The Work of Byron Katie and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: A Comparison

by Jane Bunker, Ph.D. with Carol L. Skolnick, M.A.

As a growing number of therapists, counselors and coaches incorporate the self-inquiry process called The Work of Byron Katie into their practices, the question often arises, "How does The Work compare to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)?" There are notable similarities in that The Work, like CBT, is a cognitive restructuring technique. However, unlike CBT, The Work does not seek to replace one thought with another, less stressful thought; it is an experiential modality in which stressful thoughts are identified, expressed and questioned, resulting in an awareness of projective identification.

Here are some fundamental differences between the two approaches.

1. CBT: Achieve specific result
The Work: Discover what's true for the client

If there is a goal in The Work, it is to discover what is true for the client. The underlying assumption of The Work is that all suffering comes from arguing with reality. The secondary assumption is that reality is good. With CBT, the goal is to achieve a specific, client and therapist devised end result (i.e., to be happier, to have a better marriage, to like one's job more, etc.). CBT assumes that reality can be manipulated in order to achieve a particular, more desirable outcome....the secondary assumption here being that reality is flawed.

2. CBT: Necessitates a therapist
The Work: Does not need therapist or facilitator

CBT necessitates a therapist; The Work, which is self-directed, does not require a therapist or even a facilitator. Even if facilitated by a therapist or performed in a group setting, the simple structure of The Work's four basic self-inquiry questions and its reversal technique, the "turnaround," entrusts the process to the client. Administered cleanly, there will be no imposition of therapist's opinion or values in the course of a session.

3. CBT: Replace painful thoughts with "better" ones
The Work: Does not attempt to replace thoughts; painful thoughts dissolve

Both CBT and The Work are clear about the powerful role that thoughts play in human suffering. CBT, however, attempts to get the client to drop these thoughts and replace them with new, more productive, positive ones. In The Work, one part of the mind examines the other. There is no room for the normally defensive, proof-seeking part of the mind to hold on to the identity-defining thoughts that have been contributing to the client's suffering. With the resulting clarity that comes of mind meeting mind, the stressful thoughts serve no further purpose and dissolve on their own.

Also, by directing the client's pain outward on paper, The Work provides an initial vehicle for releasing rather than adding stress, the latter being a phenomenon which may occur in CBT when judgments are aimed at the self.

4. Both CBT and The Work address question 1 of The Work: Is it true? -- to expose the lie of the mind. However, The Work goes significantly further with question 2: Can you absolutely know that it's true? -- by attempting to eliminate even a 1% probability for the "I-know mind" to attach to and thus short-circuit the rest of the process. With questions 3 and 4: How do you react when you believe this thought? Who would you be without this thought? -- The Work offers the opportunity to hold thought up to the light, examine it openly, see the damage it has evoked and what life might be like without it. The subsequent turnaround -- a reversal technique in which the client considers ways in which the opposite of the belief might be just as true or truer -- offers a perfectly timed glimpse of one's own innocent, but complete, responsibilty for one's own happiness, while providing an expanded awareness of what "truth" encompasses. As in advaita vedanta, the Indian school of nondual philosophy, there is a gradual recognition that all experience is projected, and when the "projector" is adjusted, the projection changes.

5. Embedded in the turnaround is the concept of nonduality. All that was directed at the other appears to be true of the self as well. All that was apparently not absolutely true of the other might not be absolutely true of the self either. With The Work's loving, incisive probing, thoughts are eventually relieved of their charge. The safety and comfort of truth discovered replaces the client's need for attachment to identity-defining thoughts, and those thoughts are released in their obsolescence.

©2005 by Jane Bunker, Ph.D. and Carol L. Skolnick, M.A.
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Jane Bunker is an artist and a retired psychologist from Santa Fe, New Mexico and Boise, Idaho, whose practice incorporated CBT and other modalities. Carol L. Skolnick is a Santa Cruz, California-based writer, educator, and facilitator of The Work of Byron Katie. Both Jane and Carol are graduates of Byron Katie's School for The Work and have served on the staff of the school.

Free Hugs

This song, by the (not so) Sick Puppies—and this now-famous "Free Hugs" video—just say it all.

Mothers, Lovers and Sunsets

"Mommy, did you love sunsets?" I asked aloud. As I asked her that question, I wept as I saw that I had never really known my mother.

I have chased after sunsets wherever I am in the world; from the Thansa Valley in Maharastra, India to Cali, Colombia...from Santa Fe to Santa Cruz...from Cancun, Mexico to the bridge connecting Maine to New Hampshire. Some of my favorite sunsets have been those rosy, striated beauties I'd been privileged to witness as often as I liked at a riverside park near my former home in New York City's Greenwich Village, where the light descended on New Jersey across the Hudson every evening. In the year before I left the east coast and moved to California, I'd been depriving myself of our waterfront. My "ex" and I regularly did the "sunset thing" together and I thought that meant it would be painful to do it alone. What did I get for holding this belief that sunsets are romantic and best viewed with a partner? No sunsets. So a year after he and I parted, I headed down to the water to catch a late summer view. It was spectacular.

Midway through the viewing, my late mother came up for me. Maybe it's because I was contemplating leaving New York, where I was raised and where I've lived for most of my life; maybe, in midlife, I was feeling closer to my own mortality. Whatever the reason, I'd been talking to her lately, although she had been dead for seven years. When she was alive, I spoke to her only when necessary; we'd had a difficult relationship from the time I was five years old and our conversations usually culminated in arguments.

Why the sudden need for communication? I was very confused when she was alive. I had a picture of my mother as cruel, undercutting, a bad parent, unloving, withholding and insane. I didn't have the tools of self-inquiry then. In recent years, I have made amends to her, in my mind and on paper, many times. I have no idea if she hears me. It doesn't matter; I do.

"Mommy, did you love sunsets?" I asked aloud. It was not a premeditated act; it did not arise out of loneliness. She was just there. As I asked her that question, I wept as I saw that I had never really known my mother. I don't even know if she loved one of the things I love most; she never shared that with me and it never came to me to ask. The "I know" mind was convinced of who she was and I rarely acknowledged the other side of her, the part that was brilliant, creative, humorous, the part that sounded like criticism but that may have been her way of expressing concern...the part that housed and fed and clothed me and did the very best she could to raise me while she lived in an apparent mental hell.

The mind's job is to be right. It will spend a lifetime proving itself to be the authority on things like nagging mothers, deadbeat dads, lying partners, intractable kids, officious shop clerks, murderous dictators. It misses out on sunsets, on intimacy, on real life.

Do I love sunsets enough to view them without a story of how I should have done it all summer, how I should be watching it with a partner, how my mother and I should have shared sunsets instead of shouting matches? Yes. I wouldn't want to miss the beauty of life as it is showing up, right now.

Deepening Transformational Inquiry: Mothers and Others

©2006 by Carol L. Skolnick. All rights reserved.

Order your copy of my new eBook, Transformational Inquiry: Working on Mothers and Others. First in a series, it is filled with information and exercises to help you work with your stickiest stressful beliefs about "the first love affair." For more information, visit the Clear Life Store.

Metanoia, Unlimited

Metanoia is a metaphysical term coined from two Latin words that translate roughly to "above the mind." A metanoia is a fundamental shift in thinking, like the one my mentor Byron Katie had when she realized no stressful thought that she believed was true. At one time Katie made a lot of money buying and selling real estate. Today she is swiftly becoming a household name because she gives her main product away for free (yours for the taking at www.thework.com), and yet I understand she does quite well. For those of us with the traditional "buy low, sell high" mindset, it doesn't make sense. And yet, look what that mindset did for us in the early part of this new millennium.

In business as in life—even when our old paradigms are no longer working—we often have a fear of radical shifts, because it would mean...well, whatever horror stories our minds can concoct: we'd go down the drain, lose everything...our money, our credibility, our position, our best people, our structure.

We don't usually stop and question these beliefs. We don't normally ask ourselves if the opposite could be true...to consider that if we changed, everything could get better.

Every entrepreneur and business leader wants to be a visionary, an innovator, and a person of integrity...and every business has its share of nay-sayers, including the would-be change-manager. It's natural to doubt. We cling to what is familiar, even if it does not make us happy.

Many businesses prosper doing business as usual, and that's fine; what we might want to question is this: is it true that we'd be less profitable, less successful, if we made the changes we'd like to? Some of our greatest business leaders today are metanoiacs. Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop, created a huge international company that prospers despite (or because of) her dedication to human rights, animal rights and environmental issues. Paul Hawken, founder of Smith & Hawken and Datafusion, is known around the world as one of the leading proponents of ecological corporate reform. The world-class Gillette Company has spent tens of millions of dollars to develop alternatives to animal testing and it sells razors and shaving cream like crazy. Southwest Airlines proved that "leadership at every level" is a workable paradigm.

The next time you find yourself hesitant to shake things up a bit, before you change your mind, I invite you to sit with your discomfort. Whether it's something seemingly small, like instituting a company-wide policy to use only recycled paper products...or something huge, like a re-org...put the "yeahbuts" and "whatifs" on paper and question them. "It's too expensive." "It will upset the shareholders." "It's too much work." "We will fail." Can you absolutely know that it's true?

Deepening Transformational Inquiry: Business Above the Mind

1. Consider this: "To risk nothing, in the long run, could be more dangerous than to risk everything."

2. Transformational Inquiry with The Work of Byron Katie can bring about metanoia, both in the way we look at our business (and life) issues and in the ways we work at and run our enterprises. With the deepening of our understanding of our greatest fears and toughest challenges in the world of work, we equip ourselves for whatever comes our way, from management shake-ups to exponential growth.

3. Learn the basics of self-inquiry. Visit ClearLifeSolutions.com to find out about Transformational Inquiry with The Work...four simple questions followed by a "turnaround," or reversal. Subscribe to our newsletter and receive your free report on inquiry in the workplace. Try it with one of the "shoulds" in your work life and notice how clarity happens when we're not married to being right.

©2006 by Carol L. Skolnick. All rights reserved.

The Power of Willingness, Part II: "Yeahbuts" and "Whatifs"

"There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets
in." --Leonard Cohen

Resistance is a funny thing. Ultimately it exists to defend what does
not exist. It knows its days are numbered, and the reason it knows this
is because behind every resistance is the possibility of willingness.

People who are committed to knowing their own truth share in common a
willingness to be wrong...to listen...to consider other angles...and
most especially to question their "yeahbuts" and "whatifs," the two
bodyguards of the mind whose job it is to keep the identified self from
dissolving.

When we are invested in wanting to be right, there is nothing to be
done. Thankfully, most of us have a breaking point, where we are willing
to seek relief at any cost. Some of my clients come to inquiry with a
huge arsenal of "yeahbuts" and "whatifs," and yet they come away from
sessions and workshops at least partially disarmed. Why? Because
willingness--even a tiny bit of it--is more powerful than any defense. Where
there is willingness there is potential for transformation

Lacey was a client of mine, a young woman who was in love with an
unavailable man. He claimed to love her, but he was married and had a family
and would not leave them. She, too, was married and was scared to
forfeit her financial security. For several sessions, I listened to Lacey's
litany of "yeahbuts" and "whatifs." "Yeah, but with my limited skills
set, I can't enough to support myself." "Yeah, but no one will ever
love me like he [Mr. Unavailable] does." "What if I make a mistake and my
husband won't take me back?" Lacey continually veered away from
answering the inquiry questions, yet she kept coming to sessions for months.
That told me that she had a tiny bit of willingness. People who know
they are right don't even attempt to question their reality. They don't
hire facilitators.

When Lacey and I worked together, I would ask her to notice each time
she used a "yeahbut" and a "whatif" to avoid seeing the truth. "You can
be right later," I assured her. "For now, let's see if what you are
saying and believing is really true."

Eventually, Lacey began to question her beliefs while putting the
"whatifs" and "yeahbuts" on hold. We didn't banish them; that never works.
We just asked them to hang back for a bit while we did our work. Lacey
came to see that she could not absolutely know that she needed the
unavailable man in her life, or that she needed her husband's financial
support, or that she'd never find another great love. She was willing to
consider being wrong, or at least to stop needing to know everything in
all certainty. Ultimately she gave up on the lover and separated from
her husband for awhile. She got a good job and gave herself a chance to
get to know the true love of her life: herself.

The mind really wants to know the truth, even as it fights for the
survival of its sacred beliefs. When we're out of integrity, we feel it,
and the pain is excruciating. So try this: the next time you encounter
great resistance, don't try to banish the "yeahbuts" and "whatifs," but
instead invite them to wait in the wings; you can pick them up again
later if you like. Treat your yeahbuts and whatifs with gentle
understanding; they're lovingly doing their job, trying to protect you from
dissolution. Then, allow Willingness have its life...and see what happens.
You may discover that what you thought needed defending is the very thing
that has held you back from what you really want: true strength,
authenticity and happiness.

Deepening Transformational Inquiry: "I know I should, but...."

Is there something you believe you "should" be doing? For example:

"I should clean out the garage."
"I should get started early on my taxes."
"I should work out at least three times a week."

One way to work with "shoulds' is to question them directly: e.g. "You
should work out three times a week; is that true? What is the reality
of it, do you? Can you absolutely know you'd be better off if you worked
out three times a week?"

Another way is to look at your reasons (or excuses) for not doing what
you "should" be doing. These are the "yeahbuts" and "whatifs."

"Every time I clean out the garage, my husband yells at me for throwing
out something he needed."
"With the holidays coming I don't have time to start on my taxes. I
should have started them earlier."
"If I go to the gym that often, I look better but I get so tired; then
how am I going to clean out the garage and do my taxes?"

We dislike our "shoulds" because they make us feel like we're doing it
wrong. We love our "yeahbuts" because they lead us to believe we are
right in not addressing the "shoulds."

The trouble is, whether we are "shoulding" ourselves to death or
"yeahbutting" ourselves into complacency, it generally doesn't feel very
good. That's because when we attach to shoulds and yeahbuts, we are not
living in the present moment. "Shoulds" are stories of a nonexistent
future. "Yeahbuts" are horror stories based on past assumptions. "Whatifs"
are horror stories, period.

The yeahbuts and whatifs underlying our "shoulds" are like the legs of
a table. The tabletop cannot remain stable unless it has four good
legs. While inquiring into the validity of a "should" belief, notice any
wobbly legs holding up the table and make a mental note or written
sidebar about them to question later.

©2006 Carol L. Skolnick. All rights reserved.

Celebrating the "Hellidays"

How do you celebrate the winter holidays? For many of us it's a time to get together with loved ones...eat, drink, and make merry...give and receive presents with joy...take a vacation to a special getaway...meditate on the spiritual significance of the season...entertain loved ones in our homes.

And, typically, it's a time to entertain other not-so-well-loved ones...thoughts like:

"I can't afford Christmas (Chanukah, Kwanzaa, a winter vacation) this year."

"The holidays are so depressing."

"My brother gives chintzy gifts to my kids."

"If s/he really loved me s/he'd know that what I wanted was a (insert ideal gift that you didn't receive here)."

"Thanksgiving is cultural propaganda."

"I should have more 'Christmas spirit.'"

"There's too much rich food (too much alcohol), I'm going to gain weight (fall off the wagon)."

"I have no one to kiss on New Year's Eve and it means that...."

"Oh, God, not another business luncheon."

"I'll never get all my shopping (cooking, housecleaning, holiday cards) done."

"I have to make and stick to my New Year's resolutions."

Sound familiar?

When we attach to thoughts like these, the holidays become the "hellidays." The end of the year is a great time for self-inquiry, as holiday thoughts rise to the surface like whipped cream in the eggnog.

Lost your job and your huge family expects to exchange gifts with you? Inquire: what's the worst that can happen if you cut back this year? Think your yearly bonus wasn't enough? Is it not enough in reality? You should not be depressed, is that true? How do you treat yourself when you attach to that belief...and how does this help to alleviate your depression? Don't want to take your mother to church this year? Judge your mother, write it down, ask four questions, turn it around. The holidays are too commercial? Try this turnaround: "My thinking is too commercial." Can you find three ways that this is equally true, or even truer?

The gift of self-inquiry costs nothing, knows no season, and you can give it to yourself, whenever you like and wherever you are. The result? Peace on earth.

©2006 by Carol L. Skolnick. All rights reserved.

Where Does Hate Come From?

This year, 2006, the Jewish High Holy Days coincided, as they often do,
with the Muslim Ramadan and Hindu Navaratri/Dasera. This "coincidence"
in a time of cross-cultural misunderstanding (someone once said that
coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous) was not lost on the news
media this year and was so very apparent in my own life, when both a
dear Hindu friend and a beloved Muslim business associate wrote to wish
me a happy Rosh Hashonah.

When did we humans start to resent each other...and why?

Robert Sternberg, a Yale psychologist known for his work on wisdom,
love and creativity, began a study of hate in 1999. He was motivated by
his own family history, as the son of an Austrian Jewish survivor of
Hitler's Final Solution, and by reading a book about the Rwandan genocide.
He wondered why human beings are getting smarter (on the average, our
IQs worldwide are rising as much as 3 points per decade), but not
kinder. If we are so intelligent, why do we promote intolerance and wreak war
and terrorism?

Sternberg came up with a triangular theory of hatred. One side of the
triangle is passion: impulsive rage excited by fear. Another side is
what Sternberg calls "negation of intimacy," which is basically a feeling
of repulsion or disgust. The third side is "cold hate," a cognitive
commitment to hatred, such as the learned, conditioned prejudices that
many societies have regarding homosexuals. He calls a combination of these
three kinds of hatred "burning hate," which expresses as a need for
annihilation. And all hatred, Sternberg proposes, arises from a story;
there can be no hatred without a tale of woe to tell about how the hated
one "done us dirty."

We human beings tend to love our hate stories. We don't want to lose
them. On an individual level, this could result in revenge killings, in
spite of the consequences. When an entire nation wants to be right,
other nations may perish. Entire worlds can disappear...and have.

On a less grand scale, the hate story can lead to a lifetime of stress.
A "bad mommy" story may result in a lifelong hatred of women. A bad job
can mean anticipating every work situation will be undesirable. When
women laughingly say "All men are pigs," there's bound to be a painful
paradigm behind that sentiment.

Hate stories, Sternberg points out, are always factually wrong. All men
are not pigs. Jews do not have all the money. All Muslims are not
terrorists. All Christians do not vote for conservative political
candidates. True wisdom, acknowledging all perspectives, all stories, would help
all stakeholders reach saner conclusions. But it appears to be much
easier to follow the conventional "wisdom" than to question one's beliefs.
It doesn't even occur to most of us to do so.

Until all governments, all nations, all people are committed to knowing
the truth, it is likely that wars and hate crimes will continue. But if
I think the world needs self-inquiry, I'm confused. Am I willing to do
what I want them to do? It's a lot to ask of others who have endured
suffering, loss and injustice. It can seem insensitive and unkind. Can
you imagine asking a Palestinian, "You need your ancestral land, is it
true?" Or an Israeli, "Can you absolutely know that it's true that your
child should not have died in a suicide bombing?"

So, for now, "Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me."
If I wish for hatred to cease, I must unceasingly look to my own hateful
impulses, however seemingly insignificant, and meet them with
understanding.


Deepening Transformational Inquiry: Where Does My Hate Come From?

Driving home from Yom Kippur services the other night, my male friend
expressed dismay at the egalitarian service we'd attended together. He
noted how overwhelmingly female the attendance was and indicated this
was because there was a lot of male-bashing going on there. I was amazed
that I hadn't noticed.

"It was so blatant," he said.

"You mean because of the gender-neutral or feminine translations of the
prayers?"

"No, for years it's been sexist in the opposite direction, so I don't
have a problem with that. There are just these remarks...like when the
two men couldn't figure out why the door wouldn't open and a woman
noticed there was a U-lock on the other side, and she said, 'It takes a
woman to unlock a door.'"

Then I remembered. There was laughter (I guess from the women). I
didn't think it was funny, so I didn't laugh. I also didn't think it was
significant because of my cultural insensitivity around how men might hear
and experience women's "little" jabs.

I love and appreciate so many men in my life. I like to think that I've
"done my work" about men and that I am not sexist. I mean, I stopped
sending around those male-bashing jokes in the email years ago, realizing
that it felt violent to perpetuate that kind of "humor." However, my
friend's remark helped me to see that I am far from a done deal in the
Mars-Venus department.

I sat down to write a brief list of beliefs about men...the kind that
might fit into Sternberg's "negation of intimacy" category.

*Men are insensitive.
*Men are too sensitive. :-)
*Men are clueless about women.
*Men always have to be right.
*Men are enigmatic.

Then I sat with each one and asked myself, "What is my earliest memory
of holding this belief?" "From whom did I learn these beliefs?" In this
way I was able to question the validity of my beliefs from the place
where they first occurred to me: as a small child learning from my
mother, as a little girl interacting with other little girls, as a teenager
among other teenagers awkwardly moving towards a new kind of intimacy,
successfully or not.

What "hate paradigms" are you still holding onto? Even if it's only 1%?
When did you first feel this way? Does the feeling bring peace or
stress into your life? How would you live your life differently if you never
again saw people in terms of racial, cultural, political, religious,
class or gender traits?


©2006 by Carol L. Skolnick. All rights reserved.

The Power of Willingness

We already know about the power of resistance; we're experts at that. Resistance is the mind's way of protecting itself from ever appearing wrong or unsure. When we are challenged to move from our comfort zone -- and the worst depression or the fiercest rage can be comfortable if that's all we've ever known -- the mind offers resistance in the form of "yeahbuts" and "whatifs," in saying "no" instead of "yes" and in proclaiming "I know" instead of "maybe I don't absolutely know."

Transformational Inquiry with The Work of Byron Katie is a way of opening the mind through answering questions and exploring alternate perspectives. It is not the questions in and of themselves that are so powerful -- they are really quite simple. The power of inquiry lies in your willingness to answer to these questions with penetrating honesty. The effectiveness of Transformational Inquiry depends on a willingness to know the truth, as opposed to an insistance on being right. The results can be quite amazing...and I know this from my personal experience of using inquiry in my own life and work.

For the better part of 43 years, my middle name was "No." Because of this stubbornness on my part, I suffered to the point where it was difficult to get out of bed and face each day. I was an unhappy and very willful child. In my teen years I suffered from massive depression, turning to food and sleep to dull the pain. I had been in therapy for all of my adult life, and for several years I needed medication in order to function at all. I had my own home, I had relationships, and at one time I had a very successful home-based business...but each day, for many years, I was plagued by feelings of hopelessness. In my thirties, I was diagnosed with biochemical depression, and a respected psychiatrist told me that I would need therapy and drugs for the rest of my life. Something in me rebelled at hearing that...something that I now see as a willingness to be okay.

When I finally learned about The Work of Byron Katie, I knew it held the key to my freedom...and still I was resistant. Being right had served me very well for many years. It was a protection, and an excuse: if I knew I couldn't do better, then I didn't have to keep trying so hard, and it wasn't my fault. Resistance saved me from having to face my fears, and as a wise person once said, fear is an acronym for False Evidence Appearing as Real.

With willingness, I might have had to see that I'd always had at least a small part in my own failures and disapointments. With willingness, I had no one else to blame, not even God, my ultimate whipping boy and scapegoat. However, with willingness, I would also have had to consider that everything that had happened in my life was for a reason, there to teach me something, to nourish me, to put me on the path to self-realization. That was the carrot I lusted after, because deep down I knew that God didn't love me less than the rest of creation. Beneath the clutter of my sad stories, I knew I could be okay...more than okay.

The process of The Work's four basic questions -- "Is it true?" "Can you absolutely know that it's true?" "How do you react when you believe that thought?" "Who would you be without this thought?" -- is a way of getting very honest with onesself. When the questions are held in the mind the answers come from the heart, and the answers can be astounding. One of my cherished life-long beliefs was that I was a failure. I had a long, long list of proof for that one: I wasn't married, I wasn't a mother, I didn't have a million dollars in the bank, I didn't go to an Ivy League college, I hadn't written and published a bestseller.

Now, I could think of many, many examples of successful people who aren't married, or parents, or millionaires, or Ivy League grads, or bestselling authors...but, you see, I was SUPPOSED to have done all of these things by my 30th birthday. This is called, "being at war with reality."

At first, when I approached the questions, I would answer them out of the mind's habitual thinking, very quickly: yes, it's true, yes I can absolutely know that I'm right, and I react with depression, duh, how else should I react?...and I have no idea who or what I would be without this thought because I have always thought it and believed it because it's TRUE!

What I noticed was that it felt terrible to approach self-inquiry out of a place of resistance. And that noticing the feelings was the beginning of willingness. How much longer did I want to feel like the living dead? Not one second longer.

So I would ask myself the questions again...or, when I felt too afraid or resistant to do it alone, I would ask someone else to ask me.

"I'm a failure, is it true? It sure feels that way right now."

"I'm a failure, can I absolutely know that it's true?" And I'd wait, and I'd let the heart answer. "No. No, I cannot absolutely know that it's true. I have succeeded in many ways, great and small. I am successfully sitting here and answering these questions now."

"How do I react when I think that I am a failure?" And I'd revisit the way I'd lived my life...how I'd batted away praise, spurned affection, missed opportunities out of fear, lived in the past and the future but never in the present...how I'd let my health suffer...how I'd shamed myself...how much joy I denied myself as a result of believing this incredible lie.

"Who would I be without this thought?" I realized that with a little willingness, I could visualize myself without the "failure facade"...and I saw a woman who just keeps moving...who celebrates her successes of all sizes...who doesn't say "I can't" or "I'll never"...who has no regrets...and who feels comfortable in her own skin. I could see a lover, a listener, an available partner, a friend, one with open ears and open arms and an open mind. I could see someone with an immense and contagious sense of humor. With practice, I came to see that, without my tales of woe, I already was that resilient, loving and courageous woman. You can't even concieve of it if you're not it. The person I was without the belief in failure was - is - a more peaceful person. And peace is our true nature.

When I feel resistance now, it might stick around for a few days at most. In my life, willingness has become the conjoined twin of resistance, always on the other side of it, closer than close, sharing its life's blood. While once it was the weaker twin, having flexed its muscles, it is now the stronger one, and it will have its way.

Many clients show initial resistance to the process of self-inquiry, and what they -- what all of us have in common -- is this powerful willingness that ultimately brings us home. It is willingness that allows us to relax...to listen...to wait...to stop defending...to stop needing to know everything...to stop trying to manipulate the world to conform to our idea of perfection. Willingness is what turns nervous wrecks, hotheads and sadsacks into lovers of reality. Willingness is what turns enemies into friends, tragedies into comedies, crises into opportunities, fear into courage. Willingness is the "yes" on the other side of "no." Willingness brings you your own answers to the questions the heart has been asking forever. It is within you, waiting to take birth. I invite you to give it its life.

Click here to hear Carol repeat this message at EmpoweringMessages.com.

©2006 by Carol L. Skolnick. All rights reserved.

Some Q&As about The Work of Byron Katie

Here are some answers to a few frequently-asked questions about Transformational Inquiry with The Work of Byron Katie.


Q: Isn't The Work a form of psychotherapy? It seems similar to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).

A: Therapy by definition involves the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders by trained, licensed personnel. The Work is not about changing, treating or curing anything and it does not replace psychotherapy, nor is there an assumption that clients are "ill" or not. That said, The Work provides a clean and simple way to approach "thinking disorders," or attachments to self-limiting beliefs that are not true or useful to the client. A facilitator asks questions, and the client answers them if she is willing. As a facilitator, I guide clients through the process of questioning what they believe. As an educator and workshop leader, I design and introduce exercises and disseminate information. I don't diagnose or treat anyone or anything because I am not a therapist.

The Work is a cognitive process because we are working with cognition (thinking). Unlike CBT, there is no concept of pathology and therefore there is nothing to treat or cure. However, inquiring into one's stressful beliefs is a useful component of the therapeutic process...which is why many mental health professionals incorporate The Work into their work with patients. Inquiry is quite compatible with most talk therapies and its results are consistent with cutting-edge research on the brain, the mind and its mechanisms. The Work has been used in Mind-Body Medicine programs at Stanford University Medical Center and Kaiser-Permanente in California in conjunction with mindfulness meditation to help patients suffering from anxiety, depression, stress, infertility and chronic pain. In addition, the student health center at the University of Washington offers The Work of Byron Katie to students as a stress-reduction technique. The Work has also been offered as part of training for psychotherapists at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, one of the country's leading institutions offering degrees in transpersonal psychology. Renowned ADD and brain scientist Dr. Daniel Amen, founder of Amen Clinics, recommends The Work and offers Katie's books at his website, amenclinics.com.


Q: What makes someone qualified to facilitate The Work? Do you have a certification?

A: Facilitators who have been certified (2007) by the Institute for The Work are the only facilitators recognized by Byron Katie International to provide the pure experience of this inquiry process. Certified Facilitators have fulfilled 100 days of requirements (over 400 hours), have been approved personally by Katie, and are bound by a code of Facilitator Ethics. Certified Facilitators must also keep their certification current each year. I was a member of the first group of 17 facilitators worldwide to receive the ITW Certified Facilitator credential in the spring of 2007.

Since The Work itself is is easily learned and available to anyone at no cost, there are people teaching and using The Work who have never attended the School for The Work and are not Certified Facilitators. They may be fine facilitators, but there is no oversight. So,"know your facilitator."



Q: Isn't The Work a very emotional experience? What if someone "loses it" during a session?

A: In my workshops and in private sessions, people often experience sadness, grief, anger, ecstasy, laughter, tears, irritation, anger, boredom, etc. It's natural to feel and express emotions in the process of self-inquiry, just as we experience them in our daily lives when our issues bubble up. In life, when we "lose it," we either "find it" or we call 9-1-1. In The Work, it's the same.


Q: So then, is The Work a form of coaching?

A: The Work is not coaching in and of itself, and it is an invaluable tool for coaches. I love to teach coaches how to use inquiry with their clients because it can make their jobs a lot easier. I have been a coaching client myself, and my coach, Melanie Keveles, frequently includes The Work in our sessions.

Here's a distinction: in coaching, there is a desired outcome for the client, because the client has come to the coach with an intention or a goal. In The Work, the only intention is for the client to meet stressful thoughts with understanding through self-inquiry. By showing up, the client has expressed a desire to know the truth; the facilitator asks questions to assist that process. If I have an agenda for my client to "get" something, it may interfere with his own process of self-discovery and in fact limit it.

Through self-inquiry, the mind calls its own bluff. When the coaching client's self-limiting beliefs are examined in the light of the questions, the beliefs often dissolve, enabling the coach to better help the client solidify their intentions and formulate action plans.


Q: Will The Work interfere with other transformative healing work that I am doing, or with religious practices...for example, 12-step programs, meditation, worship, other self-help modalities?

A: Some of my friends and clients involved in The Work have included devout Muslims, Hindus, Christians and Jews, Buddhist teachers, a Catholic priest, numerous interfaith ministers and the former head monk of a Hare Krishna temple...not to mention atheists and agnostics, activists and pacifists, Republicans and Democrats, self-help teachers and healers of all stripes. Many of the people I have met at Katie's schools practice The Work concurrently with Sedona Method, The Journey, A Course in Miracles, and various forms of yoga and meditation. Friends in recovery tell me that The Work dovetails beautifully with the 12 steps; it is, after all, the epitome of a "fearless moral inventory."

Some fear that they will have to give up whatever else they're doing if they question their beliefs. Can you absolutely know that this is true? Jews have been questioning their own scriptures since the origins of Judaism! The aforementioned Hare Krishna friend never questioned his belief in Krishna; if a belief is not stressful, there is no need to question it. Rather, when he discovered The Work he saw it as a message and a gift from Krishna.

You needn't ever let go of your religion, your practices, your sacred beliefs; I haven't. The suggestion is to continue to do everything that serves you and brings you joy...and question what doesn't. If you love meditation, ritual, prayer, going to meetings, and you love The Work too, good!

What's the Payoff?

The more I examine the life of the mind, the more I recognize the pure innocence of what we refer to—sometimes disparagingly—as the ego. The ego is that which gives us an identity as an "I." We wake up in the morning and the ego's job is to create a world and establish its place in it. "I am still tired." "I have to go to work." "It's going to be a busy day for me." "I wonder if the kids are still asleep." "I'm still upset about our argument last night." "He was wrong (and therefore "I" was right)."

The I-identified mind (which is a story about who we are, rather than the truth of who we are) is like an organism separate from the body. Like any organism, it seeks homeostatis: a stability of its "normal" condition, equilibrium. "I" needs to know that "it" is okay.

In its innocence, the ego which identifies as an "I" may attach to a belief that results neither in equilibrium nor in peace. To the unquestioned mind, habitual thought patterns may at first seem safer than any alternative. Since the ego needs to be right in order to exist, it may fight for this false homeostasis at all costs. When this happens, a belief, no matter how upsetting, becomes hard to shake. In spite of the problematical nature of the thought, we may experience that it serves us...or that it used to.

That is why, in Transformational Inquiry, we don't try to drop or replace a thought. Only an ego thinks and believes, and as long as we believe we're an "I," there is no bypassing thought. "I have no thoughts" is still a thought! So instead of denying our thoughts, we engage with the ego-identified mind so as to unravel thought at its source.

When the process of inquiry becomes alive in us—which can happen very quickly—sometimes it is difficult to see why we would have ever held a stressful thought to begin with. When I am facilitating The Work of Byron Katie, I ask a two-pronged question: "What do you get for holding this belief? What is the payoff?" In general it's very easy to answer the first part of the question: "I get anxiety, I get to feel separate, I get to be superior, I get to experience war in my relationship." These are the "negative payoffs." The mind is not always so open to the "positive payoffs," or perceived benefits, of attachment to a belief.

When this happens to me while self-facilitating, I find it useful to ask myself a few more questions around my attachment. It has been my experience that stressful thoughts are usually fear-based: clinging to them provides a thinly protective membrane from which I may not be quite ready to emerge but which keeps me from experiencing reality directly.

As we question our beliefs we may recognize that there is no benefit to holding the belief and if so, that's wonderful. However, if the belief still feels sticky, I want to go deeper: any resistance to answering the question "What is the payoff?" is simply the ego-organism asserting its need for homeostasis! The cost of holding the belief is I get to stay in an artificial equilibrium, a facade of safety.

Byron Katie has said that there are only two kinds of fear; the fear of losing what you think you have, or the fear of not getting what you think you want. If there is stuckness regarding the question "What is the payoff," and I suspect the inability to answer is fear-based, I will move towards this question: "What is the worst thing that could happen if I no longer believed this thought? What is the fear that keeps me clinging to it?"


Deepening Transformational Inquiry: "It's not safe to disagree."

Have you ever been afraid to disagree with someone in your life? If so, please take the trip with me back to the place in your past (it might be five decades or even five minutes ago) where you held this belief.

Let's say I work for someone with a short fuse or who likes things to go her way (who doesn't?) and I think the thought, "It's not safe to disagree with her." (Not a stretch; I could go back to at least 10 working relationships where I felt this way, beginning 30 years ago with a job I held at the Hewlett-Woodmere Public Library the summer before I left for college.)

After I question the validity of the thought (Is it true?) and see how I live out of the belief (I avoid her, I kow-tow to her publicly, and secretly or not so secretly, I resent her for having this perceived power over my financial life, career success and "homeostasis" in the office), I ask myself whose business I'm in when I believe this thought (hers, because I'm presuming she'll erupt if I disagree).

Next, I ask myself, "What do I get for holding this belief? What's the payoff?"

The more obvious answers are: I get fear, separation, a reason to hate going to work in the morning. Or, the payoff may not be so obvious, other than "I get an excuse to eat chocolate in an attempt to soothe my jangled nerves." So I move to "What's the worst thing that could happen if I no longer believed this thought?" Well, I would not keep my opinions in check, and then she might fire me." (There's an old saying: "Tell your boss the truth, and the truth shall set you free.")

Why would I fear being fired? What do I have to lose? Her approval, my family and friends' approval, my paycheck, my standing in the community?

There are a whole lot of assumptions operating here: the assumption that someone will be angry with me and that this is not okay; the assumption that disagreement always results in banishment; the assumption that if I disagree, I will be cut off, shunned, alone, without support. I may look at how old this belief is: when did it first occur to me? Early childhood? Who was I trying to appease then? (Mom, Dad, the neighborhood bully, my older cousin, my first grade teacher, the family friend who was molesting me.)

Now I can see that there are perceived payoffs for thinking this thought: if I don't disagree, I get to stay in a no-conflict zone...for the moment. And of course, there is plenty of internal conflict, so this isn't really working for me. What else do I get? Support, which I think I could lose (a paycheck, health insurance). Approval, which I believe I need (friends who see me as responsible and mature; a family that gets upset when I'm not making money and now feels relieved; a boss who sees me as cooperative, reliable and easy to get along with and who may give me a raise and promotion). If nothing else, I think holding the belief lets me keep an identity that gives me a reason to get out of bed in the morning. ("I" have a job, "I" have a purpose.)

With further inquiry I may come to see that my "benefits plan" comes at too great of a cost. This is fabulous information; it frees me up to live in the present moment, a.k.a. the real world as opposed to the anticipated, unquestioned and therefore scary world of the ego's creation.

At the same time, I can sit with that ego-driven polarity of mind as if with a frightened child or a well-meaning if overprotective parent who just needs some reassurance that all is well. It is not the enemy; quite the contrary. It has simply been trying to protect me. With the clarity that comes from inquiry, I don't have to disown it; instead I can hold it by the hand, listen to all of its concerns, thank it and love it for its innocent good intentions.

What are your payoffs? And are they worth the cost?


©2006 by Carol L. Skolnick. All rights reserved.