Metacognitive & CBT Tools to Address Anxiety & Depression

Hi, everybody, and welcome to this presentation on metacognitive strategies for happiness. Metacognition is a little bit different than regular cognition, hence the different word. But what we're really doing, instead of looking at specifically what we're thinking, we're looking at the type of thoughts that we're having. So instead of looking at the specific content of thoughts, we're looking to see if thoughts fall into certain categories like overgeneralized or negative or anxious. People with mental health issues often process information differently, and they may focus their thoughts and have a lot of thoughts that tend to be over generalized, thinking that all things always happen or nothing good ever happens. They may focus only on the negative instead of seeing both the positive and negative in situations, or recognize that this aspect of my life may not be going great, but these other, other aspects are going really well. People who are depressed, anxious, angry, often only focus on the negative. Another thinking style that they often employ is personalization. They take other people's reactions and events that happen as having to do with them. So if somebody walks by them and gives them a dirty look in the hallway, they may think, oh my gosh, I wonder why Sally's mad at me. Instead of thinking, I wonder why Sally's having a bad day that has nothing to do with me. Or if they are going through a checkout line and the cashier is in a really bad mood, they may think, oh, that person was so mean to me, they must dislike me for some reason, instead of thinking, gee, I wonder what's going on in that person's life that had them in such a dark space. Today, we want to help people examine their thinking processes and figure out if they're using strategies and thinking strategies that are helpful or thinking strategies that are maintaining their distress and their upsetness. Often, thinking patterns that maintain our distress are only based on a negative reality and don't consider the entire picture. And we really want people to be able to take a step back and recognize that, okay, this may be going bad or this may have happened, but what else? An example. If you're presenting at a meeting, most people are listening, but one person is sitting there playing on their phone. This happens in just about every meeting, every class, you know, wherever I've been. What is your thought process? If you're focusing on the negative and overgeneralizing, you might think nobody was paying attention. My presentation must have been boring and they think I'm stupid. Stupid. The consequence to having these thoughts is that I feel stupid and I may be afraid to present again Because I think they don't want to hear from me. The next question is, is this thought pattern justified or helpful? Is thinking this way helping me in my job? Since clearly I was presenting for a reason? And the answer is no, you know, and it's also not valid when all the evidence is considered. What would be a more helpful thought pattern to recognize the positive and the negative? There was this one person that wasn't paying attention, but there were 29 other people who were. So most people seem to be paying attention. Not everybody will like my ideas, and that's just reality. But that doesn't mean that they're stupid or wrong. It just means my ideas are different than some other people in the audience. What's the consequence of this thought pattern? Well, when I think this way, when I recognize that, okay, I walk out of a presentation and I say, most people paid attention, they seem to be following along. Not everybody seemed to agree, but that's okay. How do I feel? Well, I tend to feel like I did a good job. I tend to feel like it's a good thing, and I feel more positive, and I don't feel anxious and hopeless. Another example, you're depressed after getting a divorce. You may focus on the uncontrollability of things, focusing on all of the aspects of being in relationships that are not controllable or predictable. And that is really scary. When you start thinking about being vulnerable, recognizing that it can go south. People can cheat, people can lie, bad things can happen. You know, if you want to focus on all those uncontrollable things, then you can. But is that helping you feel more confident, or is that contributing to your misery? Rumination on all the things that went wrong in the relationship and how all relationships end badly, end quote. Nobody can be trusted. That's that overgeneralization again. Well, when I think that all relationships go bad and nobody can be trusted, then I don't want to engage with anybody else. I want to stay in my house and stay by myself because, you know, all other people are threatening. That, again, contributes to my misery and unhappiness. When I'm evaluating for threat, I may be constantly on alert for signs of relationship problems in any relationship that I'm in, friendship, romantic or otherwise. So I may be constantly looking at that person for microaggressions or for small indications that they may be bored. Or if they look at somebody who walks by, I may be on alert and think, oh, that means they're cheating all of those things. I'm mind reading when I'm doing that. When I'm constantly being on alert for signs of relationship problems, I'm assuming that I know what the other person is thinking and I'm assuming that my interpretation of every event is accurate, that it indicates that the relationship is having problems. My partner or my date or whoever it is may have looked at somebody that walked by because they had toilet paper sticking to the bottom of their shoe. It may not have had to do with anything even remotely related to our relationship. It may have had to do with that person and the toilet paper. Unhelpful coping strategies in this sort of situation I'm depressed after getting divorced. So when I get into new relationships to prevent it from happening again, I may try to control that person. I may nag at them to make sure they do everything the way I want them to do. I may spy on them to make sure that they are not cheating, to make sure that they're not talking to anybody else. Is this helpful? Well, no. There's a really strong chance. I won't say all the time, but there is a really strong chance if you engage, no matter who you are, if you engage in these types of behaviors in relationships, that the other person is actually going as a result, going to become unhappy. So the result of these unhelpful coping strategies is actually creating a self fulfilling prophecy and creating problems in relationships. When we talk about uncontrollability in relationships and all those aspects that you can't control, asking the person or asking yourself in what ways is this thought pattern helpful? Focusing on all the things that I can't do a dagum thing about, probably not super helpful because I can't do a dagum thing about them. What would be a more helpful thought pattern? Well, focusing on aspects of relationships that are controllable, like my reaction to people and whether I spend time nurturing relationships and, you know, what I do in relationships and identifying aspects about reactions to scary thoughts that are controllable. So when I have a scary thought that this person is going to leave me or if this person leaves me, I couldn't survive. Identifying aspects to those reactions that I can control. I can choose to keep having that thought and perseverating on it, or I can choose to think something else and developing a plan for handling those scary thoughts that is empowering and developing strategies that I have confidence will help me feel better is going to help me start addressing those types of thoughts. Rumination on all the things that went wrong in the relationship can be addressed by encouraging people to look at the evidence for Their belief that nobody is trustworthy and relationships are dangerous. Show me the evidence. Yes. In this particular relationship, maybe this person wasn't trustworthy, and this relationship caused me some pain because it ended. Let's look at other relationships that I've had. And is anybody else in my life, Is there anybody else that's trustworthy? Are all relationships dangerous? And looking at not just romantic relationships, but looking at friendships, other family members, relationships with children, those sorts of things. We want to help people examine the evidence for and against their overgeneralized beliefs. What would a more helpful thought pattern be? Instead of thinking all relationships end badly and nobody can be trusted, thinking this relationship ended badly and maybe this person can't be trusted, and learning from what happened in that particular situation if other relationships have ended badly, looking at similarities between those relationships and going, okay, well, I can see that there are some common themes here that maybe I need to look out for. But relationships that I have with other people that don't share those themes, like alcoholism, may be healthy and may not have these same characteristics. So maybe one of the things I need to learn is, is that getting in a relationship with people who have active addictions tends to end badly. And those people, generally, when they're in active addiction, cannot be trusted. That's very different than all relationships end badly and nobody can be trusted. After a divorce, people are also, often, when they get into new relationships, constantly being alert for signs of relationship problems. In what ways is this pattern helpful? Well, you can find indications that there are problems in the relationship if you look hard enough because you can interpret things to fit your beliefs. Instead of looking at something objectively, you're going, I am looking for evidence that this person is cheating. So I am going to find evidence that. That this person is cheating. Instead of looking for evidence that things are going well and finding evidence that things are going well. Another example, June is a teacher. Last semester, 40 of her students gave her fours and fives on her evaluation, out of five. So that's good. That's awesome. Three of her students gave her ones on her evaluation. June focuses on the three negative reviews instead of the 40 positive reviews. Sounds a lot like the first scenario that we talked about. June begins ruminating, thinking that she's a bad teacher, questioning her knowledge, questioning whether she should even be in the classroom. These thoughts make her anxious about teaching the next semester. She just doesn't even want to go into the classroom. Now. When she goes in to teach the next class, all she notices are the students who are distracted sleeping or have Unhappy expressions on their faces. She's teaching at 7:30 in the morning. Let's say, you know, there's going to be a lot of students who may love her, but just not be happy to be up at 7:30 in the morning. Since she's not noticing the reactions of the rest of the students, only the ones that are unhappy, she begins to believe that she is a bad teacher and that quote, everyone hates her and loses her confidence. So you can see how our interpretation of things and our what we pay attention to can go a long way toward affecting our reactions and how we feel about life and what's going on. New strategies to address these thinking challenges. Become aware of your thinking patterns, including focusing on the negative and ignoring the positive. If you notice that something's going on and you check your thoughts and you're like, okay, the last five thoughts I had were negative. That's what we call a clue that you might be also ignoring the positive. So intentionally turning your attention to focus not only on the negative. I'm not saying you have to ignore the negative. I'm just saying also make sure that you're forcing yourself to also identify the positive, also identify what's safe in that situation. Ruminating on the negative. If you notice that after something happens, that something unpleasant, you tend to think about it and think about it and continue to think about it and flip it over and over and over in your head. Being aware of those thinking patterns and developing strategies to stop those thoughts and using the acronym accepts or improves, which are common in dialectical behavior therapy, can help you get out of that ruminating mind, that emotional mind, and, and calm down. It helps you turn your attention to something else besides those thoughts. It says, okay, I'm just going to take those thoughts and I'm going to leave them on the shelf for a few minutes while I engage in some other activities. Or I do something to contribute to society or to help a friend, or I do something that makes me happy, or I engage in actively thinking about something positive. Or I use my senses, like my sense of smell, in order to trigger happy memories and help distract myself for a few minutes so my adrenaline can calm down and I can get into that wise mind, that logical mind, where I can think a little bit more clearly. A lot of times once you let that HPA axis, that threat response system cool off a little bit, the ruminations will stop. The ruminations are only active when you are anxious or angry. Kind of like popcorn, you know, as soon as you turn off the burner, the popcorn stops popping. Paying excessive attention to threats or waiting for the other shoe to drop is another thinking pattern that contributes to a lot of people being anxious or feeling helpless a lot of the time. Reminding yourself to pay attention to the safe aspects of the situation and instead of expecting if something good happens, the other shoe is going to drop, or if something bad happens, something else bad is going to happen. Focusing on being mindful in the moment of what's going right and whatever's going to happen in the future you have no control over. You can't plan or expect the future, so focus and revel in the moment. Identify the consequences of your unhelpful thinking patterns on your ability to be happy and have the things and people in your life that are important to you. Explore competing thought patterns and strategies what else could I think? Or what else could I think about or how else could I approach this that would make me feel empowered and courageous and happy versus powerless and depressed and anxious? And monitor the effectiveness of the strategies you choose on your ability to be happy and have the things and people in your life that are important to you.