Retrain Your Brain: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy In 7 Weeks

How do we engineer activities that will stop the short-term reward we get from withdrawing, and increase our long-term reward by doing things we really care about?

find ourselves stuck in a Catch-22: We won’t feel better until we do more things, and we won’t do more things until we feel better.

The developers of behavioral activation determined that the activities you plan have to come from your values, as described in a treatment manual by Carl Lejuez and his fellow authors. In this context, “values” doesn’t have a moral or ethical overtone, although your values can include morality and ethics. Here, your values are anything that you enjoy, love, or get satisfaction from doing.