Reframing Negative Thoughts and Judgements

You may not be able to control what thoughts and judgments enter your mind, but you can change the way you handle them. Today will focus on using a specific approach to taking negative thoughts and reframing them. Practicing this can help ensure that you do not fall victim to these thoughts.

Some examples of negative talk include: “I am always behind in completing projects at work”, “I don’t have time to make a healthy meal”, “I feel so bad when I eat food that is not on my diet.”

Using the ABCD approach, you can work to catch these thoughts and change them. Doing so requires that you stay in the moment, bringing your full attention to any underlying troubling thought so that you can understand and address them.

A: Activating Event: When a negative thought comes up, stop for a moment and consider the event that triggered it. What caused you to feel badly? For example: “I can’t control my eating, so why do I try?” - the event here is eating more than you wanted to.

B: Belief: What do you believe about the event? What do you think about what happened? For example: “I have no self control”

C: Consequences: How do those beliefs/thoughts make you feel? For example: “I feel bad about myself and won’t ever lose weight.”

D: Dispute: Dispute the belief and reframe the potential consequence. Tell yourself why you should not think negative thoughts about yourself and come up with evidence to support it. Then figure out how to apply this to the future to learn from it. For example: “I was able to control myself yesterday at the party when I didn’t try any of the sweets because I was too busy enjoying my conversations with friends. I have done this before and can do it again. Next time, I will avoid starting to eat things I know I will regret and will try to find someone to engage in conversation instead.”