Using Cognitive Restructuring to Reduce Negative Thoughts

What is cognitive restructuring?

Cognitive restructuring is a concept from psychotherapy. With cognitive restructuring, you learn to deal with negative thinking and turn it into positive thinking.

This psychological process is often used as a tool by therapists. The reason is that many of our problems are caused by incorrect thinking. Cognitive restructuring is designed to help people reduce their stress by encouraging positive thoughts.

Although it may seem difficult to change the way you think, you can train it just like any other skill. With lots of practice, it will become easier and easier to change your own negative thoughts to positive ones.

How does cognitive restructuring help?

Cognitive restructuring is a part of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). CBT is based on the idea that the way we think affects how we feel. CBT is a useful tool that can help with all kinds of problems. It does not matter whether these problems are related to external factors or internal problems.

CBT consists of dozens of techniques and exercises to challenge your negative and irrational thoughts. By practicing these techniques, you learn to stop automatically relying on this faulty way of thinking. In fact, these negative thoughts are not representative of reality.

Cognitive Restructuring Techniques

Remember that cognitive restructuring refers to the process of challenging your thoughts. Thus, it is not a stand-alone technique. There are several techniques you can use to turn your negative thoughts into positive ones.

The first step to reducing your negative thoughts is to be aware of your negative thoughts. Do you notice that you are in a negative mood? Ask yourself, "What thoughts brought me to this moment?"

It takes time and effort to increase awareness of your thoughts. This is because it is not natural to dwell on your feelings and thoughts during intense negative emotion.

You can think of these situations in which you experience intense negative emotions as "alarming" situations. Examples of these types of situations are:

• On a day when everything is against you, the manager at your work asks if you can have a conversation soon about how you work. The way the manager asks you this immediately evokes fear. You are afraid that you have done something wrong or that you have not done your job well enough.
• You are home alone one night and you feel so lonely that it triggers depressive thoughts and feelings.
• There is a deadline for a big presentation at work and you put it off until the last minute. You are afraid of failing.

Think about the above situations and consider whether there are similar "alarming" situations in your own life. Are there situations that have a major and negative impact on how you feel?

It is helpful to have a list of alarming situations before you begin cognitive restructuring techniques. Try to describe the situations in as much detail as possible for yourself.

1. Socratic questioning

Socrates was a Greek philosopher who used questioning to explore complex ideas and discover assumptions. This philosophy is now used to challenge irrational thoughts.

Once you know which thought you want to challenge, this technique is quite simple. Challenge the thought by asking the following questions:

• Is this thought realistic?
• Am I basing this thought on facts or feelings?
• What is the evidence for this thought?
• Can I misinterpret the evidence?
• Do I see this situation as black and white, when it is actually more complicated?
• Do I have this thought out of habit or do facts support it?

Socratic questioning asks you to think deeply about your thoughts. By analyzing your thoughts and assessing them for truth, you can turn irrational and negative thoughts into rational and positive ones.

2. Decatastrophize

Often erroneous thoughts are an exaggerated representation of reality. You may have experienced it yourself at one time or another, such as before a first date. Negative thoughts race through your head because you are afraid that something will go wrong or that the other person will not like you. You assume in this moment the most unpleasant or serious thing that could happen in a situation.

In this cognitive technique, you ask very simple questions, "What if?" or "What is the worst that could happen?" These questions aim to reduce irrational anxiety.

In the case of the date, a negative thought might be: "I worry that my date won't like my appearance or that I will make a fool of myself because of nerves." You then ask yourself, "What if this happens?" To which you will answer that there probably won't be a second date then. Then ask yourself, "What if there won't be a second date?" Then nothing bad will happen. You may not see the person again, but nothing disastrous happens.

This technique is sometimes called the "what if" technique because of the way it is asked.

3. Lawyer of your own thoughts

This cognitive restructuring technique works when you have a recurring irrational or negative thought that you want to challenge. In this exercise, you "play" advocate of your own thoughts.

Choose which thought you want to challenge and then go over the following points:

• Situation: What happened?
• Thoughts: What thought(s) does this situation evoke?
• Emotion: What emotion(s) does this situation evoke?
• Behavior: How do I act after this situation?
• Alternative thought: With what realistic thought can I replace this irrational or negative thought?

For the example about the date, this will look like this:

• Situation: A first date.
• Thoughts: The other person will not find me attractive and I am afraid I will make a fool of myself because of my nerves.
• Emotion: Scared.
• Behavior: Cancels the date at the last minute because of anxiety and nerves.
• Alternate thought: The other person must be interested in me, otherwise they wouldn't ask me on a date. It is normal to experience tension before a first date, but once we have met, the tension is bound to loosen up.

By writing down specific situations, you learn to look at a situation in a different way. In this way you can challenge thoughts and break thought patterns.