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Taurean's Easy Guide To Reframing Negative Automatic Thoughts (NATS) And Redirecting Using Positive Thinking


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OCD Intrusive Thoughts

The name of the game with OCD intrusions is to – for a very short while – note down the intrusive thought, the meaning being given to it by OCD and how that relates to your underpinning fear - and then work out in a detached way (by taking the view of an “impartial observer – without all the emotion you feel) a more beneficial way that you could look at the intrusion. The overall game plan is to – after appropriate CBT and ERP – be able to note but then move away from the thought, returning it to background peripheral thinking, and benign.

So if your fear is burglary because you have failed to lock the home securely, work out a reasonable and easy checking procedure in a logical format, work that system and allow yourself no more than one recheck – (knowing that you will have carried out one in-depth check already).

Once we have done this thought challenge, we need to detach from the OCD thought and apply refocus and distraction. We must not try and neutralise it with an opposite thought, or engage with it - this only makes the thought or urge stronger.

Other Negative Automatic Thoughts

Again just initially (until you get the hang of it) write down the NAT, and then look at an alternative way of thinking that can challenge it and take the sting out of it. You are very likely to be catastrophizing or awfulising – so look at why your thoughts are drifting that way and work out a reframe that will remove that exaggeration and see things in a more positive light.

Living in the Present

The only place for our thoughts to be to enable us to be happy healthy and free from worries is in the here and now, in the moment (being “mindful”).
The past is over – we may be able to take steps to improve something done then or compensate for it, but we don’t have a time machine and we can’t go back and change it. We can however learn from our experiences and do better in the future.

Also, we can make sensible plans for the future (e.g. life insurance, home insurance, mortgage protection, health insurance, pension, save money - but worrying about it is pointless and damaging.

ACE Therapy As Part of CBT

ACE stands for achievement, closeness to others and exercise.

Until we get the hang of this, we should write down our activities each day under these headings and then score them out of 10.

As we move forward we should look to move the scores up as close to 10 as we can get them. This will keep us busy motivated and working closely with others – and help to free us from negative biased thinking.

Positive Thinking

It is quite usual for anxiety disorder sufferers to struggle with positivity.

How can we especially seek to move our frame of reference from doom and gloom to happy and beneficial?

Doing Something for Others

First, let’s try and take our mind off our own woes and do something that will benefit and please and help others (like me writing this piece of creative writing). Shifting focus like this takes our mid of our own troubles and seeing the joy on someone else's face and the thanks for what we have done for them is very uplifting.

Attitudes of Mind

Life is neutral, our thoughts colour it. If we think happy thoughts we will be happy. If we focus on unhappy sad thoughts we will be miserable.
So let’s try and mix with happy heart-warming people, read and watch uplifting things, if we find life has handed us a lemon, let’s see how we can make lemonade out of it.

Let’s co-operate with the inevitable. Something things are meant to be, we can’t change them. But we can change the way we react to them – see them in a much rosier, positive light.

So if we have a bad day, let’s go through the things which happened to us on that day, and see how we might view each of them in a much more positive light.

If we can change something beneficially, let’s change it; if we can amend it for the better, let’s do so

.
If we can discard it let’s do so.

If we can’t do any of those, let’s accept it and make the best of it.

Worries

Worrying is endlessly going round and round in circles without ever being able to resolve an issue.

So let’s determine to apply problem –solving skills to our worries.

For each matter lets;

Determine all possible solutions.
Choose the best solution from those options.
Implement that solution.
Dismiss all anxiety about the outcome.

If we are in debt, we can consider going to a financial advisor who will help us negotiate with our creditors, and draw up a plan to get us back on track.
If we have legal concerns, we can go and see a solicitor to give us professional guidance and advice.

A problem shared is often a problem halved. Let’s talk to our friends and relatives if that might be of benefit.

Taurean March 2015.

Edited by taurean
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