What Are You Thinking??
In cognitive therapy, it is believed that cognition, or thinking, influences feelings and behaviors. The first step in the cognitive process is to recognize the internal dialogue that accompanies unpleasant feelings. This dialogue consists of a series of automatic thoughts that interpret the events of the world and supply personal meaning. Automatic thoughts have the following characteristics:
Automatic thoughts are spontaneous and often occur in short, telegraphic style. Although they may seemingly go unnoticed because of their quickness, the emotional response to these thoughts may immobilize healthy attempts to cope.
As automatic thoughts are being discovered, the next step in cognitive therapy is to identify the feelings generated by the automatic thoughts. Then examine the logic behind each statement. When automatic thoughts are twisted with illogical reasoning, cognitive distortions result.
Automatic thoughts are accepted as automatic truths. Appearing so quickly they rarely are noticed, they are not challenged, nor are their implications submitted to logical analysis.
Automatic thoughts tend to come in groups and may develop into patterns. This is especially true when the automatic thoughts revolve around "should", "ought", and "must". One automatic thought may breed a family of others, often leading to a sense of guilt, anxiety, or depression.
Automatic thoughts are often harsh and set the stage for defeat by consisting of strong negative statements. When asked to perform a new job, automatic thoughts may be, "I'm no good at learning new things, I'll never be able to do the job, I'm not smart enough, I'm a failure."
Automatic thoughts are difficult to turn off. Having gone unnoticed and unquestioned for years, they are firmly rooted bad habits. However, it is possible to change the habits of automatic thoughts.
Cognitive Distortions
All or Nothing Thinking
You see things in black-and-white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a failure.
Overgeneralization
You see a single event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.
Mental Filter
You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors the whole beaker of water.
Disqualifying the Positive
You reject positive experiences by insisting they "don't count" for some reason or other. In this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences."
Jumping to Conclusions
You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion.
1. Mindreading. You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you, and you don't bother to check this out.
Magnification (Catastrophizing) or Minimization
2. The Fortune-Teller Error. You anticipate that things will turn out badly and you feel convinced that your prediction is an already established fact.
You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your goof-ups or someone else's achievement), or your inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow's imperfections.)
Emotional Reasoning
You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: "I feel it, therefore it must be true."
Should Statements
You try to motivate yourself with shoulds and shouldn'ts, as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything. "Musts" and "oughts" are also offenders. The emotional response is guilt. When you direct statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment.
Labeling and Mislabeling
This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself. "I'm a loser." When someone else's behavior rubs you the wrong way you attach a negative label to him: "He's a louse." Mislabelling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded.
Personalization
You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event which in fact you were not primarily responsible for.
Automatic thoughts can be challenged using these cognitive distortions to question the validity of each thought. By examining which distortions are being used, questions can be asked to provide information about the truth of the automatic thoughts. As automatic thoughts begin to develop, it is often helpful to cue yourself with a statement such as, "Stop it, this is baloney!", so the thoughts can be examined. An example of this involves questioning the automatic thoughts generated by the request to perform a new job duty. "I'm no good at learning new things", uses the cognitive distortions of mental filter and disqualifying the positive and can be examined with questions such as, "Didn't I learn the other duties of my job? Haven't I learned new skills such as typing and using the word processor?". Jumping to conclusions and all-or-nothing thinking are used with "I'll never be able to do the job", and can be examined with questions such as, "Will I never be able to do the job? What's the worst thing that can happen if I don't do the job? Haven't I been able to do my job before?". The automatic thoughts, "I'm a failure", is an example of mental filter and overgeneralization and mislabeling. Questions such as, "Does the inability to do one task make me a complete failure? What are some of the things I do well? Is this new duty that terribly important?", can be used to examine the validity of the automatic thought. The greater number of questions generated for each automatic thought aids in providing information to challenge the validity of the automatic thoughts.
The next step in cognitive therapy is to refute the illogical reasoning of the automatic thoughts. Each cognitive distortion is weighed against reality and is either adjusted to totally negated to reflect a broader view of the situation. Coping skills are also addressed at this step. Healthy coping skills may consist of learning assertive communication skills, assessing organizational and goal setting skills, and developing self-enhancement skills.
Five Column Technique
The Five Column Technique is used in cognitive therapy. It consists of the following components:
BACK
1. Situation: list a situation in which you feel uncomfortable.
2. Automatic thoughts: list all the automatic thoughts generated by the situation. Develop short, telegraphic messages into complete thoughts.
3. Feelings: write down your feelings in this situation. Using the "list of feelings", be as specific as possible; you may discover a broader range of feelings than you first realized.
4. Cognitive distortions: label each thought with the appropriate cognitive distortion. More than one may apply to each thought.
5. Coping style: list the rational thoughts regarding the situation. Assess your coping style to determine your strengths and areas for future growth.
