For better or worse, our society and culture tend to emphasize and encourage judgmentalness: We hold ourselves and others to high standards and are quick to point out when those standards are not met. An under-appreciated way of thinking is what we might call the observing or appreciating mode.
This empathetic, compassionate mindset is especially helpful when it comes to our mental and emotional wellbeing. By learning to identify and modify overly judgmental and critical patterns of thought, Cognitive Restructuring can then help us shift into a more empathetic and compassionate style of thinking. One of the many problems with a mind constantly full of negative thinking is that it leaves no mental space for reflection and introspection.
A quick note before we jump in: Like running on the treadmill or practicing scales on the piano, the power of Cognitive Restructuring comes from doing it consistently over time. Simply understanding it and doing it occasionally is not enough; for Cognitive Restructuring to have a meaningful effect on your life, it must be done consistently and become a habit. Cognitive Restructuring can be useful in many situations.
When we can inhibit our instinctive response to negative feelings and approach it with an attitude of curiosity, our chances of managing the situation intelligently go way up. But events in our internal environment—that is, in our minds—can also act as triggers: A thought pops into mind that we forgot to mention a critical idea during the meeting, a memory of a recently-deceased friend comes to mind, etc.
Automatic Thoughts are our default, initial interpretations of what happens to us. I must have forgotten something earlier. We all have Automatic Thoughts all the time. Emotions are generated from our mental interpretations of things that happen. And the type and intensity of the emotions we experience depend almost entirely on the type of thinking we engage in. What the hell is he thinking?! Finally, your emotional response can contain more than just one emotion.
He almost hit me?! In any case, the important thing is to simply be flexible and come up with more interpretations than your first automatic one. This practice creates mental flexibility, a key component in the ability to disengage from negative thinking patterns and overwhelming emotion.
Also, in addition to simply generating more alternative interpretations or explanations of what happened, it can be useful to notice any obvious errors in your initial thoughts and develop alternative thoughts that are more realistic. I would have died! If possible, generate at least two or three alternative thoughts for each overly-negative Automatic Thought.
After generating multiple hopefully more realistic alternative thoughts, return to your emotion s you identified in Step 4 and reassess their intensity. Almost always, they will have gone down at least modestly as a function of questioning your automatic thoughts and generating alternative and more realistic ones.
This final step is crucial because noticing and feeling the relief from your negative emotion decreasing is an important reinforcer of the new habit of Cognitive Restructuring. The 6 steps mentioned above are a good overview of the elements of Cognitive Restructuring and how to do it in a general way. A Thought Record simply a guide for walking you through the specific elements and steps of Cognitive Restructuring.
You can also do a Thought Record digitally in a notes file on your phone, perhaps something like this:. However, the digital version on your phone is often more discreet, which can be nice if you want to quickly do some Cognitive Restructuring in a public place, for example.
No discussion of Cognitive Restructuring and Thoughts Records would be complete without some reference to Cognitive Distortions and the role they play in restructuring negative thinking patterns. Cognitive Distortions are unrealistic, exaggerated, and generally inaccurate forms of self-talk. And these habitual inaccuracies or distortions in the way we think tend to create distortions in how we feel—usually in the form of excessively strong negative emotions. Please come by my office whenever you get in.
In both cases, how we talked to ourselves was likely unrealistically negative. And as a result, we probably experienced a significant dose of negative emotion like fear, anxiety, or shame. Of course, we all play a little fast and loose with our self-talk sometimes.
Mind Reading means assuming we understand what other people are thinking without any evidence. Ultimately, Mind Reading is a failure of imagination — we only imagine the negative without considering other possibilities, some of which are bound to be neutral or even positive. My flights are always delayed. Magnification is when we take our own errors or flaws and exaggerate them. Often magnification takes the form of catastrophizing small negative events and turning them into disasters in our minds.
Am I having a heart attack? I need to go to the ER now! Minimization is the mirror image of Magnification and involves being dismissive of our strengths and positive qualities.
Emotional reasoning is when we make decisions based upon how we feel rather than what the evidence actually suggests. Black and white thinking is the tendency to evaluate things exclusively in terms of extreme categories. It shows up most commonly when we evaluate our own personal qualities and characteristics this way. They can also explain how and why a thought is irrational or inaccurate. Cognitive restructuring depends on your ability to notice the thoughts that spark negative feelings and states of mind.
Knowing what those situations are may help you prepare in advance. Maybe your pattern goes something like this: I am absolutely going to fail this test, and fail the course, and not be able to graduate with everybody else. Knowing that vulnerability exists can help you catch your negative thought and change it before it gets the better of you.
Some people find it helpful to journal as part of the process. Another essential part of cognitive restructuring is learning how to question your thoughts and assumptions, especially those that seem to get in the way of living a productive life.
A therapist can teach you how to use a Socratic questioning method to find out where and how your automatic thoughts are biased or illogical. In questioning this thought pattern, you could ask yourself to list all possible outcomes.
You could ask yourself how likely each possible outcome is. You may decide to keep track of the events that trigger a response, including who you were with and what you were doing.
You may want to record how strong each response is and what memories came up as a result. You might also gather evidence for or against your thoughts, assumptions, and beliefs. Cognitive distortions are biased and inaccurate, but they can also be deeply embedded. Dislodging and replacing them requires evidence about how rational they are. You may need to list facts that show a belief is accurate, and compare the list to facts that show the belief is distorted or just plain incorrect.
You might benefit from looking at evidence that indicates an action has nothing to do with you at all. Using this strategy, you would consider the advantages and disadvantages of maintaining a certain cognitive distortion.
But at a certain point, the harm she was doing to her sense of self outweighed the benefits to her career. So she decided to stop tearing herself down as a means of making jokes. Cognitive restructuring helps people find new ways of looking at the things that happen to them.
My supervisor has always been supportive. I have succeeded in all of my academic work in the past The university does not want me to fail and will support me. Both she and the university want me to succeed. See an example here. Concordia University uses technical, analytical, marketing and preference cookies. These are necessary for our site to function properly and to create the best possible online experience.
Read on for some examples. Source: Health Services. Here are a few simple examples:. Example 1 Situation: Some friends are going out to dinner this weekend and I wasn't invited. Feelings: Sad. Evidence that supports the thought: I do get moody every now and then. It can help to ask yourself the following questions:. If you're prone to black-and-white thinking , you could identify a few examples of times that you succeeded in your social or professional life. You might then conclude, "Sometimes I get tongue-tied in social situations, but not all the time.
The final step is to replace each of your initial negative thoughts with accurate and positive affirmations. In this case, you might replace "I never know what to say at social functions" with "Sometimes I surprise myself and I know what to say. Cognitive restructuring is an intensive process. There is power simply in the process of cognitive restructuring, but employing other tools and practices can help you make the most of it:.
Cognitive restructuring has successfully been used to treat a variety of conditions, including SAD. A study showed that cognitive restructuring reduced post-event processing PEP. Another study conducted in study suggests that it's not so much replacing negative thoughts that are important, but rather going into situations and gradually having anxiety lessen.
While we don't know the precise reason cognitive restructuring works, it is likely a combination of thinking more rationally, exposure to anxiety-provoking situations, and engaging in less ruminative afterthoughts. Cognitive restructuring is not an easy skill to learn, even with the help of a therapist. But cognitive restructuring does get easier with practice. Continue working on it for your different fears with the help of your therapist or doctor.
Over time, cognitive restructuring and CBT can have a significant impact on your social anxiety. Underlying your negative thoughts is a core belief about yourself and your ability to function in social and performance situations.
Once your thoughts and actions are significantly changed, your core beliefs will also eventually shift. Learn the best ways to manage stress and negativity in your life. The impact of cognitive restructuring and mindfulness strategies on postevent processing and affect in social anxiety disorder.
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