A few years ago, before I entered private practice, my colleague, Sherise1, knocked on my door, asked to come in, closed the door behind her and sat down. Sherise wanted to discuss an experience with another colleague, Matt. In a meeting she had heard him say something that felt like an attack, and she was thinking about how best to handle it.
I asked her to describe the situation, and she told me about a meeting in which the two of them disagreed. Then she started to explain what she thought about that situation, what the phrase that he used means, what he must have been thinking about in that moment, how distraught she was about the situation.
As I listened to her I had a couple of insights. The first insight was that Sherise was talking about a number of different things: what the colleague had actually said, the meaning of the Matt’s words, Matt’s thoughts, feelings and intent, and what her own emotions were.
The second insight I had was that from her perspective, she was talking about just one thing: the event. All these different strands of the experience were mashed together in her mind and had equal weight of explanation. She couldn’t separate what had actually happened with her interpretation of the situation. She believed that those words meant a certain thing and couldn’t perceive that those words might have a different meaning to Matt. She was hurt and so she perceived that Matt must have intended to hurt her, whereas Matt may just have been trying to explain himself and had no ill-will towards Sherise.
I wish I could say that I don’t make the kinds of assumptions that Sherise does, but I do. I recall a time when a friend said something that hurt me. As I continued to ruminate about it I started to think of our relationship as being summed up by this particular conversation and that maybe that friendship would come to an end.
You make those kinds of assumptions, too; all humans do. We are always trying to make sense of the world around us so that we can figure out what to do. We make guesses about the parts that are uncertain so that we can take action. Sometimes our guesses are accurate, sometimes they are not.
In Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) we recognize patterns of assumptions and inaccurate thinking and we call them “cognitive distortions.” Sherise was using the cognitive distortion of mind reading, thinking that she knew what Matt really thought of her, even though Matt hadn’t communicated that. I was using the cognitive distortion of overgeneralization, allowing one negative encounter to colour over all the other positives of the friendship.
Cognitive Distortions can cause negative emotions. Sherise was angry at Matt. I was sad about my friend. If our thoughts are inaccurate about a situation, our negative emotions might be exaggerated or even unnecessary.
The work of CBT is to first become aware of our thoughts because a lot of them operate under the surface of our immediate awareness. Our values and beliefs can be deeply rooted in our past circumstances, and sometimes we are unaware of what they are and that we are constantly acting on them.
As we become aware of our thoughts we can evaluate them. CBT uses various strategies for this, one of which is looking at the evidence for or against that thought. By becoming a little less certain that our immediate interpretation is the right one, we act like researchers, forming theories of what might be going on and testing them out.
I’m not sure if Sherise was able to re-examine her thoughts about her situation, but I know I did. I allowed myself time to calm, and then put my friend’s comment into perspective. We had many conversations over the years where he had affirmed and encouraged me. The evidence weighed in favour of him holding me in positive regard. Balancing my thinking balanced my emotions and I was able to talk to him later about our encounter and continue the friendship.
The skills of CBT are things that we can learn on our own, and there are some really good books that help with that. Two that I recommend are
- Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David Burns (this title also has a handbook)
- Mind Over Mood by Dennis Greenberger and Christine Padesky
There are times that despite our best efforts we find it difficult to identify the thoughts that are tripping us up or find it challenging to change them. That is the time that a therapist coming alongside can be useful. A therapist asks different questions than what we usually encounter inside our own heads or in conversations with family and friends. Therapists can help us get unstuck and moving in a better direction.
- Names and identifying information have been changed. ↩︎
Judi Heppner is the owner and manager of Five Vines. She has worked in health and social services since 1991.