I thought you stress-a-holics would find this topic interesting and help you manage those stress levels. Enjoy!
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As I was exploring what to discuss in this entry, I remembered that I am doing a presentation on cognitive restructuring.
Cognitive restructuring involves identifying “irrational” thoughts that negatively influence feelings and subsequent actions or behaviors. While emotions can influence what we think, in cognitive restructuring, the focus is on the thoughts.
In understanding how these negative thoughts originate, we look at the situations (environment) that “trigger” the specific thoughts occurring. Different situations will elicit different thoughts, but they usually manifest from a general underlying belief. Such beliefs may be related to how unlovable we are, unworthy, etc.
During our formative years, we hear various messages from our caregivers, peers, family, our culture, media, religion, employers, etc., about who we are, about relationships in general, and about the world in general. Some of these messages we internalize to formulate general beliefs and thoughts patterns. However, these manifest as individual and personal thoughts. Subsequently, some of these messages/beliefs are “triggered” depending on the situation and depending on certain contexts. One way of understanding these thoughts, is that they represent some aspects of our primitive fears, which are “housed” in the stress response, or “flight/fight response”. They may be a manifestation of some of our fears.
Cognitive restructuring looks at these “automatic” thoughts and evaluates the impact they have. Some research suggests we have 60,000-65,000 thoughts a day and that 80-87% of these thoughts is negative. Thus, if we are thinking negatively, we will feel and do things according that that “state of mind.” We may engage in actions or behaviors that are more destructive rather than constructive (or moving us forward.) We are not consciously aware of all these thoughts. Thus, part of the challenge is increasing our awareness of what we think.
In this post, I’ll discuss some ways you can begin increasing your awareness of your thoughts. In subsequent posts, I’ll discuss ways to manage, prevent, accept, or modify these patterns.
In order to identify what we’re thinking, we need to increase our awareness of what is happening. Keeping a mood/thought log is one way of doing this. On my website, www.triqualiving.com, is an example of a mood/thought log I use with my clients. As indicated, I focus on stress, pain and addictions, so the log reflects these different aspects. Basically, you write out certain situations that occur, identify what thoughts are going through your mind during, about, or after the situation and record your feelings and physiological sensations. In terms of stress, when you are experiencing this, you can utilize the log and “record” the experience. This will give you some information about different pieces of your experiences and how they are fitting together.
Next time, I’ll discuss looking at certain patterns of thought that relate to feelings of “stress” and how they influence feelings and behaviors.
Here’s to your success in managing your stress!
(Please note this is a modified excerpt from an upcoming book on stress management strategies)
