Change Your Thinking Change Your Life!

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Change Your ThinkingChange Your Life!

• Great Lakes Recovery Centers, Inc
• Behavioral Health Services
• Robert J. Swanson, LBSW, CADC, CCSM

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Montillation of Traxoline

• It is very important that you learn about
  traxoline. Traxoline is a new form of zionter. It
  is montilled in Ceristanna. The Ceristannians
  gristerlate large amounts of fevon and then
  brachter it to quasel traxoline. Traxoline may
  well be one of our most lukized snezlaus in the
  future because of our zionter lescelidge.

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Quiz

• What is traxoline?
• Where is traxoline montilled?
• How is traxoline quaselled?
• Why is it important to know about traxoline?
•   (Attributed to the insight of Judy Lanier)

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Changing Thinking Habits
Environment
Thoughts
Physical
Behaviors
Feelings
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Changing Thinking Habits (Continued)

• Our thoughts control how we feel and behave.
• Your thinking habits have got you where you are
  today. If you change your thinking, you will
  change your life.
• If you always think, the way you have always
  thought, you will always get what you have always
  got. If you want to have a better life, you must
  change your thinking.
• Changing your thinking/belief patterns is
  possible. You need to question all your beliefs.

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Stop, Drop, and Shop!!

• When you find yourself angry, Stop what you are
  doing.
• Drop out of your head and into your guts.
• And Shop around by asking yourself, What am I
  afraid of?
• 95 of the time Anger is rooted in Fear.
• 95 of the time when we have this Fear, there is
  nothing to be afraid of.

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Stop, Drop, and Shop!! (continued)

• When anyone begins something new, including
  working to develop a new way of thinking, they
  suffer from cognitive emotive dissonance, a
  form of chaos.
• Some thought patterns are so ingrained, that
  there is a significant struggle to move out of
  the friendly, safe, (but unhealthy) habit.

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Stop, Drop, and Shop!! (continued)

• In fact, the feeling of insecurity may be so
  strong as to force the individual to give up on
  change. Often this is the case with people who
  are tying to learn to live clean and sober.
  Criminal thinking and related behavior can be
  just as difficult to change.
• Thinking errors cannot be replaced unless they
  are first spotted.

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Accurate Thinking

• The way to spot errors is through familiarity.
  Becoming so familiar with errors that they can be
  easily recognized is the key to mastering the
  skill of accurate thinking.
• Below is a list of thinking errors that will
  assist you in mastering accurate thinking.

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Thinking Errors

• Labeling Using names or labels for people,
  things or situations to justify not liking them,
  it, or the situation.
• Jumping to Conclusions Assuming something
  negative where there is no actual evidence to
  support it.
• Excuses This thinking error allows us to have
  justification or reasons for anything and
  everything.

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Thinking Errors (continued)

• Polarized Thinking Everything is either good or
  bad.
• Overgeneralization All or Nothing Thinking.
  Thinking of things in absolute terms, like
  always, every or never.
• Mind Reading We use this thinking error when we
  believe that we know how others think or feel.
  Concluding what others think and do without
  proof.

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Thinking Errors (continued)

• Maximizing Using this thinking error often
  causes others to focus on little insignificant
  things rather than the issue at hand.
• Minimizing We use this thinking error when we
  try to make things seem smaller than they really
  are. Often, we will use words like, just and
  only to make what we did seem smaller.

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Thinking Errors (continued)

• Victim Stance Views self as a victim and blames
  others to avoid any accountability or
  responsibility.
• Controlling Angry statements and behavior to try
  to control others and situations.
• Emotional Reasoning Making decisions and
  arguments based on how we feel rather than
  objective reality.

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Thinking Errors (Continued)

• Closed Channel Insisting on being right no
  matter what.
• Shoulding This thinking error is focused on
  what we cant control.
• And then there is
• Lying This is the most common thinking errors
  used by us.

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Types of Lying

• Bad faith Lying to oneself
• Boldfaced lie An obvious lie
• Bluffing Pretending to have a capability
• Bullshit A fabrication of a truth
• Butler lie Used to save face
• Contextual lie Stating part of the truth to
  give false impression
• Economy with the truth Hold back relevant facts
• Emergency lie A strategic lie to not harm
  another
• Exaggeration Stretching the truth

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More Lies

• Fabrication Submit a statement without knowing
  if it is true
• Fib Told with no malicious intent and little
  consequence
• Half-truth Intended to deceive, evade, blame,
  or misrepresent the truth
• Haystack answer Much false or irrelevant
  information with a needle of truth
• Honest lie Unaware that information is false
• Jocose lie Told and meant in jest
• Lie-to-children A lie used to make an adult
  subject acceptable to children
• Lying by omission Leaving an important fact out
• Lying in trade Untrue facts about a product or
  service

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Still More

• Lying through your teeth Face-to-face lie with
  intended recipient
• Minimization Opposite of exaggeration
• Misleading Literally true but intentionally
  misleading
• Noble lie Often told to maintain law, order,
  and safety
• Perjury Lying under oath
• Polite lie Told out of politeness and usually
  known to be untrue by both parties
• Puffery In advertising unlikely to be true but
  cannot be proven false
• View from Nowhere In journalism each side have
  equal correctness, even when the truth of their
  claims are mutually exclusive
• White lie Used to shield someone from a hurtful
  truth

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Things to Think About

• Schema An innate knowledge structure that
  allows a person to organize in his or her mind
  ways to behave in his or her environment.
• Mosbys Dictionary of Medicine, Nursing and
  Allied Health, 3rd Edition, 1998
• The schema is primarily unconsciously imposed on
  reality or experience to assist in explaining it,
  mediate perception, or guide response.

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Identifying The Box
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Narrow Rigid Schema

• The schema of an individual, who views life
  through anger, fear and mistrust, has a limited
  and persistent pattern of overriding belief
  systems and behaviors that interfere with social
  functioning. This schema is narrow and rigid and
  it limits social responses. (In the box)

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Healthy Schema

• The schema of a patient, tolerant, kind, loving,
  and forgiving individual allows for a wider range
  of positive personal choices and social
  responses. (Outside the box)
• Stop, Drop, and Shop.

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Changing Your Thinking

• When you develop a healthy pattern of thinking
  and believing about the troublesome issues in
  your life, your behaviors change and your life
  improves.
• Remember, if you always think the way you have
  always thought, you will always get what you have
  always got.

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Writing an Initial Thinking Report

• If we change our thinking we can change our
  lives. Thoughts control how we feel and behave.
  Writing a thinking report will allow us to
  analyze the way we think to identify our thinking
  errors.
• Use this format for your thinking reports.
• Write about a situation in which someone did
  something to you that made you angry and you
  retaliated and got in trouble.

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Thinking Report Format

• Describe the Situation.
• A brief, factual description
• Identify Automatic Thoughts.
• List your immediate thoughts at the time,
  without explanation, justification, censorship or
  criticism.
• Identify Feelings. For the purpose of this
  assignment, we are using anger.

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Format (continued)

• Identify your Belief.
• This is the thought behind the thoughts based in
  your feeling upon which you are willing to take
  action.
• (In most, if not all cases, the Attitude is
  Negative due to the angry feeling and is based on
  the Automatic Thoughts and Belief errors in
  thinking)

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Format (continued)

• Behavior.
• Exactly what did you do?
• Outcome.
• Brief, factual description of what immediately
  happened as a result of your behavior?
• Outcome should be Negative (The consequences of
  behavior)

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Analysis of Automatic Thoughts and Belief

• To analyze your thinking, review your Automatic
  Thoughts and Belief statements, and using the
  thinking errors list, identify the thinking
  errors that relate to the thought/belief.

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Initial Thinking Report Worksheet Review(In the
Box)

• Situation (Brief, to the Point)
• Automatic Thoughts (Immediate Thoughts)
• Feeling (At the time) Anger
• Belief (The thought behind the thoughts based on
  feeling, upon which you are willing to take
  action)
• Attitude Negative
• Behavior (Exactly what you did/said)
• Outcome (Brief Description) Negative
• Now, go to the Thinking Error List, identify the
  thinking errors in your automatic thoughts and
  belief, and add checkmarks to your running list.

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Identifying Thinking Errors

• Place a checkmark on the line next to the
  thinking error. As you continue to write
  thinking reports and repeat this process, you
  will see patterns in your thinking and beliefs
  that need to be addressed by changing your
  behavior.
• Accurate thinking is developed by spotting
  thinking errors and replacing them with
  Intentionally Structured Accurate Thoughts
  (ISAT).

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Your Personal Thinking ErrorsRunning List

• Labeling _______________________________
• Jumping to Conclusions ___________________
• Excuses _______________________________
• Polarized Thinking _______________________
• Overgeneralization _______________________
• Mind Reading ___________________________
• Maximizing _____________________________
• Minimizing _____________________________
• Victim Stance ___________________________
• Controlling _____________________________
• Emotional Reasoning _____________________
• Closed Channel __________________________
• Lying __________________________________
• Shoulding ______________________________
• Now lets do the ISAT Worksheet.

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Writing an Intentionally Structured Accurate
Thinking Report

• Using the same exact situation, you will make up
  the automatic thoughts and your belief so your
  attitude and outcome are positive. This forces
  you to think outside the box, and gives you a
  positive social response to the situation.

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ISAT Worksheet Review(Outside the Box)

• Situation (Exact situation from In the Box)
• Automatic Thoughts (Immediate Thoughts)
• Feeling (At the time) Fear
• Belief (The thought behind the thoughts based on
  feeling, upon which you are willing to take
  action)
• Attitude Positive
• Behavior (Exactly what you did/said)
• Outcome (Brief Description) Positive
• If you always think like you have always thought,
  you will always get what you have always got. If
  you like what you have been getting, keep doing
  what works.

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Contact Information

• Great Lakes Recovery Centers, Inc.
• 201 Rublein Street
• Marquette, MI 49855
• www.greatlakesrecovery.org
• Robert J. Swanson, LBSW, CADC, CCSM
• 906 362-2693
• drbob449_at_att.net