Cognitive Behavioral Tools

in this part of the workshop we several cognitive I'm going to share a variety of information with you four things to think about practicing later and throughout your life these tools do take a lot of practice and patience and in my hope is to give you exposure to them so that you can find ways on your own to continue to practice them and we're going to start with some tools related to thoughts so one tool when it comes to thoughts is to be able to objectively observe your thoughts so this is a challenging skill at times and so if you imagine if you take a minute to there's different ways that people like to do this but imagining thoughts and seeing your thoughts like leaves passing on a river or for some people they like to see them on a conveyor belt passing by and so taking a moment even in this moment to close your eyes and try to notice what are some of the things that you tell yourself and noticing some of your thoughts not trying to judge them just that they are and being able to be the observer of your thoughts maybe you notice thoughts about your to-do list or your mind kind of goes to a variety of places including thoughts maybe you have images of things that kind of pop in your head and you working on being the observer of those thoughts and go ahead and bring your focus back to the room so that's a pretty challenging skill and to develop that you might want to take a meditation class or mindfulness meditation there are different ways to work on developing our ability to observe our thoughts another thing about thoughts is we want to be able to remember that thoughts aren't facts we can have all sorts of thoughts now I might drive by a bank and think well what do we like to rob that bank doesn't mean I'm going to do it maybe six months ago I saw a movie where someone robbed a bank that looked just like that Bank and so that thought popped in my head so we could have all sorts of thoughts pop in our head I don't have control over who knocks at the door but I do have control over how long I entertain them you know so how much time I spend with that thought and really putting energy into that thought I do have some control over that but we can have all sorts of thoughts that pop in our head I could think oh right now you're all judging me no and it may not be a fact and so we can just have thoughts pop in our head all the time and it's important to remember that they're not facts another thing about thoughts is we want to know how thoughts trigger feelings so when it comes to situations we often believe that the situation triggered the feeling that we have when actually the situation we interpret this situation and that interpretation often triggers the feeling that we have so an example of that would be I go to the store and I give the lady my money and she pushes the change at me and I think to myself what she thinks she's better than me what's her problem so that's the interpretation of her pushing the change at me what feeling might I feel from that interpretation maybe irritation or I don't know anger yeah so I might feel irritated or angry though if I give the lady my money and she pushes the change at me the exact same event the exact same way and I think to myself wow it's probably late in her shift she's probably tired what feeling might I feel sympathy yeah so I might have sympathy yeah I might thank oh boy I'm glad I don't have her job I might even smile at her oh and so the event didn't change it's the interpretation of the event that changes so part of it is noticing what our interpretations are and that they do trigger our feelings now it isn't that all our feelings are in our head now I give the lady the money and she slaps me and I get angry I didn't imagine that right lots of times life has painful moments but sometimes it is really our interpretation that is turning up the heat on that pain and kind of looking at how our interpretations trigger feelings so one way to practice this skill is being able to observe your feeling and then ask yourself what did I tell myself about that situation what is the interpretation in the middle that's triggering this feeling another skill is the skill of being able to shift perspectives oh when I think about shifting perspectives you know how interpretations trigger feelings even shifting a little thing like a word how if I say to myself I have to work I have to study I have to go to class I might feel a little trapped but if I say I choose to go to work because I like to have a roof over my head and food in the fridge no I choose to study because I like to get good grades I choose to go to class because I might learn something that's going to have a different impact on how we feel and so being able to shift perspectives a little bit when I think about shift perspectives I think of the old story of the blind men and the elephant so there's a very old story of several blind men describing an elephant and one is it the sight of the elephant going an elephant is like a wall that's what an elephants like and another is it the leg or none elephants like a tree that's what an elephants like and in other ones at the tail going an elephant is like a twig that's what an elephants like and another is at the nose when an elephant's like a snake that's when an elephants like and they're all arguing and arguing and in some ways they're right but when it comes to what an elephant is truly like they're all wrong because they're limited in their perspective and so thinking about that sometimes that we all come to a situation with a certain perspective certain life experience that maybe is limited and so the skill of being able to shift perspectives work ourselves around that elephant you know right now I'm telling myself this about this situation what's five other ways that I can look at it so that's a way to practice it asking yourself what are some other ways that I can look at this now in part one we talked about interpersonal stress being a stressor stress between relationships well that's also when I work with couples sometimes sometimes couples get stuck in their perspective so one is like at the side going it's a wall it's a while in the other ones it's a leg it's a tree it's a tree you know and and they sit there really stuck in their perspectives trying to convince each other of their perspective and not taking the time to be curious about the other person's perspective huh you're saying it feels like a tree okay tell me more about that what's that like for you and so trying to put ourselves in other people's shoes and communicating but when we get too stuck and trying to justify our perspective we miss out on learning from other people and putting ourselves in other people's shoes and getting the big picture so thinking about that sometimes another skill this is exposure some pretty challenging skills to master but being able to be aware of and shift negative critical emotional abuse of self-talk so most of us in this society if we talk to our friends the way that we talk to ourselves we wouldn't have any friends so being aware of our self-talk and the impact that that has because that's part of our perspective and the emotions that get triggered and so noticing some of those things how when we have a thought in a way it's like digging a groove in our brain so the neurons fire and the myelin sheath gets thicker every time we have a certain thought so if somebody whispers your name you really catch on to it because you've had the thought of your name a lot because you've heard it a lot No and so part of it is noticing if we have certain thoughts that aren't so helpful for us and then working on breaking that a little bit so an example would be I have dyslexia and growing up I was often teased and called stupid by my classmates and so I started telling myself that so having the thought I'm stupid was really strong in my brain and some therapists recommend using affirmations so saying maybe the opposite you know so noticing every time I said I'm stupid saying I'm smart I'm smart I'm smart now it isn't that I think I'm stupid or that I'm totally brilliant but by doing that it helps develop other connections in the brain so that you have more cognitive flexibility so when you notice that you have certain things that you tell yourself negative things you tell yourself out of habit saying the opposite even if you don't believe it sometimes can help you get there to have more diversity and how you think so that's one way to practice that another thing about being aware of negative critical emotionally abusive self-talk sometimes it's helpful to know where that's coming from you don't always have to know you can work on changing it without know but being able to label some things like maybe you've had someone in your past that was really critical or negative you know oh that's aunt Jun there she goes again now giving me a lecture and noticing when you're the one playing those tapes and maybe just labeling it nope Jun you don't get to go with me to this class I'm not taking you on this date and whatever that is being able to notice it and try to substitute different types of thinking or maybe just ignore her you know notice those negative thoughts and focus on something else not put energy into it but let it pass by by putting energy into other ways of thinking and another skill is noticing where your mind goes okay if you think about life on a timeline usually this moment is not so bad sometimes this moment can be pretty painful but usually it's not so bad what happens is that our attention leaves this moment quite a bit I mean even in the last five minutes most likely you have left the room enta ly a few times now maybe you've gone to the past or maybe you've gone to the future maybe you've gone to your to-do list and so bringing yourself back the skill of bringing yourself back to this present moment if I have a habit of going to the future and in this moment practicing anxiety maybe I go to the future and I worry about an upcoming event in this moment I'm just practicing being anxious so if I can catch myself from doing that and bring my focus back to this moment sometimes people go to the past and in this moment they practice feeling remorse or shame and they're just practicing feeling those painful feelings now so being able to notice and bring ourselves back now sometimes it is helpful to mentally go to the future if you are planning if I'm thinking about something and I'm planning for it what am I going to do and how am I going to do it and maybe I'm even practicing a little confidence that's helpful but if I'm just practicing worrying that's usually not very helpful the same thing with the past sometimes it's helpful to go in the past and say okay what did I learn from the situation so I don't do that again you know this reminds me of that what do I need to do different this time so if we're going to the past and we're learning then sometimes that's helpful but if we're just sitting there practicing painful emotions that's just usually not very helpful so it takes a lot of practice and patience though to bring yourself back to this moment just gently over and over again and another skill you know being effective in a moment part of being effective in the moment so making the most effective choices given the situation is that we have to accept reality so that is challenging in our society we often take a situation in which that it was different for example if I accept this is how the teacher teaches what do I need to do to do well in this class I might be able to come up with some ideas on how to effectively pass the class if I get wrapped up in well he should teach this way and what if he taught this way and I should have took this class three years ago and we get distracted and we try to make choices based on fantasy the what-ifs and the shoulds we're not going to make effective choices we're just wasting energy coming up with solutions to fantasy now acceptance of reality does not mean that you have to approve of it I don't have to say I don't have to convince myself I like the way the teacher teaches I just have to accept this is reality of what are my options I accept I don't like the way he teaches and what are my options this is how he can pass the class maybe I can drop the class and take it from a different teacher but unless I first accept reality I can't make effective choices oh so noticing if you you should and what ifs bring yourself back you know realize you're going on a tangent so what if this happens you know I should have done that and try to bring yourself back to reality to make effective choices so as you can see all of these skills are pretty challenging and they take some practice and patience but they do help a lot with emotion regulation and stress management so let's go a little bit to feelings so I just use the word emotion regulation so emotion regulation is our ability to use our emotions as a resource instead of being controlled by our emotions like a puppet on a string right so increasing our ability to use our emotions so that's a skill that we can develop that takes practice one of the things with that is being able to notice them notice our emotions without making them larger than they need to be or pushing them away sometimes people are in the habit of making them larger than they need to be so then they can finally notice them but noticing them at a manageable level if our emotions are too intense then it affects sometimes the way we perceive things maybe what we say what we hear and so having them at a manageable level noticing but don't automatically just push them away knowing that emotions are information so here's this emotion it's information and not fact and I have a few examples of that so thinking about fear fear is a signal that maybe I'm in danger now are you in danger every time you're afraid No so it's a signal that maybe I'm in danger but it's not a fact so we want to notice it say oh I'm feeling afraid am I in danger no I'm not okay guilt is a signal that maybe I've made a mistake it lets us know that maybe I've done something that is not consistent with the person I want to be but just because I feel guilty does not mean that I have made a mistake it's a signal to ask myself oh yeah yeah I did make a mistake I need to keep working on that you know but it's not a fact I was raised that you need to stay busy and so when I would relax sometimes I would feel guilty because I would call myself lazy so was it a mistake that I was relaxing well no I've learned over the years that it's really important to learn to take time to relax and so even though sometimes I feel guilty that doesn't mean I made a mistake it's a habit to feel guilty when I relax so then I relax anyway right so anger is the power to fight for a dignity it's the energy to set boundaries to say don't treat me like that but just because I'm feeling angry does not mean I'm being mistreated so if you think about all the emotions as information and kind of as a signal and then asking yourself what are you trying to tell me and then asking about what's happening a little bit but remember that emotions are not facts they're information another piece is remembering that emotions are something we have just like thoughts are something we have they're not who we are and so not labeling ourselves a specific emotion if I say I'm an anxious woman there's not a lot of room there for other feelings oh maybe I'm a person that sometimes gets anxious more than others but sometimes I get excited sometimes I get bored but there's room for other feelings there so we don't want to label ourselves a specific emotion we want to have the flexibility to have a variety of emotions and so there's something that we have they're not who we are and we talked about this a little bit in the visualization but you can actually notice and practice emotions that you want to feel more often in our society were in the habit of sometimes maybe remembering a painful event throughout our day and then at night thinking about that Andry triggering that painful emotion practicing that you know maybe it was only ten minutes that I felt really uncomfortable but then if I practice it it feels like hours and so the goal of being able to notice when we feel other emotions that we want to feel more often and holding on to that a little bit longer so whatever that motion is whether that's confidence the thing with anxiety sometimes too is it's not the event as much as our perceived ability to handle the event that makes us anxious and so if I work on being more confident there's less room for the anxiety so practicing things that make us feel confident make us feel capable maybe I feel anxious in this situation but then I go make sure that that day I do some that also makes me feel competent and capable and then the other goal of just being able to sit with some anxiety no not saying I should never be anxious being able to say there you are there's my anxiety okay you don't get to control my behavior but I notice you're there so the nice thing about anxiety is that sometimes when we're pushing ourselves to do something out of our comfort zone we get anxious isn't that great that you feel anxious sometimes because if you didn't then maybe you're not really pushing yourself very hard to try new things to grow so feeling a little anxious is okay maybe even something worth celebrating sometimes now on a little bit two behaviors so the skill of being able to choose your behaviors not just let the emotions choose but it is the skill to create a little bit a space between impulse and action so with most emotions they make us want to do something in creating a little bit of space so we can make an effective choice now one of the ways to practice is just notice when you have an urge to do something and pause for a minute and create some space I have an urge to text my friend you know whatever that is pause for a minute create a little space and make a choice it is a way to private practice so you can add some effective choices and not just react on your emotions and then another piece with behavior too is sometimes people sit around waiting there for their emotions to do their behaviors but we can actually choose behaviors that trigger emotions now if I waited to feel motivated to exercise I'd never exercise but about 20 minutes and exercise I start feeling motivated I exercise because it's consistent with the woman I want to be so choosing behaviors and those behaviors can sometimes trigger that the emotions that you want don't wait to feel motivated to study or motivated to go to class go anyway maybe while you're there curiosity can get triggered motivation can get triggered so by focusing on the behaviors sometimes the emotions that you want more in your life can get triggered another skill is to be able to take accountability so accountability is to look at our behavior and take responsibility for our part in things so being able to do that helps us see okay here's the behavior here's the consequences this is something that I can work on oh it's different than shame so shame if I take accountability and say oh I made a mistake this is how I change it shame in a way it's like saying I am a mistake bad girl bad boy you know I am bad well if I do that then it's really hard to look at my behavior no if I'm too busy beating myself up then it's hard to say this is what I did and this is how I can do it different next time and so accountability can be really empowering because we can actually work on changing our behavior and develop more competence that we can affect in a life in the way that we want so but we want to decrease the habit of shame so don't call yourself names and say that you're bad focus on what did I do and why wasn't effective and what do I want to do next time other roadblocks to accountability or minimize denial and blame Hey so an example of that would be if there was a chair here and I pushed it over minimize would be oh I barely touched it no denial would be like what chair now blame would be stupid chair got my way No and so in life some of us are in the habit of these three things minimize denial and blame and that gets in the way of us taking accountability for our behavior and then working on making our life better and then the skill of choosing behaviors that are consistent with the person that we want to be so whatever it is that you do whatever that behavior is there's going to be somebody that agrees with it and somebody that disagrees with it whatever it is so you have to figure out what you value in what you believe in and choose behaviors that are consistent with the person that you want to be so putting it into that context and sometimes I like to think of it in a way if you imagine a mountain and in your journey you're kind of going around the mountain and your ideal self is at the top of the mountain and you need to notice when you're getting closer to your ideal self and when you're getting away from it with your behaviors so I value being healthy so if I maybe smoke maybe that gets me away from my ideal self and just having that compass am i getting closer or am I getting farther away you never get to your ideal self because that changes through this journey if you think about it what this looks like now is probably different than what it looked like five years ago so with life experience this changes so not thinking you're just going to run up to the mountain and be your ideal self but just having the ability to notice when you're doing things that get you closer and when you're doing things to get you away and then working on getting yourself back on track so so these are a variety of skills too and there's lots of different self-help books and workshops and I think there's probably even a podcast or the little games or different things that from your iPod I mean there's different things that you can use to kind of work on some of these skills and find ways to practice thank you

Channel: aggiementalhealth

Views: 699,340

Keywords: stress, anxiety, breathing, psychology, mental health, usu, aggies, cbt, cognitive, behavior

Id: IEsYiCDoJks

Length: 26min 30sec (1590 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 07 2013