This is week 2 of Dr. Clare’s A Lust for Life online CBT course. Here is week 1 if you missed it. It’s best to follow it week by week and take your time with the processes suggested.
Did you manage to start getting in tune with what you’re thinking and feeling some of the time? Well done if it all went smoothly but for those of you who found it harder (most of you perhaps, I remember trying to get to grips with what I was thinking for the first time and it took me ages!), keep practicing. It takes time to get the hang of doing this. But it’s worth it.
This week we are going to explore times when we experience problems with our thinking. The way we think is usually informed by the experiences we have had when we were growing up. For example, if we have grown up in a house with lots of dogs, big and small who were gentle and let us pull their tails we will go through life thinking most other dogs will be the same. If we grew up in a house that had no dogs and had a parent who was scared of dogs and pulled us anxiously away whenever a dog came within sniffing distance we are likely to grow up thinking that dogs might harm us. It’s pretty much the same when it comes to thinking about ourselves, other people and the world.
ACTION: Writing down our own life story can help us better understand how we have learned to think in certain ways. Over the coming week take some time to write down the story of your past between the age of 0 and 13. Write down important events, what you remember about how your parents and family treated you and the things they said to you. When were you saddest? When were you happiest? Try to remember and write as much as you can!
How do you think your experiences have shaped how you think about yourself, the world and other people?
I hesitate to make generalisations about people or humanity as a whole but there is one that I really believe to be true and that is that we all believe that what we think is true! Confusing huh?
What I mean is that as humans we think that what the voice in our head is saying is the truth, that we are right and other perspectives are wrong. This is all well and good if the voice is saying ‘you’re a good person and you are going to have a great day today’. Not so good if the voice says ‘You missed that goal at training yesterday, what a horrible, stupid person you are’.
We all make errors in how we think meaning that our thoughts might not be true, at least some of the time. Have a look at the information sheet below and identify what errors you make most frequently.
The types of thoughts we are going to attempt to change first are called hot thoughts (finally this blog is getting interesting I hear you say…unfortunately these are not always as enjoyable as you might think!) Hot thoughts are those thoughts that almost immediately produce a surge in emotion, the connection is so strong that the thought and the feeling seem to be one and the same.
Sometimes it’s useful for us to experience a sudden change in feeling. When we were romping around in caves thousands of years ago and we heard the call of a hungry sabre toothed tiger we felt terror which helped us get the hell out of there, ensuring our survival. However the thought, ‘OMG OMG OMG that chihuahua is definitely going to kill me, I don’t care that my exam is starting in 1 minute and I have to walk past it, RUUUUUUUNNNNNNNN’ may not be so helpful.
What we are aiming to do is throw a bucket of ice cold water over our hot thoughts, cooling them down and reducing their emotional impact. This has the short term effect of helping us manage difficult situations and crises and the long term effect of reducing our stress levels and improving our relationships with ourselves and others.
ACTION: Practice cooling down your hot thoughts by:
- Assessing whether you are making any thinking errors
- Weighing up the evidence for the hot thought
- Weighing up the evidence against the hot thought
- Ask yourself what you would say to your friend if they had the same thought.
Download, print and complete the worksheet to keep a record of your thoughts.
Practice doing this frequently enough and it will become easier. On this worksheet hot thoughts are referred to as negative automatic thoughts.
Disclaimer: The information provided on this blog is intended for information purposes only and represents solely the opinions of this author. If you are seeking diagnosis or treatment of a mental health problem you should consult your GP or mental health professional. The information on this website is NOT a substitute for proper diagnosis, treatment or the provision of advice by an appropriate health professional.
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