Tag: negative thoughts

  CEUs are available at AllCEUs.com/CBT-CEU This episode was pre-recorded as part of a live continuing education webinar. On demand CEUs are still available for this presentation through ALLCEUs. ALLCEUs.com/CBT-CEU I’d like to welcome everybody today to cognitive behavioral therapy addressing negative thoughts. Now a lot of us took courses and cognitive behavioral therapy we’ve worked with CBP for many many years so some of the this is just going to be a refresher and others you know you may pick up a few new tips or tools as we go along so we’re going to define cognitive behavioral therapy and its basic principles just get a really basic refresher on what was that original CDP about well identify factors impacting people’s choices behaviors because you know they always have a choice we’ll explore causes and the impact of thinking errors whether you call them cognitive distortions irrational thoughts or when I work with my clients I try to call them unhelpful beliefs or unhelpful thoughts because distortions and irrational seems sort of pejorative to me so I try to avoid those words as much as possible and help clients see them as not incorrect necessarily but unhelpful and then we’ll identify some common thinking errors and their relationship to cognitive distortions and some of our just very basic fears why do we care well because cognitive distortions or irrational thoughts or unhelpful thoughts whatever you want to say really impacts people on a physical level a mental level and an emotional level a person who perceives the world is hostile unsafe and unpredictable will tend to be more hyper vigilant until they exhaust the stress response system so think about you know a bottle ship and you’ve got a bunch of new people on this battleship and all the sailors every time there’s the least little thing they send off the all-hands-on-deck so a big bird flies over and I mean literally a bird and they freak out found me all hands on deck and this goes on for a week or two or six months you know let’s think about our clients they don’t usually come in right away where everything is set to OFF that startle response everything sets off that fight-or-flight response the staff starts to get exhausted all the rest of the sailors that have to drop everything and run to their battle stations after a little while they’re like really no no we just we can’t even do this and it also reminds me of the boy who cried wolf anyhow I digress sticking with the battleship metaphor so eventually the captain says you know what let’s retrain on what is worth setting off the all hands on deck because everybody here is exhausted and nobody’s even really responding anymore when they come to their battle stations they’re just kind of dragging their butts in like whatever it’s probably another false alarm the same sort of thing is true with us when we’re on on high alert for too long our brain says you know what we got to conserve some energy in case some really really big threat comes along so it turns down what I call the stress response system it turns down the sensitivity so you don’t get alerted for every little thing that would cause you stress but you also don’t get alerted for those little things that would cause you happiness either anything that would cause the excitatory neurotransmitters to be secreted you’re just not getting those anymore which a lot of people kind of refer to as depression it’s just kind of like the F whatever and only the biggest most notable things actually cause an emotional effect we don’t want people to get to that point that’s no way to live so we need to help them learn how to sort of retrain their spotters to figure out what is actually stressful a person who perceives the world is generally good and believe they have the ability to deal with challenges as they arise will be able to allow their stress response system to function normally there are going to be times you have all hands on deck whether it’s a real emergency or whether it’s just a drill but it will happen and they can go they can you know do what they’re going to do they have that adrenaline rush they have the energy and the focus to do their jobs and when it’s over they go back to their quarters they can relax refresh you know just kind of chill for a while and then there’s a low where their body rebalances before the next one and this is kind of what we want in life I mean ideally we wouldn’t have super high peaks very often but we want to make sure we give our body time to rebalance after there’s a stressor and not have to stand on on edge not be hyper vigilant constantly just waiting for the next one to come along so what is the impact of these thinking errors well whenever we have that stress response system activated the body is saying we either need to fight or we need to flee so you’re dumping all kinds of adrenaline and other neuro chemicals so there’s anxiety there can be stress when people start having this reaction you know they start having muscle tension sweating heart rate increases breathing increases people will call that anxiety some will label that as anger either way they’re both sides of the same coin they need to do something but if it lasts too long then we start moving into depression and they just they don’t have to get up and go anymore there’s just not any excitatory neurotransmitters really left they need some time to rest and rebalance behaviorally think about it if you go somewhere and you are just constantly on guard are you going to keep going there or are you going to withdraw so people who have a lot of thinking errors unhelpful thoughts tend to withdraw more they may turn to addictions to kind of numb or blunt some of the inputs sleep problems and changes when you are hyper vigilant when you have this stress response going even if it’s not a full-bore if it’s still there somewhat if you’re stressed out you’re not going to sleep as well you’re going to maintain higher levels of cortisol so you’re not going to get that restful rejuvenating sleep you may kind of goes on and off eating changes you know depending on the person some people eat the self food that some people can’t eat it all but we do see that the hormones Guerlain and lets them get all out of whack not under stress but also when sleep gets out of whack when your circadian rhythms get out of whack so we’re starting to see the Cascade effect where it’s emotional and behavioral physical you’ve got stress-related illnesses that start coming up if you’re on that lunch you’ve got muscle tension for that long it starts to hurt I mean you start to get migraines your back starts to hurt wherever you store your stress so to speak it starts to come out and most people when they’re under a lot of stress for an extended period you know a day is not a big deal for most people but for an extended period become more susceptible to illnesses they start getting sick easier headaches GI distress you know some people store their stress right in their gut socially think about the last time you were stressed were you patient and tolerant and just a pleasure to be around you may have tried to be but you’re more prone to irritability and impatience and again wanting to withdraw all of these affects contribute to fatigue and a sense of hopelessness and helplessness which often intensifies thinking errors so you’ll see this negative reciprocal interaction if somebody feels stressed out and overwhelmed and that they withdrawal then they may start feeling like they have no support and they don’t and they lose all their social buffers to the stress so they feel even more stressed so they want to withdrawal even more so we’re going to talk about how to prevent that now I like this little diagram maybe because it’s got a heart in the center I don’t know but behavior feelings and thoughts this is the outside of the circle all three of these impact diecuts each other when you do something it often impacts your feelings and your thoughts about a situation when you when you’re thinking if you think positively you’re probably going to choose more positive behaviors and more have more positive feelings you’re thinking negatively obviously you may choose more of an escape behavior Protection behavior and may have more feelings of anger anxiety depression etc so these things are going on and they’re all interacting the one really cool thing is if you break this chain somewhere or this circuit then you can stop that reciprocal negative downward spiral so cognitive behavioral helps people who are willing to show up or who are willing to address their thoughts not everybody is willing to start addressing their thoughts right away maybe they want to start addressing their sleep problems in their eating problems or something that’s more physical okay that’s fine because anywhere we interrupt this circuit is going to have positive effects assuming the intervention is positive it’s going to have positive effects on the other ones so what about the triangle well yourself so you’re feeling thoughts and behavior impact you it impacts how you feel and you’re like well yeah okay just stay with me but the way you feel think and act impacts your future and it also impacts how you interact with others so you know that kind of affects things because remember social support is a big buffer for us now core beliefs and you can do this inward to outward or outward to inward but either way it comes down to core beliefs if you have positive thoughts and positive feelings and you generally engage in positive behaviors to keep that cycle going you will probably feel pretty good about yourself have good relationships have a somewhat optimistic feeling about the future and your core beliefs may be more like people are generally good I can do this you know very self affirming and other affirming positive core beliefs about yourself in the world now if your thoughts or feelings are negative then you have this negative outer circle you don’t feel so good you start questioning the goodness and Trust ability and dependable of other people you have more of a bleak look in the future so what do you think is going to happen to the core beliefs the core beliefs may change too if someone doesn’t love me I am completely unloveable they may change to being more extreme more negative and more difficult to rectify if you want to have somebody who’s happy I mean you’re not going to have somebody who’s happy who thinks the world is an unkind unpredictable scary place going it’s just wonderful roses today so we have to help people try to adjust eventually start adjusting those core beliefs and when we get into causing that behavior remember the ABCs your automatic but well your automatic thought then your and beliefs are what happened as soon as that event occurs and those you don’t think about that’s why they’re called automatic so when you have the ABCs these core beliefs are those things that pop up that we need to address so what factors affect this and whoops you know there’s a lot of stuff right here and EBP they call them vulnerabilities you know we’re just going to talk about in general different factors that affect the choices our clients make in terms of behaviors so negative emotions if they are not if they’re feeling angry if they’re feeling anxious they’re feeling depressed they’re probably not going to be really motivated to get up and engage in a whole lot of self affirming activities they’re not probably not going to be having a lot of positive self affirming thoughts they’re going to be focused on whatever is causing that distress and maybe escaping from that physically pain and illness when you don’t feel well it’s harder to be Susie sunshine I don’t think many of us are just a barrel of monkeys when we don’t feel well so if our clients have pain this is one of those if you want to put it in behaviors behavioral areas physical areas we can address and have them go see their physician have them go see their physical therapist and get recommendations so they aren’t feeling physically painful physically and distress all the time because physical distress and emotional distress both mess with sleep unfortunately sleep is the first thing to usually go and I’m not talking about quantity I know a lot of clients who when they get depressed they’re in in bed for you know days they’ll get up they’ll maybe shower and you know go back to bed and they’re sleeping a lot but it doesn’t mean it’s quality sleep so what we need to look at is what is the quality of their sleep are they getting that rejuvenation the time for their brain and neural chemicals to rebalance so they can feel happy so they can have that nice balance of all the the neurotransmitters they need to feel happy poor nutrition well no matter how much sleep they get if they don’t have the building blocks to make the neurotransmitters and the hormones that are needed to prompt the feelings the physiological sensations that we’ve labeled happiness or excitement or you know even depression and anxiety those are all caused by different neurotransmitters being secreted in different combinations if your body doesn’t have the building blocks to make those then it doesn’t matter how much sleep you get you’re not going to get any benefit from it an intoxication and this can be uppers downers anything that is psychoactive if you are messing with that neurotransmitter balance you’re going to get it out of whack and you may either use up too much of the excitatory or cause us a lot of it or you may use up too much of the depressant either way there’s usually a rebound effect which we call withdrawal so you’re not going to be in a good space either during the intoxication sometimes but definitely when you’re sobering up there’s a period where there’s going to be negative emotions negative feelings environmentally yeah your environment can even make you grumpy introduction of a new or unique situation some people love new challenges love going to new places other people not so much depending on the person taking on going somewhere new may be really stressful for them so if they’ve already got de-stress going on because of having to go to this new situation then their thoughts may be a little bit more on the anxious side about a lot of things and they may have less patience and tolerance to deal with other stuff that comes their way because they’re already kind of on edge and exposure to unpress you know going places that you just really don’t want to go maybe and one of the places I used to work we had this meeting once a month and it was literally an eight-hour meeting and we would all sit in there for eight hours and one person at a time would get up and give their staff reports or whatever but it tended to be a relatively dreadful sort of environment or eight hours and we all knew we had to be there and that was fine but it was an unprecedented were grumbling on the way in they were getting their coffee and going well I better do this because I’m not getting out for another eight hours we need to help our clients obsess what is it in your environment if anything that is making you already feel grumpy or not as happy and likewise what can you put in your environment to make you feel happier you know I keep pictures of my kids and my animals on my phone that way if I’m having a moment or not sometimes I just like looking at them I can take a look at it it makes me smile and I’m like okay life is good you know this moment may not be so wonderful but it’s just this moment then we move on to stress of a social nature peers or family who convey irrational thoughts as necessary standards for social acceptance nobody wants to associate with those people or nobody’s going to like you when you’re like this or you read if you really want to be successful then you need to change fill in the blank it’s always a something needs to change you are not okay for who you are how you are and a lack of supportive peers to buffer stress because we all have negative people in our life it happens but if you have negative supportive peers that you can call afterwards and go yeah I had just had to meet with someone so for an hour and it was just dreadful and that person can go well I’m sorry or be there make you laugh or whatever they do it helps buffer the stress if you don’t have those positive social supports then you’re left walking out of it you’re kind of feeling shell-shocked and then you also at the same time have to figure out for yourself all right what do I do next now it doesn’t mean you can’t do it you know people do it all the time but it is good it is awesome to have supportive peers to buffer your stress so when cognitive therapy clients learn to distinguish between thoughts and feelings realizing that thoughts will trigger feelings but they don’t have to cause continual feelings and behaviors and feelings can cause certain thoughts but they don’t have to you can unhook from them and you can just say this is how I’m feeling right now now where am I going to go from here and we talked about that on Tuesday with unhooking from unhooking from your thoughts and stepping back and going what is the next logical action to get me to where I want to go become aware of the ways in which the thoughts can influence feelings in ways that are sometimes not helpful being critical being jealous envious maybe you just don’t like somebody and you know there’s a whole lot of reasons for that but you don’t like everybody most people don’t like everyone and so it’s you know that’s okay but recognize how that affects your interactions with that person and your thoughts about that person learn how thoughts that seem to occur automatically affect emotions so recognize start getting down to what are these core beliefs that happen every time it’s a negative incident that make me feel angry or anxious constructively evaluate whether these automatic thoughts and assumptions are accurate or perhaps biased evaluate whether the current reactions are helpful and a good use of energy or unhelpful and a waste of energy that could be used to move toward those people and things important to the person so again back kind of to that ACP sort of thing is this a good use of your energy to help you achieve your goals and be the person you want to be and develop the skills to notice interrupt and correct these biased thoughts independently like I said you don’t always have to call somebody you can do it on your own but sometimes it’s nice to have that buffer in that middle moment so what causes these thinking errors how can we even start helping people address their thoughts and until we start thinking about well what caused them information processing shortcuts as we grow up we learn things you know when you were knee-high to a grasshopper you didn’t have a lot of experience so you learned things but things you learned when you were a kid unfortunately because you were cognitively a child are either our dichotomies they’re all or nothing it’s either this way or no way at all so things that you have things that you learn back when you were a child may not have been challenged if you heard something from your parent maybe your parents said you’re a bad girl or you’re a bad boy it’s all or nothing well I am a bad girl so I guess that means I’m not okay and if I’m not okay right now I’m never okay that can stick with a person so these outdated amis schemas can really trip somebody up once the person gets into you know middle schoolish the thoughts aren’t nearly as dichotomous there’s a lot more formal operational thought if you will but up until then I mean you’ve got a child who’s experiencing a lot of stuff and taking in like a sponge everything they hear and it gets sorted into a yes or a No pile there’s there’s no kind of middle pile that there’s no yes and so what we want to do is help people look at those thoughts now and say okay if they’re all or nothing is there a way to find both and so for example we’ll take that exam scenario I gave you earlier if a child hears you’re a bad girl when they’re young they take that to mean always everything about me is bad I’m unlovable so what is the both and compromise as an adult we can look back and go you know I’m a good person I may not make may make poor choices sometimes I may make bad choices but I’m a good person so there’s that both and you know I’m not perfect but I’m good so that it’s not all or nothing and I encourage my clients to really always look for that middle ground how can it be both or does it have to even be that negative one but most of the time there’s a little bit of something on both sides the brain’s limited information processing capacity and limited responses when children are young you know they hear something you know mom comes in and says you’re a bad girl and child hears I’m totally unlovable and it just crushes the child they don’t have experiences to go moms having a bad day she kind of tends to say things she doesn’t mean when she’s having a bad day it’s just it’s devastating to that child when you’re older if somebody says something that’s not necessarily tactful you know you can look at it and go yeah that really wasn’t nice but that person probably did not intend to be hurtful they may have something else going on children have fewer experiences so what was devastating or overwhelming as a child may not still have have to feel that way when you’re a child if your best friend moved away oh that was devastating it was the end of the world now as an adult you can go visit them you can call them and with the internet and everything you can email them you can still stay in touch so there are ways to do it yeah you can’t go out and swing swing on swings together all the time but it doesn’t have to mean the end of the end of time things will change and there’s a little process of grieving that has to go along with that but to an adult a friend moving away is less devastating than say to a six-year-old your parent being angry with you if you grew up in an alcoholic or addicted household you learn don’t talk don’t trust don’t feel when the parent came in if the parent was angry with you you could have been in a lot of hurt you know there could have been some actual danger to your physical or emotional person so it was scary as a 26 year old or however old your client is is it that threatening you know if your parent gets angry with you you don’t depend on them for food and shelter anymore you don’t have to be an inner household if they were violent towards you so is it as terrifying when your parent gets angry yes there’s lots of issues with wanting acceptance from your parents that’s over here there’s a whole nother issue but when your parent is angry do you have to have that person’s approval when we’re in crisis we don’t process much when you’re in crisis your body is worried about surviving if you’ve been in a car wreck if somebody has gone to the hospital whatever the case is you’re not processing all of the data in order to make it in for decision you’re processing what’s right in front of you because when we’re in crisis we generally have tunnel vision and really crappy memory so if something happened when someone was in crisis that hurt their feelings made them angry you know fill in the blank some sort of dysphoric emotion we want to say well let’s look back at that and see if there’s a pose and let’s look back at that and see if there was something that you missed that might help you understand why this person reacted that way but understanding that in crisis we just generally don’t make the most informed decisions so emotional reasoning helping clients understand that feeling or not facts and helping them learn to identify feelings and separate them from facts so if they say I’m terrified all right so you’re terrified got that about what are you terrified you know tell me what are these things that make you feel like the world is such a scary place and let’s list them on the whiteboard or a flip chart what is the evidence that those are present dangers right now that they’re actually impending threats so tell me about what the evidence is in what ways is this similar to other situations where you felt terrified and how did you deal with those situations I have a friend who actually went this morning on an airplane flight and she hates flying totally terrified of it so what is the evidence that this plane is going to crash you know what is the evidence that it is likely that this plane will crash and there really she’s flying on an american-based commercial airliner there really isn’t any when you look at the proportions so okay there’s there have been a couple of crashes over the past 20 years and in a couple of those there were some fatalities no doubt but looking at the proportions and running the numbers what’s the likelihood in what ways this is similar to other situations that you have felt terrified you know maybe there haven’t been any other situations where she’s flown and gotten through it and been like score I did that but what other situations have you had to get through that you were terrified and how did you deal with those help people develop distress tolerance skills one of the things I told her was when you’re sitting on the airplane and you know the airplane starts up don’t wait til you start getting really stressed necessarily but when we were little on the car when we’re in the car we used to find things on the drive find something that starts with a and everybody would find something that started with a and then find something that starts with B and you know so on and if you couldn’t find something that started with that letter you were out so I mean she’s going on this trip with her kids and I’m like why don’t you try doing that because there are some letters that you’re going to have to work really hard and it’s kind of like the game apples to apples you end up finding something really inane in order to get that letter and you laugh and you’re so busy focusing on that you’re not focusing on all of the things that could possibly maybe go wrong other distress tolerance skills you know you can go through the whole DBT curriculum and learn some of those the biggest thing is if you have to face the terror if you have to go through it figure out a way to not have to focus on it and fight it and go I shouldn’t be afraid I shouldn’t be because that doesn’t work if it worked we wouldn’t be talking about it and develop emotional regulation skills so prevent those vulnerabilities set yourself up so you are as prepared as you can to not feel stressed to not feel anxious she has her spouse with her who can help diffuse some of it she’s got her kids with her she downloaded some movies she’s prepared to endure the distress she’s you know trying to go into it with a positive mindset as much as possible and focusing on the destination which you know is ultimately the reason she’s getting on the plane social causes of stress and thinking errors everybody’s doing it well that’s not true there’s very real that everybody does so correcting misinformation how the client gather objective information about you know if they say well everybody else that I know has succeeded okay well let’s gather objective information about that who do you know and tell me if they’ve succeeded if I want to be liked I must do it this need for approval or low self-esteem can cause a lot of problems in thinking errors and fears of rejection so we say okay let’s look at developing some self-esteem so you don’t need to worry about if somebody likes you what would it be like if you woke up in the morning and you didn’t care if so-and-so liked you I mean we all want to have friends don’t get me wrong I’m not saying you want to be her moving out in the woods but if we’re talking about a particular so-and-so what would it be like in the morning to get up and go you know what if that person messages me today or call us me today that’s great and if not I’m okay with that how liberating would that be to get your power back and how people develop social supports that share their same values and goals at least mostly or at least can respect yours so for example when you know I work with people with co-occurring disorders and they don’t drink and they don’t use drugs so they may be around people family friends who drink if you’re going to be in that situation do you have to drink and can you be around do you have social supports that can be supportive of your choice to not drink doesn’t necessarily mean they’re it’s not going to not going to not drink in front of you but at least they’re not trying to get you to drink so the social causes of irrational thoughts if I want to be liked I must do this why can’t you be like for who you are cognitive bias negativity mental filter focus on the negatives and worry about the future most of us know some people like that most of us have had a moment where we felt like this we’ve just gotten ourselves in a tizzy and spun out of control but you can bring it back so you want to ask yourself or have your clients ask themselves what’s the benefit to focusing on the negative if you know that this is going to go south really fast what’s the benefit to just focusing on that could you focus on alternatives or Plan B’s what are the positives to the situation most people who have mood issues who present to us in counseling don’t focus on both sides yes every side you know has a little bit of negative to it if you really want to look hard enough but every side also has a silver lining if you really want to look hard enough so we need to balance the the positives and the negatives so encourage people to look for the positives in the situation yeah this really sucked but and what are all the facts what are all the things going into it sometimes people will go to work and not know or wonder if they’re going to get laid off because you know you’re not necessarily always guaranteed a job anywhere there can be layoffs but if somebody is going to work every day worried about this focusing on the negative up yep I’m definitely going to be the one that’s going to get the pink slip and they go to their mailbox each time looking for that pink slip expecting it to be there how is that going to affect their mood as opposed to alright there may be layoffs coming what can I do to make myself really valuable or and what are my options if I do get laid off let’s make a plan B and C so I don’t just feel like the rug was pulled out from under me coin toss activity if somebody tends to be stuck in negativity have them flip a coin every morning if it lands on heads they can just see their normal selves to their heart’s content if it lands on tails they need to act as if they are a happy positive optimistic maybe even a noxious ly optimistic person for the entire day you know we want them to be farting rainbows and when I say that they usually look at me and laugh and but that’s okay I’m like every time you start having a negative thought I want you to see a unicorn farting rainbows and take it from there and then have them process how they felt at the end of the day if they weren’t constantly focused on negativity and worrying and only seeing the bad stuff disqualifying or minimizing the positive if something happens when somebody says well I just got that promotion because they didn’t have anybody else to give it to okay if your best friend just got a promotion would you say that to them what is scary about accepting the positive about accepting the fact that maybe you got the promotion because you’re awesome sometimes we disqualify the positive because it fails to meet someone else’s standards so might that be true here you know maybe you got this promotion and you’re actually down deep down inside kind of proud of it but you know that your mother had always wanted you to be this over here and you’re never going to meet that expectation so you minimize it that way nobody else could say well you know better than nothing and take away your thunder egocentrism my perspective is the only perspective take different perspectives I always say three if something happens and you know maybe somebody was rude to you anyone they were rude to me okay they were rude to you what are three reasons what are some alternate perspectives why that person might have been rude maybe what you did something that triggers them maybe they were having a bad day and it’s got nothing at all to do with you you know there are options that we can look at personalization and mind-reading what are some alternate explanations for the event that didn’t involve you if you think well that person that person just really doesn’t like me and you know I’ve got to work with them every day and they hate me my question to my client would be what what’s the evidence for that and what are some alternative explanations for why that person may be behaving that way I had a staff member that a lot of my other staff members had difficulty getting along with and ultimately you know we had to sit down and look when I had some different staff meetings with people and say you know what gives you the idea that she doesn’t like you what gives you the idea that it’s about you and you know they cited all kinds of behaviors and I had to come back to well what are some alternate reasons why somebody anybody not just her might be expressing those behaviors could it be something besides you and of course they came back – yeah availability heuristic remembering what’s prominent in your mind if somebody was if you’re a supervisor for example and you’re doing evaluation for the year what are you really remembering when you’re doing that evaluation the whole year or the last three months and that’s the event fail ability heuristic so when you’re talking to somebody about their relationship with their best friend or their spouse or their kids and if somebody says well that that child has always been a problem okay let’s look at that you know the child is 18 and you’ve had a lot of problems with him lately but what about three years ago so was he always a problem or is this something that’s relatively new that something might have changed magnification people getting stuck on fearing the absolute worst so you want to ask them is this a high probability or low probability outcome if they’re magnifying something that happened like oh my gosh that is the worst thing in the world is this going to matter six months from now maybe you totaled your car and yeah that is a huge bummer and you’re safe in six months is this really going to matter that much you know there are going to be some bills and everything but the big scheme of things is at the end of the world what have you done in the past to tolerate events like these when something really really unpleasant has happened and then if they’re looking at dichotomous ways of thinking which a lot of our clients still do they’re like someone so it always does this or never does this have them look at the differences between love versus hate perfection versus failure and all good intentions versus all bad intentions because a lot of our dichotomies fall in one of these three categories this person always does this or Never or does it intentionally or you know just doesn’t care belief in a just world the fallacy of fairness encourage people to look for for good people they know that have had bad things happen attributional bearers are labeling yourself not a behavior such as saying I am stupid instead of I don’t have good math skills I am is difficult to get rid of I can’t get rid of stupidity if it’s part of me but if it’s a thought or a skill I can either get rid of it or improve it stable I am means I am right now and I probably always will be stupid verses I can change this thought or skill I can learn math and internal attributions mean it’s about me as a person versus about a skill or skill deficit or something completely unrelated so when somebody makes a global internal negative statement we want to help them challenge that global internal positive statements I’m all about but the negative ones I want to say let’s take a look at that is that true that this is about you all of the time and it means that there’s something wrong with you so we want to ask them how are these thoughts how are these ways of thinking impacting your emotions health relationships and perceptions of the world we want to increase motivation to start looking at these spanking errors because it’s a lot of work to start changing the way you automatically think because you’ve got to stop you’ve got to become mindful and then you’ve got to decide well what are the alternative thoughts because this is what I thought for so long how may have this thought has been helpful in the past most of the time thoughts we have came from somewhere and whether it was a thought we had when we were a child something we learned when we were a child that is dichotomous and not quite applicable anymore it may have been helpful in the past to help you navigate situations doesn’t mean it was wrong it means it’s not helpful in the present asking them to always ask themselves is this thought or feeling bringing you the client closer to those people and things that are important to you it’s hanging on to this negativity bringing you closer and and I like the energy philosophy if you will when you are unhappy you are letting this person have your power you are letting this person make you angry when you decide you are not going to give them your power then you may start feeling happier and I don’t always use that with clients but sometimes the power metaphor help when we talk about thinking Ayers asked them are there examples of this not being true and and or how can a statement be made less global stable and internal is it about you or is it about what you do at work is it about you or is it about your relationship with this particular person so the last couple of slides focusing on some of the irrational thoughts or unhelpful beliefs our basic fears are rejection and isolation failure loss of control the unknown and death generally the things that cause people to have this fight-or-flight reaction fall into one of those categories so some of the unhelpful beliefs that we hear a lot coming up when we do the ABCs is that mistakes are never acceptable so if I make one I am incompetent so we’ve got dichotomous thinking and we’ve got a lot of internal global labeling here rejection and isolation when somebody disagrees with me it’s a personal attack against me well sometimes it is what does that mean it’s about you we’re helping them address the rejection and isolation fears we want to ask them you know if they disagree with you were they attacking you and saying you were stupid or were they attack attacking you want to use that word or were they attacking the thought and saying they disagreed with the thought there’s a little bit of a difference it’s somewhat semantics but it’s a difference because they may have a lot of respect for you but they may disagree with what you just said if someone criticizes or rejects me there must be something wrong with me again that’s one of those internal global negative statements to feel good about myself others must approve of me we want to make sure our clients can self validate and they don’t rely on external validation because they’re setting themselves up for a world of hurt if they are not their own best friend to be content in life I must be liked by all people and thanks for a second are you liked by everybody I know I’m not liked by everybody so does that mean that I should not be content in life and what does it say to give people that power to say if you don’t like me that I can’t be content because I’ve got to be liked by everybody sometimes with clients I’ll help them look at what may be going on with the other person why that person might like them because a lot of times other people’s reactions towards you are more about their stuff than about you and helping them see how that might be true my true value as an individual depends on what others think of me so these other unhelpful beliefs pertain to those thoughts of failure and loss of control none of us likes to fail don’t get me wrong it’s not pleasant but it happens and there is a saying out there that says if you haven’t failed you haven’t tried which means we need to get beyond our safety envelope we need to push ourselves behind beyond our boundaries and when we do sometimes we’re going to stumble and fall and we pick ourselves up and we learn from it but to expect to never fail at anything is not realistic so nothing ever turns out the way you want it to how many times have you heard that from your clients I won’t try anything new unless I know I’ll be good at it I’m in total control and anything bad that happens is my fault so let’s look at this locus let’s control thing here you’re in total control so you can make it rain you know it was unpleasant today because I had to come to work and it was raining outside so that was bad it happened was it your fault pointing out and depending on your relationship for your client you’re probably going to be more or less snarky when you present some of these but a lot of times I have a semi joking relationship if you will with my clients and they’re like yeah I see your point that kind of didn’t make a lot of since other times you know if they’re more serious I’ll ask them to identify things that happened that were bad that they had nothing to do with if I feel happy about life something will go wrong or I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop helping people stay focused in the moment with mindfulness and something’s going to go wrong down the road somewhere sometimes yeah it’s true this will happen let’s enjoy what we’ve got for right now the past always repeats itself it was if it was true then it’s true now so what was true when you were ten is true now that you’re forty always is that true it’s not my fault my life didn’t go the way I wanted everybody conspired against me and there’s no gray area so for people who feel the need to hold on to control its dichotomous it is or it isn’t it’s got to be that way there’s no gray area and it can make life be seem very uncomfortable because they’ve got to put things in one of two buckets and sometimes things don’t fit nicely in buckets what happens if we add a third bucket that both an bucket so a quick note about irrationality the origins of most beliefs were rational and helpful given the information the person had at the time and their ability to process that information because of their cognitive development so things that we identify as unhelpful or automatic beliefs now came from somewhere and they made perfect sense whenever they were formed they may not be healthy or helpful now which is why we want to look at them and either adjust them or just throw them out the door but when they were formed they were on point irrationality or unhelpful nasaw thoughts comes when those beliefs are perpetuated without examination so again we need to look at them continually look at what you’re telling yourself and go is this still accurate and continue to be held despite causing harm to the person sometimes you’re going to look at a thought an automatic thought and you’re going to go yeah that is still spot-on now is holding on to this helping me achieve my goals you know yet the world right now is kind of a scary place is holding on to this fear and terror helping me and be a happy productive yada-yada whatever kind of person you want to be or is it causing me to feel anxious and angry and scared sometimes it’s more productive for clients to think of thoughts as unhelpful instead of irrational because like I said I feel like irrationality and distortions seem very pejorative to a lot of clients so questions clients can ask themselves when they are faced with a situation what are the facts for and against this belief is this belief based on facts or feelings just because you feel scared is it a scary situation does the belief focus on just one aspect or the whole situation does the belief seem to use any of those thinking errors we talked about and if so you know what do I need to do about it what are some alternate explanations for this belief what else could have caused this to happen besides whatever I’m afraid of what would you tell your child or your best friend if they had this belief what would you took what would you want someone to tell you about this belief you could have somebody tell you something that would make you feel okay what would you want them to tell you and how is this belief moving you toward what and who is important to you remembering that beliefs are a combination of thought and fact and personal interpretation of those thoughts and facts I tend to when I talk you know you see me I kind of I’m all over the place with my arms I am a animated talker now if you are seeing me from a hundred feet away and you are seeing me talk might think I was angry because I make a lot of really big gestures because if you had grown up in a situation where there was domestic violence or something but if you had grown up in a household like I did where you had a first generation Italian first generations of ten Italian Americans talk big they talk real big with lots of gestures and sometimes loud and that doesn’t necessarily mean any anger a lot of times it’s just pure excitement so understanding that there’s thoughts in facts you know you see this going on but your personal interpretation can really affect what you get out of it or what you perceive that situation to be so we need to look at how is your personal interpretation maybe adding a negative bias and what what do we do about that it may be 100 percent accurate what do we do about it so it doesn’t keep you miserable thoughts impact behaviors and emotional and physical reactions emotional physical reactions impact thoughts and your interpretation of events irrational or unhelpful thinking patterns are often caused by cognitive distortions my two favorite words in that same sentence cognitive distortions are schemas or shortcut ideas or memories if you will which were formed based on faulty inaccurate or immature knowledge or understanding of the event you know little kids may not have quite understood what was going on they just understood that mommy and daddy were screaming identifying the thoughts the hecklers I call them those negative voices inside your head that are maintaining unhappiness helps people choose whether to accept the thoughts and say yeah you know that’s right I really am not good at that or whatever the negative thought is and change it or let the thought go are there any questions you you thank you miss Benson well thank you all if you come up with any questions you know you’re mulling it over later and you think you know that yet I’ve worked with a client and with something similar and I did this or you know you have a question about something I said feel free to email me the easiest one to remember is support at all CEUs com there’s only two others in the office so either my husband gets it err I do so it’ll get to me and I guess that’s it so I will see you all on Tuesday if you have any types of courses that you want to see added to the list please let me know I’m always interested in doing what you want to learn about not necessarily just where I pull out on my rabbit hat yes you can print the slides in the golly golly golly when you go into the class there’s a link that has a PDF of the slides that you can print if you want to print go ahead and print those out the video version of this will be up on YouTube by tomorrow morning maybe later this afternoon you okay everybody have an absolutely amazing rest of your day and weekend if you enjoy this podcast please like and subscribe either in your podcast player or on YouTube you can attend and participate in our live webinars with dr.   Schneider by subscribing at all CEUs calm / counselor toolbox this episode has been brought to you in part by all CEUs calm providing 24/7 multimedia continuing education and pre certification training to counselors therapists and nurses since 2006 use coupon code consular toolbox to get a 20% discount off your order this month. As found on YouTube SeanCooper🗯 The Shyness & Social Guy ⇝ The 3 WORST Mistakes You Must AVOID If You Want To Overcome Shyness (PLUS: 1 weird trick that targets the root biological cause of shyness so you can stop being nervous, awkward, and quiet around people…) By Sean Cooper, The Shyness & Social Anxiety Guy. The fact that you’re reading this article tells me you may have already reached a point where you feel your shyness is NOT going away on its own… or you fear it’s getting worse and worse. And I don’t want you to waste one more day living a life where you feel left out, bored, or depressed because you don’t have the relationships which would make you happy. That’s why I’ve put together this page to help you avoid the worst mistakes that keep many people stuck with shyness for years… often giving up hope of ever improving as you watch other people have interesting “normal” lives without you. Yet this doesn’t have to happen.