Is the belief rigid? Consider whether your belief is flexible enough to allow you to adapt to reality. For example, the idea that you must get approval or that you need approval in order to think well of yourself, is overly rigid. It is entirely possible that you will fail to get approval from significant others at some stage in your life. Unless you have a flexible belief about getting approval, you're destined to think badly of yourself whenever approval isn't forthcoming. Replace the word must with prefer in this instance, and turn your demand for approval into a flexible preference for approval.
Is the belief extreme? Consider whether your unhelpful belief is extreme. For example, equating being disliked by one person with worthlessness is an extreme conclusion. It's rather like concluding that being late for one appointment means that you'll always be late for every appointment you have for the rest of your life. The conclusion that you draw from one or more experiences is far too extreme to accurately reflect reality.
Is the belief illogical? Consider whether your belief actually makes sense. You may want approval from your boss, but logically she doesn't have to approve of you. Not getting approval from someone significant doesn't logically lead to you being less worthy. Rather, not getting approval shows that you've failed to get approval on this occasion, from this specific person.
Is the belief unhelpful? Consider how your belief may or may not be helping you. For example, if you worry about whether your boss is approving of you, you'll probably be anxious at work much of the time. You may feel depressed if your boss treats you with indifference or visibly disapproves of your work. You're less likely to say no to unreasonable requests or to put your opinions forward. You may actually be less effective at work because you're so focused on making a good impression. You may even assume that your boss is disapproving of you when actually this isn't the case. So, is worrying about your boss's approval helpful? Clearly not!
Running through the preceding list of questions is definitely an exercise that involves putting pen to paper or fingertips to keyboard. Try to pick out your unhelpful beliefs and to formulate helpful alternatives, then generate as many watertight arguments against your old belief and in support of your new belief as you can. Try to fill up one side of A4 paper for each belief you target.
You can include in your portfolio evidence gathered from other CBT techniques you use to tackle your problems, such as ABC forms (Chapter 3) and behavioural experiments (Chapter 4). You can use any positive results observed from living according to new healthy beliefs as arguments to support the truth and benefits of these new beliefs.
Generating arguments to support your helpful alternative belief
The guidelines for generating sound arguments to support alternative, more helpful ways of thinking about yourself, other people and the world, are similar to those suggested in the preceding section, ‘Generating arguments against an unhelpful belief'.
On a sheet of paper, write down a helpful alternative belief that you want to use to replace a negative, unhealthy view you hold. For example, a helpful alternative belief regarding approval at work may be: ‘I want approval from significant others, such as my boss, but I don't need it. If I don't get approval, I still have worth as a person.'
Next, develop arguments to support your alternative belief. Ask yourself the following questions to ensure that your helpful alternative belief is strong and effective:
Is the belief true and consistent with reality? For example, you really can want approval and fail to get it sometimes. Just because you want something very much doesn't mean to say you'll get it. Lots of people don't get approval from their bosses, but it doesn't mean they're lesser people.
Is the belief flexible? Consider whether your belief allows you to adapt to reality. For example, the idea that you prefer to get approval but that it isn't a dire necessity for either survival or self-esteem, allows for the possibility of not getting approval from time to time. You don't have to form any extreme conclusions about your overall worth in the face of occasions of disapproval.
Is the belief balanced? Consider whether your helpful belief is balanced and non-extreme. For example, ‘Not being liked by my boss is unfortunate but it's not proof of whether I'm worthwhile as a person.' This balanced and flexible belief recognises that disapproval from your boss is undesirable and may mean that you need to reassess your work performance. However, this recognition doesn't hurl you into depression based on the unbalanced belief that you're unworthy for failing to please your boss on this occasion.
Is the belief logical and sensible? Show how your alternative belief follows logically from the facts, or from your preferences. It follows logically that your boss's disapproval about one aspect of your work is undesirable and may mean that you need to work harder or differently. It does not follow logically that because of her disapproval you're an overall bad or worthless person.
Is the belief helpful? When you accept that you want approval from your boss but that you don't have to get it, you can be less anxious about the possibility of incurring your boss's disapproval or failing to make a particular impression. You also stand a better chance of making a good impression at work when you prefer, but are not desperate for, approval. You can be more focused on the job that you're doing and less preoccupied by what your boss may be thinking about you.
Imagine you're about to go into court to present to the jury arguments in defence of your new belief. Develop as many good arguments that support your new belief as you can. Most people find that listing lots of ways in which the new belief is helpful makes the most impact. Try to generate enough arguments to fill one side of A4 paper for each individual belief.
Review your rational portfolio regularly, not just when your unhealthy belief is triggered. Doing so helps you reaffirm your commitment to thinking in healthy ways.
Understanding That Practice Makes Imperfect
Despite your best efforts, you may continue to think in rigid and extreme ways and experience unhealthy emotions from time to time. Why? Well, - oh yes, we say it again - you're only human.
Practising your new, healthy ways of thinking and putting them to regular use minimises your chances of relapse. However, you're never going to become a perfectly healthy thinker - humans seem to have a tendency to develop thinking errors and you need a high degree of diligence to resist unhelpful and unhealthy thinking.
Be wary of having a perfectionist attitude about your thinking. You're setting yourself up to fail if you expect that you can always be healthy in thought, emotion and behaviour. Give yourself permission to make mistakes with your new thinking, and use any setbacks as opportunities to discover more about your beliefs.
Dealing with your doubts and reservations
You must give full range to your scepticism when you're changing your beliefs. If you try to sweep your doubts under the carpet, those doubts can re-emerge when you least expect it - usually when you're in a stressful situation. Consider Sylvester's experience:
Sylvester, or Sly for short, believes that other people must like him and goes out of his way to put people at ease in social situations. Sly takes great care to never hurt anyone's feelings and puts pressure on himself to be a good host. Not surprisingly, Sly's often worn out by his efforts. Because Sly's work involves managing other staff, he also feels anxious much of the time. Sly also worries about confrontation and what his staff members think of him when he disciplines them.
After having some CBT, Sly concludes that his beliefs need to change if he's ever going to overcome his anxiety and feelings of panic at work. Sly formulates a healthy alternative belief: ‘I want to be liked by others, but I don't always have to be liked. Being disliked is tolerable and doesn't mean I'm an unlikeable person.'
Sly can see how this new belief makes good sense and can help him feel less anxious about confronting staff members or being not-so-super-entertaining in social situations. But deep inside, Sly feels stirrings of doubt. Still, Sly denies his reservations about the new belief
and ignores niggling uncertainty. One day, when Sly's confronting a staff member about persistent lateness, his underlying doubts rear up. Sly resorts to his old belief because he hasn't dealt with his doubts effectively. Sly ends up letting his worker off the hook and feeling angry with himself for not dealing with the matter properly.
Had Sly faced up to his misgivings about allowing himself to be disliked, he may have given himself a chance to resolve his feeling. Sly may then have been more prepared to deal with the stressful situation without resorting to his old belief and avoidant behaviour.
Zigging and zagging through the zigzag technique
Use the zigzag technique to strengthen your belief in a new, healthy alternative belief or attitude. The zigzag technique involves playing devil's advocate with yourself. The more you argue the case in favour of a healthy belief and challenge your own attacks on it, the more deeply you can come to believe in it. Figure 17-1 shows a completed zigzag form based on Sly's example.
Figure 17-1: Sly's completed zigzag form.
You can find a blank zigzag form in Appendix B. To go through the zigzag technique, do the following steps:
1. Write down in the top left-hand box of the zigzag form a belief that you want to strengthen.
On the form, rate how strongly you endorse this belief, from 0 to 100 per cent conviction.
Be sure that the belief's consistent with reality or true, logical and helpful to you. See the ‘Generating arguments to support your helpful alternative belief' section earlier in this chapter for more on testing your healthy belief.
2. In the next box down, write your doubts, reservations or challenges about the healthy belief.
Really let yourself attack the belief, using all the unhealthy arguments that come to mind.
3. In the next box, dispute your attack and redefend the healthy belief.
Focus on defending the healthy belief. Don't become sidetracked by any points raised in your attack from Step 2.
4. Repeat Steps 2 and 3 until you exhaust all your attacks on the healthy belief.
Be sure to use up all your doubts and reservations about choosing to really go for the new, healthy alternative way of thinking. Use as many forms as you need and be sure to stop on a defence of the belief you want to establish rather than on an attack.
5. Re-rate, from 0 to 100 per cent, how strongly you endorse the healthy belief after going through all your doubts.
If your conviction in the healthy belief hasn't increased or has increased only slightly, revisit the previous instructions on how to use the zigzag form. Or, if you have a CBT therapist, discuss the form with her and see whether she can spot where you zigged when you should have zagged.
Putting your new beliefs to the test
Doing pen-and-paper exercises is great - they really can help you to move your new beliefs from your head to your heart.
However, the best way to make your new ways of thinking more automatic is to put them to the test. Putting them to the test means going into familiar situations where your old attitudes are typically triggered, and acting according to your new way of thinking.
So, our friend Sly from earlier in the chapter may choose to do the following to test his new beliefs:
Sly confronts his member of staff about her lateness in a forthright manner. Sly bears the discomfort of upsetting her and remembers that being disliked by one worker doesn't prove that he's an unlikeable person.
Sly throws a party and resists the urge to make himself busy entertaining everyone and playing the host.
Sly works less hard in work and social situations at putting everyone at ease and trying to be super-likeable mister nice guy.
If you're really, really serious about making your new beliefs stick, you can seek out situations in which to test them. On top of using your new beliefs and their knock-on new behaviours in everyday situations, try setting difficult tests for yourself. Sit down and think about it: if you were still operating under your old beliefs, what situations would really freak you out? Go there. Doing so will ‘up the ante' with regard to endorsing your new beliefs.
Coping with everyday situations, such as Sly's previous example, are very useful, and they're often enough to move your new belief from your head to your heart. But if you really want to put your new beliefs under strain, with a view to making them even stronger, put yourself into out-of-the-ordinary situations. For example, try deliberately doing something ridiculous in public or being purposefully rude and aloof. See if you can remain resolute in your new belief such as ‘disapproval does not mean unworthiness' in the face of your most feared outcomes. We think you can! This is a tried and tested CBT tool for overcoming all sorts of problems, such as social anxiety. (Refer to Chapter 14 for more guidance on developing self-acceptance and Chapter 24 for more on devising shame attacking exercises.)
Here are some tests that Sly (or we could now call him ‘Braveheart') may set up for himself:
Go into shops and deliberately be impolite by not saying ‘thank you' and not smiling at the shop assistant. This test requires Sly to bear the discomfort of possibly leaving the shop assistant unhappy after making a poor impression.
Say good morning to staff without smiling and allow them to form the impression that he's ‘in a bad mood'.
Mooch about, deliberately trying to look moody and aloof in a social setting.
Make a complaint about faulty goods he's purchased from a local shop where the staff know him.
Bump into someone on public transport and don't apologise.
You may think that Sly's setting himself up to be utterly friendless as a result of this wretched belief change lark. On the contrary. Sly has friends. Sly still has a reputation of being a generally kind and affable bloke. What Sly doesn't have now is a debilitating belief that he has to please all the people all the time. Rather, Sly can come to truly believe that he can tolerate the discomfort of upsetting people occasionally and that being disliked by one or more people is part of being human. That's life. That's the way it goes sometimes. Sly can believe in his heart that he's a fallible human, just like everyone else, that he's capable of being liked and disliked, but basically he's okay.
Nurturing Your New Beliefs
As you continue to live with your alternative helpful beliefs, gather evidence that supports your new beliefs. Becoming more aware of evidence from yourself, other people and the world around you that supports your new, more helpful way of thinking, is one of the keys to strengthening your beliefs and keeping them strong.
A positive data log is a record of evidence you collect that shows the benefits of holding your new belief. The positive data log helps you overcome the biased, prejudiced way in which you keep unhelpful beliefs well-fed, by soaking up evidence that fits with them and discounting or distorting evidence that doesn't fit. Using a positive data log boosts the available data that fit your new belief and helps you to retrain yourself to take in the positive.
Your positive data log is simply a record of positive results arising from acting in accordance with a healthy new belief and evidence that contradicts your old, unhealthy belief. You can use any type of notebook to record your evidence. Follow these steps:
1. Write your new belief at the top of a page.
2. Record evidence that your new belief is helpful to you; include changes in your emotions and behaviour.
3. Record positive reactions that you get from others when you act in accordance with new beliefs.
4. Record any experiences that contradict your old belief.
Be specific and include even the smallest details that encourage you to doubt your old way of thinking. For example, even a newspaper vendor making small talk when you buy your paper can be used as evidence against a belief that you're unlikeable.
5. Make sure that you record every bit of information in support of your new belief and in contradiction to your old belief.
Fill up the whole notebook if you can.
If you still have trouble believi
ng that an old, unhelpful belief is true, start by collecting evidence on a daily basis that your old belief isn't 100 per cent true, 100 per cent of the time. Collecting this sort of evidence can help you steadily erode how true the belief seems.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy For Dummies Page 31