In cognitive brain therapy (CBT) we are taught how to actively identify our automatic negative thoughts and brain patterns to situations and introduce alternative ways of thinking. Over time this practice of consciously choosing alternative viewpoints creates new pathways in our brains that result in more positive and balanced automatic thoughts. Here I am sharing with you a worksheet that has greatly helped me with this practice
Seligman's ABC approach
I have talked about how in the first step – Seligman's ABC approach – we need to actively identify the situation that creates our mood change, the accompanying negative thoughts that arise and the resulting emotions and low mood
A dversity – the situation that created the mood change - Who, what, when, where?
B eliefs – the thoughts that went through your mind (thoughts or images)
C onsequences – the resulting mood changes and emotions - What did you feel? Rate your emotion 0 -100%
When we have learnt how to identify our negative automatic thoughts and their triggers, we can work to dispute them. As proposed by the psychologist Martin Seligman (a leading authority in the fields of Positive Psychology) we can start to employ the 3 Ds
DISTRACTION: the turning OFF of pessimistic thoughts. There are different techniques employable to do this, here are 3:
One of my personal favorites for when my inner voice becomes so loud and continuous I feel like it is taking over my whole being. I look around my surroundings and name out loud (or in my brain if I am in public) everything I can see. For example ‘Blue poster’, ‘grey arm chair’ ‘yellow tea pot’ etc I aim to name at least 10 items in the room/surroundings. By doing this your brain can not physically continue to think about those negative thoughts, it’s impossible! This gives me an all important break from my inner torrent and allows my brain to calm down
Simply say STOP loudly to your thoughts
Another favorite of mine which I learnt through mindfulness is to mentally put the thoughts into an imaginary cloud or car in your brains eye and watch them float/drive away.
The theory is that if you do not continue to give attention to your negative thoughts they will no longer have power over you. It’s not the situation but your reaction to it which causes your suffering. This is very useful to remember when you are in the moment and unable to physically write down your thoughts on a worksheet.
DISTANCING
This simply means to remember that what your thoughts are saying are not true facts – only an interpretation coming from a negative place that you have most likely learnt from past events and that are skewering the reality of your present moment. You can distance yourself from them by remembering they are not the only reality available.
DISPUTATION
The technique of using positive thoughts to offer alternative valid explanations for the situation that has created your negative mood and thinking – this works by asking yourself 4 questions on the themes of current evidence, alternatives, implications and usefulness.
Alternative Thoughts Worksheet
To employ the last 2 D’s mentioned, we can use the Worksheet ‘alternative_thought_record_ABCDE’. This worksheet employs Seligman’s full process of A,B,C,D,E
A dversity
B eliefs
C onsequences
D isputation (as explained above): In the worksheet disputation is covered in 3 columns
Evidence that support your negative thoughts
Evidence that contradicts your negative thoughts
Alternative thoughts - what you would say to your best friend if they were having these negative thoughts
E nergistation - recognizing your resulting outcome mood after going through the above system of ABCD. Re-evaulate how strong your emotions are after going through the process, rate them again 0-100%, hopefully you will find your negative emotions have decreased and perhaps you feel additional positive emotions.
Example using the worksheet ‘alternative_thought_record_ABCDE’ (click link to download)
Over time this worksheet helped me to build automatic thoughts that were more positive, fair and balanced. It’s best if you print out this sheet and fill it out by hand rather than using a computer. Writing by hand really connects you with the words and allows your brain to focus on them, understand them, and learn from them (there are various studies that show this to be true)
It takes time but after a while I found I could go through the process consciously in my head. After a time the positive alternative thoughts become automatic. However our learnt brains pathways from before will always be there (though be it weaker), so it’s easy to fall back into your past negative brain patterns. That’s OK, at that point I return to the worksheets again to reinforce my practice.
You can take back control of your brain, you have the power to create change