‘Cognitive Restructuring’ Can Help You Shake Off a Doom Spiral and Be More Productive

“Cognitive restructuring” is not as culturally popular as its therapeutic counterparts, like “toxic” and “gaslighting,” but it is a powerful tool that professionals use to help people adjust their thoughts. Although this is usually something you address in therapy, you can still use some cognitive restructuring principles in your daily life to stay more optimistic and productive.

What is cognitive restructuring?

The American Psychological Association (APA) defines cognitive restructuring as “an ability to carefully examine your thinking when you feel upset or distressed about something.” The goal is to change the way you think in times of stress so that your thoughts become more balanced. You want to be less subjective, more objective, and overall less influenced by negativity. Here, the stressful thoughts you might be experiencing are considered cognitive distortions and are not helpful to your overall well-being or productivity. In fact, they can be downright useless, preventing you from getting things done.

Negative feelings associated with certain actions or events can block your progress, which can lead to even more negative feelings as your tasks pile up. Whether you’re too sad to do housework, too anxious to run to the store, or too stressed to do your job, addressing negative feelings head-on and restructuring them can help you overcome the obstacle and do everything in a way that still feels safe and even right. When you feel good, your thoughts are good, and when your thoughts are good, you go on and do more. Negative thoughts breed more negativity, and the same is usually true for positivity. You just need to figure out how to make the change, which is what cognitive restructuring is for.

Five steps to practicing cognitive restructuring

Here’s what you do, according to the APA:

1. Write down the situation that upsets you, whether it’s a real event (like cleaning your house, doing your homework, or having to talk to someone you don’t like) or a memory of an event. You just need a one-sentence description.

2. Identify the most overwhelming feeling you experience. Even if you have a lot of feelings, choose the strongest. This can help you classify them as fear and anxiety; sadness and depression; guilt and shame; or anger. Keep the stronger feeling in mind for the rest of the steps.

3. Identify your thoughts about the event or situation as they relate to your strongest feeling. If your strongest feeling is fear, ask yourself what you are afraid of. of. If it’s guilt, ask yourself what “bad” thing you actually did. This is where you get specific when you try to find the root cause of your negative feeling. So if you’re looking forward to studying for a test and keep putting it off, identify what scares you (like not understanding the material or getting a bad grade). Write the thought in its entirety: “I feel anxious about studying because I’m afraid I won’t understand or retain enough information to pass the test.” »

4. Here, evaluate the correctness of your upsetting thought. Start with any evidence that might support this idea, then dig deeper. For what Do you think you won’t understand or retain the material you have to study? Write down all the evidence, but also ask yourself why your thinking might be wrong. Explore the evidence against thinking, including alternative ways of looking at the situation, what someone else might think, and whether your feelings are based on fact.

5. Once you have listed all the evidence for and against your negative thinking, make a final decision, giving the most weight to the strongest, most objective information. Cross out anything that is weak, subjective or based on feelings; surround anything that is supported by concrete evidence.

The steps here remind me of a reading comprehension and study technique called elaborative questioning. There you identify a fact that you need to study and understand, such as the fact that a historical event took place. After that, you ask questions: who was there? What happened? When did this happen? Where did it happen? What was happening in this region at that time? Why did this happen? Why did this lead to the event? How did this happen? How did this impact everything that happened next? You search for the answers to all these questions until you know all the details of the context of the fact. At that point, you know so much that the fact itself – the simple, straightforward thing you need to know for your exam or whatever you’re studying – is so obvious it’s laughable. Of course the historic event happened – look at everything that led up to and happened there! Cognitive restructuring is similar: you identify your doing, which in this case is the painful thing, then you dig deeper into what you’re afraid of, why you feel that way, when you last completed that task, etc. Going through it in a questioning way helps you move to a point of deeper understanding and then beyond it.

Doing this when you feel stuck in anxiety or sadness can help you see the path forward. If you do it enough, rejecting negativity and focusing instead on facts—like the fact that you’ve passed tests before or that you’ve kept your house clean in the past, or that poor test scores or a messy house don’t make you a bad person in every way—will come more naturally. Better yet, you can prove the facts are correct by then completing the tasks, reinforcing them for next time. The self-reinforcing nature of the good feelings and productivity that comes with this process is what makes it effective, so the first time you try, keep your eyes on the light at the end of the tunnel. It will get easier the more you do it.