Identifying and Addressing Thinking Errors

Well, welcome everyone, today's presentation is about

thinking

errors

in understanding and

addressing

them, so for the next 45 minutes to an hour we will define

thinking

errors

and examine different types of thinking errors, including cognitive distortions. and irrational thoughts. We will evaluate how thinking errors can influence our own basic fear of rejection, isolation, unknown loss of control and failure, and identify ways to increase our thinking errors because we all have them; It's just becoming aware of it, so you can address it and then 'We talk about how to address thinking errors as well as basic fears, and when we talk about our basic fears like this fear of rejection, everyone has it.

We can't make it disappear. on irrational thoughts, for example, my world will end if I get rejected, why do we care and how does it affect people's recovery? These thinking errors or stinking thoughts play a big role in keeping people miserable when working with clients experiencing depression, anxiety, and addiction. problems, yes, I try to quickly overcome mood disorders, many of which help keep them unhappy, their thinking errors are many of the cognitive things they probably developed over time, either in response to neurochemical imbalances or as reaction to things they have taken and it has become an ingrained way of thinking instead of seeing the glass half full they see it half empty instead of seeing the day as partially sunny they see it as partially cloudy addiction depression anxiety anger and guilt often occur o They are exacerbated by erroneous thoughts.

When we talk to our clients, we want to tell them what these irrational thoughts are, what these automatic beliefs that you have are, and whether they are rational. You know, sometimes life just falls apart and that's just the way it is, but mostly we can go to the By looking for positives, we may find that our clients look more in terms of all or nothing rather than looking at their shades of gray, so that we want to look at that and then we want to address these mindsets to help people not make mountains out of molehills.

Focus on the things that can change, and identify and eliminate the thought patterns that hold you back. Many of us have very habitual thought patterns; You know there are four or five that relapse and sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, but generally it's for us, so if we can identify the negative and address it, it will be easier to release energy and yaadda- Yadda they will have it, there will be times when that we will have irrational thoughts and cognitive distortions will definitely occur, but if we can hold back, if we can be aware and conscious and address it when it occurs, we can refrain from binding energy, so that the cognitive distortions contemplate it and manipulate it to meet the expectation.

In a situation, if you expect it to be a crazy day, cognitive distortions will make you see all the crazy things about the day and ignore the things that are good or at least you don't like, so cognitive distortions play an important role. A very important role in what we pay attention to and our expectations, and confirms that it is in line with our current space, so if you wake up and are in a bad mood, you are likely to adopt a negative appearance when you arrive. up and you're in a good mood you'll notice the good things so you'll know what it tells you what you can do right off the bat if you get out of bed and you're on the wrong side of the bed.

Tell clients that when they get out of bed there is an activity called a coin toss, they toss a coin and if it lands heads, they can tell that they are acting, thinking about whatever it is or just what it is like. You know if they're in a bad mood when they're on the wrong side of the bed, that's fine, they don't have to do anything if I don't, so they're behind, so they have to act like it's a good day and they have to try to look at everything with an optimistic point of view, and then they have to look at how the day after went to see if they noticed that there was a change in the way they approached things, how they interpreted things and their energy levels, depending on whether They were in a bad mood and if they were somewhat optimistic, I mean they don't have to be obnoxiously cheerful, but we want them to look and find good things, irrational thoughts. , our beliefs or thoughts that people tend to have in their extreme.

I have to. I always have to do it. I must always have love and approval, that is one of the things they give as an example. Why should you want to say yes? But if you know and it's highly unlikely that everyone will tell you, what does that mean? If that statement or denial of the statement makes a person uncomfortable, say, what does that mean for your irrational thoughts? It is unrealistic and creates feelings of failure, inadequate or powerless. If I have to do it all the time or if it never works for me, then I'm going to feel very disempowered and you know that's going to show in my mood and the way I do it. all other things are interpreted, we want to pay attention to what clients say when we hear cognitive distortions, we want to stop it and say: now I hear you say what happened and it always happens to you, give me another example of how when it happened to you then give me another example and then take the information and say ok now see if you can find an exception when it could happen but not every time I walk in my car it rains as soon as I'm done and I can think of I see it three or four times when I wash the car and look, it rained three hours later, it's almost like I'm predicting rain, but sometimes I can also think about when I wash the car and it hasn't rained and of course it won.

It doesn't really affect temperament much, but if you look at the things they talk about, my boss is always in a bad mood or every time I get called to my boss's office I'm in trouble, find out the exceptions, give me an example of a time in which they called you to your boss's office to tell you that you were not in trouble, what was different or if you did not become the boss's office, what is different because there are some bosses who only contact you when you are in trouble, so , what's the difference if you're not in trouble?

Some of your personal favorite cognitive distortions have to do with me, someone walking down the hallway is in a bad mood and smiles and I take it personally, ooh. I must have offended them by personalizing that the person probably didn't even see that I was there, or that he didn't recognize you, or that you were there because I was lost in his little world like in the notes I wrote him. I said before class started that I'm not going to wear my glasses today because you know you look at the screen and you see the little guy;

I just can't concentrate on both, so I squint when I read the chat window, which isn't personal. You know, when I squint it's not a comment on anything that's being said, except for the fact that I'm trying to read it so we can personalize it. , we want to identify the moments when our clients take things and turn them into something that does not happen and is very common with people who grow up in addicted homes, especially because everything revolves around the addict, the addict tells you how he feels how to think, when talk and likes to walk on eggshells, so when something happens to the addict it is their fault, there is a lot of blame and the people who come from backgrounds where there is a lot of blame, we tend to blame ourselves. for anything and everything.

It's a sunny day, it's good, it's sunny, it's good, so it can't be my fault, it's a rainy day, it must be my fault If you read assuming you know what someone thinks, is it a huge cognitive distortion to know that your partner fourth is angry? staring at you for being on the other side or assuming that someone can read your mind and that your roommate knows that you hate it when she leaves her stuff in the living room, if you haven't told her yet, she might not know because guess what? . It's not just about you, you're both opposite sides of the same coin as it's all about you, if something is bothering you or you think someone is bothering someone else, don't assume, don't guess, ask or say something. don't read everything, don't think about anything, I talked about that before and many of our clients will see things as if they have to happen every time or they will take an example of something that happens and say, well, it happens all the time.

If you hear it all the time, it's probably not that common. So if they say people get into car accidents all the time and it's not safe to drive well, let's look at the data. Yes, car accidents are quite common, but how many cars are there on the road? that don't crash, so we want to look at both sides, we want to take away the extreme nature and look at the subsequent conditions, when it's most dangerous to drive. Yes, there are probably more accidents when there is dark fog and the roads are icy. a recent ice storm probably isn't the best time to drive there, so yes, there will be a lot of accidents, but if it's sunny and not rush hour, and you know that all things considered, it's very unsafe, so we want to help you Watch these polarizations every time they say an extreme word and you will hear from your clients that there are certain things they would like to use, never challenge them to take that word out of their vocabulary and replace it with a conditional word. of saying a lot sometimes or instead of all the things I say sometimes or many times even in the session, if you just practice changing your words in the session, one of the things will go far and it is not a cognitive distortion but one of the things about We talked in college about customer focus and I don't remember what it was, I think it was or Aaron, I think it was Aaron Beck, but I don't remember saying the words delete, I can't delete. the word can't be that you can't do something, you know that 99% of the time men can't have children, but you know that there are very few who are truly capable, that's what I choose, not to choose their children . power I can't it's like I'm stuck you know I would love to but I can't.

I choose not to say I could if I wanted to, but I don't want small changes in vocabulary and you know, we don't want to give clients 15 things to change in a week, pick one or two words. that they use frequently and that seems to have caused the most distress or let them choose one or two words that you know, talk about topics that you hear, where they use the word, everyone always does it, everyone does it all the time, so I've heard that It's a recurring theme that you seem to feel like everyone in your life is doing bad things to you all the time instead of saying everyone, let's focus at any time, it happens exactly who did it and how many times people like that betrayed me and told me. a lie last week not everyone lies to you like that all the time so it helps them have a little more perspective and also allows them to identify exceptions, so that whoever doesn't betray you what in your life has done terrible things to you that has done good things in your life and bad things that you know, we are not perfectly catastrophized to make a mountain out of a molehill from 1 to 15 on a scale of 1 to 10 in two seconds, most things are not a catastrophe, they are They are uncomfortable.

If they are frustrating, they are depressing, but it is not the end of the world. A client's car is now broken down, this is quite common for many of my clients. They get stunned, it's like I'm not going to work, I'm going to miss therapy, I'm not going to come get my drop of urine, I'm going to go to jail and they're going to take children away from me and I say who, who, well, let us know what. you can stop, we prove that your car broke down because you have substance abuse and dual disorder counseling many times in legal involvement, you need to be able to prove it so we can prove it.

If we can prove it, you couldn't have planned it better, but your car broke down, it happens, so what's the next step to make you depressed and confused? In this adrenaline rush it's not going to do any good, so let's stop expressing ourselves and then make plans on how to deal with it, are many of the dialectical behavioral therapy techniques that we discuss, like when you have a feeling if you know you are. For those people who go from zero to 120 in two seconds when they feel the sensation of getting angry, remind them to use the skills you worked on together to identify the feeling, but they don't have to not react to it and then talk. about distraction, whatever they have to do to get the adrenaline going, about generalization, take one thing and use it in any other situation, if you fight with a friend, say, okay, I'm just not going to go with women, about where it came from, even if Fighting with two friends to say that means you don't get along with women is an overgeneralization.

I think there are women you would get along with, so if clients come in and say I can't work with a counselor, that's fine, you know there may be situations where that's true and there's nothing we can do. about it and of course we want to try to put a kl in a situation where he is more comfortable in home treatment, which is not always possible in private practice, not always possible if you are the only one practitioner in his practice and not. You are a woman and someone comes in and says: I can't work with counselors;

It's better that we had no choice here but to encourage people toconsider generalizations. You don't care, don't you? I should have gotten up earlier. You don't have that. How can you prevent this from happening again? Because beating yourself up for being late to work because you should have done something is not good. If a client starts saying, "Well, I should have done it," I stop them and I have a whiteboard in my office because I'm a visual learner and we write down all the needs and then we draw a line and say we'll do it. do differently and then we make a complete list of what they will do differently to prevent this from happening if a student has the opportunity to hold it, do nothing if they would make up for it even if it were if they lied to someone and I should have told them the truth in the future.

You can tell them the truth mmm, they may also have to pay for what they did. It's a matter of figuring out what that should mean and then it's a very heuristic availability. A few days ago there was a plane crash. The EgyptAir plane has people who don't like flying, who mention that flying is dangerous because planes crash all the time, it seems that way because the only planes we hear about are the ones that crash. We haven't heard about the other 20,000 that landed safely today, and we encourage people to get accurate information. How often does this happen when clients talk about a behavior they are doing or a behavior someone else is doing?

Is it a great moment? to obtain a baseline. Let's determine exactly how often this happens and it can also work for or against your client. When you do staff appraisals, if a staff member knows that you were there for the first six months of the appraisal period, but they weren't there, there has been issue after issue and in the last six months they have really turned the tide. forget the first six months, because the last six months were so good, that we just block or make excuses for the first six months, it's also true with things related to mental health if someone feels better in the last three months they started to feel a lot better and they made some changes that we want to see before they feel better what's different what's the same because it could be that they're just going through a really don't want time in their life but a less stressful period in their life where they we don't want to send them there with false security and say, I've got this in the queue and then life comes and Kate gets there, but again, right?

I don't want to do them. I don't want to take away their feelings of satisfaction or empowerment. I just want to make sure you are aware of what could be causing your depression. I haven't been depressed in the last three months, but this is where our relapse prevention plan comes in to remember all the things that can trigger an episode. If it is activated now, no, you tell us what solves your vulnerabilities, you live carefully. You do all the things that are in your recovery plan and you have a lot of support that you didn't get in this meaningless nature of living and what we found is that relapse really occurs primarily under three conditions, one that it never had. recovery anyway just stopped for a moment: they become careless in their actions, get up for breakfast, go to work, come home, have dinner, go to bed, get up and repeat, and begin to forget all the things they have to pay attention to, they start thinking about these thoughts and thought patterns again, they stop paying attention to whether they are positive or negative, they start to stop preventing their vulnerabilities before they realize it, They go back to that old pattern of behavior, like the old pattern of thinking, and they're distressed and then the stress leads them to whatever problem they're having and we essentially have a relapse, so they didn't have, they weren't paying attention, or life happened, you know, Every once in a while everything goes well and then something like Hurricane Katrina comes along that no one can be expected to handle in a completely calm manner and it just hits them on the butt, that's just the way it is and when I talk to clients you know that I work with adults, I don't work with children, so I don't usually censor my language because you know that a blow to the heart doesn't convey the same feeling, we want to match our tone.

We want to show people how to identify and address cognitive distortions, we want to find out how these thinking errors influence our fear of rejection, so if we personalize things, when someone personalized is all good, they can be a little narcissistic. but it is unlikely to cause a negative situation. If they can take advantage of or derive from it everything that is bad, because they fear rejection, then they are alert, they look for rejection, they look for signs of rejection, the reading is in the same way that they expect to be rejected, they will foresee that people will reject them internally, or are they going to do some kind of project, I'm going to set it up so they can't win a situation where I won't tell them what's going on in my head, you're going to have to guess and usually that leads to discussion problems , and then the person leaves.

I'll see you reject me again. reading all or nothing is polarized thinking about rejection do you love me or hate me I mean let's talk about the limit here isolation the unknown all or nothing are extremes all or nothing thinking tell me people clinging to clinging to some semblance of control and construction when I say it it happens sometimes then I can't predict it because I don't know all the variables, which makes me uncomfortable when I say it can happen all the time, I can predict it and if I can predict it it's not unknown, follow me there.

It's artificially putting things into boxes, even if they don't quite fit into that box, like the dsm-4 they mentioned above, an unspecified diagnosis doesn't quite fit into the pretty box, which is uncomfortable for many people. find out why it is not comfortable, why this unknown factor causes stress, perhaps because of loss of control, and in general, if we look back at the history of our clients, we see cases where they were rejected and isolated. I had a lot of things that were out of control, especially when they were kids, they had no way to control them, they couldn't predict them.

You know that foster care authorities get into all kinds of things when you talk about people with co-occurring disorders and many times in these dysfunctional homes the children don't have a sense of accomplishment or love or security. , so develop in them a sense of failure. I couldn't keep our family together. I couldn't do it right if I had been a better kid, then Eddie wouldn't have it or mom wouldn't be good, we can't fix the past, but they have the same mentality, they have the same belief. system and use it now when they have more control and when you know it's not good, but they may reject it more from a parent, you know it's a whole therapeutic problem in itself, but we want to talk to the client about trying to gain the support of person. acceptance as a 25 year old young man.

It's what affects you and it's worth doing to know what would be different if this person accepted you, how it would affect your life and if this person never accepts you, how your life will change and you know just throw a trick in there, what can you learn from this person about how you do or don't want to interact with other people? So, irrational beliefs are what people often think and they have also learned over time that there are certain beliefs that they should have. Wait if I'm a mistake it means I'm incompetent it's true sometimes yes you know sometimes we make a mistake because we are incompetent sometimes we make a mistake because we were careless sometimes we make a mistake only you know Many reasons what does this mean to you as a person and what does it mean for your confidence in everything?

Are you incompetent at a specific thing like changing a car battery? Yes, I am NOT competent with any car, yes, it's just terrifying. , then I know. There are certain things I am NOT at work, but there are things that encourage clients to focus on what something means and whether it means something to them as a whole, or to them in this particular situation, and then take the globalization that belittles . all or nothing thinking and that kind of thing, and that you will see cognitive distortions and irrational beliefs if someone disagrees with me, that's a personal attack if you grew up in a home where you disagree, how do you think people are? adults? react to confrontation or disagreement and it could be a disagreement about whether you liked that movie we saw last week what does it mean if someone disagrees with you it means they say that sometimes you are stupid because of the underlying thought that arises so that you want, We talked in previous classes about playing the tape for the client, and we know I was talking to my best friend, and we went to the movies and got into this big fight because I said it was a great movie and she hated it and just couldn't understand why. what and then my question would be what was the fight to start talking about why it was so important to stand your ground, why it is so important to be right and what does it mean if you don't Don't go back to fears soon it means you fail it means you'll be fired because you think they think your opinion is stupid Going back to these fears doesn't always fit well, but it gives you a way to make a chart so you can identify what fears we're talking about and what thoughts we're talking about, I have to through all the people stay as long as it won't happen and when I go through irrational beliefs in groups, I read some of the most common irrational beliefs and I ask people when I say: how many of you think that's true, how many of you think that you can be?

Everyone maintains all the time, very few people will raise their hands, if generally the rest are there. It's a couple if we start talking about activating events that often led them to get angry it comes back so good and then they don't agree with me, they feel rejected or they feel like they said I'm stupid or a failure and I'll come back to this. You need to please all the people all the time and then we talked about how this irrational belief underlies many of your other cognitive distortions, my worth depends on what others think of me and the classes I have taken in the past, we are very concentrates. in external validation if people can't validate themselves if they can't say I'm good and my thoughts may not always be correct but they are mine.

My feelings are my feelings and if you like them, if you don't know, I'm open to opinions, but I won't necessarily change mine if people trust and value what other people think about them instead of what they don't think. . They think about themselves, they come to you out of disappointment, I turn it around and say, okay, you know, let's think about your son or your little sister, or do you know someone younger than them who can be their mentor, and you will do. telling them that their true value depends on what all their peers think of them many times, which makes us think and talk, you know, actually, you know, I want them to think that it's good who they get along with, and sometimes there is a A middle ground where people think they need approval from groups like that and stuff like that, but it creates a dialogue and we can start to see those shades of gray when I'm not in a relationship.

I'm all alone, it's true, but guess what the only relationship is? Some people there may be two, but there is one relationship that everyone can have and that is a relationship with themselves. If you don't have that relationship, then you don't care, so if you do. it just means and there is a difference between being alone and being alone, many clients are alone but some don't feel alone at all, they don't mind being alone, they don't mind being quiet. There are a lot of people who can be in a room full of other people and still feel alone because there is a void in them, they don't have the relationship with themselves and they encourage people to foster that relationship, and I have said that there may be a second for those who believe in a higher power that is relationship.

Also another relationship you can cultivate before or in addition to relationships with other people who experience your success and failure is black and white. there is no gray I encourage people to really think, okay, you failed at something, what can you learn from it? You know it was a learning opportunity, not a no. you know that a total obstacle necessarily is that failures are learning opportunities, successes are also learning opportunities. you have achieved success. How do you want to do it again? And most of the time, no matter what the success was, we can look back because hindsight is 20/20 and you'll know next time, or if I ever do it again, I'll know.

I'll do these things I'll probably adapt here and here, and look at success and failure as learning opportunities like training sessions in life if you don't want anything, like you want me to look for exceptions, is there ever anything like I wanted? , and I've let people sit with that for a while, because the first reaction is usually no, but if they think about it, they can say that yes, you know, I've had very few good things to keep a gratitude journal. The way you attract people helps you focus on the positive and on the things that were good, it was how you expected it to be, not necessarily, anymore.You know, ask any woman who has ever been married, most of the time the wedding doesn't turn out exactly how she imagined it, but it worked, and mostly the answer is yes, what we took as a result was not a complete failure, You know, I think a lot again, it wasn't how you imagined it, or the result wasn't perfect. , but it was a complete failure, my kids are in school now, and we talk about grade levels and you know what an acceptable grade level is and what I think they can do and what I know they can do, you know, and Sometimes bringing the C's home and sometimes they struggle with things, does that mean it's a complete failure?

No, it just means that there is a learning opportunity, but there are always some things that they have done there in martial arts, so if they are going to train, there are some good ones. things and some bad things, then I ask them to identify two things they did well and one thing they can work on so they focus on the preponderance of good things with one thing to work on and one thing to work on if there is something wrong. it happens it's my fault customization it was a cloudy day today my fault my mom is one of her going through the usual irritation my beliefs and her current husband bother us about it and he's like there was a train wreck in siberia it must have been Your fault, it's not funny, but the fact that he can point these things out to her and tell her that it's okay, she takes things completely personally, in her jovial way and they have this communication, it puts her on the spot again, you know, perhaps, it was like that.

It's not my fault the train crashed there, it always repeats itself well, the sun rises and the sun sets, it's true, there are some things that will repeat themselves as long as our life extends as long as our behavior extends, the past repeats itself only to the extent that we allow it, if we enter into a dysfunctional relationship and then enter into a similar dysfunctional relationship, yes, it will repeat itself because we have not learned anything from the first one, life is a set of learnings. experiences, whether they are successes or failures, so if you don't want it to be repeated, learn from it, if it was true, then it must be true now, sometimes this is true, you know, if you know it, think about how the past is repeat if someone was a very bad match for you in the past thinking about codependency or adjective relationships or whatever in the present, it may still be true now that person may have gone to therapy and you know they discover their sober self in yada-yada and that may not be true, so we can't say from the beginning if it was true and then it will be true now, but there are certain things that we can weigh the probabilities on.

There are other things like, when I was five, I couldn't stand being alone now. I'm 45 and I really like being alone, it's peaceful, but understanding that things you couldn't handle in the past doesn't mean you can't handle them in the present, you're a different person. You've grown, you've developed other skills, you've developed other support systems, so what was true then may not be true now, when I work with clients and in recovery, one of the problems that many of them have is guilt for being bad. . parents, so we talked about what made them bad parents. Do you know what qualities they identify that they believe made them bad parents?

Do they still have those qualities or are they a different person now that they are in recovery? So back then, these qualities made you a bad father in your definition I'm NOT going to take that away from you, you know, if that's how you feel, then we can work on crying about not being the kind of father you want me to be, however, now in the present, talk about what you can do with the new skills you have because you are not the same person you were before you went into recovery, so quickly help your clients ask them what's bothering me, why? bothers me, what are the facts and Against this, am I reacting based on facts or feelings and, if you have time, what cognitive distortions am I using and irrational thoughts.

If they have a worksheet, you know, I always talk about the smartphone and clients having a PDF that they can refer to. on your smartphone when you start getting angry because you're not going to think about all this stuff, but if you have it on your smartphone and you have a list of the top five cognitive distortions and irrational thoughts that you use, then you can go on and on, yeah, I'm using that one, yeah, I'm using that one, oh yeah, and I'm exaggerating all of this based on how I feel about the situation, it gives it structure, it also gives the person time to decompress to let that adrenaline go away so that They can make more rational decisions and we all know ABCDE and F, but we're going to talk to them and I'm very quick, the triggering event is what happened and I always teach this out of order.

However, you know it because it makes sense to me to teach it out of order the triggering event is what happened what the action was look it's the consequences you got angry so between the a and the C there was this automatic B that just happened wrong. Bing, what were those beliefs that made this significant? Because a car accident, you know, is just an event, why did it bother you? What were the beliefs about it that led to your emotional reaction? Dispute any irrational thoughts and then you know, sometimes you know. I said, I've said it before, sometimes bad things happen, sometimes you can't make all the negative thoughts go away, sometimes they are really rational, so the next step is to say is this worth it, my energy is getting bothered by this, I'm going to do something.

Well, how can I best use my energy to deal with it or let it go when clients go to job interviews or job reviews? Forgive me, sometimes it doesn't always work the way you want and the old way of thinking would. Whether it's dwelling on the fact that it didn't turn out well and having a litany of irrational beliefs and cognitive distortions to support the fact that they deserve to be miserable, we want to encourage them to figure out, you know, how you could better use that energy. Now, instead of using it to stay angry and feed that discomfort, how could you better deal with it?

And if you can't fix it, you know, maybe you got fired. Okay, that sucks, maybe we can't change that, so how can you let it go? so you can move on and get another job instead of feeling resentful and apprehensive and you know what other feelings arise when something triggers a negative emotion and these would be those cognitive distortions and you know this because automatic beliefs are irrational, cognitive thoughts. The distortions happen so quickly between A and C that we don't have time to take a breath, so when you get angry, distract yourself, don't react, feel it, name it, and figure out how to overcome that feeling until you can think about it rationally. or with a clear head, sometimes it's a better way to say it, talk it through, get back to irrational thoughts, help quickly talk to yourself to figure out what's going on, navigate the urgency, remind your clients that we react, we have that fight or...flight reaction and it's a primal thing so we can't always make it go away and sometimes it's there to tell us we need to do something sometimes it's right sometimes it's wrong but it's there saying you need to do something so you need Find out how you feel, remember it rises and falls like a wave, so if they are upset, they will get progressively angry for a moment, but then it will die down, so if they can figure out how to ride that wave.

You'll find that you'll be much better off than if you start shaking the currents and notice changes in yourself as the urge goes away, so if you're upset and you can get out, go for a walk and you'll be able to notice, you know. your heart rate increases your breathing increases your hands shake and if you calm down you can notice that your breathing is slowing down your heart rate slows down and it doesn't look like you're about to have a little body earthquake you're concentrating, you're focusing on the feelings that you know, physical or emotional, preventing them from focusing on the problem until they can let that rush of adrenaline die down.

Change in the challenging thoughts we talked about before. Can and can't versus. I will do it or I choose not to if someone is apprehensive if they are afraid if they are anxious make them remind themselves that they can do it that positive self-talk that reminds them of all the things they have done so far that we have prepared them for this challenge. The thoughts, on the other hand, are especially about relapse and the desire to engage in self-destructive behaviors. We don't want to romanticize how good it made you feel. We want to remember. Put the tape through it. you feel great for a minute, but then after that, what happened, constructive self-talk, point out what they tell themselves about an impulse that makes it harder to deal with the impulse.

I can't do this or I have to have this right now. As? extreme is why do you have to have it would you like to have it yes I would like to have it right now it's okay having to have something and wanting to have something are two different things I have to have oxygen I don't have to Having a chocolate bar to differentiate wants from needs helped clients to learn how to use self-talk constructively to challenge these statements that make it harder to deal with their impulses if I just go to the bar I'll just have a drink mmm that's not constructive this impulse to say well I can really.

I would like to have a drink right now and I know that if I go I can tell the bartender that I can only have one drink and he will only serve me one drink, that kind of minimization and rationalization is I'm going to come back and bite our customers in the butt to help them to figure out how to use self-talk constructively to play that tape and say: yes, I know damn well that I will talk you out of it and I will have three four five dozen drinks an effective challenge will make you feel better less tense, anxious or panicked, so ask if clients have learned to wonder what evidence will hold up with the drug analogy at this point.

I have to take a dose right now. What is the evidence that you have to have it? Unless someone is in acute withdrawal, in which case you know they may be going into a physical crisis, but that's rare unless we're talking about alcohol and benzos, so it's generally more common. a desire than the one I have so what is the evidence that you have to have it? What is the evidence that you are going to die if you don't have it? What's so horrible about not getting it? What happens if you don't have it? In reality, if you remember that we are urging you, this feeling, this longing, this drive, this stress will dissipate over time, unless you cultivate it, unless you feed it, you are a normal human being and you have the right to make mistakes. , so if someone is saying you know I screwed up I can't face anyone I just need to clear my head and get high you have to do it you need or want to want to escape from that instead of facing the fact that you made a mistake going back to that thought of all or nothing and that fear of failure, fear of rejection, when people make mistakes they often want to get into a hole and that hole is their addiction or their depression that they pull from.

They cover their heads with blankets and don't want to go out, encouraging them to look at what makes them feel like they want to do that and to criticize those beliefs. So distressing thoughts worksheet. I'm going to go over this real quick, what is the evidence? Am I assuming causality where none exists? Am I confusing thought or feeling with fact? Am I close enough to really know what's going on? You know, if you're speculating about something happening to your second cousin's ex-husband, you're probably not close enough to the situation to know what's going on if your boss comes home from a meeting and is in a really bad mood, you know especially If it was like a senior management meeting or something like that or you know maybe he just walked in, you're probably not close enough to know what's going on, you know, maybe he got into a fight with his spouse or maybe the meeting administration he was in was not so good, it does not mean that he comes to fire people or that you.

You are in trouble? Am I thinking in terms of all or nothing? And when I'm using extreme words like always or never, the source of information is credible and if all this information is coming from your own head, that's generally a no. Many times we color this information according to what we expect to see. Am I confusing low probability with high probability? You know someone comes over, your spouse comes home, they're supposed to be in recovery and they come home and trip over the cat when they walk in the door and you automatically assume they're drunk.

Is this probability low or high? Well, they've been clean for two years. What's more likely is that they went out and got drunk or that the cat was in the way because he was always sitting. At the front desk door, am I focusing on irrelevant factors? You know, sometimes you can focus on the color of someone's shoes or you know what, instead of what really matters, does this thought make mecloser to what I want or is it taking up all my energy? far from where I want to go, what are the advantages and disadvantages of thinking this way and finally the big question a year or a month from now is will this make any difference if you make a mistake or get fired or don't get the promotion you want? did you want?

What are the differences? This will let you know that you are fired, you may have to get another job, but does that mean you will be homeless living in your car and lose your children? Probably not, so we really need to rationally analyze the differences. exact effects this will have other CBT interventions to remind clients to simply recognize how thoughts can cause feelings and feelings can cause thoughts. If I am depressed, it will be harder for me to think happily and see the positive side if I am depressed. happy I can tend to give people a wider berth I can minimize and make a little more excuses I can try to see the optimistic side or the positive side if people practice acting in a certain way and that's why I love the activity of heads and tails sometimes I even say that if their heads act moody and depressed and if their tails act happy and cheerful and tell me how much difference it makes in your day and a lot of times I will do this when I teach at universities and it makes a big difference. difference for that for staff or for students to schedule activities to increase positive emotions and schedule mastery in recreation hello everyone, work and no exposure to play with response prevention if there is something that is really stressing your client out or making them anxious if you have the training to work with them to expose them to the situation and prevent them from running away and getting hurt, whatever the case may be.

I am very afraid of closed spaces. You know, even thinking about walking into an MRI machine makes my heart start to race. I would start with me, I would start thinking about going into an MRI machine and getting to the point where that doesn't stress me out and then lying in the MRI machine but not going into the tube, etc., etc., and sometimes you have to you know, pretend or make up certain situations that mimic whatever because you probably can't lie in an MRI machine, just randomly recognize negative thoughts and improve problem solving skills, if you can't fix it how are you going to let it go?

In group activities, list thinking errors and discuss how those thinking patterns protected you so far, for example, they protected you from being disappointed if you expected to fail or expected people to leave, if you only expect that then you won't be disappointed, so I'll list all the thinking errors or you know ten of them on the board and we'll talk about how they protected the person so far, but then we go ahead and say how those thinking errors can be eliminated and why not. You don't need them anymore, so what's your counterattack mantra? So instead of saying "I need to be loved by everyone all the time", saying "I need to love myself all the time" and "not everyone is capable of love", it's about them, not about me or what arise in your group.

I like this activity because not only do we talk about irrational thoughts and cognitive distortions, but we clients also have to manipulate the material to create their mantras that counteract them so that they really take hold. Identify the thinking errors that you still have. and why and then develop a plan to start

addressing

them balance of decisions and we've talked about this before what is the benefit of these old ways of thinking and what are the drawbacks what are the benefits of new ways of thinking and ordering the drawbacks that we have to make it more beneficial to change our behavior over the last week or two that we have probably all experienced for ourselves and have worked with clients who have had cognitive distortions or irrational thinking patterns.

I can recommend just as a starting point because as baselines, pay attention to your own thinking over the next week and identify some of these thinking errors that you have and ways that you could address them because we have them. I mean, most of us have at least one or two alternative banking errors that we can spot. We continue but they still come up from time to time and then we think about how we can begin to integrate this knowledge of thinking errors and cognitive distortions into our counseling technique. How can we integrate this into our work with clients?

CBT is a technique that helps people understand how thoughts create feelings and vice versa. It helps us address and identify negative self-talk issues and events. They do not need to continue to negatively impact the person. The wonderful thing is to think that mistakes have been learned and can be unlearned, you just have to. At the same time, negative thought patterns form and maintain a negative or vulnerable and disempowered self-image, so helping people address them strengthens them and creates stronger self-esteem. Thank you for coming and let me know if there are any topics you would like me to cover. future webinars by emailing me at support at all CEUs com