The first step toward fixing faulty thinking is to identify your faulty thinking. Luckily, although cognitive distortions are stubborn and surprisingly insidious thought patterns, there are ways to combat them! Cognitive restructuring techniques have had great success in identifying, challenging, and replacing faulty ways of thinking with more accurate, helpful, and positive ways of thinking. To learn more about how CBT uses cognitive restructuring techniques, watch this video of CBT founding father Aaron Beck discussing this method.Ĭognitive Restructuring Techniques: Socratic Questioning, Guided Imagery, and More Applied correctly, it will help the client learn to stop automatically trusting his or her thoughts as representative of reality and begin testing his or her thoughts for accuracy (Mills, Reiss, & Dombeck, 2008). This method of addressing problems and promoting healing makes up the bulk of CBT sessions and offers dozens of techniques and exercises that can be applied to nearly any client scenario. CBT practitioners quickly found that it was an adaptable and flexible tool that could help a wide range of people dealing with all kinds of problems, whether the problems were due to outside factors, internal issues, or both. It is easy to see the logic behind this idea, and the implications of faulty ways of thinking.Ĭognitive restructuring was first developed as a therapeutic tool of CBT and Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy, or REBT (Mills, Reiss, & Dombeck, 2008). What Role Does CR Play in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?Ĭognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, is built on the idea that the way we think affects the way we feel. Cognitive restructuring aims to help people reduce their stress through cultivating more positive and functional thought habits (Mills, Reiss, & Dombeck, 2008).Īlthough it may seem overwhelmingly difficult to change your own ways of thinking, it is actually comparable to any other skill – it is hard when you first begin, but with practice, you will find it easier and easier to challenge your own negative thoughts and beliefs. It is a staple of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and a frequently used tool in a therapist’s toolbox because many of our problems are caused by faulty ways of thinking about ourselves and the world around us. What Is Cognitive Restructuring or Cognitive Reframing? A DefinitionĬognitive restructuring, or cognitive reframing, is a therapeutic process that helps the client discover, challenge, and modify or replace their negative, irrational thoughts (or cognitive distortions Clark, 2013). 9 Cognitive Restructuring Worksheets (PDF).Cognitive Restructuring Techniques: Socratic Questioning, Guided Imagery, and More.Magnification, Overgeneralization, and Other Cognitive Distortions.What Role Does CR Play in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?.What Is Cognitive Restructuring or Cognitive Reframing? A Definition.These science-based exercises will provide you with a detailed insight into Positive CBT and will give you the tools to apply it in your therapy or coaching. Read on to learn about cognitive restructuring and how it can help you improve your thinking.īefore you read on, we thought you might like to download our three Positive CBT Exercises for free. We do not always come up with the best and most effective methods for solving problems, but these methods can get saved to our subconscious anyway.įortunately, all hope is not lost if you have internalized a faulty perspective! There is an effective, evidence-backed process of reframing or restructuring these faulty ways of thinking that can help you right the biased, skewed, or just plain inaccurate beliefs you hold. The issue with these schemas is that they are not always accurate. Without them, we would have to approach every problem as a brand new one, with no pre-existing experiences, problem-solving techniques, or lessons learned to draw from. It’s in our nature to come up with schemas, or thought patterns and assumptions, about how things work. I’m going to assume you answered affirmatively since you’re human! (If you’re not a human, feel free to skip this piece.) Do you ever find yourself following a certain train of thought, without consciously deciding to go down that path, that takes you to a sad or upsetting conclusion?
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