How do you know what you are thinking, if you do not write it down?
Why do I feel the need to write down all of my thoughts?
Now it's called journaling. It's simply writing down your thoughts and feelings to understand them more clearly. And if you struggle with stress, depression, or anxiety, keeping a journal can be a great idea. It can help you gain control of your emotions and improve your mental health.
The key to understanding feelings is identifying the thoughts associated with them.
Thoughts influence much of our experience of the world, including our emotional experience.
Our minds are thought processing machines, creating and sifting through as many as 60,000 ideas in a given day. If we were to attend to each one of these, we would be overwhelmed by the flood of information. Thankfully, that’s not how our brain works. Most thoughts enter and leave our minds out of our awareness. The brain is pretty good at filtering what it deems to be unimportant information and focusing on what seems to be most salient. It does this by focusing on certain aspects of a situation, then assigning some kind of meaning to those aspects, resulting in our thoughts and opinions about things.
Making a broad assumption about something from limited experience is the definition overgeneralizing.
Overgeneralizing is a cognitive distortion, or a distorted way of thinking, that results in some pretty significant wrong assumptions. A great deal of unnecessary emotional pain is caused by distortions such as overgeneralization. Overgeneralization is often implicated in clinical depression, anxiety disorders, and anger management problems.
Working off of a faulty assumption and believing the distortion to be true, it becomes even harder to put any effort toward achieving your goals.
Fortunately, we can reverse this pattern by being more introspective: examining our own thinking in order to come to a more balanced, reasonable perspective. This process is called cognitive restructuring or cognitive reappraisal. Cognitive behavioral therapy has numerous techniques and exercises for investigating the validity of cognitive distortions such as overgeneralizing, and distancing ourselves from these unhelpful thought patterns. A useful skill to help us let go of our attachment to overgeneralizing is to intentionally investigate our thoughts from a number of angles:
Step 1: Ask yourself: What are the costs and benefits of thinking this way? In other words, is it worth being so attached to this way of thinking? Does this kind of thinking protect you from anything? Is it harmful? If this thought costs you more than you’re gaining, it makes sense to develop more effective ways of reacting to the situation by going through the next five steps.
Step 2: Collect the evidence that supports this thought. Are you basing your conclusion on a lot of relevant data, or just one or two data points? Is there significant evidence against this particular thought? Is there a way to consider both the evidence against this thought and evidence supporting it when thinking about this situation? Would the evidence you’re considering hold up in court, or is it too flimsy?
Step 3: Based on the current facts, do you think everyone would draw the same conclusion as you? If not, why not? Are they seeing something you’re not? Would other interpretations be more effective in coping or in achieving your desired outcome? If someone were handling this situation more effectively, how might their thinking be responsible for their success?
Step 4: Take a step outside of your own head for a moment: Pick a friend. If this friend came to you and told you the same thing was happening to them, what would you tell them? Is it different than what you’re telling yourself right now? Consider why you might be giving your friend different advice than you’re giving yourself, and whether this is helpful. Would you tell a friend what you are telling yourself? If not, why not?
Step 5: Do you think you’re relying on the actual evidence, or is it possible you’re letting your feelings guide your thinking about this matter? Emotions have a tendency to color our thinking, altering the conclusions we make, and exacerbating natural errors in thinking. If you were feeling better or were in a better mood, what’s your best guess as to how you’d think about this situation?
Step 6: Identify examples of this interpretation not being true. What are the exceptions to this conclusion? Now identify some more examples…
Looking at the thought from new perspectives helps us to soften our attachment to old patterns of thinking like overgeneralization. The best way to use these steps is to first identify the situations where you usually engage in this sort of distortion and apply the steps to them. You can even plan ahead by rehearsing these steps both before and during the situation. And don’t feel you have to be totally convinced of some other thought for this process to work. Just the act of taking on new ways of thinking can result in our emotions settling down, and our thinking becoming more flexible.
Cognitive behavioral therapy is devoted to identifying similar patterns of thinking and helping people develop healthier thinking habits. There is significant scientific research showing cognitive behavioral therapy is the most effective treatment for a whole host of problems.
Cognitive defusion is detaching from a thought when it’s unhelpful or stands in the way of doing things that bring wellbeing. Try these cognitive defusion techniques and exercises below.
Copyright © Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Los Angeles, 2016
Updated 2022
A Course in CBT Techniques:
A Free Online CBT Workbook
by Albert Bonfil, PsyD and Suraji Wagage PhD, JD
https://cogbtherapy.com/free-online-cbt-workbook
CBT For Anxiety Disorders: A Practitioner Book. Wiley-Blackwell: Hoboken, New Jersey. – Simoris, G., Hofmann, S.G. (2013).
Cognitive Behavior Therapy, Second Edition: Basics and Beyond. The Guilford Press: New York. – Beck, J.S. (2011).
Cognitive therapy techniques: A practitioner's guide (2nd ed.). Guilford Press. Leahy, R. L. (2018).
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Books
A strength of cognitive behavioral therapy is its ability to be used in psychotherapy as well as at home for self-help. Unfortunately, many CBT books purporting to teach CBT principles and techniques fall short. We have compiled a list of the best evidence-based cognitive behavioral therapy books for both consumers as well as psychotherapists. All of the CBT books below are written by experts and are widely considered to be foundational in the field of CBT. We have also included a link to a free online CBT workbook for anyone who is interested in learning more about CBT, consumers and clinicians alike.
Free Online CBT Workbook: A self-help workbook that introduces the CBT model, cognitive restructuring, cognitive distortions, and behavioral interventions. Includes worksheets that are free to download and print.A practical CBT book recommended for consumers and mental health professionals.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Books for Consumers:
Feeling Good by David Burns. An easy-to-read best-selling self-help guide using CBT principles.
Mind Over Mood by Greenberger and Padesky. A self-help guide CBT book primarily emphasizing cognitive therapy techniques.
Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life by Stephen Hayes. A mindfulness-based self-help CBT book using principles of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook by McKay, Wood, & Brantley. A CBT workbook providing instruction and DBT exercises for people who have difficulty regulating intense emotions.
Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness by Jon Kabat-Zinn. A self-help CBT book about mindfulness for a variety of problems.
The Mindful Way Through Depression by Williams, Teasdale, Segal, and Kabat-Zinn. A self-help guide for using mindfulness-based cognitive therapy to cope with depression.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Books for Clinicians:
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: Basics and Beyond by Judith Beck. An excellent introduction to using cognitive therapy for clinicians new to the treatment.
Treatment Plans and Interventions for Depression and Anxiety Disorders by Leahy, Holand, and McGinn. An invaluable reference for the practicing CBT clinician, complete with treatment outlines, printable handouts, and more.
Contemporary Behavior Therapy by Spiegler & Guevremont. A textbook that gives a very broad overview of the history and practice of behavioral and cognitive behavioral therapy.
The ABC’s of Human Behavior by Ramnero & Torneke. Probably the best introduction to clinical behavior therapy there is. Clear and to the point.
Behavior Modification in Applied Settings by Alan Kazdin. A good book for helping clinicians implement behavioral treatments.
Handbook of Assessment and Treatment Planning for Psychological Disorders by Antony & Barlow. A comprehensive guide of assessment techniques and reviews of evidence-based interventions for a number of common disorders.
Behavioral Activation for Depression by Martell, Dimidjian, & Herman-Dunn. A concise primer for behavioral treatment of depression.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Books for Advanced Clinicians
Overcoming Resistance in Cognitive Therapy by Robert Leahy. A manual for what to do when things go wrong in cognitive therapy.
Collaborative Case Conceptualization by Kuyken, Padesky, & Dudley. A guide to conceptualization-driven cognitive therapy.
The Case-Formulation Approach to Cognitive-Behavior Therapy by Jaqueline Persons. Another guide to conceptualization-driven treatment. Persons incorporates different evidence-based models of behavior to account for different presenting problems.
Treatment for Chronic Depression by James McCullough. A manual for Cognitive Behavioral Assessment System of Psychotherapy, an integrative CBT treatment for treatment-resistant depression.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: An Experiential Approach to Behavior Change by Hayes, Strosahl, & Wilson. An introduction to ACT, a third-wave, mindfulness-based behavioral therapy.
Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder by Marsha Linehan. Don’t let the title fool you – this is the definitive textbook on DBT. The other book by Linehan with DBT in the title is just the manual for running the skills group.
Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression by Segal, Williams, and Teasdale. The manual for MBCT, a third-wave treatment for relapse prevention of depression.
Schema Therapy by Young, Klosko, and Weishaar. An integrative CBT treatment for working with personality disorders.
Click for more information about What CBT is and How it Works
New York Times Article: "Evidence That Therapy Works"
Los Angeles Times Article About CBT for Anxiety
Huffington Post Article About CBT for Depression
UCLA Mindfulness Awareness Research Center
TED Talks: Video Lectures by Experts in Psychology
CBT Blog: CBT Techniques
Information about Anxiety Disorders: anxieties.matchingneeds.com
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