Change Your Thinking Change Your Life!

1. Change Your ThinkingChange Your Life! Great Lakes Recovery Centers, Inc Behavioral Health Services Robert J. Swanson, LBSW, CADC, CCSM

2. 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.

3. 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)

4. Changing Thinking Habits Environment Thoughts Physical Feelings Behaviors

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. 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.

14. Thinking Errors (Continued) • Closed Channel: Insisting on being right no matter what. • Shoulding: This thinking error is focused on what we can’t control. And then there is: • Lying: This is the most common thinking errors used by us.

15. 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

16. 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

17. 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

18. 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.” • Mosby’s 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.

19. Schema “The Box”” Belief Feelings AutomaticThoughtstriggeredbyschema Physical Situation Behavior Identifying “The Box”

20. 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)

21. 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.

22. 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.

23. 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.

24. 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.

25. 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)

26. 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)

27. 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.

28. 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.

29. 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).

30. 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 let’s do the ISAT Worksheet.

31. 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.

32. 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.

33. 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@att.net