. Sometimes people have a lot of messages when they grow up from their caregivers that they're not good enough and that they have to be a certain way to be okay. But this isn't about blaming, it's about understanding where it comes from because your parents had parents too. Exactly. And nobody actually means to be dysfunctional. So sometimes you have to change around the board of directors in your head and realize. this one doesn't work for me, so well. I like that board of directors. Yeah. One I hear a lot is I should be farther along. Absolutely. one thing they do in CBT is, where's the evidence? Where's the evidence that you should be father along? Well, so and so is father along. So what comparison? That's another cognitive distortion. He's so much smarter than me. He's better than I am. People do that all the time. they have smarter kids, they have better kids. They're, wealthier, they have a better car. like we compare to each other and that is usually not gonna end up too well with us. Yeah, right. Because there's always, always someone that's better in some way or another. Compare yourself to where were you, where you were yesterday? Yes. That's basically where the comparison should be, but it, it, it steals a lot of joy from people mm-hmm. When they compare themselves to others, because often they find people that they fi fall short of. Yeah. And there's always somebody better and somebody worse. Yep. And really. It doesn't matter. No. It matters about you being you and the best you that you can be. Yeah. And bring, bring yourself and your family joy. Right. But when you talk about burnout, burnout often happens because we have internal narratives in our head of the way things should be and that we have to be better and we have to work harder. We have to do this, and we end up stressing ourselves out. Mm-hmm. Because we have a board of directors that needs to be fired. Yeah. So another one is like people pleasing. You can't make everybody happy. You can only make yourself happy. I used to ask my clients, I'm a retired therapist. I, I say, well, let's say, people really like you. How does that make you feel better about yourself? I mean, you're not gonna necessarily know how much they like you. Why would that make you feel better? Like, really, I would say the real key to happiness is self-compassion. Mm-hmm. And compassion towards others. Mm-hmm. And a lot of times people think if I'm smarter, if my kid gets into the best school and all these objective things, then I'm gonna be happier. Well, guess what? It doesn't work that way. Yeah, you might have a temporary lift, but real happiness is when people are forgiving of themselves or others and they have compassion for themselves and others. That's the real self-esteem. that's a beautiful insight. I love that. I, I've hear, I've heard people, I would be happy if I lost 10 pounds and then they lose 10 pounds and then they go, wait, what happened? Hey, what happened? It was supposed to make me happier. maybe there's something good about it. I'm not saying that it's not something to strive for. we all need to strive for things that we find important, but happiness is not contingent necessarily on reaching the goal. It's on how you reach the goal and what you tell yourself. I think so too. So let, let's talk about some typical results, like what do you commonly help people with and what does the process look like from start to finish? If someone would come to my office and, and I do still see a few people online, and they would say, I had terrible week. I'm so upset, I'm so anxious. A very simple technique that I would use all the time and it was so effective is writing down what they said. I would write and I'd have like a whole page and I'm, I'm listening for about 10 minutes. I did this and that, and I'd ask questions and then write it down, and then I would say, okay, let's look at what you said. And almost if they were really depressed and anxious and stressed out, almost everything was irrational. And they didn't realize it because they're called ants. Automatic negative thoughts. They are so akin to our being, we have no idea that they're even irrational. So an example would be, my, spouse made me so mad, my kids drove me crazy. that kind of stuff. So I'd write that down. Is that fact or is that fiction? I would ask them and they said, well, okay, maybe it's an exaggeration. I said, well, when you exaggerate, your feelings are also exaggerated negatively. So they started to then identify what some of the thoughts were. And then I said, well, let's change the thought to a healthier thought instead of My kids drive me crazy. I'm very stressed out when my children, don't do their homework or, be specific rather than general and. By modeling to them how to catch your thoughts. Mm-hmm. How to make them not so automatic. Mm-hmm. That helped a lot. Another technique, which is actually from A.C.T. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, which was founded by Steven Hayes. Is distance yourself from those thoughts, observe them instead of think from them, you look at them. Mm-hmm. So just imagine those negative thoughts being on like leafs on a stream or clouds in the sky, or a ticker tape at a movie theater and you watch it rather than looking from it. There I go again thinking I'm a failure rather than I'm a failure. So one is you believe everything you think, and I love that saying that I heard years ago, I don't even know who said it, but don't believe everything you think. Just love that you think it doesn't make it so. Exactly. It's just like everything you read on the internet is true in the news. That's a whole other story of the fake news and whatever. Won't even go there. Yeah. We don't need to go there. But it's just a lot of information going by that's meaningless. Exactly. Yeah. So not everyone finds it easy to change those long held emotional habits. Some listeners might be in the middle of a very tough chapter right now. When someone is really struggling, deeply overwhelmed, mentally exhausted, or convinced, nothing can change. What do you recommend as a starting point for them? So I think self-help books help a lot. Mm-hmm. Of course, I would love everybody to get mine, but there's plenty of self-help books out there. And, for example, I'll give you examples from my self-help books because I've written a lot of them. But, let's talk about the CBT one. I, You don't just like read about how to think more healthy. There's worksheets, there's handouts, there's logs, there's diaries, and so a lot of times people need structure. It's hard to do it on your own. So like if you say to something, well, just try not to think so negatively. Guess what? That's not gonna work. But if you say, okay, write down your thought. Write down your feeling and your. Your, reaction, your behavior and then write down a healthier thought. This is all on a log now. And then what's the effect of healthier thinking? So you actually learn how to change that thought with a, cognitive CBT diary, for example, are, I have worksheets in my, my books on. what is, temporary thinking versus permanent thinking? How to use I statements in communicating. Mm-hmm. Not just to other people, but to yourself. Mm-hmm. Rather than you statements instead of, I shouldn't be that way. That's actually a "you" statement to yourself because you have the shoulds. So a way to change that is I am this way and this is what I would like to change, rather than I should be that way. So it's a lot of, Work, like if you're going to a therapist and just like if you go to a personal trainer once a week, but you don't train or do anything in the middle, you're not gonna be very physically fit. But if you use therapy, like a personal trainer for your mind, and in the middle you need to do exercises, you need to do diaries, you need to do logs. So I would say my biggest advice to people is find the type of log, or diary or self-help worksheets that you do over and over and over again.'cause just 'cause you know it doesn't mean you're able to incorporate it. And so that's what self-help books do, and mine certainly does. It gives the tools of how to do all this. The thing that triggered in my is like, try not to be so negative or try not to be whatever it is. But whenever you throw not in a sentence, your subconscious puts it away. And here is try to be more negative. Right. And also it's hard to try to be something that's not. Yeah. Positive. Yeah. Like it's better to think this is my goal and this is what I'm gonna do. Yeah. So let's say you want to avoid the cognitive distortions. Some people have a more dramatic way of thinking about things. So things are all or nothing. And the end of the world. And I'll never forget when I was at a youth guidance center early in my career, I was generally in private practice, but this is very early on when I was in my twenties, and this girl, this is before cell phones, this girl was brought into a, my clinic and I saw her, by police because she ran in front of a car 'cause she didn't wanna live anymore after her boyfriend broke up with her. Oh my goodness. It is actually very true, and the car stopped and the person that was in the house called the police and came over and she was crying and sobbing and miserable. I don't wanna live, and I talked to her and she again said things that I wrote down, nothing without'em, I will never love again. All this, all this stuff. And I said, do you think that's really true? You're 17 years old. I know it's very painful, but where's the evidence that that's true? Well, no, maybe not. So she had a very dramatic way of thinking about things, and I taught her other thought habits. I gave her worksheets on what is unhealthy thinking versus healthy thinking. And she said, yep, that's me. All these things. That's what I'm thinking. I said, well, let's work on changing your thoughts because you're not thinking very clearly. Well, about three weeks later, she had another boyfriend. She was feeling fine. She didn't even wanna go to therapy anymore. So, like she learned. I'm not saying she didn't have problems down the road, I don't know. But all I know is that I taught her some skills. some people have more of styles that need it more. Now there's something called dialectic behavior therapy. Mm-hmm. Which is great for borderlines. It was actually. kind of invented, mm-hmm. by Marshall Lenahan for people who were high risk kind of behavior, extreme. and, and, DBT dialectic behavior therapy dialectic means opposite Uhhuh, how you, I love you, I hate you, like this extreme kind of emotions that people get and what. DBT does is it uses cognitive behavior therapy, but it's softened with mindfulness. Mm-hmm. And focus on being able to experience now what are you feeling? How, what are your sensations to take you out of the drama? So that's in my books also because, that has been very helpful to people who need to what's called emotionally regulate.'cause some people have a hard time doing it on their own. Yeah. Is that in your latest book, the one on CCP t? Yes. Okay. I'll make sure. Yeah, sorry. I'll make sure that the link is in the show notes so people can go directly to it and get it. Mm-hmm. I love CBT. CBT is kind of the cornerstone of a lot of therapies. Mm-hmm. And DBT is one of them, that's one of the quadrants. There's, there's like basically four major things in DBT and CBT is one of them. Mm-hmm. but then there's the mindfulness, there's emotional regulation. Mm-hmm. And, distress tolerance, tolerating, and so they're all hands on tips. And that's all in my book too. because it's all hands on, practical tips for living when you don't feel like you're empowered. Yeah. A lot of, a lot of people in the healing arts empaths, they don't feel empowered because. I mean, empath for example, is pulled this way and that by everybody's moods and emotions and it's very disempowering to not be able to stand there and say, this is me, and that's you. It's really hard to distinguish. So this work sounds like it's excellent for those of us that are healers, empaths, highly sensitive people. Mm-hmm. Yes. Absolutely. So you've been doing this work for about four decades. What, what is it that makes or more now? I'm, I'm retired now from my therapy practice. Yeah. Okay. Getting older. Getting older, So what makes your approach different from other CBT focused clinicians and teachers? I have no idea. I don't know other people that well, of what they do in therapy. I don't know, but I would say that I have a lot of resources, like on my website. I have a lot of free resources. I, I always would give clients homework and, and different things because, and I, and I love to speak, and I have done since COVID not too much. but I always kind of made the learning come alive because. I didn't just talk, I had people experience. So I do have like a focus on experiential learning and I would say, a lot of people don't necessarily have that. but a lot of people might do it more than me. I don't know. Yeah. I don't compare myself to anybody else. Well, I listened to some of your interviews before and Oh, cool. Uh, I, yeah, I found, I found that your Examples and interactive style and mm-hmm. All of that, like extremely engaging and drawing people in so they can see themselves like, oh, I've said that. And I've done that and Oh yeah, you're, she's right. So I, I think that this is really helpful because a lot of people don't do that. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny, I, I remember speaking a while ago somewhere, and the person who hired me to speak at this, conference, when I would talk about, This particular thing we talk about communication, workplace communication, and I talked about rhetorical questions like didn't I already tell you that? They're actually put downs disguised as questions. Yes. So that's like practical. And she said, told me afterwards, she said, I was sort of horrified as I was listening to you.'cause just this morning before the conference, I did that in my emails. I did those kind of things. So I, I, I do like to use a lot of practical examples. Mm-hmm. Because a lot of people use them, a lot of people use rhetorical questions. what's wrong with you? Yeah. Or they, it just, why are you acting that way? They, it's like a knee jerk reaction that they've heard their whole life and they don't realize how damaging it is to them and to the people around them, and they don't realize the question is just to put down. Yeah, just being critical. It's, and the less judgmental we can be. Mm-hmm. The healthier we're gonna be for others. Now, obviously people shouldn't kill and, beat you up and that kind of stuff, but we're talking about personality characteristics. The least judgmental we are, the better. Yeah, the more accepting, the more loving, no matter what I, I have this image and, 'cause I'm into all this, like, hands-on visualizations. I love this image that I have of, and I learned it from someone else. I'm not taking credit for. originating it, but it's been very powerful and I've used it for years now is, let's say you have like a $20 bill and you crumple it up. As we get older, as we get into our fifties, sixties, seventies, and we feel creased and we have little, disappointments in our lives and big disappointments and we have losses and whatever, sometimes we feel like we're not as worthy. And we're all kind of crushed and folded. And so in like a seminar, I would say, okay, let's say, you make mistakes, you failed, you have regrets. And then I say, all right, let's open up this $20 bill, not crush it fold it anymore. How much is it worth? And it's still worth the same no matter how much we're crushed and we lose and we fail or whatever. We're still as beautiful as the day we were born. Mm-hmm. And so many times people forget that because of all those creases and folds in their lives. So I love that as an image. That's, I love that too. Thank you worthy, no matter. Mm-hmm. We, we all have the same worth, just as we did when we were a baby in the nursery. Yeah. I, I always say God doesn't make mistakes. Right. You are the beautiful divine being. God doesn't make mistakes. You're here for a reason. Mm-hmm. Right. And I know that's a little on the religious side, but it's one of those things because I, I am very different. I did all boy things, i became a scientist. I did a lot of sports. I was a runner. I lift weights. I do all of this boy stuff and I thought. What's wrong with me? Why don't I like women's stuff? And so then I go, nothing's wrong with me, God, made me, what am I doing? Do questioning God? And so that kind of thought brought me through thinking that, I, I was a mistake and no, I'm just different. Well, and I look at it as mistakes are what you need to do to succeed. Exactly. we're human. when my clients would tell me about, all these things that they did and regrets that they have, I said, what, it just makes you more human and hopefully it increases your sensitivity in others who are also dealing with adversity and it can increase your empathy. So I don't really, I I, mistakes are okay. It's not like there's no mistakes. I don't believe that. I think there's a lot of mistakes. I made a lot of mistakes. I would've done things differently if I knew better at the time. But I've seen so many clients that were wearing the past, like a backpack. And it was so heavy because of their failed marriage and their poor choices and getting into drugs and all this stuff. And I would try to help them forgive themselves for not knowing then what they knew now. Mm-hmm. And also to not having the foresight to what's now so obvious in hindsight. Exactly. And. That has been very helpful to people because we're all works in progress. Mm-hmm. And in all my years of being a therapist and being a person, I've never met someone who actually wanted to be dysfunctional. Correct. And they don't wanna hurt other people. And they wanna have great relationships. They wanna be loved. They might hurt other people because they don't mm-hmm. Don't, they don't want, they don't either know any better or they're just mm-hmm. Well, they, they wanna, they just don't know any different Yeah. And they don't know what they're doing. Correct. So the more enlightened we get. Unfortunately, as you get older, you get wiser, but it doesn't do you as much good as they did when I was younger, but whatever. I'll take it out. Exactly. Yeah. I remember when I was younger, I was always anxious. I was chewing the inside of my mouth. I was like holding myself really stiffly, and now I think, wow, who was that? I wish I was like that. Back then instead of now. But it's, but you wouldn't have ended up the way you are now. Yes, exactly. So we, we all have to, we all do the best we can. Right? We have to go through the steps, to become who we are now. Mm-hmm. So, no, there's no, there's no turning back the clock. There's only no living now and moving forward with what we've learned. Yes, exactly. So I love this conversation. This was wonderful. And yes. Well, thank you. Yes. And what, what's like one last tip for someone who feels drained or defeated, what's a single best tip you could offer them right now besides getting your book? There's always hope and never forget how beautiful you are, even though you might feel like that crumpled bill. Yeah. Oh yes. I love that analogy. It's so beautiful. So Judy, thank you so much for sharing such powerful, practical tools with us today. Thank you. I know so many listeners are walking away with new clarity and breathing room and to remember that. Thank you very much Yeah. For having me. Yo, you're most welcome. I enjoyed our conversation. Thank you. Thank you for listening to break free from the burnout. Resources and show notes are available at break free from the burnout.com. Until next time, I'm Dr. Anastasia Chopelas, sending you golden healing, light and success vibes to becoming aligned, confident, and prosperous. Your gifts are so needed in this world.