The main idea of ​​cognitive therapy is that a person’s emotions are determined not by external events as such, but by a subjective assessment of these events. And these assessments, this personal meaning, are different for each person. Each person has their own set of potential triggers for negative emotions - those events that cause a strong emotional reaction. At the same time, a person takes automatic thoughts on faith, while they very often distort reality. Automatic responses to certain situations are associated with a person’s past experiences, which are very often not relevant to the current situation. The goal of cognitive therapy is to analyze and challenge automatic thoughts. However, before you question your thoughts, you need to record them. The main method of monitoring your thoughts and emotions is an automatic thought diary. The client is asked to write down the events that caused him to change his mood, emotions and thoughts that arose in these situations. In addition, behavior related to this situation is noted. It should be noted that to successfully master this technique, practice is needed. Evaluative thoughts do not always lie on the surface, although they are not completely unconscious. But it is not always possible to immediately understand what exactly you thought in connection with the situation. It often happens that some event causes a sharp deterioration in mood for unclear reasons. You also need to learn how to correctly label and record trigger events. On the one hand, this should not be an extensive story, on the other, specificity is very important. For example, the event “my mother offended me” is not a trigger event; what is important is what exactly my mother said or did. Or “I did a bad job” is not an event, but an assessment of it. It is important what exactly happened - for example, “I made a mistake in the report” or “my experiment did not work out.” A trigger event can be not only an external event, but a sensation in the body, a thought, or a memory. The path to automatic thoughts often goes through emotions. For example, a person made a mistake in a report and felt shame. It is important to ask yourself: what did this mean to me, what thought arose if I experienced shame? The answer could be, for example, “I’m a bad employee.” As a rule, each emotion has its own automatic thought. The emotion of anger is caused by thoughts about violations of boundaries, about the discrepancy of someone's behavior with expectations. Often such thoughts contain obligations to others “He should not have... He should have...”. Anxiety is caused by thoughts of catastrophic content - for example, in response to illness the thought “I have cancer” or when a loved one is late from work: “he was hit by a car.” Shame is caused by thoughts about one's own inadequacy, “I am incapable of anything.” Careful collection of automatic thoughts between sessions usually leads to the discovery of themes and plots that are dominant in a given client. Among the many thoughts, we can identify the most typical ones and those that bring the greatest discomfort - these are the thoughts that are chosen as a target for work. If this approach is close to you, please contact us! Cognitive therapy is very effective in treating anxiety and depression.My phone (Telegram, Whatsapp) 8-916-150-88-30