Psychological Aspects

Cognitive Therapy

Cognitive therapy is acknowledged as the most successful treatment for depression. The word cognitive means ‘thoughts’ so cognitive therapy basically means therapy of your thoughts, or more simply put, changing the way you think.
The therapy is based on the following premises:

• It is not the event that causes our negative emotions but rather the personal meaning that we associate with the event.
• While ill with depression thoughts are negative and are not in touch with reality.

So the therapy involves examining our thoughts and replacing them with more appropriate thoughts that are based in reality. Our thoughts determine how we feel. Change your thoughts and your mood changes. If you think of something pleasant, your mood is happy, if you think of something unpleasant your mood goes down. Your feelings follow on from your thoughts, which in turn affect how you behave.

Behavior, Emotions and Thoughts Connected

• Behaviour (above the dotted line) is visible to all.
• Emotions are on the dotted line, which is like a water line. Sometimes your emotions are above the surface, visible to all as in a temper tantrum. They might be under the surface and not visible to anyone else as happens in people who have suppressed all their emotions.
• Thoughts are definitely not visible to anyone else (thank goodness!), and are definitely under the surface. Often we are not too aware of our own thoughts.

Our thoughts determine our emotions which in turn determine our behaviour. This is the order, not the other way round. As I said we are often not aware of our thoughts and this is why getting in touch with our emotions (our warning system) is so important. Our emotions are the key to unlocking our thoughts. How we do this is dealt with in Changing your thoughts – step by step.

Emotions

Damaged Emotions

Emotions are the key to our thoughts but this key is often damaged. How often do you hear people criticizing their emotions with comments like ‘I know I shouldn’t feel this way, but..’ Many people criticize their emotions and I think this is a carry over from parents criticizing their emotions as children with comments like ‘you’re oversensitive, nice children don’t get angry etc’ Maybe thoughts are coming to mind about comments that damaged your emotions. This is good because you can examine whether they are true or not, and asking yourself if it is worth holding on to these beliefs? Emotions are neither good nor bad, they just are. Don’t judge yourself by saying that you shouldn’t have these emotions. Sometimes people will say that it is wrong to feel anger. You can see that even people’s thoughts about emotions do not represent the truth, as even anger serves a purpose. The emotion is not wrong; it’s what you do with the emotion that can be wrong.

Emotions are God-given, we didn’t invent them and they are given to us for a reason. Our emotions are there to let us know on a moment- to moment basis if our belief systems and thoughts represent the truth.

Many people say that they only really started to feel again during a depressive episode and are quite surprised at the intensity of these emotions. If this applies to you it is good because you are now getting in touch with emotions that have been denied or buried for a long time. As emotions serve a purpose and it is better to feel than not to feel. If you placed your hand on a hot stove and had no feelings you would get burnt. Be thankful for your feelings, your emotions. Maybe they are like friends you are now getting acquainted with. As an aside, don’t criticize your children’s or your spouse’s emotions, you’re damaging a God-given warning system.

Another point worth remembering is that the greater the emotion the more important it is to examine what it going on.

Changing your emotions – Scripture

In Scripture, the heart is often referred to as the seat of the emotions. There are many choruses that we sing asking God to change our hearts (change our emotions?) Psalm 51:10 says: Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. We sing. Refine my heart, o Lord, Let me be as gold, pure gold.

Maybe you want to pray the end of Psalm 139: Search me, O God, and know my heart, test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. If you pray this prayer, expect God to answer you, and when you have a negative emotion, ask God to show you what He wants to show you and let the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth guide you.

Commit the process to God and co-operate with God as He shows you what needs changing. James 2:17 Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. We’ve got some work to do. James 1:12 says: Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him. Hang in there, there’s a crown waiting for you for your perseverance. Remember the verse that says that if God is for you who can be against you.

Thoughts

Self-talk

Our minds are never silent. There is a constant stream of images and thoughts running through our heads. This is known as our self-talk and directs how we respond to situations. The thoughts that come into our heads come in automatically, we cannot control them. We presume them to be the truth and usually act on them as if they represented the truth.
Let me give you an example.
Suppose your child walks home from school and she is late. As time goes by you get more and more worried and you find yourself thinking thoughts along these lines. ‘Something terrible has happened. She’s been hurt. Or kidnapped.’ Panic and anxiety set in. After a while your child comes home and tells you she had to stay in for detention, a fact that you had forgotten. All the anxiety was for nothing, as your thoughts were not based in reality.
If you are prone to this sort of anxiety you might even be aware that your thoughts have no real basis but you tell yourself that you can’t help it, you’re just an anxious sort of person. The truth is that you cannot help the thoughts that come into your head, but you do have a choice of believing them or not and replacing them with a thought that is more based in reality.

We don’t want to have those kinds of thoughts, nor do we purposely think them. They just come into our heads uninvited, completely by themselves, and that is why they are described as automatic. Many of our thoughts are not based on fact and painful thoughts often do not represent the truth. Don’t criticize yourself for your thoughts, even if you do think they are ridiculous. You can’t really control them, but you can decide what to do with them when they surface. Often we make ourselves miserable and keep ourselves miserable by listening to a non-stop stream of inner nonsense – even when we know well that the nonsense is not the truth.

Hearing our thoughts or self-talk

In order to change our thoughts or self-talk we need to learn to hear them first. Thoughts are a bit like the white noise of a fan. The noise is always there but you are not aware of it after a while. I live on a busy road and I don’t hear the noise of passing cars, whereas an upcountry visitor would remark on the noise. Only then do I hear it because it has been brought to my awareness. Thoughts are much the same; we need to bring them to our awareness.

Everything we do is motivated by a thought or a belief. You’ve read this far on this website probably because your thoughts tell you that you could learn something from it. If you didn’t think this you probably would have exited a long time ago. When you sit on a chair, you have the unconscious thought that it will support you. You drive to work with the thought that your car will get you there safely. These thoughts are automatic and often out of our awareness. It would be quite stressful to have to think through everything we did so it is helpful that our thoughts do become automatic. Imagine going to your car in the morning, looking at it and wondering if it is safe or not to drive! However if our thoughts are causing depression and anxiety we need to look under the surface and examine the validity of what we are thinking because it is our thoughts that cause our moods which in turn affect the way we behave.

Proverbs 4:23 (Phillips version) says: Be careful what you think, because your thoughts run your life.

Change your thoughts and your mood and behaviour will change. If you are thinking that you cannot change the way you think let me give you an example I used earlier to illustrate my point. In my country (South Africa) we drive on the left hand side of the road. I follow this rule as I believe, or my thought is that this is the safe way to drive (my behaviour follows my thoughts). If I were to drive in the USA I would soon have to rethink my thoughts on what side of the road is safe if I value my life.

Many of us hang on to thoughts that affect us so badly and handicap us as much as driving down the wrong side of the highway could. Learn to discard thoughts that handicap you.

Faulty Thinking Patterns (cognitive distortions).

Please print out this list as it will be constantly referred to and it is important that you learn to recognize these types of thinking which are the most common types of thinking that cause depression and anxiety.

1. All-or-Nothing Thinking: You see things in black and white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.
2. Overgeneralization: You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.
3. Mental Filter: You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolours the entire beaker of water.
4. Disqualifying the Positive: You reject positive experiences by insisting they `don’t count” for some reason or another. In this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences.
5. Jumping to Conclusions: You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion.

1. Mind Reading: You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you, and you don’t bother to check this out.
2. Fortune Telling: You anticipate that things will turn out badly, and you feel convinced that your prediction is an already established fact.

1. Magnification (Catastrophizing) or Minimization: You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your goof-up or someone else’s achievement) or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other person’s imperfections). This is also called the `binocular effect’.
2. Emotional Reasoning: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: `I feel it, therefore it must be true’.
3. Should Statements: You try to motivate yourself with `shoulds and shouldn’ts’, as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything. `Musts’ and `oughts’ are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct `should’ statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration and resentment.
4. Labeling and Mislabeling: This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself: `I’m a loser’. When someone else’s behaviour rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him: `He’s a jerk’. Mislabelling involves describing an event with language that is highly coloured and emotionally loaded.
5. Personalization: You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event, which in fact you were not primarily responsible for.

Reference: Burns, David D.(1981) Feeling good, the new mood therapy. Penguin Books, USA (pages 40,41) ISBN 0-451-16776-7
I found this book to be extremely helpful. It is probably no longer in print and has been replaced by The Feeling Good Handbook, Penguin Books (ISBN 0-452-26174) written by the same author. I have read several books by David Burns and have found them to be excellent.

COGNITIVE DISTORTIONS: a more detailed explanation.

All or nothing thinking ( also known as black and white thinking)

• Sue thought she had done pretty well on her history test. She thought she might get an A or a B. Instead, she got a D. As she looked at the paper, she thought, “I’m a total failure. I’m so stupid. I never do anything right! I work so hard in school and still nothing seems to work out right for me.” There are quite a few distortions in this thinking including all or nothing thinking, overgeneralization, as well as blowing things out of all proportion (magnification).
• What about the common statement, ‘if you can’t do things perfectly don’t do it at all’. This is also a case of all or nothing thinking and robs you of learning from the mistakes we all make and which teach us lessons.
• Your house has the normal everyday clutter and you label yourself as a failure as a housekeeper because your house isn’t perfectly tidy. A normal house is somewhere in between. If you label yourself as a failure if your housekeeping is not perfect you’ll also be quite a pain to live with, always nagging your spouse to put things away. If your spouse is not tidy agree to have some areas that are kept respectable and others where it is acceptable for them to have their mess. Tidiness doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing.
• What about the thought `if you can’t say anything intelligent don’t say anything at all.’ It’s quite a high demand to make sure that everything you say is intelligent so you keep quiet, then people will never know how stupid you are! This thought is also ridiculous as much as our conversation is just ordinary chatter just to connect with other people. Relax a bit. You can remain a silent captive or change your belief and practice at becoming more spontaneous which will probably open up the possibility of more friendships and give you more joy.

Overgeneralization

The key words here are ‘always, never, nobody, everybody, totally, completely, forever, every time’. When you overgeneralize you see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.

• If you are arguing with your spouse it doesn’t help to say you never listen to me, or you always come home late. Because you will start arguing about whether it is actually always or never. The important issue is actually how it makes you feel. So a statement like I feel unloved when you come home late so often, or when you don’t phone and tell me. You can state how you feel as this does not come across as an accusation.
• Your spouse criticizes or starts arguing with you. You get an emotional reaction inside but you keep smiling and try to keep the peace at all costs because you have a false belief that happy couples never disagree. You have to behave in a way to keep the peace so that you keep your basic belief intact. This is so unrealistic as no two people can always agree. To keep this belief intact any dissatisfaction or hurt has to be suppressed. Eventually the pressure cooker will burst and the result can be very hurtful and messy. The truth is that we all have different opinions and it’s okay. It’s only an opinion, not a reflection on us. If your spouse doesn’t agree with you it doesn’t mean that he is right and that you are wrong. It means that you have different opinions and you are entitled to your own opinions. When you get that negative thump on your chest and you say, I always say the wrong thing, change your self-talk to `it is only his or her opinion, it doesn’t mean that I am wrong’ I know that this advice has helped many people that I have counselled, because this is the truth.
• If someone disappoints you do you write them off 100% declaring that you will never trust them again, or if someone of the opposite sex hurts you might even overgeneralize even more to never trusting anyone of that sex again. Isn’t the truth that we all disappoint people at times, we’d like to be forgiven so maybe we also need to be more forgiving.

Some other common statements are overgeneralizations are:

• Things will never get better
• I’ll never amount to anything.
• These kind of statements lead to a feeling of hopelessness and therefore ultimately depression.

Mental filter

The best way of describing the mental filter is to imagine dropping a drop of ink into a glass of water. In no time at all the entire glass of water is discoloured. One thing goes wrong and you dwell on it exclusively until your picture of reality becomes darkened like the water.

• You have a pleasant family outing but the children fight on the way home. You tell them they’ve spoilt the entire day. It’s just not true. The children were noisy in the car going home which was understandable as they were tired. It did not spoil the entire day but you block out the many pleasant moments of the day by this thinking. In fact we can’t really expect children to behave like angels all the time – that’s unrealistic.
• You go out for dinner and the service takes a bit long. You have two choices, either let this spoil your whole evening or you can acknowledge it as an inconvenience, accept that the waiter is probably not intentionally out to spoil your entire evening. Rather choose to enjoy your time together. You can choose what you think.

Disqualifying the positive

Whenever you have a positive experience you reject it by insisting that it ‘doesn’t count’.

• You did well in an assignment. `Oh it was just luck, or the lecturer was in a good mood when he marked it, or the sun was shining or whatever.’ Your positive input, the time you spent studying is just negated, you’ve disqualified the positive experience, the reward for your hard work.
• You get a promotion at work and conclude that it’s only because you’ve been working there for 10 years so they had no choice.

Ignoring the positive implies that we should only pay attention to problems, or areas that need improving. This robs us of joy, satisfaction and self-esteem. It gives us a dreary outlook on life and we can stay negative even when all sorts of positive things are happening around us.

Jumping to conclusions

This is the source of all anxiety. You jump to negative conclusions without any evidence.

• Mind reading: You decide that someone is reacting negatively to you, and you don’t bother to check this out. You assume you know what they are thinking.
  1. You tell your friend ‘I know why my husband gave the children and me tickets to the movies. Not because he cares about me and the kids; he just wanted to get us out of the house so he could watch rugby in peace.’
  2. She told me she had to visit her grandmother, but I know it was just an excuse not to visit me.
  3. Your friend tells you how nice you are looking but now you know that she normally thinks you look terrible, why else would she make the comment..
  4. Your son comes and starts a conversation. You half listen because you’re reading the paper and decide that he’s only talking to you because he wants something from you, it’s definitely either money or your car. You get impatient and say. Okay, what do you want? Maybe he doesn’t want something; maybe he just wants to talk. Don’t presume you know what someone wants and react on your thoughts. Wait for them to verbalize their thoughts.
  5. Your acquaintance doesn’t return your phone call…what do you think? Maybe ‘what have I done wrong? Well if she can’t be bothered to return my call, I’m not phoning her. You can see how this possibly doesn’t reflect the truth as maybe she never got the message and you would be better off checking this out with her first.
  6. Often married couples expect their spouse to mind read their needs. Learn to verbalize your needs; it will make for a happier marriage.

Nobody can mind-read so as soon as you start deciding what someone thinks you’ve got to consciously stop mid-track and ask yourself, what did the person actually say rather than presuming that your ‘mind-reading is reflecting the truth.’. Ask yourself what proof you that that your thought is true.

When we tell ourselves we know the real reasons other people have for their actions, we’re playing God – Only God and the owner of that mind knows that person’s thoughts. Stop doing it and you’ll be much happier.

• Fortune Telling: This one is future related; you anticipate that things will turn out badly, and to go from bad to worse, you feel convinced that your prediction is an established fact.
  1. When the boss doesn’t greet you in the morning you convince yourself that he is going to fire you. Maybe you wait anxiously for the bad news or maybe you decide to get in first and save the embarrassment of being fired and hand in your notice by lunchtime!
  2. Your husband is late, dinner’s getting cold and you haven’t heard a word and he hasn’t got a cell phone. What thoughts rush into your mind – He’s having an affair, he’s at the pub, he’s been in an accident! The anxiety mounts! Better phone the hospital or morgue. When he walks in you blast him and he tells you that he was stuck in a traffic jam and had no way of contacting you. Acting on what you incorrectly believed to be the truth you have spoiled the mood for the evening.
  3. How often do you hear people say `never mind – things will be better in the morning – you just need a good nights sleep’. How can they predict that things will be better in the morning?
  4. You have a physical pain and you conclude that it’s definitely cancer and you probably haven’t got long to live. You fear that what you are believing is the truth, why else would it enter you head, but are too scared to have it confirmed, so you don’t go to the doctor and continue living with the fear of imminent death hanging over you. Better check out the facts and go to the doctor.

Are your thoughts based in reality or are you fortune telling? If you are prone to anxiety, mind reading and fortune telling are your most common faulty thinking pattern.

Magnification or minimization

This is also called the binocular effect. You know when you look through the one side of binoculars everything looks big. You look through the other side and everything shrinks and looks tiny. We often magnify or minimize the importance of what others or we do or say.

• Maybe you go overboard in praising other people’s achievements in an effort to keep their love or approval. You’re magnifying their achievement, making it greater than it actually is.
• On the other hand you make a small mistake and you view it as a train smash. ‘I’m a real failure’ you tell yourself, ‘I’m useless’ and so on. You’re making a mountain out of a molehill. You’re magnifying your mistake.
• If you obsess or have sleepless nights over some conversation, replaying it over and over again in your mind, you are probably magnifying the importance of what was said.
• If you loose your temper over minor incidents you are probably magnifying the importance of what has happened. You are turning relatively unimportant things into a train smash.
• Or maybe you minimise your good qualities. Maybe someone tells you how nice your dress is and you reply ‘oh this old thing’. Basically you are rejecting their compliment and they will stop complimenting you. A compliment is a gift – say thank you.
• Sometimes when a girl is dating a boy with a drinking problem, she will minimize the seriousness of the problem. She is not seeing the situation realistically because of her need to be in a relationship. A drinking problem is serious but she minimizes it because of her need.
• How do you respond to your child’s report card? Do you say things like ‘you did well getting 5 A’s but the B was disappointing’. If you point out other peoples imperfections or weaknesses you are a minimizer. Sometimes parents think that criticism will motivate children to improve. It doesn’t, it minimizes them. If you use the word ‘but’ or ‘yes, but’ a lot you are probably a minimizer because the word ‘but’ negates all that comes before it.

Emotional reasoning

Another way of describing emotional reasoning is `I feel it, therefore it must be true.’ You assume that your negative emotions reflect the truth, the way things really are.

• You feel that God doesn’t love you, and conclude that because this is how you feel, it must be true. This is a case of emotional reasoning. It is not true as the Word says that he loves you with an ever-lasting love. Our feelings do not always reflect the truth.
• Have you ever felt that your family would be better off with you dead, and because you feel this way, you presume that this is the truth? Most people with depression are very loved and are very badly affected when a family member takes their life.
• I don’t feel like getting up so it must be a bad idea, I’ll just stay in bed all day. The truth is that getting up and doing something will help you. Check out your feelings, they can be distorted.
• I feel like an idiot so I must be an idiot!

Should statements

It is amazing that a word like `should’ can affect how we feel, can affect our mood. I think that this word causes more problems in relationships than any other. The word `should’ is at the root of anger, guilt and resentment` The words must’ and `ought’ fall into the same category.

Do you try to motivate yourself with `shoulds’ and shouldn’ts, as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything? If you do, you probably feel guilty a lot of the time as this is the emotional consequence.

When other people tell you what you should or shouldn’t do the consequence is anger and resentment. Others have the same feeling if you tell them what they should or shouldn’t do. It comes across as controlling and unaccepting because what we are really saying is that if you do what I tell you your life will be much better. This is quite arrogant, as we cannot possibly know what is better for another person. Don’t presume that what is right for you is right for the other person.

People who are task oriented are more inclined to want to fix up peoples problems, which involves a lot of ’should’ statements. Rather try to just listen to how the person is feeling, believing that they have it within themselves to solve their problem and maybe just need a listening, uncritical ear. Once we feel that we have been heard we often are able to move on and sort out our problems. Often being given advice and being told what we should or shouldn’t do actually makes it worse.

• You’re out shopping and get irritated. ‘That salesclerk should treat me with respect’ you say, ‘after all I am the customer’. You could also change your response to something like this: ‘The salesclerk could treat me with respect; but then again, it looks like she’s having a really rotten day and I get crabby too, when thing go like that’. Try and not to always reflect situations negatively onto yourself. Try to see what could be happening with the other person.

Labelling

Something goes wrong and you attach a negative label to yourself or someone else: `I’m stupid or a loser’ or ‘he’s an idiot’ or something worse. This type of language is emotionally loaded and not really true. Look up the dictionary and see whether the meaning is really the truth or not. When you label yourself as an idiot, according to the dictionary you are saying that you are a person so deficient in mind as to be permanently incapable of rational conduct. I’m sure this doesn’t apply to most of you.

Don’t label your children either with labels like, that’s the rebellious one, that one’s a handful. Labels can stick and when you label your children, they believe you are speaking the truth and this label will come true in their lives because you always behave in a way that matches what you believe. It can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Quite scary.

Personalization and blame

With this distortion you personalize or blame yourself for some negative event that you are not really responsible for.

• If your child does badly at school you blame yourself for being a hopeless mother – not true. You can guide your child, but the child has to take responsibility for his schoolwork.
• Do you act as a go-between between your spouse and your children, taking responsibility for their happiness, trying to keep the peace? Are you trying to fix up relationships that are really outside of your control?

On the other hand if your language is full of `if only’ statements you are probably prone to blaming outside events for your situation.

• If only I hadn’t come from a dysfunctional family.
• If only my husband was nicer to me.

If you blame others or circumstances, you are playing a victim role and will always be at the mercy of how you perceive others to treat you. Remember it’s not the event that causes your mood, but rather how you interpret the event. When you stand before God one day, you cannot say that you didn’t do much with your life because He put you into a dysfunctional family.

CHANGING YOUR THOUGHTS – Step by step

Before you start you will need some ‘tools’. You will need a notebook, a pen and a copy of the list called Faulty thinking patterns (cognitive distortions). Are you ready?

1. Listen to your emotions. When something upsets us we usually react in a physical way as well as in our emotions. When someone says something that leaves me feeling depressed or angry, I usually feel as if someone has just thumped me on the chest. Maybe you feel the same way. Some people react as if someone has punched them in the stomach. What physical reaction do you have when you are upset? This negative reaction is telling you that it is time to examine your thoughts.
2. Keep a notebook and write down the event that caused the negative event. You might be tempted to skip this and try and do it in your head. Please don’t, as writing it down is a very important step. It also helps to stops your thoughts from getting out of control like a runaway train.
3. For each negative reaction you will need to write down
   • The event that ’caused’ your negative emotion,
   • Your automatic thought. People get thoughts and feelings muddled. If in doubt thoughts can always be preceded by the words ‘I think that..’
   • Faulty thinking pattern. Use your list of Faulty Thinking Patterns and see where your thinking could be wrong. You will need to become very familiar with this list so that with practice you can immediately identify where your thinking is going wrong.
   • Replace your automatic thought with a more realistic thought.

With practice you will become quicker at replacing the thought before it takes you on a downward spiral. Maybe an event comes to mind now that gave you a negative reaction, in which case maybe you want to try and work it out. Also most of us seem to have our ‘favorite’ faulty thinking pattern and possibly even as you read the list a few seemed to jump out at you.

At this point you might need a word of encouragement! Does it sound like too much hard work? It is hard work but I promise you that it is worth the effort to live a life free of depression and anxiety and emotional turmoil. Hang in there! Take one step at a time!

Let’s go through a few examples as this may help in understanding the process.

• Your friend has a problem and you automatically try to fix her up, give her advice She doesn’t listen to you. You get fed up and frustrated, after all, you’re only trying to help her but she just doesn’t seem to want to listen to you. Your getting frustrated is the negative emotion that indicates that you need to examine your thoughts. Let’s look at this scenario in terms of the event, emotions, automatic thought and replacement thought.
  1. Event – Tried fixing up your friend, giving (obviously unwelcome) advice.
  2. Emotion – frustration, probably also anger
  3. Automatic Thought – Maybe it could be ‘I am responsible for making everyone happy’. ‘Negative emotions are unacceptable. – Got to sort the person out’.
     • Is this thought based in the truth? Are you really responsible for making everyone happy? This is a very common belief but it is not based in the truth, as we are each responsible for our own happiness. Remember that it is our own thoughts that determine our mood. If you believe that you are responsible for making everyone happy you will probably experience endless frustration, as we cannot change people. Our task is to love our friend and walk alongside her. Most people resist being told what to do and it makes them want to do the exact opposite. Try telling a child not to touch something in a shop and when your back is turned they will do what you told them not to do! This thought if you look at the list of faulty thinking patterns falls in a ‘Should’ statement – no. 8 as you are telling your friend what she should do and you are getting cross because she should listen to you. You are actually being controlling. Also the belief that negative emotions are unacceptable is not based in reality as we all have negative emotions but many perfectionists believe that they are unacceptable and need to be sorted out.
  4. Replacement thought? ‘It is not my responsibility to fix up my friend but it is my responsibility to love her, accept her as she is and just listen to her’. ‘It is okay for her to show negative emotion as we all have negative as well as positive emotions at different times’. You will probably immediately change how you feel; a burden will be lifted because this thought is based in reality.
     • Future behaviour. Now that you are aware of a faulty thinking pattern, the next time you want to step in and ‘fix up’ your friend stop yourself and empathise and love her instead. If you have a tendency to say, I’m only trying to help, it probably indicates a tendency towards wanting to control others, to fix people up.
• Jane (not her real name) sent her brother to the shops. On the way a drunken motorist killed him. Jane feels responsible for his death, as he wouldn’t have died if she hadn’t asked him to go to the shops. Now she won’t drive, remains housebound and fearful of going out. She also suffers from depression and anxiety. The negative emotion of depression and anxiety is the indication that the underlying thoughts need to be examined.
  1. Event – Jane sent her brother to the shops. On the way he a drunken motorist killed him.
  2. Emotion – Depression and anxiety.
  3. Automatic thought – ‘I am responsible for his death. If I hadn’t sent him to the shops he would still be alive.’
     • Is this thought based in the truth? Is she responsible for his death? No, it was the drunken motorist who killed him. It is true that he might still be alive if she had not sent him to the shops but she is not responsible for his death. She would not have sent him to the shops if she could have foreseen what was to happen. She is taking inappropriate responsibility, which is referred to as ‘personalization’ (no. 10 on the list of faulty thinking patterns) where you see yourself as the cause of some negative external event, which in fact you were not primarily responsible for.
  4. Replacement thought – ‘The drunken motorist is responsible for my brother’s death. I feel terribly sad that I asked him to go to the shops but there was no way that I could have known what would happen. I am not responsible for his death, my brother would not hold me responsible and would rather I got on with living life to the full’.
• John is retrenched from his job, feels angry and despondent about ever getting another job.
  1. Event – Retrenched from job
  2. Emotion – Anger, despondency
  3. Automatic thought – I’ll never get another job.
     • Is this thought based in reality? I’ll never get another job. – ‘Never’ is a key word for overgeneralization (no.1 on the list of faulty thinking patterns) and should ring a bell. How can you possibly know what is going to happen in the future, that you will never get another job. In fact if you convince yourself you’ll never get another job you will make this come true by the manner in which you present yourself at the interview as you always act out in a manner consistent with what you believe.
  4. Replacement thought – No reason why I won’t get another job. The company were downsizing and no longer needed my expertise. Even if I’m unsuccessful with 9 interviews it doesn’t mean I will never get a job. The 10th on could give me a lucky break!
  5. Automatic thought – They shouldn’t have retrenched me.
     • Is this thought based in reality? They shouldn’t have retrenched me. – ‘Should’ statement (no,8). The word ’should’ rings a bell. Replace the word should with ‘it would have been nice if’.
  6. Replacement thought – It would have been nice if they hadn’t retrenched me but it is really a sign of the times with many companies downsizing. I can re-skill for other work.
  7. Automatic thought – They’ll never get another person as good as me. The next person will just mess up.
     • Is this thought based in reality? They’ll never get another person as good as me. – No. 1. Overgeneralization The next person will just mess up. – No.5. Fortune telling
  8. Replacement thought – Maybe discard these ridiculous thoughts as not worth replacing!

Maybe you can feel the changed emotions for yourself as you read the examples. It’s not a case of positive thinking but it is a case of lining up your thinking with reality. I cannot overemphasise the importance of this list in changing your thoughts. I know the list so well that as soon as someone uses the ’should’ word, I think, cognitive distortion no.8 and immediately replace my angry or resentful thoughts associated with ’should statements’!

CLOSING COMMENTS ON CHANGING YOUR THOUGHTS

I know that it is not easy but I would really encourage you to persevere. Some people I know practiced the technique by looking at past situations that had hurt them to see how they could have thought differently. One friend went right back to childhood hurts and managed to get some degree of healing by using this technique. Please email me with any of your examples that might help others, maybe examples where you found the techniques helped or even examples where you would like me to give some input. I cannot reply personally but can reply in the section titled Your questions, keeping your identity anonymous.

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