Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Understanding Cognitive Distortions: Dr. Dawn Elise Snipes

This episode is pre-recorded as part of a live, on-demand continuing education webinar. CEUs are still available for this submission by all CEUs. register the CEU communication advisor toolbox without problems. I would like to welcome everyone to understand and address today's presentation on

cognitive

distortions

. One of my favorite topic presentations, so to speak, if I find you more hyperactive and excited than usual, probably what we're going to do is define thinking errors and explore the different forms of thinking errors of many people, not only us clients, but many people's experience and my personal and professional experience has been that by identifying and addressing many of these thinking errors, we can significantly reduce stress if we reduce stress, then reduce how often we are emotional, stressed from the extra energy, the HPA axis disappears and sleep improves, mood improves, there are a lot of things I have never known to not say that they will not happen, someone who does not have some

cognitive

distortions

, it is not uncommon ;

It's one of those things that if you're not alert often and you don't have stealth. We will talk about how we can encourage clients to be aware that we will also talk about how thinking errors and cognitive distortions can specifically influence our basic fears of isolation, rejection, unknown loss of control, and failure that, in general, you know. the ones that trigger that fight or flight response, so we have increasing cognitive distortions, we fear that our sense of our need to fight or flight will increase our stress, which probably won't be good in the long run. in our health about our health, our mental state, and then we continue to identify ways to increase awareness of thinking errors, and we can even begin to address some of the basic fears, such as fear of abandonment, cognitive distortion is not so strong if, for example, someone interprets something as a rejection, if you have already overcome your fear of abandonment, maybe you can let it go and say: you know my time is not worth it, so why do we care how it affects recovery of people? or smelly thinking if we have a profession in drug abuse it plays a big role in keeping people miserable if you see things in extreme terms if you personalize things if you make regulations based on feelings instead of feeling fear, therefore it must scary, it will probably add a lot of extra stress, most of the things we call mood disorders and addiction are made worse by wrong thinking.

I'm not saying that depression-anxiety from wrong thinking doesn't cause everything, but it certainly doesn't help, so if we can help people start to identify that, that's a small thing, that's something they can start doing on day one. . They are out of their way. If we can give them a little hope and a little more awareness of what is happening, it can help clients stop focusing on the things they can change, identify and eliminate. Keep most of my clients, my experience is that they have three or four cognitive distortions that are like two and there are themes within the thinking errors that help me understand why they react in a certain way to certain events and a very interpersonal process. , we can go back and see where they learned. and then we can talk about whether everything they learned in the past still applies, so cognitive distortions can take a thought and manipulate it to change people's expectations about a situation or to fit it into their current mental space in general, so when people think all-or-nothing, you know they take an event and it's all or nothing, this person never does it or always does it, and in general it's not good for them to use the terms, so we want to encourage people to look for exceptions, cognitive distortions, as they say here, also help people or influence people by encouraging them to look selectively and notice things that might fit into their current mental space, so that if they are in a bad mood they will notice the negative things.

I mean, think about it, it's easy to fall into this trap when you wake up in the morning and it's a little gloomy and it's raining outside and you know you have a meeting you don't want to go to, so you're not in a good mood to get up, you notice. how good breakfast tastes and you think about all the exciting things, and whatever you know, the fact that you're not going to water your garden, or you're focused on a mess, I'm going to drive, people drive like idiots when it rains a lot. Sometimes we focus on the things we can.

With our state of mind, it's just human nature because we're aware, we can stop and we can say, you know there's not a lot of challenging things and I wish it would rain, but I'll force myself. Try to take the middle road, focus on the fact that I have a job, and yes, this meeting is not the most pleasant, but I will get through it and find optimistic ways to avoid the rain and all right, maybe people will drive like this. idiots, so maybe you want to take the back roads to get to work today so you don't have to drive on the highway, but it's a little more dangerous, but concentrate and stay and think about things, find your solutions and try to Focus on at least some positive irrational thoughts which we will talk more about next week about our beliefs or thoughts you may have, what about the generally extreme ones?

I always have to have everyone's love and approval, so this usually involves some kind of cognitive distortion, many times everything Arnon thinks tends to be unrealistic. SiC, is it realistic to think that you will always have everyone's love and approval? Not everyone will like you, so it's helpful to figure out how you're going to handle it and help clients realize how unrealistic certain thoughts are; Sometimes when I work with teenagers or people who seem to resist this concept, I can ask them: you know, tell me someone you really admire to tell me someone you favor, and then I ask them: are there people who don't like them? and luckily you know that so far I haven't been able to confirm if everyone likes them in general, even if you know Tom Cruise or whoever the popular person is, if there is someone who doesn't agree with that, then we can talk about that person is super talented, super popular and all these things apply to them, but there are still people who don't do what they want, so it's too late to be a person and irrational thoughts create feelings of failure. , insufficiency and lack of power, if you yourself are setting this barrier that no one can overcome, you know that no one likes everyone all the time, so you are setting yourself up depression, anxiety and frustration.

The causes of thinking errors can also be information processing shortcuts that we use. schemes when we interpret things so that when something happens we look back with our memories ago something like this I lived it before what can I interpret it, instead of starting from the jump to know what is happening here, it is certain: it is dangerous, the Example that I always give because I talk a lot with my hands, my Garmin thinks I run three miles every time I learn. because I move my hands and it just comes from the environment that I grew up in and you know whatever, but I'm a very demonstrative person and I tend to talk loudly, and that's just how I am when you're raised in an environment, especially one of the characteristics of domestic violence which can be intimidating to see or perceive, especially if you can't hear what I say, you can only hear that I speak loudly and use big gestures, some people may get scared because it is being processed. of information shortcut would be incorrect because they interpret something in the present that is based on a previous experience and the two are not the same.

Can we help people overcome that mental noise? My son bless him, he is a teenager and I am. I guess part of us is just a teenager, but I'll talk to him and he'll just go on a rant about something else, he was thinking about something else while I was talking, I was talking and his mind is constantly everywhere. and part of what he has: his mind works much faster, so he gets bored with what I can say quickly. He shares what he is just a teenager, but help PEO quiet the mental noise so they can focus on what is being said and listen to everything instead of just. the first part or little impression here and there, so they can understand the whole situation of what's going on, you can see it if you've been in a meeting and you're falling asleep, you're half paying attention and suddenly you hear something about budget cuts and suddenly you're paying attention, now the mental noise is just starting and now you're not sure you have to play catch up to figure out what they're talking about and how it applies to you; we also have thinking errors caused by the limited information processing capacity of the brain and you like that we have a big brain, yes we do, but a two year old child does not have the experience or the ability to process information of the same So a 22-year-old doesn't, so the things you learned as a child may not be accurate now or even useful when you were a child.

It is very important to listen to your parents, and you know that when you are 22 years old. You depend on yourself to survive, that in theory you know that you live alone, so it is less important that you can buy food. basic needs if you want the same experience it's good to respect your parents and yadda-yadda-yadda with respect, of course, you know, usually that's what we want to strive for, but not all families work, so they are families really dysfunctional, sometimes the adult, the A 22-year-old, who is not dependent on mom and dad to change diapers and feed them, can set some boundaries and say: you know what is important to me during a crisis.

You can't process information as well, so it's important to write things down for people who are in crisis, and that doesn't just mean crime victims, but someone who's been fired from their job and who's been in a car accident. some time ago. the diagnosis of some kind of long-term illness, not necessarily even terminal, something that will leave you stumped if you avoid hearing and receiving all that information and therefore it is important for people to help process things throughout the process. like with the example of someone getting a diagnosis of a long term illness, they will listen to it and probably set it to zero and not listen to 60% of what is said after that.

It is important that someone is there with them. or have the provider write it down to make sure they understand it well, yes, that's the diagnosis, but those are our options, and those are the emotional causes of the treatment plan. Thought errors. I feel bad, so it must be bad. I hate my job, so I must. Maybe it's a terrible place to work, but maybe you have other things going on. I'm scared, so it must be a scary event. It's one that when I work with the client. If you are afraid of flying, you know exactly what we are talking about, emotional.

Reasoning, look at the facts and see if it is the fact that you are afraid, let's see if it supports the fact that it is a terrifying experience. We talk about emotions in advance and where they come from. Not only am I going to go into things that don't make sense, but at a certain point we can begin to explore the basis of the gap towards your emotional reaction, the moral causes of thinking errors. Sometimes you can convince yourself that it was the right thing to do, or that it was wrong to judge yourself and other people based on your moral reasoning and social causes, everyone does it that way, or no one does it, if you think that because you see something stuck on the social media or seemingly stuck on the internet 24/7 and you think everyone thinks the same thing, or you don't see something you like, no one thinks about it and you want to investigate, because it may not be the case. a girl getting a girl, and it's what you see, you've talked to people, or you've gone to your local community and done your research, you know everyone does it, no one does what the data we use says like this.

We reason a lot when we talk to young people about preventing drug abuse and sexual practices, so what is the impact of thinking errors? And I mentioned that before, it causes fight or flight most of the time, so when we do what we compensate our HPA axis we secrete a lot of cortisol and we create a cascade of excitatory responses we prepare to survive it makes sense yes there is most of the survival time. I would say we just spit out 85 percent of the time we make threats or We perceive threats when there aren't any, or there aren't any that are really worth our energy, but thinking errors cause depression, anxiety, emotional distress,

behavioral

withdrawal.

Some people try to escape using addictions because they think the mistakes are so ingrained that they see the world as a terribly hostile and welcoming place, and they don't feel hopeless and unable to change anything if their stress response kicks in and they don't get any sleep either, and youyou will feel very tired, which will change your sleep patterns, which can cause your ability to lose quality sleep, because if you don't sleep and maintain your circadian rhythms, you also eat hormones, but also some Eating just because of physical stress, we know That there are a lot of stress-related illnesses.

It is, but even if you don't have a stress-related illness, a lot of tension, you may have more headaches, back pain, stomach pain, gastrointestinal disorders, things like that, and socially, you may not have the energy or desire to do so. interacts with people, so you can put yourself in the position of someone who due to many cognitive distortions, you can see how it affects every aspect of their lives, thinking errors and interventions in emotional reason, feelings are not facts, you know that your Feelings are your feelings, and it comes from a place where your brain is telling you there could be a threat.

I hear you, let's find out if there are people who teach people to effectively identify feelings and separate the facts so that the person says I you are afraid of flying, then we know why you are afraid, what is the evidence that you are in danger when you rise in the air, do you know that many times people only have memories of what they have seen on television, and that heuristic that is important but does not happen often, only after 9/11 do you know that a big event is still very scary for you, you know if you were safe or not, and you ask the person who is the proof that it is so.

Is it dangerous and how is it similar to other situations you've been in? fly or do something scary, give me another situation that was like that and how you handled it because most of the time people were afraid of various things, you know, it's not just about flying, so we'll talk about other situations that they've dealt with with anxiety, which will give us an

understanding

and remind you of your strengths in how to deal with fear more effectively, and we can start talking about it and if you can't think of anything, go away. go back to a less intense emotion, like well, when you're scared, what do you do when you're worried about something, what do you do that makes you feel less worried, you know, I don't want to keep quiet about it.

No? Circle the things that strengthen you. I want to know what helps because most people and you know, I'm sure there are people who don't do it, but everyone I've come across so far has always had one or two things that they can do and that they can help. they feel a little less stress because it's not always the healthiest thing, but we try to start from there and work forward, you know, some people smoke a cigarette, some people exercise, some people drink, some people start there to find out. what they did before to know what to do, encourage them to develop distress tolerance skills, but a different presentation, but recognize that fear and the need to escape like a wave comes and usually leaves in about 20 minutes if they can handle it.

It gives them things to not focus on their anguish about my clients with airplanes, that's when they have to fly. I encourage you to make a game. They remember when you used to fly and not fly, but you would drive with your parents and take long trips and you would watch. billboards and you'll find things but something that starts with the letter A and then B and C and D or something with certain colors or whatever; We always play these crazy games when driving in a car to keep ourselves busy when we are bored, but you can use the same type of mind games and pranks to stay focused and not focus on your anxiety, the other one.

What you can do is know how to practice mindfulness. Identify four things you can hear or see. Three things you can see. Listen to two things you can smell. A thing you can touch. The other is to use guided imagery. Encourage them to focus on wherever they are happy. What does it smell like, what does the sun feel like, what does the temperature feel like? Show yada-yada so they can distract their brains if they want until the need passes and they may need to use it a few times depending on if they know if they hit turbulence, I know when I fly.

I'm especially afraid of flying, but when I encounter turbulence, I say a few greetings and it's just an automatic response, and then I stay on the ground again, and I encourage people to develop emotional regulation skills and prevent as much distress as possible. by preparing ahead of time if you know you have to fly, what you can do to get a good rest, what you can do to reduce the chance of you reacting with strong emotions, and this is a completely different presentation that we have videos on. on our youtube channel youtube.com cuts all CEU teachings and you can also google basic skills in dialectical behavior

therapy

cognitive bias negativity mental filter all together if you focus on the negative and worry about the future, cognitive bias means focus on things and always interpret things in a negative or positive way, and a negative cognitive bias is usually what our clients experience; otherwise they don't feel depressed or anxious, but this mental filter also encourages you to only see and focus on the negative aspects of something, so the questions you can ask people, the advantage is to focus on the negative, which are the positive aspects of this situation, and they can look at you like you have three heads, and it can take some You know, to get something positive out of a given situation, if someone gets fired, it's not a happy experience, so what positive can we find in this situation?

Then you have the opportunity to get another job, so we want to see what happened. , which lit the fire and helps the person learn from the situation, so maybe in the next job it might work a little better, and we want you to look at all the facts that you know, because sometimes someone will come to you and I was fired for no reason and there was no warning, no I know what you know and I'm not going to tell anyone, but there's going to be a process of verbal reprimands unless you're on probation so we can get started.

Speaking, tell me a little bit more about what was going on and how it happened and what reason you gave so I can start to get an idea of ​​which ones were more factual and you know what we can come up with. from this other activity, which I do completely different from the questions, it is a coin activity if someone is negative, but I want you to experience a week in the morning, you wake up and throw a coin if it lands on your head. You have to act like you're the most optimistic person in the world and put on rose-colored glasses and act as if and then on the days that you end up in a cross, you know that you can be normal, and in the end, you can fill out a journal every day if You want to write a journal to describe what your day was like when you were negative and positive.

Have people interacted with them? How was your day? It would be a little exhausting to be happy all day if that's not their normal mode, so I don't expect them to go, it was the best thing in the world. world, but I want you to start and realize that things can go a little easier, and I also want you to see that you were optimistic in the days when you were optimistic, but that you were actually able to find the good things, so that Next time week we can go more dialectic and walk the middle path, so when you have a negative source, I want you to think of a corresponding positive thought to balance it and reduce the positive.

A large part of our clients know what they are saying. Wow, congratulations on your promotion and it was no big task, no big task to achieve that goal, anyone can do it. Many times they don't feel good about themselves because they always minimize their own achievements. They spend a month sober. That satisfaction can diminish. and it was only a month or so when I was here before you knew it, I was just waiting for the other shoe to drop. I ask them questions like, would you reduce this if it were your best friend's experience or your child's experience?

If only they got this award now. , it would be like if someone could do that, just leave it on the shelf, probably not, so encourage more people to be kind and compassionate to themselves and treat themselves like they would treat other people, which is important for us to talk about which is scary to accept. Positive if I accept that I got a really good job and it's "a great experience, it's intimidating, you know people expect things now, and if you're confused, you know people can judge you, all those things are true, but can you do it?" ?

We handle it many times, then we let it spend a lot of time thinking about what's scary about success because success is often like climbing to the top of the mountain and then looking over the edge fear of heights absolutely fear of heights like that that I don't look to the limit and I can understand​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​How someone you know likes someone coming out of a depression if they are in a bipolar episode especially, but if they are coming out of a deep depression, the most dangerous period for them is when They start to feel better and they start to accept that things are better and they are happy again because they are like shit, I don't know if I can get out of this, I don't know if I can take the blame, so we talk about how to avoid what What if you know you have failed or have started to get depressed again, what steps will you take?

Sometimes we disqualify the positive because it doesn't meet someone else's standards, so ask the person you can't. I know when I have my grade. Good luck. You're not a real doctor. It's true, but a PhD is a great achievement. Sorry, sometimes the people you think you need approval for may not give you the approval that is important to you. So encourage people to give positive results. Feeding themselves and being proud of their achievements despite other people's judgments is very important to help them accept themselves, and they know again that they move away from that fear, and then because they know that they are smart enough and that People like me remember. the availability of the heuristics that are most important to you. like I said about the plane crash, when a plane crashes, we always hear that when a plane doesn't crash, we don't hear that there are about 20,000 flights in the US every day, but not one, but every now and then one wants and that's what we hear so we focus on that and we consider it dangerous so ask people what the facts are.

It is a very dangerous thing to fly in the air at 30,000 feet above the ground, what are the real facts about it? and you know there are other things that you do driving on the road that are also more dangerous or dangerous, and I don't always share the part because I use, I don't want them to be afraid of driving except flying, but we look at facts about whatever the prominent fear is, egocentrism, my perspective is the only perspective so what I see is what happened and I don't care what you say, you don't necessarily know what happened and if you were a parent you know that's true because you can go in and out.

I can't believe you did that but you don't realize until you have something else in the other kid that was just as bad so figure it all out and see the The whole picture is really important and don't get stuck on things. I see it happening and that's just the way it is, but it's a blast when you go to a grocery store and you run into a cashier who is horribly unpleasant and you know. Before this I was a cashier, a challenging job. I loved it but you can meet some challenging people so thank you in terms of being okay this person is really unpleasant but it's about me.

Do you know my initial? Maybe you really are. It's rude to me, but if I go back to other perspectives, you know what happened differently, and if you phrase it differently to this person, what I'm reading are just adaptations and rude thoughts. There are some alternative explanations for the event that did not involve you. I put it on the same page because it is very related if you think about yourself, again you should know that the cashier maybe had to be very rude to the customers, maybe they had to get off three hours ago and their replacement doesn't show up, so they have to mandatory overtime there are a lot of things that could have happened, maybe their dog just died, I don't know, but I don't know what's going on in someone else's head so I have to assume or choose to do so 99% of the time . that it's not about me, you know I checked myself, and I felt like okay, I know I do know, if nothing is clear, I guess it's something else, it could be happening with them, how often? it's really about you, so encourage people to think about how many times someone was in a bad mood or in a bad mood or passed you in the hallway and didn't say hello, how many times it was a chip against you versus they were on the - la land or something else that happened and you know they were in a bad mood before they even realized you were there, magnifying, asking people, you confuse high and low probability results if someone says it's the worst thing ever the times, how much will it matter? six months?

We know that sometimes they fight over the cover of theodorless, but for removing the toothpaste cap or for not putting the dishes in the dishwasher. If you live at home with someone, there may be arguments, arguments at work, arguments in other places, but many times the things we go through can bother us more than necessary because we have other vulnerabilities. If you continue here with the tension we have accumulated, we don't sleep enough; We haven't eaten for 12 hours, there could be many reasons for it, but you can cheer yourself up if you start to feel upset, think about what you want to do in six months and you're worth my energy, it's kind of like what I'm at at the end because it can It may matter a little in six months, but is it worth investing a lot of energy in now or is it something you just have to let develop now. , what have you done in the past to tolerate events like this, politely ask someone to change the situation or do you know how you handled other situations where you didn't have to, don't you think?

The worst thing in the world that is just going to ruin and ruin your day, similar to magnification, is all or nothing, so I let people see things like love and hate, perfection and failure, mostly good or well-intentioned, they know that people are not. completely p mostly inherit or fail that people don't have all good or bad intentions, sometimes they may have all good intentions for a particular episode or event, but I think most of us are guilty of not necessarily always doing next, so encourage people to look for exceptions in love versus hate I love this person this week next week I hate this person I never want to see them again What exceptions are there?

What do you like about her? What do you think about hate? Behavior towards people we also look at you know imperfection versus failure because a lot of people fall into this if I'm not perfect and I'm a total failure. Do you hold other people to the standard and what they have for things? What you've done has been really fantastic and you encourage people to focus on the things they can control, remembering the highlights. We already talked about the available availability of a heuristic belief in a just world or a fallacy of justice that identifies good people who If bad things had happened, you know.

I encourage people to realize that sometimes you can be good, you can be doing all the right things, and something bad is going to happen if you think that if you do the right thing, you're always going to keep going. to have a good life and everything will always be fine, you know, hearing that word always, which is where another cognitive error bleeds, it's important for them to understand that sometimes they think life just isn't fair, so how do you deal with that? ? accepting the fact that life is not fair helps from a young age helps people deal with it when something happens that is unfair and they don't go oh my god I didn't expect that to happen they can go okay yeah mom always she told me life isn't fair since she told me to go up and clean my room anyway attribution errors labeling yourself is not a behavior and many of us and many of our clients tend to do this like im stupid versus I don't have Good math skills kill, so global attributions are things that apply to the whole person.

Single agency that is the worst agency of all time. By comparison, that agency has some really bad managers, but it has really good line staff who encourage people to be specific about the things they have problems with. with themselves, with other people, that person who lives across the street is totally crazy and unreasonable about what you know, if they are totally crazy and unreasonable all the time about everything and to your face, that's fine, but most of the time that's not going to work. This can happen, so it could be a certain thing that the person across the street is completely crazy when my dog ​​goes and uses the bathroom in our yard or something that encourages them to be more specific in the barn, it means that It is something that cannot be changed at all. so you know I'm stupid means I am and always will be versus you know I'm ignorant of this particular skill, but I can learn it so you know I can learn to do math.

I had to learn to do math again because it was my son's. I exceeded my math skills and internally it's about me as a person versus a skill or skill deficit one of the common things we use to give an example of this is if you see someone walking down the street and they trip and fall, do you say ? who is a total clumsy or do you initially believe that person must have lost their balance because they tripped on something on the concrete when you trip it is a single event it is on the concrete it is external it is not that the person's clumsiness is that they tripped or they were not paying attention attention because they were playing on their phone versus they are a total and complete clumsy one can be changed one is more lasting, so questions for clients encourage them to understand that beliefs are the combination of thoughts and facts plus their interpretation of reality more the interpretation produces what we come to believe so we ask what the facts are for and against my belief and you can do this with positive things it usually doesn't require it but you can do it so you can start If your group is somewhat resistant to doing some of these activities, you can start with positive things, but whatever works, what it is, what are the facts for and against, my belief is a belief based on facts or feelings, so we have already identified the facts for and against, now we can look at this belief and we are looking at these lists of facts for and against and if the beliefs are the facts then the belief is probably based on facts if the belief is not fits the facts then we could take a good look at what is based on feelings so we can begin to explore it, does it focus on one aspect or the entire situation?

You know, there's usually a lot going on. If someone gets into a car accident, they often focus on the person in front of them who got into it. They braked too quickly or, you know, they turned without signaling or they did what they did, they focused on one aspect of the situation rather than what other drivers were doing, what else was going on, what they were doing to paint the overall context, does it seem like belief? use any thinking errors and we just went over a bunch of them, all or nothing, thinking about magnification and selective attention, paying attention to things that fit your hypothesis, what are some alternative explanations for what might have happened, already You know if you've been in a car accident you were rear-ended, you might think that person wasn't paying attention, that's right, or maybe they were paying attention and it had just started raining, it hadn't rained in a while and it was very slippery. and not calculating the distance to stop in enough time happened frequently in Florida, so thinking about alternative explanations can help people examine their beliefs.

It may not change them, but it helps them have some alternative thoughts. What would you say to your son? best friend, if you had this belief, what would you want someone to tell you about this belief and how does this belief lead you towards what and who is important to you or away from what or who is important to you? So get them to really examine whether I hold on to this belief that I'm useless. Okay, is it based on facts or feelings? Does it focus on one aspect or the entire situation? Are you useless all the time to everyone?

And in general, well, I don't think I would ever ask anyone that question. I would directly ask them how you are useful to people and I hope to have some information in advance, such as knowing that they are parents and that they work and yada yada no, we could start to examine some errors in thinking that could lead them to think that they are totally useless and so on as we work on these questions, then, cognitive distortions, personalizing mind reading, all or nothing thinking, catastrophizing, making mountains out of moles, over generalization, taking a thing that happens and expecting it to happen in all situations.

Every time I see someone who fits this description, I expect them to act this particular way if I have to do this, but you know, and the heuristic of recency or availability, all of this can influence our fears of rejection, isolation, unknown loss. of control and failure when you personalize something negative if you think it's all about me and I'm the worst person in the world, why should anyone like you? and if you feel that you are not lovable, that you are not likeable, then you may feel isolated. and depressed, so you know you can see how those things work together, what do we do?

The abcdes you probably learned as the ABC and we just added. We keep adding letters. The triggering event is what happened that you fought with. your partner the consequences you got angry you were devastated you ran out and slept at your best friend's house overnight okay, meanwhile there were those automatic beliefs so what are the obvious beliefs you had? the first things you can recite the part that your partner didn't love you and had no respect for you, then whatever it is, then we want to see the negative self-talk and the past tapes and the things that you also tell yourself about If you were unlovable and if you deserved to be treated like that we go back and question the irrational thoughts we look at the beliefs we identify any cognitive distortions any irrational thoughts and we dispute them there will be some that will remain, you know, maybe your partner was completely insensitive, okay? ?

Well, we can't take that away if that's what happened, so we evaluate whether the most productive outcome is to stay angry, is it worth my energy, or is there a different way to approach this. Is there anything else I can do? How can I best use my energy to cope? with this situation if it's worth my energy or let it go if it's not worth my energy maybe you got into this big fight because your roommate forgot to clean the litter box you know what happened is it worth your energy to get fired? educate yourself about it coping skills distract not react encourage people to find a way and sometimes I call this practice pausing to take a breath and distract yourself for a minute until you can get into your mind wise until that adrenaline rush goes away and they can think clearly, speak to identify cognitive distortions, and find the middle path.

Sometimes you're not going to talk to the person you're angry with. Sometimes you can talk to your dog because you know what Freud used to remember. he talks to himself and figures out his own things, but a lot of times you can get a lot of information from journaling or talking. If you're an extrovert, you'll probably talk. If you're an introvert, you can write anything. works for you take it out so you can evaluate it and find the middle path you know the good and bad in it encourage clients to engage in impulse surfing and remind them that their fight or flight impulses will dissipate if they don't keep feeding it makes clients Identify what you tell yourself about an impulse that makes it harder to cope, whether you want to self-harm, put your fist through a wall or another person's face, or want to scream and scream. to someone and really put them in their place, those are all impulses, so what do they tell themselves about those impulses that makes it harder not to engage with that impulse?

Help them develop a list of empowering self-statements to constructively challenge anything that makes coping difficult. with that drive, anything that helps you will make you feel better, so some of these statements you can use are: What is the evidence that I have to put my fist through the wall? What is the evidence that yelling that this person is going to do something? good to encourage them to give themselves a little space and some compassion recognizing that that person is human they have the right to make mistakes or if they are angry with themselves you are human you have the right to make mistakes and you have a direct access to your feelings, another empowering internal dialogue is: I can do this, I can get through this, this urge will pass, whatever gets you through that 20 to 30 minute period where you can still feel that urge, distressing thoughts worksheet we already did.

Through a group activity, ask them to list the thinking errors and you can do it. You know that I preferred to put up flipchart sheets in the room and divide my large group of 8 to 12 people or whatever into smaller groups of 2 to 4 and have them go to the different stations where after we have already defined discuss the spanking mistakes and how they protected it until now, we could ask them to move to overgeneralization and say, let's talk about this, how they have protected it until now and they can list different ways, for example, if they were victims when they were younger than anyone else person, that reminded them that perhaps someone who is later generous, somehow acted to protect them without other information,it just served as a big general barrier, so encourage them to see how this has worked for you and you know it may not be working very well, but at one point it served a purpose, a lot of times it's a kind of survival, a protection issue, identifies thinking errors that you can currently eliminate.

Anna counters the mantra, so I need to be loved by everyone all the time or I'm the worst, most useless person in the world or I'll never be happy. Those are all cognitive distortions, extreme thinking, so what kind of countermantras can they counteract? Can we help them? find what kind of positive self-talk when they tell themselves, what they can respond with, help them identify thinking errors they are still holding on to and why, and start addressing them, so that if there are some things like I will never be able to being happy or everyone is always fine, if someone is determined to hold on to that, you know they can't see any alternative explanation, so let's see what function it serves, how it is protected, what it does for you and how it helps you.

Or how can we begin to approach it by remembering that thought patterns are usually learned over a long period of time and are purposeful and generally more beneficial than the alternative? For example, if someone suffered emotional abuse as a child, they may have developed serious authority issues in the present, you know that they will not lose their power again, come hell or high water, so we can understand from an interpersonal perspective how that could have been developed and how could it have been beneficial at a certain point in their lives in so that they feel like they are taking back power.

Is it functional now? If they are working with us it is probably not the case, what is a more effective response? a change in Outlook. I mean looking at how this thought pattern is now destructive and how alternative thought patterns can now be more helpful in helping people figure out how they can deal with authority figures and helping them see how their verbal and non-verbal behavior can It can be discouraging if they think that people who are an authority are always going to do them wrong, cognitively. Behavioral

therapy

is a technique that helps people understand how their thoughts create feelings and vice versa, we help them identify and address negative self-talk, and you know, in negative self-talk I put those all-or-all cognitive distortions of thinking. nothing, negative thoughts that feed By seeing the consequences, past problems and events do not need to continue to negatively impact the person.

They can choose to walk the middle path. They can choose to deal with it. You can choose to incorporate it into your life. If someone was victimized when in the past you know, I'm not going to say well that's done, that doesn't impact you anymore, yes it does, it's something that happened and something that will affect your hands forever, you can choose whether it affects you negatively and it keeps you stuck and depressed and feeling broken or if you use it as a source of strength to see what you've overcome and use it to maybe help other people or you know find some positive uses for it, but you don't.

I don't need to continue to impact you negatively and tear you down thinking that mistakes are learned and can be unlearned now as children, as I said, children in the preoperational stage in concrete thinking, they can't think abstractly, so they can't see. alternative possibilities is kind of what's in front of their faces, this is when they generally think in terms of all or nothing, so unless we as adults help them challenge that thinking pattern as they grow, many times everything but Most rudimentary things, like math skills, go unquestioned, so we have cognitive distortions that persist into later life.

These thought patterns can help form and maintain a negative or vulnerable self-image, and healthy thought patterns can help people feel more empowered and worthy of love. It also helps them be more able to feel compassion toward other people if they don't imagine that everyone else always wants to hurt them, hurt them, or take advantage of them, so before we get to the question part, if you need to go, take whatever quiz you can. feel. free to go ahead and do it. I want to remind you that we have the Nashville Counseling Unconference coming up in February on February 23-25.

There will be up to 20 CEUs available. The entire conference will cost $99 with advance registration. It will open in October 2017 and we currently have the call for papers open to recruit a variety of presenters. We are really looking for students who have at least a master's degree and maybe not yet licensed and people who are working in the field and want to share their knowledge and experience, this is not a sponsored conference. I'm going to pause this for a second so I don't cough in your ear, sorry, okay, are there any questions you know? Feel free to type them in the chat window. and I can see what I can do to address them.

What experience do you have with your clients and cognitive distortions? One thing I like about doing CBT and DBT techniques in a group is that they are very suited to group activities and are so suitable for group discussion. It is not as abstract as other things we might talk about and can really help people. to grab a particular tool, even if they only identify with a cognitive distortion, they can leave the group that day and be fine, I see. How I might think a lot in terms of all or nothing, so from now on when you hear me say that I'm always using an extreme word, I'm going to use a different one, it's a simple change, but it may help people start to think. feel a little a little better and with a little more power to change what is happening and what you feel in your own head.

Okay, it doesn't seem like everyone has any questions. Well, wait a minute. Yes. Diary work is amazing for thinking mistakes and if someone I don't like journaling I know I'm not very good at journaling like handwritten prose, if you can give them question and answer sheets. I have a checklist of cognitive distortions that I have people go through and ask them if they have an unpleasant thought or if they are in a really bad place. I have them just go through and try to fill in examples of thoughts that they have that fit the current cognitive distortions, but yeah, having people write it down, bring it to light, and become aware of their thinking patterns are amazing, like that.

I'm going to do another presentation or a presentation on aging issues, so that's great. The presentation is in your classroom. It's in a PDF that you can download if you're looking to publish it. check to see if it's a future reference or whatever you miss, Sandy. I think you were talking about putting the journal worksheet on the website and yes, I can do that. I'll put it in additional resources. I understand what you were asking now and yes, it's Thursday. Today Tuesday I thought it was Thursday I guess I was getting ahead of myself so it's Thursday everyone have an amazing long weekend try to enjoy it stay safe whatever you do and I'll see you on Tuesday welcome to this week's book review every week I'll review a book that I think would be useful for the general public or for doctors.

I never get paid to do reviews; however, in some cases I may receive a small commission if you purchase the item which helps defray the cost of our podcast and provide free educational videos, the cost to you remains the same, today we are going to talk about self-esteem and this is the fourth edition. In fact, I started using this book when it was in the third edition. and I loved it. It is a very complete guide to help people improve their self-esteem. In the book you will learn to discover and analyze negative self-statements, so by talking about that internal criticism, create new, more objective and positive self-statements.

Avoid critical and self-attacking thoughts and act according to what matters most to you, so the book is 300-odd pages and goes on for a while, but what it does is guide you step by step to understand what self-esteem is because it is It's one of those terms we talk about, but we may not really know what it is and why simply telling yourself you're fine may not work well. The key is that you have to believe it, so he starts talking about why people don't. If you don't think they're okay, even if they tell themselves they are, then he introduces you to the pathological critic and encourages you to explore why you listen to him and learn how to disarm him.

From that point, he goes on to create a balanced self-description. accept the weaknesses and embrace the strengths, recognize that we are not perfect but that no one is perfect, so embrace yourself and value yourself as you are, from there it goes on to identify and combat the cognitive distortions that make you feel bad because many times when we start When we look at our weaknesses we magnify them and when we look at our strengths we minimize them and that makes us feel bad about ourselves, which is why McKay goes into great detail about how to combat some of those cognitive or thinking errors.

Encourages you to explore your thoughts on Compassion and developing self-compassion One of the reasons why many people have difficulty developing self-esteem and being kind to themselves is because at some point they were taught that having compassion for themselves or being kind It can be seen as weakness, failure or something negative. So it really challenges you to look at your beliefs about self-compassion and self-acceptance. Explore how to reframe mistakes and embrace pfal skill because, again, even though we know we have strengths and weaknesses, we're also going to make mistakes. accept them and learn from them and not turn them into something huge but accept that we all make mistakes, then talk about what to do with the constructive and destructive criticism that you sometimes receive on a daily basis to help you respond in a meaningful way and it basically boils down to a Lots of techniques that will help you learn to take what is useful and leave the rest accepting that sometimes criticism is not so much about you but about that other person's things and then ends up helping you clarify what you want and need and use your skills to meet those needs more effectively, creating win-win situations and learning how to communicate assertively with the people who are important to you.

This book is written in very simple language with practical tools, which is something I love. About it, you can read three or four pages, get something really useful and insightful and work with it for a while, then come back the next day or the next week and read another three or four pages so that it can be really useful for self-help or as a tool to guide individual or group therapy sessions visual learning clients like to have it as a reference to review marks and bring it back for discussion in the next session, so many times when I do self-esteem groups, I have each client get a copy of this book, we go through it page by page, activity by activity, we do them sometimes in class, sometimes it's homework and then we talk about what they learned and then they can come back and review during the week between sessions what we talked about and get those visual cues that help them remember important skills.

I hope you enjoyed this book review and feel free to log in. Your Self-Esteem by Matthew McKay has a Google preview so you can read a little more about what's in it. Check it out and see if it resonates with you as a good tool for self-improvement. If you enjoy this podcast, please like and subscribe either in your podcast player or on YouTube. You can attend and participate in our live webinars with dr. Snipes subscribing to all CEUs comm slash counselor toolkits, this episode is brought to you in part by all CEUs com, providing 24/7 multimedia continuing education and pre-certification training for counselors, therapists and nurses since 2006.

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