Top all-time · #4402
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David Burns
Personal blog · feelinggood.comhealth
David Burns writes Feeling Good, a personal blog at feelinggood.com about health. Since 2015, 18 different Hacker News readers have linked it 42 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-02, and you can follow it by feed.
42mentions?
18HN people?
2015–2026first – last linked?
Too few sampled comments (22) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link David Burns' feelinggood.com for self-help on depression, anxiety, procrastination and perfectionism, mainly through his podcast and the Feeling Good books.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 22 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
You can change the way you feel. Explore free advanced Cognitive Behavioral Therapy resources here. You owe it to yourself to feel good!
Most-linked posts?
- /3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-12-04
- /list-of-feeling-good-podcasts/2 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2020-01-12
- /2016/12/12/014-the-five-secrets-of-effective-communication-part-1/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-02-19
- /2017/09/18/053-ask-david-i-dont-feel-like-doing-it-quick-cure-for-procrastinators/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-09-01
What Hacker News says?
> " I mean, I realize that no good comes from feeling bad about myself over it " I have listened to a lot of Dr David Burns' podcasts[1] (and recommend them) and there is a relevant part here which I will try to explain enough to tempt you to look at it more, in the hope it helps[2]. He observed that patients came asking him to make their bad feelings go away but the more he tried, the more they held onto the bad fe…
Comment linking /list-of-feeling-good-podcasts/
on “The year I didn't survive”Submitted Self Esteem (2013) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionWhile I believe depression has biological contributors, it's amazing how much learning techniques to combat the mental spiral can do to help avoid depression, along with the "maintenance" of proper sleep, food, and exercise. It seems strange that learning "thinking techniques" can have such an impact on "chemical imbalance," but in my experience, anyway, practicing these techniques works better than drugs do for aff…
Comment linking /books/
on “When You Are Depressed, Make Something”Submitted Therapist Error #6: Joining a School of Psychotherapy (2014) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThe "feeling good" podcast by David Burns: https://feelinggood.com/list-of-feeling-good-podcasts/ I came across it in this remarkable interview in the "Clearer Thinking" podcast https://podcast.clearerthinking.org/episode/192/david-burns-... After that I was really curious if his claims about success in therapy were plausible or wildly exaggerated, and my conclusion so far is: it seems he really is legit, but his st…
Comment linking /list-of-feeling-good-podcasts/
on “Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough”Submitted Self-Esteem (2013) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionTL;DR Emotions are somewhat studied in terms of how to deal with them, check Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Check out Feeling Good by Burns[1], there are specific chapters addressing perfectionism. And his podcast on this topic "“I don’t feel like doing it!” Quick Cure for Procrastinators""[2] (suggest to find it on iTunes[3]/Spotify to listen with 1.5x speed, episode 053) I'm going through a stage in my life when I…
Comment linking /2017/09/18/053-ask-david-i-dont-feel-like-doing-it-quick-cure-for-procrastinators/
on “Procrastination is more about managing emotions than time: study”Dr David Burns' Feeling Good podcasts: https://feelinggood.com/list-of-feeling-good-podcasts/ on the subjects of therapy for depression, anxiety, panic disorders, OCD, self-defeating thought patterns, guilt, shame, empathy, why traditional therapy models are broken, and what to do about it all - how to actually feel good in a couple of hours - such that people can make major inroads into decades of problems in one o…
Comment linking /list-of-feeling-good-podcasts/
on “Ask HN: What were your most impactful podcast episodes from 2019?”I wish more people here could read/listen to some of Dr Burns works, I think his approach to feeling good is a lot like debugging and testing. He gets patients to identify times they feel bad, and what they were doing and thinking when it started, then pick one specific item and work on it to try and help with it - not fixing "depression" as a whole problem, but helping someone get past "I feel hopeless when I think…
Comment linking /list-of-feeling-good-podcasts/
on “Ask HN: Are you depressed?”If that idea of your lifetime not being enough is stressing you out, Dr David Burns' work on cognitive behavioural therapy might help. Saying you want to be an expert in many things because you are interested in many things could be papering over some deeper anxiety-driven motivations around 'not being good enough' or 'not being worthy of respect' or 'needing to prove yourself to someone' or 'not wanting to be a nob…
Comment linking /list-of-feeling-good-podcasts/
on “Ask HN: I want to be an expert in many things but my lifetime won't be enough”> " Improvement from therapy is not something that’s easily measurable " Is it not? I have commented before about the work of Dr David Burns[1], and one thing he drills over and over is that therapists need to start measuring their work, and it is easy, and they don't because they either don't want to hear that they are doing a bad job or they depend on their clients for long term income and so aren't incentivised t…
Comment linking /2022/02/28/the-feeling-good-app-part-1-or-2-the-unexpected-results-of-the-latest-beta-test/
on “Dentistry is less scientific and more gratuitous than people think (2019)”Working on anxiety can be life changing. I highly recommend the book "When Panic Attacks" by Dr. David Burns. In fact just the other day Dr. Burns had as a guest on his "Feel Good" podcast a tech guy who was rebuilding his web site ( https://feelinggood.com/ ) in exchange for help with his anxieties. In a nutshell, the guy was a "handsome, successful, Yale educated, British" guy who was suffering from anxieties in s…
Comment linking /
on “We ran the numbers, and there really is a pipeline problem in engineering hiring”A major technique mentioned by the author is omitted from the article’s headline: co-working. She writes about benefitting greatly from logging on to a muted Zoom room with hundreds of other people to work at a set time. It’s interesting how this is effective for some people; for another anecdote, blogger Alexey Guzey wrote about a similar system [0] with a smaller group. Psychiatrist Dr. David Burns writes at lengt…
Comment linking /2017/09/18/053-ask-david-i-dont-feel-like-doing-it-quick-cure-for-procrastinators/
on “The thing standing between procrastination and daily progress is ritual”I have enthused about Dr David Burns, his TEAMS CBT therapy style, how it seems like debugging for the brain in a way that might appeal to a HN readership, how The Feeling Good podcast is free online with lots of episodes explaining it, working through each bit, recordings of therapy sessions with people demonstrating it… They have an AI app which they have just made free for this summer: https://feelinggood.com/202…
Comment linking /2025/07/02/feeling-great-app-is-now-free/
on “LLMs should not replace therapists”Yes, it was Marilyn. She's in two episodes recorded two years apart. The one I listened to was the second one[0]. [0] https://feelinggood.com/2019/09/23/159-live-therapy-with-mar...
Comment linking /2019/09/23/159-live-therapy-with-marilyn-what-if-i-die-without-having-lived-a-meaningful-life/
on “Emotionally focused couple therapy can help love last”Thank you for the recommendation! From [0] (first question on the page), I gather that you’re referring to Marilyn’s case? Thanks again [0] https://feelinggood.com/2019/03/11/129-ask-david-how-can-i-d...
Comment linking /2019/03/11/129-ask-david-how-can-i-develop-greater-joy-and-happiness-does-neuroticism-exist/
on “Emotionally focused couple therapy can help love last”Frankly, I don't think there's any useful advice anyone can give you about how to work harder, how to balance side projects, how to deal with feeling lazy or overwhelmed which isn't going to end up with some form of "introspect your thoughts" either alone or with a therapist or a friend or psychedelic drugs. You don't need to choose better projects, you need to understand why you feel stressed and compelled to start…
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on “Ask HN: How do you take care of yourself?”This is the basis of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT); hating oneself or forgiving oneself are behaviours of the mind (cognition), and the idea is that we can fall into negative behaviours and get stuck there, and can learn positive behaviours instead. A realted sticking point is when we can't learn positive beahviours, because we don't want to give up the negative ones - e.g. "I deserve to hate myself for not do…
Comment linking /list-of-feeling-good-podcasts/
on “The goal of standards is to improve our future actions”If you clicked on this article because you wanted to read about anger management, you may be disappointed. In the event you were, I highly recommend the book, "Feeling Good" by David Burns: https://www.amazon.com/David-M-D-Burns-Feeling-Good/dp/B00GY... Burns turned his practice into a platform, featuring a very active podcast. He's working with people on a mobile app and is publishing the sequel to "Feeling Good" (…
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on “Anger Management”Dr Burns' Feeling Good Podcast has examples of listening to people, possibly not the same exact thing the parent comment means, but his T.E.A.M.S CBT therapy stands for "Testing, Empathy, ..." and Empathy is where the patient tells their problem, and the therapist has to communicate that they heard it and empathise with it. Otherwise if the therapist does a "yeah ok got that, let's move on" the patient will get stuc…
Comment linking /podcast-database/
on “How to be a good listener”Same goes for conventional therapy. "Failure to Measure" is #1 on the list: https://feelinggood.com/2018/12/24/120-ten-worst-errors-ther...
Comment linking /2018/12/24/120-ten-worst-errors-therapists-make/
on “Dramatic growth in mental-health apps has created a risky industry”I think you could have phrased this differently but there is something there. Depression is a complex and multi-faceted challenge that can have many underlying causes and is subject to a number of psychological forces. The author takes the approach of managing the superficial symptoms whereby depression makes people non-functional, but there are probably underlying causes that will reemerge in various ways down the…
Comment linking /
on “How I’m Handling My Depression Using an App”To question the premise of the quote as well, an approach that I've found to be helpful to address procrastination/negative moods is to start with action if I can, rather than trying to motivate myself or change my thoughts. Psychiatrist David Burns summarized this [1]: "Most procrastinators think that motivation comes first, followed by productive action, but this is an illusion, because you’ll probably NEVER feel…
Comment linking /2018/02/12/075-the-second-simple-way-to-boost-your-happiness-do-something-youve-been-putting-off/
on “Observations on 6 Years of Journaling”The term "treatment resistant depression" bothers me because, I think, a more accurate name would be "placebo resistant depression". Sorry to come off as frustrated; I'm like others in this thread with 10+ years of trying various therapies and antidepressants to end up feeling more, not less, hopeless. David Burns does a good job explaining why antidepressants and psychotherapy don't typically work in his most recen…
Comment linking /2019/11/18/167-feeling-great-professor-mark-noble-on-team-cbt-and-the-brain/
on “What I have learned from my suicidal patients”I sometimes recommend Dr David Burns' Feeling Good podcast[1], and he is big on measuring and testing and stop points. Instead of 'tell me about your mother' his style of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is called TEAMS in which the T stands for Testing, and it involves: - Patient choosing a specific mood problem/feeling they want to work on. - A mood survey, where the patient rates their own level of e.g. anxiet…
Comment linking /podcast-database/
on “Jan Leike Resigns from OpenAI”I'd recommend that you find a therapist to discuss your burn out. It sounds like an acute episode so seeing a professional could help. They can help you ask the right questions and stop the fly wheel. It sounds like you are engaging in some self reflection too which they can help with and you've reached out here so again I'd say a therapist will help you. It certainly helped me. Another good resource is the Feeling…
Comment linking /2019/12/16/171-ask-david-burnout-physical-pain-and-more/
on “Ask HN: Am I experiencing burn-out or just getting too old”Yes, sometimes explanations and reasonable arguments can just derail conversations completely. For preventing that, I find David Burns' disarming technique[0] really useful. It is about "finding truth in what the other person is saying, even if it seems blatantly wrong, or illogical, or exaggerated." His podcast is amazing. Perhaps part of what your room mate is saying is that she is concerned about the well-being o…
Comment linking /2017/12/11/066-five-secrets-training-the-disarming-technique/
on “Ask HN: What is going on?”I lost my software engineering job a year ago. In my late 50s I sunk into a depression. A resource that helped me get back on my feet was the works of Dr. David Burns. His website is https://feelinggood.com . He also has a book "Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy" and a podcast. In my case the feelings of hopelessness and depression that stemmed from my job loss were due to distorted thinking. For example my thinkin…
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on “Ask HN: How does one have the mindset to study for coding interviews?”1. Do you know your worth in the labor market? Believe it or, there’s high demand for mediocre developers and they make a good living. Go on some interviews. Knowing you can get another job gives you a ton of confidence. 2. This podcast episode can help you figure out what you’re really afraid of: https://feelinggood.com/2017/05/29/039-uncovering-techniques...
Comment linking /2017/05/29/039-uncovering-techniques/
on “Ask HN: How do you work with the fear of your own incompetence?”In my experience this usually boils down to different opinions on design decisions or the best way to implement a feature. One way to mitigate is to hold a design review where you get their sign off before the PR. Outline the basic strategy and pseudo-code. Document the functional interfaces etc... The other thing to do is to ask for specific feedback to get to the root cause of the disagreement. I try to disarm the…
Comment linking /2016/12/12/014-the-five-secrets-of-effective-communication-part-1/
on “Ask HN: How do you handle toxic coworkers?”
