How To Challenge Self Defeating Thoughts

This is a follow up to a previous video on identifying your self-defeating thoughts. You can watch that video here:

Challenging your thoughts is called cognitive restructuring and is a technique used in cognitive behavior therapy. You can do this on your own, but of course it works better when you have a therapist guiding you and helping you work through it. Today’s technique involves using a thought record. I have a free worksheet that you can download to use for this. You can download it by clicking the image below

You challenge your thoughts in two stages, the first is to recognize the thought and record it. The second is to challenge the thought. 

Stage one

So how do you recognize an automatic thought? Start with when you notice feeling low or some other negative emotion like anger. Take a minute to ask yourself what was going through my mind just then? Then you pull out your thought record and you write down the situation, the emotions and body sensations you experienced and the actual thoughts you had.

Another way to know this is when you notice a shift in your emotions.  That shift is a sign that you may have interpreted something based on distorted thoughts.

Here’s how you do it. For the situation, you want to put the date and time. Then think about who you were with, what were you doing or where you were. Jot down what was happening just before you noticed the shift in your emotions.

You may not have time to write an essay, but even being able to capture a few details can help you fill this in more later.

Next you want to describe your emotions and body sensations.

What did you actually feel? You can usually write an emotion in one word like angry, humiliated, empty. 

If you have trouble recognizing your emotions, you can use emotions cards to identify your emotions. You can get these cards as a download entering your name and email address below and I will send them to you.

Next you want to rate the strength of the emotion from 0 – 100% And this number is your own estimation, just so that you have a way to quantify your feelings. Last thing is to record what you felt. Did you feel a lump in your throat, head pain or butterflies in your stomach?

Then for the third column on the worksheet, you want to record the thoughts or images that went through your mind just before you had the change in how you were feeling. Questions you can ask yourself to get to this are what were you saying to yourself? How did that situation affect your present or future? Was it threating to you in some way? 

Once you record your thought, rate how much you believe the thought on a 0 – 100 scale. Zero means you don’t really believe it at all – even though the thought popped into your mind and 100 is you completely believe it.

This is a lot of information to take down and it takes practice to be able to observe yourself like this. It’s not realistic that you can get down every thought and you don’t want to try for that. But the more you do it, the more automatic it can become. Also, since you’re trying to catch the thoughts as they happen, you may not be able to write all of this out at first. But you can jot down a few basic facts then fill in the rest at a later time.

Then on to stage 2 – challenging your thoughts. There are a few ways to do this. The one I’m going to talk about one in this video is putting your emotions on trial.

With this approach, you take one of the thoughts from your thought record and run it through a trial. The defense will argue that the thought is true and the prosecution argues that the thought is false. You will argue as both the defense and prosecution and then you will act as the judge to make the final decision.

Start with the negative thought you had. If it’s a question like why am I such a failure. Turn it into a statement – I am a failure. If it’s an image in your head like the image of you losing your job. Turn the image into a thought by answering the question – what does this image say about me? Maybe it says your boss has it out for you. That becomes your thought to challenge.

Then for the defense argument, write down the evidence that the thought is true. Don’t censor this. Just write down everything you can think of that proves what you think is true.

Next you write down that evidence that the thought is false. You want to think about reasons why what you think may not apply 100% of the time. To figure this out you can ask yourself these questions.

Are there things about the situation that you didn’t consider that affect how you think about it?

What would you say to a friend who told you they thought this?

Has there ever been a time where this wasn’t true? If so, what made it untrue?

Next you present your case to the jury. It works best if you read it aloud. Things sound differently when they are said aloud than they do only in your head. Read the defense argument first, then read the prosecution’s argument.

Now you reach a verdict. You can say, given all of the evidence, here is the fairest way to sum up the situation. You’re looking for way to balance both sides.  It the evidence clear and convincing for one side over the other?

How would you rewrite the thought that allows you take other possibilities into consideration? Now reflect on your new thought. How different is it from the original thought? Can you recognize what kind automatic thought you had? 

Recognizing what kind of automatic thought you had is another way to approach restructuring your thoughts. You don’t have to label your thoughts for this exercise, but if you’re able to recognize what kind of cognitive distortion it is, it can help you be more aware of how you think so you can break the pattern of responding automatically.