Evaluating Our Thoughts To Reduce Stress

A key part of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is learning how to evaluate the way we think. This practice can be especially helpful when you’re struggling with a specific situation and notice that your thoughts about it may be adding an extra layer of stress or distress. While we can’t always change the situation itself, we can learn to recognise the different factors at play and reframe how we see it. Developing this skill can help us navigate challenges with more clarity and a little more ease.

Transcript

Hi and welcome to this practice of learning how to explore and evaluate the way that we're thinking about things.

This is one of the core skills that we learn in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy or CBT for short and in CBT the idea is that our thoughts,

Feelings and behaviours are all interconnected and sometimes the way that we think about a situation can make us feel worse and influence how we act or respond.

Evaluating our thinking helps us step back and become aware of and explore our thinking patterns and in that process see if there may be more accurate and helpful ways of framing situations.

Often,

This is considering context,

Other possible factors that might help us frame situations in a more balanced and considered way.

Now evaluating our thoughts isn't about seeing the world through rose-tinted glasses,

Forcing positive thinking or ignoring real problems,

It's simply about exploring other perspectives that might be more reflective of the situation,

That might help us navigate the situation,

Influence how we feel about it.

Even though it feels like it,

Thoughts are not facts,

They are our way of interpreting and making sense of the world.

So you may have a thought about a situation that your friend has a very different thought about and it's not necessarily that one of you is right and the other wrong,

It's just that you're making different interpretations about that situation and the way that we interpret is very much through the lens of our past experiences and the learning that we develop from them.

So by way of an example,

And this is just an example,

This didn't really happen,

But imagine that when I was young,

I was badly bitten by a dog.

I might learn that all dogs are dangerous and whenever I encounter dogs,

My automatic thought might be that I'm in danger,

However other people who haven't had that past experience might have different thoughts when they encounter dogs.

The way we interpret situations and how we think about them is also influenced by how we feel in that given moment.

So just consider my dog situation again.

If I came across a dog in the street and I was feeling really good because I'd had a really good day,

Perhaps a few successes,

Some wins in my day,

I might think and feel differently about encountering that dog than if I'd had a really terrible day where everything had gone wrong and I was already feeling in somewhat of a threat state.

So it's really important to keep in mind that the way that we think about the same thing can change dependent on context and other factors.

So turning to this practice,

You can do the practice as a listening exercise and just sit or lie down with eyes open or closed,

Whatever feels better,

And reflect on the questions as they come.

Or you might want to have a pen and paper and pause as you need to make a few notes as we go along,

Whatever feels more helpful for you.

So let's start with a simple example.

Imagine that you send a text message to your friend and they don't reply for two days.

The thought that pops up might be,

They're ignoring me,

They mustn't like me anymore.

How might engaging with that thought make you feel?

Perhaps there might be flavours of anxiety,

Panic,

Dread.

Maybe you might feel angry.

If there's a sense of rejection,

Maybe you might feel sad or embarrassed.

And how might engaging with that thought and the feelings that come with it affect how you behave?

Maybe you might be spending time worrying about it and that stops you from getting on with other things that you need to or doing things that you enjoy.

Maybe you might avoid your friend or the opposite,

Bombard them with more texts.

These are just examples.

So this is the first step in the process,

Noticing the automatic thought that comes up in the situation.

And you'll notice I use the word automatic in CBT.

We call these thoughts automatic because they pop up instantly without us choosing them.

Sometimes these thoughts are accurate,

But often they're based on assumptions or old patterns of learning or what we might call mind traps,

Like catastrophizing or jumping to conclusions or personalising blame.

So let's pause for a moment.

I invite you to think of a recent situation where you noticed yourself feeling stressed,

Upset or anxious.

And be gentle with yourself as you do this.

And try to remember the automatic thought that popped into your mind.

So I'm going to be quiet for a few moments to allow you to think about this.

I'm going to continue.

If you need a few moments longer to think about this,

Then feel free to pause.

As you recall or engage with this automatic thought,

Just notice the intensity of the emotion that's present for you,

Always present for you at the time.

Maybe you can identify what emotion or emotions were there.

And of the most intense ones,

Perhaps you might put a percentage to those emotions to rate the intensity.

So if there was anxiety there,

But it was 10%,

Then that tells us that it wasn't too impactful.

But if the anxiety was 90%,

Then that tells us it was very intense.

Now having noticed and identified the thought,

We can begin to explore and evaluate it.

And a good way to do this is by reflecting on some simple questions.

So let's go through them together.

So first of all,

Let's consider what tells us that this thought is true.

What's the evidence?

So in our friend text example,

Maybe our evidence is that they didn't reply.

Now let's look at the other side of the coin.

What is there that tells us that this thought isn't true?

What's the evidence against it?

So again,

In our example,

Perhaps our friend's phone broke.

Maybe something might have happened in their life and they've just not been able to get back to us.

Maybe they thought they'd sent a reply and hadn't realized that they hadn't hit the send button.

Let's move on to our next question.

Invite us to consider how does it help us to think about the situation in this way.

So again,

In our example,

Maybe it might feel that worrying about our friend might lead us to reach out to see if something is wrong.

Sometimes when we ask ourselves this question,

It's hard to come up with any ways that thinking about the situation in the way that we are is helping us.

And now let's ask our next question.

How does it cost us to think about it in this way?

What impact does it have on our mood,

Our stress or anxiety levels?

Perhaps it impacts the way that we are with people around us or our ability to concentrate and focus on our work or our study or the things we need to do.

It might lead us to avoid certain things.

It might impact our sleep,

Our appetite.

Next,

I invite you to bring to mind a friend that you like,

That you have respect for.

And just consider if your friend was having this thought about this situation,

What would you say to them?

With our text example,

Would you tell your friend,

Yes,

Definitely,

They don't like you anymore,

That must be what it is.

Probably not.

You might say something that takes into account other possible factors and in that way is a much more balanced way of thinking about it.

Asking ourselves this question can do two things.

It can allow us to get a bit of a sense of distance from the situation by thinking about it from a different perspective.

And it can also bring an element of compassion and kindness into how we're thinking about it.

Because very often we're much more compassionate and kind to other people when we think about them in that situation than we are to ourselves.

And one final question that can sometimes be helpful is to consider how you might think about this situation in the future.

So maybe asking yourself how you might think about this in six months' time or next year or in five years.

Again,

This can bring a different perspective.

And having considered our exploration through all of these questions,

Finally we can ask ourselves what is a more helpful way of looking at this that is more balanced and takes into account perhaps some of those factors and contexts that our initial automatic thought didn't.

So in our text example,

Instead of,

They mustn't like me,

Maybe it's they haven't replied yet and there could be lots of reasons why.

I'll wait and see or I can check in later.

So let's take a moment now and think of the situation that you recalled earlier.

Ask yourself these questions and in the same way see how it is to come up with a way of framing this situation that takes into account more context around the situation and is therefore a more balanced way of framing it.

Again,

You can pause the recording.

I'll be quiet for a minute or so but if you need a little longer,

Feel free to pause the recording.

So I'm going to continue.

As I say,

Feel free to pause if you need a little longer.

Having come up with a different way of framing the situation,

Just notice how that different way makes you feel.

Does it change the intensity of the emotion that was there with your original automatic thought even slightly?

Often it doesn't erase the feeling but it might reduce the sting.

So instead of going from 100% anxious to 0% for example,

Maybe it goes from 100% to 60%.

That is still progress.

And if we act from the perspective of this more balanced thought or way of framing the situation,

Our behavior might also change.

We might feel calmer about it,

More open,

More flexible,

More willing to communicate,

Less likely to avoid.

Evaluating our thoughts is a skill.

The more we practice it,

The easier it becomes to step back from unhelpful thoughts and see things from a fairer and more broader contextual perspective.

So just to recap,

The steps that we took were to notice,

Identify the automatic thought,

Look at what tells us it's true,

Look at what tells us it's not true,

Consider how it helps us or not to engage with this thought,

And to think about how we might advise a friend in a similar situation,

Maybe to think about how we might feel about this in the future,

And then come up with a thought that does consider context and other factors and is therefore more balanced in that regard.

And this practice can be useful when you are evaluating your thoughts in relation to situations that are happening in the here and now or maybe in the recent past.

And you can practice this with a journal or a thought record worksheet.

There's one that you can find on the Insight Timer website.

Or just pausing in the moment and reflecting in the way we've done today.

Over time with this practice,

You'll start evaluating your thinking on your feet,

And it can really shift how you think and feel about and respond to difficult situations.

As we come to the end of this audio,

I want to thank you for practicing with me today.