Putting It All Together
Thoughts play a powerful role in determining how people feel and how they act.
Thoughts play a powerful role in determining how people feel and how they act.
CONGRATULATIONS, YOU’VE COMPLETED OUR COGNITIVE RESTRUCTURING COURSE!
By owning my mind, I own my life.” – Harry, age 37
If someone thinks positively about something, they’re more likely to feel positively about it. Conversely, if they think negatively about something—whether or not that thought is supported by evidence—they will feel negatively.
As we learned in this course, cognitive restructuring is the process of identifying and challenging negative and irrational thoughts, called cognitive distortions. Although everyone has some cognitive distortions, having our thoughts distorted by too many of them is often a key factor underlying depression.
When looking at other people’s cognitive distortions, they may seem easy to dispute – no matter how much your friend believes that they’re the “worst person ever”, you know that to be untrue. But when it comes to our own cognitive distortions, they can be much more difficult to overcome. When we’re depressed, we tend to believe in our own cognitive distortions, no matter how inaccurate they may be.
Cognitive distortions can happen so quickly that they come and go before we’ve noticed them. They’re more like a reflex than an intentional behaviour.
This course introduced us to the Cognitive Restructuring Worksheet, which helps us put our thoughts under inspection, scoping out the situations that triggered them, the automatic negative thoughts that were provoked, the feelings that emerged, and how we responded behaviourally.
Through the use of the worksheet, we can carefully analyze our thoughts, judge the merit of them by considering evidence supporting or not supporting the thoughts, and developing a more realistic, balanced, and adaptive perspective to replace the negative thoughts.
The reflective process of using the Cognitive Restructuring Worksheet helps retrain our minds, by increasing our awareness of patterns and ways to respond to them more effectively. With enough repetition, we will be able to imprint the steps of cognitive restructuring into our subconscious mind so that we can draw upon them in the heat of the moment and thereby prevent the cascade of negative thoughts, feelings, and behaviours that underlie depression.
The point about repetition cannot be overstated. Much like a simple physiotherapy exercise that needs to be done over and over again to be helpful when rehabbing an injury, we need to practice the steps of cognitive restructuring repeatedly in order to really benefit from it.
It’s important to keep in mind that while cognitive restructuring is a useful self-help tool, sometimes it’s not enough to keep depression at bay. Talk therapy can be extremely helpful in fighting depression and a trained therapist can help examine underlying issues that may be affecting your thoughts.
Below are some more examples to help out:
Negative thoughts around not keeping up with goals for physical activity
Situation
Thoughts
Feelings
Behaviours
Alternate Thoughts
Negative thoughts triggered by seeing a picture of an ex on social media
Situation
Thoughts
Feelings
Behaviours
Alternate Thoughts
Please take a minute to let us know what you thought of our Cognitive Restructuring Course.
Both your time and input are greatly appreciated!
You may also be interested in our Mindfulness for Men Course, which can help you develop a complimentary skillset for managing intense thoughts and emotions, providing you with more strategies for recovering from and preventing depression.
Mindfulness is a potent skill that helps us avoid destructive or automatic habits and responses by learning to observe our thoughts, emotions, and other present-moment experiences without judging or reacting to them.
This course includes simple daily practices, as well as step-by-step guided meditations that you can work on weekly towards becoming more emotionally resilient.
Anger is one of the few emotions many guys actually express, but it often done in a way that is destructive for ourselves and those around us.
This course, which includes interactive exercises, will equip you with the tools and strategies to effectively manage your anger in healthier and more constructive ways.
Explore additional approaches to managing thoughts with our articles and pages on:
New free course! Build relationship skills and learn about communication, sexual intimacy, romance, empathy, reciprocity, trust, setting healthy boundaries, and navigating disagreements.