Cognitive Restructuring II
Goal
To be able construct alternative thoughts and beliefs
Alternative Thoughts & Beliefs
Once the faulty thoughts or beliefs are challenged, new truths need to be identified. By practicing the new and more realistic way of looking at life experiences, over time your feelings will positively respond to your new way of thinking.
Thought Record Exercise (Barlow, p. 105)
Instructions: Use the table on the next page to construct alternative thoughts to various situations. Complete the exercise once per day for the next 7 days. Identify and rate your thought(s)/belief(s) and emotion(s) about a situation and challenge your thought(s) just like you did in prior lessons. Next, determine if you are making a thinking mistake. Then, ask yourself what else you could say instead of your original thought(s). Lastly, rerate your original thought(s) and reexamine your feeling(s) about the situation. Keep in mind that if you do not make a thinking mistake, you likely will not experience a change in your feeling(s).
| Thought Record | Situation | Thought(s) & Emotion(s) | Challenge | Thinking Mistake | Alternative Thought(s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Describe what led to the unpleasant emotion(s). | List your primary thought(s) about the situation and specify your emotion(s). Rate how strongly you feel the emotion(s) from 0-100%. | Use the questions in lesson 4 to examine your initial thought(s). | Use the thinking mistakes table in lesson 4 to determine if this is a particular pattern of thinking. | What else can I say instead of my initial thought(s)? How else can I interpret the event? Rate your belief in the alternative thought(s) from 0-100%. Rerate how much you now believe your initial thought(s) from 0-100%. List the emotion(s) you are experiencing about the situation now and specify how strong it is from 0-100%. |
Overcoming Avoidance (Greenberger & Padesky, p. 187)
Learning to approach and cope with situations in which we feel anxious is a lasting and powerful way of eliminating anxiety. Use the various relaxation strategies that you will learn in lesson 5 to reduce your anxiety about situations you tend to avoid. By gradually approaching what you fear, you can gather evidence about the accuracy of your catastrophic expectations and replace avoidance with engagement.
Overcoming Avoidance Exercise (adapted from http://www.anxietybc.com/resources/anxiety.php)
Instructions: To help you identify situations that you avoid, try to come up with as many answers as possible to the following questions:
- If you woke up tomorrow morning and all your anxiety had magically disappeared, what would you do?
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________ - How would you act?
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________ - How would someone close to you know you weren’t anxious?
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________ - Finish this sentence: My anxiety stops me from
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________ - Finish this sentence: When I am not anxious, I will be able to
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
Next Step
It takes time for a new thought to replace the original, problematic thought. Once you have completed this exercise, you may find it helpful to re-read what you wrote down to help solidify your shift in thinking.
Learn how to complete a thought record by watching the following video. We apologize for the visual quality of the video: