COGNITIVE RESTRUCTURING EXERCISE

Alivia Matchett

1-What did you noticed and discover by doing this exercise?

My whole life I have resorted to my journal as a sort of comfortable place to state my
thoughts and feelings within an event. I didn’t start to realize the negative foundation of
context in my entries until this semester, where I am forced to re evaluate my subconscious
behavior upon my attitude and social interactions. Most of the time the kairos for writing in my
journal is influenced by my negative thoughts, or rather a negative situation that I feel as if I
need to write about to unleash its weight on my shoulders. I’ve felt for so long that this was the
key to overcoming these events; a way for me to project against my depression as long as I was
writing down exactly how I may be feeling, no matter how negative and detrimental to my self
esteem they may be. They are my thoughts and feelings so they must be true, right?
This assignment showed me the effect of my writing to be more of a dead end, and
allowed me to recognize the practice of properly restructuring my cognitive distortions. The
first step, within “The Ten Ways to Untwist Your Thinking” is to Identify the distortion. This
seems to be the only step I have inhabited throughout my life, as I have had the courage to be
aware of what thoughts and feelings I conjure up in my mind. I have always felt overly “aware”
in my life; being fully awakened to what is unhealthy in my resort of living but not necessarily
as awakened to the application of changing them. I seem to avoid that part in my journal
entries, writing about what IS but not what may BE, or what I am capable of overcoming on the
positive spectrum of things. It may be because I am more comfortable and acceptable with the
atrocities of life, being introduced to the ugly in my childhood experiences and feeling a
demand for growth at an early developmental stage. This week was particularly a challenging
week for me, as a lot of situations have come up taking over a negative control on my
thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Instead of how I might have previously reflected my
feelings, I challenged myself to face each situation differently. I don’t necessarily feel like this
habit will be as easily developed and obtainable to apply in my cognitive state of mind, but this
assignment was a good way for me to start practicing and seeing it’s affection of my behavior
and attitude for life.

2-Were you able to untwist some thought distortions? What were your
thought distortions? How did you untwist them?

As I stated previously, there were quite a few unfortunate events that seemed to
crumble down atop of me. Below I will list the few events that particularly conjured my
personal thought distortions, and how I had planned to alter their existence. Some things will
be coming straight from my journal this week; quotations will be the reference of this entry.

OVERGENERALIZATION:
Growing up I have experienced 10 different divorce situations, 5 from my mother and 5
from my father. This past week my mother has decided to leave our family behind as
she took off to develop a new life and find her happiness in her previous home state of
Omaha, Nebraska, following the “love of her life from 25 years ago.” As I have just
recently moved back home, a month and a half ago, I began to think of the situation to
be a recognizable and never ending pattern. I never expected her current marriage to
end, “This time was supposed to be different”. We just bought a house and everything
seemed perfectly fine, untouchable of being torn apart, and our family was finally
standing strong after so long. “Of course as soon as I come back, everything falls apart.
this always happens to me; why WOULDN’T this happen to me.”. This began a sort of
domino effect on my life, as I started to believe the world was absolutely against me
and “happiness just wasn’t fit for me.”. As I started to reflect on every situation, I began
to examine all the other elements that may have made them occur, rather than just be
acceptable that I was bound to experience this life of constant atrocity. “It is out of my
control. I can control how I let it affect me, rather than let it have control over me.” was
one of my first examinations, the only thing I could control was how I let this event play
out on my life. My little brother is 13 years old, and once I started reflecting on how he
might be feeling I realized my responsibility of my behavior to this situation and how it
might effect him too. “I have the opportunity to be there for Carter. Even with such a
busy schedule, I have gone out of my way to care for him and take him too school or
wherever he needs to go, giving me more time to connect with him than I did before.
What you are doing is not something any person can be particularly strong enough to
do, and look at you, you are doing it.”. I also replaced the context of where I placed the
statement of “always”, and reiterated it to be placed in a positive way to my thoughts;
“I ALWAYS overcome the bad, and it ALWAYS works out. I have ALWAYS been so
strong, and I ALWAYS will.”

PERSONALIZATION/BLAME:
This event has resurfaced my purpose for blame. It seemed as if these events weren’t
the problem, but maybe I was. “Our family wasn’t enough to make mom happy, so will I
ever be happy? Will I ever make someone else happy? What did I or my siblings do to
make her want to run away?” started filling my journal pages, and I recognized my
habitual response to be the context of blaming my self and my family to be the cause.
“If I wasn’t born, she would’ve been able to be with ED from the beginning, instead of
having to build a life she never even wanted in the first place, a life she wouldn’t have to
run away from.” I wanted to take the responsibility for her actions, when I didn’t
entirely have any participation in the event at all. I started to examine these thoughts in
the shade of grey, recognizing what I CAN do and learn from it, instead of what I CAN’T
do and wasting time crying over something I couldn’t change. “I have learned the
importance of love. The value of communication, and the meaning of giving rather than
receiving. Don’t take things for granted, don’t take those you DO have in your life for
granted, and don’t forget those that haven’t given up on you, because they are just as
important as the pain.” Seeing my positive feelings on paper gave me hope and
recognition that this is not my fault, nor my family, and it wasn’t my moms either.
“Mom has lost just as much as I have, and I have to remember that. This couldn’t have
been easy for her, just as it isn’t easy for me. But we will both be okay. We will all be
okay, as long as I am truly believing it and seeing it.” I actually began to thank the
situation for teaching me so many valuable things; things I might not have understood
 before. The positive lessons were just as important as the frustration, sadness, and
discouragement I was feeling, and I needed to give them just as much recognition and
power to me as I do the negative ones. They are apart of me, and I need to make the
best of it.

3-Did you notice any difference of your general feeling about yourself after doing
this exercise? Did you notice any change in your self-esteem?

Overall I feel a slightly warmer feeling in my tummy everyday. I’ve told myself “I have 30
minutes to cry, after that you’re going to be the strong, beautiful, hard working individual that
you are. NO distractions and NOTHING pulling you behind. KILL THE DAY.”
This is always in the back of my mind, and the domino effect has seemed to fade. My self-
esteem was previously a road block to all of my responsibilities, and I seemed to kill time
staring at the wall hoping everything would just get better or thinking of how it never will. I am
not saying that it has gotten exponentially better within this week time frame, but I have
begun to see the light at the end of the tunnel and resurfaced a purpose for myself once again;
the one that drives me to be the best I can be everyday, my full potential, slowly accepting the
fatalities to be a stepping stone closer to the success and happiness I deserve.