Quickstart Guide to Cognitive Restructuring with Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes | Mental Health Month 2020

Hey there, everybody. I'd like to welcome you to this 10 minute quick start guide to Cognitive Restructuring. This is another one of our short videos that we're doing in honor of mental Health Month 2020. Cognitive restructuring literally means changing your thoughts. If you are thinking of something as the worst thought thing ever, cognitive restructuring would help you see it as maybe the most exciting challenge ever. Cognitive restructuring can also help you look at the good parts. For example, when it's raining outside, I can see that as, you know, a bummer. And I can get all poochy about it because I'm going to have a bad hair day. I can't go running. You know, there's things that are going to be irritating about it or. But I could also choose to see the positives that God is washing my car for me. I'm not going to have to water my garden because, you know, it's happening already and it's going to keep, potentially keep it cooler outside. So there are things that I can look for in. Instead of focusing on the negative, I can change my approach and sort of force myself to look at the positives of the situation. And COVID 19, you know, that's another one that people can really stay focused on the negative and panicked and all that kind of stuff. Or we can change our thoughts. We can view this as an opportunity to maybe embrace some new changes that are better for the earth. You know, remote working is reducing smog. It's reducing how much we're driving. It is forcing businesses to look at the potential for letting their employees work from home. You know, so there's a lot of benefits there. It is allowing some families to spend more time together. That could be a good or a bad, depending on the family. But there are some positives that are coming out of quarantine. You know, I, I hate to say it, but I am looking at, you know, some of the long term. In the short term, it's really frustrating. We're gonna, we' to change what we're doing, which, you know, y' all know that I like my routine and I like my structure. So this has been challenging for me. But instead of seeing it as, you know, an horrible, awful thing, for example, that my gym was closed for almost two months, instead I used that time, I said, okay, well, I can't do that. So staying all pooched up about it isn't going to do me any good. So instead I'm going to use that energy that I would have used at the gym to, you know, increase the size of My garden to mop the floor a little bit more often, to wash the walls, which I've been putting off doing for a year and a half now. I found a lot of things to do with that energy. Cognitive restructuring can mean seeing things that are barriers or obstacles or, you know, problems, seeing them as challenges, seeing failures as learning opportunities. There are a lot of quotes that you can find online. If you look for quotes about failure that can help you change the way you view something. Instead of seeing it as a devastation, seeing it as an opportunity, instead of seeing yourself as a victim and seeing yourself as a courageous survivor. Another aspect of cognitive restructuring includes unhooking. And unhooking is really very simple. When we say I am something or I have to have something, then we are connected to it. I have to have that. When we put the phrase in front of whatever it is that I am having, the thought that I have to have this, well, I can change my thoughts, you know, if I'm thinking I have to have that feels like it's imperative to my well being. If I say I, I'm having the thought that I have to have this, then I can evaluate whether that thought is accurate or not. When for example, somebody's trying to quit smoking, you know, they may think to themselves, I have to have a cigarette. If instead they say I am having the thought that I have to have a cigarette, then they can, they're distancing themselves and they're putting this idea out there as a thought and deciding whether they want to attach to it or let that thought just float on by. Thoughts don't stay with us very long. Most of us have had occasions where we have, you know, gotten up to do something, walked into the kitchen and before we even got there, we, we forgot what we were going in there for. That's an example of a thought just kind of going right by. If we don't hook onto those thoughts and hold on to them, then they are going to float on by. We need to unhook from things. When we feed thoughts, when we keep perseverating, all we're doing is hooking on to them. So unhook from those thoughts. Another cognitive restructuring tool is doing a cost benefit benefit analysis. What is the cost to me holding on to these negative thoughts, to these distressful thoughts, versus the benefit of me holding on to these distressful thoughts? What is the cost to me of continuing to be angry? It's going to cost me energy, it's going to reduce my immunity, it's going to make my Sleep worse. It's going to make me a grumpy Gus, which is probably not going to go well. And in my relationships, it's going to negatively affect my relationships. Let's look at the benefit to me staying angry. Well, if I stay angry, then potentially I won't be surprised by whatever it is again. And you know, it protects me to a certain extent. But is the cost worth the benefit? Another way I encourage people to look at anger, for example, as well what it is when I am angry, I am giving somebody else my power, I am giving them my energy. I am using my energy to stay angry at them when it's not affecting them at all. So what is the benefit to me staying angry at somebody? Does it really impact them that much? Does it get me anything? Cost versus benefit. What's the benefit of holding on to the distressful thoughts? Most of the time there are very few benefits to holding on to them. And there are a lot more physical, emotional and interpersonal costs. Another thing you can do in cognitive restructuring is just dispute those thoughts. Dispute those thoughts using the facts. For example, if you think that if you go to the grocery store that you are most certainly going to get COVID 19 and die, well, it's possible. But is it likely? If you are washing your hands, if you are in a low risk category, if you are wearing a mask, how likely is it that if you go to the grocery store and follow social distancing and all those protocols, how likely is it that you are going to get sick? What are the facts? Is it potentially scary for you? Maybe I am not denying the fact that some people are terrified to go outside, but it's important to look at the facts supporting whether it is really that dangerous to start resuming your normal life assuming you're using appropriate precautions. Another way you can dispute things is look at alternate explanations. Maybe Sally doesn't call you this evening and she was supposed to, so you start thinking, well, Sally must be mad at me. Or maybe Sally got into a car accident, is dead somewhere in a ditch or, or whatever. Well, you know, those are possibilities. What are some alternate explanations that are not quite so distressful? Maybe Sally's phone went dead. Maybe Sally got called into work or got busy. Maybe Sally just forgot it happens. Looking for alternate, less stressful explanations to examine all the possibilities. It doesn't mean they're going to be right, but it's important to recognize that our brain usually goes to the most dire consequences, the worst possible scenario. And it's important for us to pick our head up and look and say, what are other possible explanations for why this might have happened? Another way of disputing stressful thoughts is to look for exceptions. And we'll go back to COVID 19 right now, since that is so timely. What are the exceptions? You know, if you think that if I go outside, it, it is dangerous, it's dangerous for me to go in public right now because I'm going to get sick and then I'm going to die. Okay, let's look at the exceptions. How many people have gotten sick and not died? And how many people have gone out in public even without a mask and not gotten sick? You know, there are a lot more people out there who have not gotten sick. And you know, think about your average flu season, or let's think about a bad flu season like the one that we had in 2018 when like 85,000 people died of the flu. That was kind of a scary flu season. And I'll admit I altered my behavior a little bit. We didn't go out in public quite as much. But looking at the exceptions, yes, 85,000 ish people died that year from the flu, and that is devastating. However, how many people in the United States, number one, didn't get the flu and continued to go about their daily life, and number two, did get the flu and recovered just fine. So looking for exceptions to that thought that if I go out, I'm going to get sick and I'm going to die. Looking for exceptions that may dispute that, looking for exceptions in daily life. Like if I say, you know, my dog wakes me up every single night, he is such a pain in the butt. Okay, well, I can get frustrated and, you know, irritable with my dog about that. Or I can look for exceptions and I can think, all right, when has he slept with me and not awakened me? And there are a lot of times when he has done that and then I say, okay, what was different about those times? Oh, hey, I let him go outside at 9 o' clock before we went to sleep. So looking for exceptions can also help you find ways to, to address the current issue. Same thing with depression. When, if somebody thinks, you know, I feel like I'm always depressed. Well, let's look for exceptions to when you're depressed because you're not always most people, it's rare. I have yet to find anyone in 20 years of counseling to find anyone who is always 100% of the time depressed. They may be in a period, you know, in a depressive episode where they're depressed. You know most of the time that they're conscious, but there are times prior to this current episode where they weren't depressed. So again, what was different? What is different when they're not depressed? What are they doing differently? And what changed that may have prompted this depression to kick in? And how can we alter that situation to get back to the environment and, and a situation where they weren't as depressed? And finally, alternate perspectives. Sometimes we need to get out of our own head. And if we think something is the worst thing ever, we want to step out of our own head and say, how would my best friend describe this situation? What solutions might my best friend offer that helps us again, unhook from those thoughts, unhook from those emotions a little bit, and, and be that objective fly on the wall that can help us restructure the way we think about something. Even though if we're in our own head, it feels like a catastrophe. If we can step out of our own head, we may be able to see it with clearer eyes and make more objective, mindful decisions. Another technique is evaluating probabilities. Could something happen? Certainly there is always the chance that something could happen. My best friend, when he retired from the army, you know, he was sure that he wasn't going to find another job and he was going to be broke, he was going to end up homeless and a drug addict on the side of the street. And I'm like, okay, how did we get there? Let's evaluate the probability that that's going to happen. You've got 100% retirement from the military. So given that, what is the probability that you are going to ever end up homeless? And, you know, we actually were able to stop right there. Was it the lifestyle he necessarily wanted to live? No. But the chances that he was going to end up homeless and a drug addict living under a bridge, you know, we were able to put that to bed pretty quickly. Focus on what you can change some things. And we'll go back to COVID 19. We can't change that right now. It's here, it's with us. You know, we can't change that. We can't make it go away. What can we do? We can focus on our behaviors. We can practice social distancing. We can wash our hands. We can do those things. We can focus on our emotional reactions to it. We can either feed the fear and stir up the terror and just keep perseverating on the negative aspects and the dangerous aspects, or we can use some of those other tools that we talked about a minute ago in order to help us feel a little bit more calmer, a little bit more secure, a little bit more like survivors, like, we are going to come out of this and we are going to be victorious. Another aspect of cognitive restructuring is sometimes just having distress tolerant thoughts, recognizing that pain and distress is part of life. It happens. So what we can do is recognize that with distress, we often tell ourselves, I, I can't stand feeling this way or I'm not, I feel like I'm losing my mind. Talking back to those thoughts and developing distress tolerant thoughts such as, this is difficult, but I've gotten through worse, or this is challenging, but I am determined to get through to the other side. All of those are, you know, distress tolerant thoughts. I remember when I was having my daughter, there was one point where I was telling the midwife, you know, I can't do this, this hurts too much, I cannot do this. And she looked at me and she said, well, it's too late and yes you can. And so I just kept telling myself, okay, I can do this, it'll be over in a minute. And you know, I got through it. Finally, ask yourself what you would tell somebody else if they were going through a similar situation or, or having similar thoughts or fears and they came to you and they said, you know, I'm really, I'm struggling with this, I'm really angry about this, yada yada. What would you tell them, for example, if they came to you and said nobody would want to be in a relationship with me because I am too broken? Well, that is one thing that you can say, let's take a look at that. And what would you, if your best friend came to you and said that would, what would you say to them? And then tell yourself those same exact things. Sometimes you just need to step out of yourself and get a more objective look on at what's going on. I hope those tips helped a little bit and I will be back in a couple of weeks.