Can We Reframe Our Negative Thoughts?
This month, my book club is reading a book focused on uncertainty. A chapter reminded me about Thought Catalogs, a CBT tool that helps reframe unhelpful thoughts that might crop up. Here's how they might help you too.
The Art of Uncertainty
I’ve been wanting to join a book club for a little while now. Not only have I gotten back into reading, but I’ve also missed the discussion component (that was probably my favorite part of getting my English major). When I moved to Northern Virginia, I decided to finally join one. This month, the book we’re reading is called The Art of Uncertainty by David Spiegelhalter.
This book really stood out to me because I’ve always been someone that struggles with the idea of uncertainty. In college, I felt that I needed to have a whole plan for my life put together. I even fight that urge to this day as a 26-year-old.
I’m barely a few chapters in, but there’s already been some great nuggets of information. There’s one idea made by the author that really stood out to me, though.
Uncertainty as a Range of Emotions
The author defines a spectrum from negative to positive to think about one’s relationship with uncertainty.
For cognitive aspects, people can think of uncertainty as anything from a threat to an opportunity. In an emotional regard, people lie somewhere between worry and calm. Finally, the behavioral aspect outlines people from avoidance to approach of uncertainty.
This is an oversimplified explanation of how the author defines it in Chapter 1. The main takeaway for the sake of this article is that people naturally tend to have a negative or positive view of uncertainty.
This book is far from a self-help book, as the author admits, but he can’t help but call out a personal note about his relationship with uncertainty.
Spiegelhalter tells the story of his father, who in his youth was an avid traveler. As his father aged, he grew more and more afraid of traveling as the anxiety he felt around doing so only increased. Spiegelhalter noticed he started feeling the same way as he aged and decided to meet with a psychotherapist. With the therapist’s help, Spiegelhalter realized he could talk his way across the spectrum when experiencing anxiety due to uncertainty. Specifically, he could “think” his way from feeling worried and anxious about a trip to excited for what might come.
Perhaps you can’t think away all your anxiety surrounding an event. If you are dealing with strong anxiety, I’m not sure you can expect yourself to feel bliss in a couple minutes. It is, however, a good notion to explore.
The Thought Catalog
Spiegelhalter mentions that the therapist taught him a cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) method to help cross the threshold. I suspect that method is the Thought Catalog.
I’m not a licensed therapist or anything close to that. The Thought Catalog has helped me in the past. I’m going to outline it as I’ve been taught it, and maybe it’ll help you out too.
A Thought Catalog is essentially a table.
The first column is the event that upsets you or makes you feel bad. I’ll include an example below after outlining the setup.
The next three columns relate to your response to that event: the automatic response. This includes the thought that occurred, the behavior, and the emotion related to that response.
The final column is the alternative response. I’ve only done this with an alternative thought, but you can do this with behaviors and emotions too.
I recently started a new job. Before getting accepting my offer, I experience a lot of rejection surrounding job applications. Here’s how’d I reframe my thoughts about those rejections using the Thought Catalog exercise.
Again, this won’t change your mindset overnight, but I have found that catching myself in a train of negative thoughts, interrupting those said thoughts, and thinking about something more upbeat has tended to help me. It’s like meditation where a huge benefit is to simply notice when you’re caught in these thought patterns.
This is what I expect Spiegelhalter did when experiencing anxiety around traveling.
Maybe this won’t be some sort of panacea for anxiety and negative thinking but consider giving it a try. Sometimes, all it takes is one thought a day for a positive habit to start. You never know.
If you found this post interesting, please consider subscribing so that the next post gets delivered straight to your inbox!
Bonus!
Last week, folks seemed to enjoy my polar bear, so I've added a new drawing this week! This one is yet another tutorial I followed using this video by Art with Flo. Hope you enjoy!
