Cognitive Behavioral Therapy – Thinking Errors Part I[1]

Thinking errors are the thought patterns that we have that are not healthy and do not serve us.  In this post, we will go over the thinking errors and some quick strategies to overcome them.  There are 12 destructive thought patterns in all and we will talk about four of them over the next couple of blog posts.

Catastrophic Thinking:  is taking a relatively minor event and imagining all sorts of disasters resulting from that one small event. Strategies to defeat this thought patters are:

• Put your thoughts in perspective;
• Consider less terrifying explanations;
• Weight up the evidence;
• Focus on what you can do to cope with the situation, and the people or resources that can come to your aid.

No matter how great a travesty you create in your mind, the world's unlikely to end because of it – even if the travesty comes to pass.  You're probably far more capable of surviving embarrassing and painful events than you give yourself credit for – human beings can be very resilient.

All or Nothing Thinking:  This type of thinking is the black or white, love you or hate you, perfect or disaster.  This thinking can lead to extreme emotions and behaviors.  Strategies to defeat this thought pattern are:

• Be realistic;
• Develop "both-and" reasoning skills.

All or nothing thinking can sabotage goal-directed behavior.  You're far more likely to throw in the towel at the first sign of something blocking your goal when you refuse to allow a margin for error.  Beware of either/or statements and global labels such as "good" and "bad" or "success" and "failure."  Neither people nor life situations are often that cut and dried.

Fortune Telling:  This type of thinking is predicting the future outcome.  Unfortunately, the predictions made are usually negative.  You're better off letting the future unfold without trying to guess how it may turn out.  Put the dustcover back on the crystal ball.  Strategies to defeat this thought pattern are:

• Test out your predictions;
• Be prepared to take risks;
• Understand that your past experiences don't determine your future experiences.

Typically, fortune telling stops you from taking action.  It can also become a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.  If you keep telling yourself that you won't enjoy that party, you're liabile to make that prediction come true.  Same goes for meeting new people and trying new things.  So, put on your party gear, ask him out for dinner and book yourself in for some hang-gliding.

Mind Reading:  You tend to think you know what other people are thinking.  With mind reading, the tendency is often to assume that others are thinking negative things about you or have negative motives and intentions.  Strategies to defeat this type of thought patters are:

• Generate some alternative reasons for what you see;
• Consider that your guesses may be wrong;
• Get more information (if appropriate).

You tend to mind read what you fear most.  Mind reading is a bit like putting a slide in a slide projector.  What you project or imagine is going on in other people's minds is very much based on what's already in yours.

Think about these four types of thought patterns and see if your thinking is like any of them.  Again, we need to identify the source of our thoughts and feelings in order to fix them.  This is the first step in that process – identifying the thought patterns that you have.  The next blog will cover the next four types of thinking errors and the blog after that will cover the last four.  Give yourself some time to think about and identify the thinking errors that you have.

[1] Personal Development All-In-One for Dummies

As I mentioned in the last episode, today we are going to talk about Personal Development in general.  There are many aspects of personal development.  Today we will touch on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Examining Confidence.

One of the essential concepts of personal development is that there is no failure.  There is only feedback.  So, as you are on journey, you may want to keep a journal to keep track of your progress.

As we embark on this voyage, you may want to keep the following questions in the front of your mind:

• What am I aiming to achieve?
• What have I achieved so far?
• What feed back have I had?
• What lessons have I learned?
• How can I put these lessons to good use?
• How am I going to measure my success?

You want to continually ask yourself these questions because you will want to set a goal to get to.  In order to make this successful, you need to know exactly what it is you want to get out of this.  Otherwise, you're just traveling to nowhere.

Understanding Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

• Cognitive is the mental process;
• Behavior is everything you do;
• Therapy is therapy

The philosophy behind cognitive behavioral therapy is that you can make a difference to the way you feel by changing unhelpful ways of thinking and behaving – even if you can't change your environment.

Cognitive behavioral therapy is also progressing from problems to goals.  It gives you the tools to develop a focused approach, it aims to help you move from defined emotional and behavioral problems towards your goals of how you'd like to feel and behave.  It is a goal oriented, systematic, problem-solving approach to emotional problems.

It is also making the thought-feeling link.  In other words, your thoughts, beliefs and the meanings that you give to an event produce your emotional and behavioral responses.

In examining the meanings you attach to events, you should ask yourself the following:

• Is the meaning your giving to this event unduly extreme, like over reacting?
• Are you drawing global conclusions from this singular event? This would be seeing an event as defining your entire future.  An example would be if you didn't get into a certain college of your choice are you thinking that now your entire future is ruined.
• Is the meaning you are assigning to this event loaded against you? In other words, does the meaning make you feel better or worse?

Sometimes when there are emotional problems, one may act out and have self-destructive behaviors, they may have isolating and mood depressing behaviors and they may avoid things completely.

Cognitive behavioral therapy emphasizes the role of the personal meanings that you give to events in determining you emotional responses.  It was developed through extensive scientific evaluation and focuses more on how your problems are being maintained rather than searching for a single root cause of the problem.  And it offers practical advice and tools for overcoming common emotional problems.

Cognitive behavioral therapy holds the view that you can change and develop by thinking things through and by trying out new ideas and strategies.  It can address events from your past if doing so can help you to understand and change the way you're thinking and acting now.

It also flushes out some of the strategies you're using to cope with your emotional problems and shows that they are actually maintaining those problems.  Cognitive behvioral therapy strives to normalize your emotions, physical sensations and thoughts rather than to persuade you that they are clues to hidden problems.  It also recognizes that you may develop emotional problems about your emotional problems like being ashamed about being depressed.

More importantly, cognitive behavioral therapy highlights learning techniques and maximizes self help so that ultimately you can become your own therapist.

Examining Confidence

For our purposes, we are going to define confidences as the ability to take appropriate and effective action in any situation however challenging it appears to you or others.  It is your ability to take appropriate and effective action and is your ability to reach beyond how you are feeling in the moment in order to take action that leads to the outcome you want.

Confident people are ok with the feeling of not knowing all the answers.  And it is feeling that everything will be ok.  If you are confident, you will more likely feel the following:

• Poised and balanced;
• You are breathing easy;
• You are moving towards a goal or action with a sense of purpose;
• You are being proactive rather than defensive;
• You know that you can deal with whatever life throws at you, even if you can't control it;
• You can laugh at yourself
• You know everything will be all right in the end, however long it takes.

Indicators of confidence are the following:

• Direction and values: you know what you want, where you want to be and what's important to you;
• Motivation: motivated by and enjoy what you do;
• Emotional Stability: you have a calm and focused approach with how you are with yourself and with others as you tackle challenges;
• Anger and anxiety are kept in check;
• Positive mindset: ability to stay optimistic when you encounter setbacks;
• Self-awareness: you know what you are good at, how capable you feel and how you look and sound to others;
• Flexibility in behavior: you can adapt your behavior to different circumstances, you can see the bigger picture and the details, you can consider other people's opinions/views when making decisions;
• Eagerness to develop: willingness to learn each day, self help and personal growth;
• Healthy and energetic: manage stress without becoming ill, in touch with you body.
• Willingness to take risks: ability to act in the face of adversity/uncertainty and put your self on the line even it you don't have all the answers;
• A sense of purpose: increasing sense of coherence of the different parts of your life, you have chosen a theme or a purpose for your life.

Having confidence also means recognizing your strengths: You know how to love yourself and can acknowledge what you're good at, and this boosts your resilience and ability to take on greater challenges.

For confidence to thrive and grow, you must concentrate your attention on what you're good at, instead of trying to turn yourself into something you're not.

During this journey make sure to get some feedback from people you love and trust, and ask the following:

• What are you good at?
• When have you seen me operate at my best?
• What should I do more of?
• What should I do less of?
• What can you rely on me for?
• Where do you think I can stretch myself.

Picturing the life you'd like to lead:

Confidence is all about perception.  Visualize a moment when you are super confident, picture about a real moment coming up where you'd like to be supremely confident:

• Where are you and who is with you?
• What are you doing?
• What skills and talents do you have now?
• What are your thoughts and feelings?
• What's really important to you about this newfound confidence?
• What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail.

Visualization involves focusing your thoughts on the things you want to happen in your life and picturing them happening.  This is a powerful motivation tool.

As you become more confident, you start paying more attention to what's important to you in life instead of bowing to the pressures that those around you place on you.

Uncovering your confidence:

• As your skills and competence grows. So you become more confident to take on bigger challenges;
• Support, mentoring and personal sponsorship of various types can help you to be the very best you can be;
• Begin by assuming you are going to be successful and surround yourself with people who honor you and support your growth.

Preparing for action:

• Getting your confident self fired up means adopting a new, positive mindset and getting rid of any self-doubts you have. Ask yourself:
  • Is it ok to make this change and become a more confident me?
  • What do I stand to lose or gain.

Setting your intentions:

• Make the declaration to yourself that you are committed to build your confidence in a way that is right for you, knowing yourself as a unique and special human being, you will be honest and kind with yourself on this journey to be the very best you can be.

Acknowledge the perils and perks of change:

• Flex your knees over the bumpy days;
• Look at the worst case scenario;
• Ask yourself, what will this be like in a week's time, a month's time or this time next year.

This is a self-help and personal growth podcast.  My vision for this podcast:  to share myself and my experiences with women in order to help them along this journey.  This will be a journey of self-exploration, self-awareness, and transformation.  I want to guide you on this journey to re-inventing yourself.

Why did I create this movement?  Because every single woman, young or older, has the absolute right to have high self-esteem and confident.  And I want to help women gain all of that and more.  I want the women that I work with to become so confident that they rock the world..  Let this show acts as the compass in the voyage to your truth.