In cognitive brain therapy (#CBT) we are taught how to recognize our negative thoughts and brain patterns and how to introduce alternative, more positive ways of thinking. During my experience with this therapy when I was in my late twenties, I used certain CBT worksheets that helped me identify and dispute my inner critical voice. I found this incredibly useful for my social anxiety and preceding pessimistic beliefs about myself. I want to share these with you, though you may need to see a therapist to get the best out of them. I still use these 10 years on when I go through an anxious patch.
In the UK CBT is now available on the NHS and there are many CBT self help books available. Personally for me this type of therapy works very well because of its logical and analytical approach. It puts the power back into your hands to take control of your own brain patterns. It allows you to build new thought processes that are conducive to happier lives. It takes practice but does have powerful effects over time. By repetitively replacing negative thoughts with positives ones we build stronger pathways in our brains. These pathways allow for alternate automatic thinking so we are more inclined to ‘look on the bright side of life’ and create fairer kinder balanced beliefs about ourselves and the world around us. It’s not theory, it’s scientific!
I have previously written about humans natural tendencies to look at the negatives; our brains protective survival system that can result in negative outlooks and low self esteem. So this retraining of our brains is incredibly important and useful to us in our modern lives.
Worksheet tool to recognize our Negative Automatic Thoughts (NATs)
The origins of the worksheet I want to share with you is rooted in the work of the psychologist Seligman (ABCDE attributional retraining framework) on how we can turn pessimism into optimism. He proposed we can monitor our mood changes when faced with adversity by specifying the adversity (situation), the resulting thoughts and beliefs and the consequent mood changes. Once we have this we can actively dispute these negative thoughts and beliefs and replace them with more positive trains of thought. In other words we can learn to be automatically more optimistic.
First we start with identifying our negative reactions, beliefs and thoughts to a situation by using the ABC technique:
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%
EXAMPLE below using the ‘simple thought record_ABC’ worksheet (sourced from www.psychologytools.com)
The worksheet ‘simple_thought_record_ABC’ you can identify your automatic brain responses. You may find that you need to do this post situation as it’s often not practically possible to do it at the time i.e. if you are at a party or in a meeting. However try to do it as soon as possible after the event so that the thoughts and feelings are still fresh.
It’s important that you are able to do this step before moving onto the next stage.
Once you are able to identify your negative reactions to situations you will see patterns in your brain responses. You can then move on to disputing and distancing yourself from them and replacing them with better alternatives.