Sometimes they’re helpful, and sometimes they’re not. These are thoughts that just ‘pop’ into your mind. Everyone has hundreds of ‘automatic thoughts’ every day. So, if we want to change the way we feel then it is important that we know what we are thinking. “We know that ‘what we think and do affects the way we feel’. With this information, clinicians can help their client to re-appraise situations using a variety of cognitive restructuring techniques. It is designed to help young people to develop their skills in noticing and recording their automatic thoughts, as well as identifying triggering situations and accompanying emotional reactions.Ĭontaining simple instructions, this worksheet guides the user to complete the form whenever they notice strong feelings, to notice what event has triggered a change in their emotions, and to pay attention to what goes through their mind and how they felt emotionally. This Catching Your Thoughts worksheet is a thought record for children and young people. Thought records exist in multiple variants, depending on the needs and abilities of the client. CBT therapists use a variety of techniques to help their clients to develop cognitive restructuring skills, but a mainstay is the ‘ thought record’. The aim of these techniques is not to ‘think happy thoughts’ or to replace negative thoughts with positive ones, rather, it is to overcome biases and think accurately. ‘Cognitive restructuring’ describes the category of techniques that cognitive therapists use to help their clients to overcome their cognitive biases and think differently. Beck (1963) and Burns (1980) have described common cognitive biases which are outlined in more detail in our information handout Unhelpful Thinking Styles. For example, people who suffer from certain types of anxiety often ‘catastrophize’, and people who are depressed often discount positive information. However, automatic thoughts are often inaccurate – biased in characteristic ways – and there is considerable evidence that different mental health problems are associated with particular biases in thinking. thinking “He could hurt me too” after seeing an acquaintance act violently would be both negative and accurate). Some negative thoughts are accurate representations of the world (e.g. sadness, anxiety, anger) are commonly described as Negative Automatic Thoughts (NATs). 34)Īutomatic thoughts that result in negative emotions (e.g. are situation specific and may be considered the most superficial level of cognition” (Beck & Beck, 1995, p. your parent asks to speak to you and you think “It’s bound to be bad news”). Automatic thoughts are not facts, but they are so immediate and familiar that we often assume them to be true (e.g. These arise quickly and without any apparent effort throughout our day to day lives, often in response to specific events (or in response to other thoughts or memories). “If someone is nice to me, it’s because they don’t know the real me”). They can often be stated in a conditional if-then format (e.g. These are understood as a set of assumptions that guide behavior across different situations. “I’m competent”, “I’m unlovable”, “No one can be trusted”, “The world is dangerous and unpredictable”, “I’m adaptable”). These are understood as generalized statements that shape how an individual understands themselves, other people, and the world (e.g. Moving from the deepest to the most superficial, these are: The CBT cognitive model describes different levels of cognition that underpin how we think about ourselves, other people and the world, shaping our interpretation and response to events. The model implies that we can change how we feel by changing how we think. Rather, it is the interpretation of those events – our appraisals, thoughts, or cognitions – that trigger our emotional responses. Beck’s cognitive model (Beck et al, 1979) proposes that events are not directly responsible for the way we feel.
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