Cognitive Therapy – Automatic thoughts – Flashcards

- Thoughts that occur rapidly without rational analysis - Negative - Based on erroneous logic

- Arbitrary Inference - Overgeneralization (absolutistic thingking) - Dichotomous thinking - Selective abstraction - Magnification - Minimization - Catastrophic thinking - Personalization

- Individual automatically comes to a conclusion about an incident without the facts to support it, or even when there's contradictory evidence to support it - Ex: You sent someone a present and he/she has not replied to you yet, you think that he/she did not like it and you had a poor taste.

- Sweeping conclusions, "all or nothing" kind of thinking - Ex: you applied to a nursing school and you were rejected, so you think of your self as a failure and you would never get accepted to a nursing school.

- Someone who views situations as "all or nothing", "black or white", "good or bad". - Ex: You applied to nursing school and got an email saying you have to write an essay for them to consider you for acceptance. You started to think you're disqualified even when they're giving you a chance.

- Sometimes it is referred to as "Mental filter" - Someone who just focuses on the negative evidences rather than success - Ex: you got accepted to a local university with a 4-year scholarship but you're upset that you're not accepted to the state university.

- Someone who exaggerates on the negative significance of an event

- Someone who undervalues the positive significance of an event

- Someone who always thinks that the worst will occur without considering the possibility of positive outcomes

- Someone who tends to take complete responsibility for situations without considering that other factors had contributed to the situation

- There are 3 techniques: + Didactic (educational aspect) + Cognitive therapy: * Recognizing automatic thoughts and schemas * Modifying automatic thoughts and schemas + Behavioral intervention

- This is to prepare the patient to become his/her own therapist - Pt will be given information on cognitive therapy, how it works (maybe by audiotape or videotape) - Pt will be also given homework

- Are used to recognize and modify automatic thoughts and schemas - Techniques to recognize include: + Socratic questioning + Imagery and Role play + Thought Recording - Techniques to modify include: + Generating alternatives + Examining the evidences + Decatastrophizing + Reattribution + Daily record of Dysfunctional thoughts + Cognitive rehearsal

- Is also called guided discovery, by asking the pt questions that stimulate the pts to recognize dysfunctional thinking

- When Socratic questioning does not work, that's when the therapist switch to Imagery and Role play - Imagery: pt is asked to relive the situation to recognize what feelings did pts experience in association with the situation - Role play: not used as commonly as Imagery. Used only when there's an exceptionally strong relationship between the therapist and pts and there's little likelihood of maladaptive transference occuring. Therapist will assume the role of a person within a situation that provokes the maladaptive response in pts

- Assigned as homework outside of therapy and kept as a written record + 2 - column thought record: include situations that occurred and automatic thoughts elicited + 3 - column thought record: include the same columns as above plus associated emotional response

- Generating alternatives: helps the pts to see a broader range of possibilities - Examining the evidences: set the automatic thought as the hypothesis and study the positive and negative evidences against the hypothesis - Decatastrophizing: examine the validity of negative automatic thoughts -> review ways to cope adaptively - Reattribution: reversing the negative attribution of depressed clients from internal/enduring to more external/transient manner of non-depressed clients - Daily record of Dysfunctional thoughts: 2 more columns added to the 3-column thought recording: rational response and associated emotional response - Cognitive rehearsal: use mental imagery to to predict potential automatic thoughts in advance of the occurrence

- Activity scheduling: pts to keep a daily log of hourly activities and rate each activity for their mastery and pleasure, from 1-10. Then the therapist will help pts to decide which activities need more concentration - Graded task assignment: when pts facing overwhelming situation. It will then be broken down into smaller tasks so pts can complete it step by step - Behavioral rehearsal: somewhat similar to cognitive rehearsal - Distraction: pts would engage in activities that distract them from intrusive thoughts - Misc. techniques: relaxation, role modelling...