Cognitive Therapy in a Nutshell
One of the big truths that we continually refer to in therapy is this – how we think about a situation affects how we feel and then what we do. Often, when we are in highly stressful situations, our brains have a way of making us think the worst possible scenario will happen! Cognitive therapy aims to help us re-train the brain into recognising that our thoughts are just that, thoughts, and reminds us that our thoughts are not necessarily true.
One of the ways in which we can start to challenge our perceptions of the world is beginning to notice common ways of thinking that all of us engage in from time to time. Have a look at the below list and see if any of these happen for you:
1. Filtering – Focusing solely on the negative and ignoring all the positive
2. Overgeneralisation – Assuming all experiences and people are the same, based on one negative experience
3. Catastrophising – Assuming the worst-case scenario, magnifying the negative and minimising the positive
4. Control fallacies - Thinking everything that happens to you is either all your fault or not at all your fault.
5. Blaming - Pointing to others when looking for a cause of any negative event, instead of looking at yourself
6. Emotional reasoning - Believing “If I feel it, it must be true!”
7. Global labelling/mislabelling - Generalizing one or two instances into an overall judgment, using exaggerated and emotionally loaded language
8. Heaven’s reward fallacy - Believing that any good act on your part will be repaid or rewarded
9. Polarised thinking - Black and white thinking, not seeing the grey
10. Jumping to conclusions - Being convinced of something with little to no evidence to support it
11. Personalisation - Believing that you are at least partially responsible for everything bad that happens around you
12. Fallacy of fairness - Being too concerned over whether everything is fair
13. Should’s - Holding tight to your personal rules on how people ought to behave
14. Fallacy of change - Expecting others to change to suit your needs or desires
15. Always being right - Believing that it is unacceptable to be wrong
All of these different ways of thinking, also known as “cognitive distortions ”, happen to all of us from time-to-time! There may be some that you think all the time and others which have never occurred to you.
The trick is starting to recognise what situations these different types of thoughts occur in for you and then start labelling them. From there, we can get a little bit of distance from these thoughts and stop letting them be in the driver’s seat!
If you’re noticing that any of these thoughts in particular stick out to you, let your therapist know, and you can start using the power of cognitive therapy to gain control back of your brain.
