Cognitive Restructuring: How to Apply Cognitive Restructuring

Cognitive restructuring, also known as cognitive reframing, is a technique used in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), clinical psychology, and psychiatry to help patients combat negative thoughts and cognitive distortions by changing thinking patterns. Common cognitive distortions include overgeneralization, black-and-white thinking, negative magnification of neutral events, and destructive emotional reasoning. Cognitive restructuring techniques may help alleviate mental health disorders associated with negative thinking, such as depression, compulsive behavior, and anxiety disorders.

Reframing irrational thoughts and negative emotions through cognitive restructuring might restore your well-being in several ways. It can help you:

1. 1. Boost relationships: CR helps you to challenge unhelpful thoughts about the important people in your life, reducing conflict in your personal and professional relationships. Instead of labeling a behavior as a personal attack or jumping to the conclusion that someone dislikes you, cognitive restructuring encourages you to study and reframe those thoughts. Upon examination, you may find you don’t have enough information about these situations and become willing to open communication channels to resolve relationship issues.
2. 2. Improve psychiatric conditions: Cognitive restructuring through psychotherapy can improve the outcome of various mental health issues, including depression, anxiety disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), eating disorders, borderline personality disorder, and addictive behaviors such as substance abuse and gambling.
3. 3. Lower stress: Changing your negative thought patterns stops you from catastrophizing about events, offering alternative explanations to your automatic thoughts and creating a more positive outlook, thus reducing mental stress. Get more stress management tips from Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR).
4. 4. Restore self-esteem: Improved coping mechanisms and de-catastrophizing through cognitive therapy can boost how you see yourself in relation to external events. Cognitive restructuring works by questioning your thoughts and perceptions and, along with affirmations, increases your confidence to engage with the world, knowing you’re strong enough to handle any eventuality.

The process of cognitive restructuring varies depending on the psychological approach. When employed as part of cognitive behavioral therapy, the process unfolds as follows:

1. 1. Identify your automatic thoughts. Automatic thoughts are the ones that immediately pop into your mind in the face of adversity, negatively affecting your perception of events, loved ones, the world, the future, and yourself. If these thoughts are judgemental, it may be helpful to identify the voice of your inner critic. Automatic thoughts may also include coping strategies to handle your emotions, such as engaging in unhealthy behaviors like substance abuse, gambling, or acting out.
2. 2. Determine your cognitive distortions. This stage involves using worksheets and thought recording to analyze where your thinking process deviates from facts into negative biased assumptions.
3. 3. Disputation of cognitive distortions. Once you’ve identified your irrational negative thoughts, you’ll actively challenge their veracity using Socratic questioning. The questions may examine: the evidence behind the thoughts, whether they come from fact or feeling, the thoughts’ complexity, and your assumptions.
4. 4. Develop alternative thoughts. Once you’ve convinced yourself that the truth of the situation isn’t as harmful as you perceive, you adapt your thinking through thought interventions. Challenging and changing your thought process can positively affect your mood and improve your problem-solving abilities.

Imagine you’re on social media and see photos of a party a friend had the weekend before. Your friend didn’t invite you. The first automatic thought that pops into your head is, “My friend doesn’t like me. That’s why I wasn’t invited.” These thoughts fuel feelings of sadness, anger, and despair.

To restructure this thinking, examine this thought by asking yourself for evidence for and against its veracity. Evidence supporting: You don’t always get along with your friend. Evidence against: They recently invited you to the movies, and you can see from the photos that your friend didn’t ask all of their friends to the party.

You then reframe the thought based on this evidence to generate a new, more balanced line of thinking, such as “my friend likes me and doesn’t have to invite me to everything they do.” As a result, you feel more at peace and happier.

You can apply CR with the help of a CBT specialist guiding you through behavior therapy or on your own using a self-help book. Follows these general steps:

1. 1. Monitor your thoughts and feelings. Be aware of your thoughts, keeping an eye out for possible distorted thinking. Often you’ll recognize a cognitive distortion by how you feel. If you experience sadness, anger, or anxiety, take some time to examine what’s causing this feeling and why. A mindfulness practice can help you observe your thoughts and feelings without judgment.
2. 2. Question your assumptions. Ask yourself if the emotion you’re feeling stems from a fact or a feeling. Are you assuming the worst about something that hasn’t even happened yet? Are you trying to mindread someone’s thoughts from their behaviors? Is it a black-and-white situation or more complex?
3. 3. Examine the evidence. Once you have a read on the thought, cause, and your feelings about it, examine the evidence. Keep an air of detachment about this examination and treat it as a fact-finding mission. One popular technique is to pretend you are a reporter on the scene, neutrally gathering information.
4. 4. Embrace alternative explanations. Finding alternative explanations based on evidence aids you in seeing the world through a more rational lens. Once you see your patterns of thought, you can use positive affirmations to avoid negativity and catastrophizing in the future.

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