Today we will talk about a short and simple exercise that you can do to recognise and become aware of unhealthy thought patterns.

Because you can only change the things you are aware of.

The exercise was shown to me by the psychologist Bettina Löhr, who was also on my old podcast in episodes 63 to 65 in German.

And I learned the exercise from her at university as part of a six-month mental training course and found it to be good. The aim of the exercise was to become more conscious in everyday life and to prevent stress by becoming aware of your thought patterns.

In addition, the exercise was also very helpful for me in a therapeutical context in order to understand myself better.

Today I have further modified the exercise for myself. I use it whenever I feel something where I think: I don't yet understand why I feel or behave like this.

This is especially helpful with unhealthy patterns, negative feelings or micro-traumata.

So to start the exercise, you'll need a pen and paper. There are four steps you can go through.

For preparation you can draw four boxes in the middle of your paper and connect them with arrows. On the left and right side of the sheet, i.e. next to the boxes, you leave some space for notes.

Box 1 is always the initial situation, the so-called trigger. More about this in a moment. Underneath, in box 2, write the term 'thoughts'. Box 3 is your feelings that are triggered by it and box 4 is the action that follows from it.

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► About: UNDERSTANDABLE makes Mental Health, especially the Sensory-Processing Sensitivity Trait of Highly Sensitive People (HSP) understandable.
► Disclaimer: None of the contents are therapeutic recommendations. The contents are not to be understood as therapeutic-medical instructions and are neither intended as professional health advice nor as education.