THOUGHT BALANCING
This technique is key to cognitive therapy and involves looking at your anxious thoughts in a different way. You really can start to see that thoughts are just that, and do not necessarily represent facts. We can see thoughts as simply mental events. Yet frequently we respond to them as if they were concrete facts rather than possibilities or ideas. Just because you think something bad will happen is that guaranteed? Some thoughts will be true, some won’t and there will be a large grey area in between these two extremes. Remembering this is a good place to start.
Chapter 6 looks at depression and shows you how to begin to manage your negative thoughts by examining the objective evidence for them and working on developing alternative balanced (and ultimately more realistic and helpful) ways of viewing a situation. Check out some of the exercises there. Consider whether you are being affected by any of the distorted ways of thinking that we describe.
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CHALLENGE YOUR WORRIES OR ANXIOUS THOUGHTS
When dealing specifically with anxious thoughts, worries or pre