Recognising Thoughts.
The outside world can affect us and so our reactions to different situations, environments, social situations can be looked at using the model below.
We all have emotions (how we feel), thoughts (what we say to ourselves), bodily sensations (physical symptoms or feelings) and behaviours (our actions). It is important to understand that each of these interact and have an affect on each other.
Have a look at the example below.
Self Talk
What your young person says to themself is called āself-talkā.
It is important for a young person to identify their self-talk, because persistent negative self-talk can lead to negative feelings which can lead to negative behaviour as shown earlier. Teaching young people that we can manage our own self-talk, can help them to control unhelpful thoughts.
Sometimes it can be difficult to understand the difference between a thought and a feeling. For example, the person may say their thought is āIām scaredā (which is actually a feeling) versus āthat noise is a burglar trying to break inā (which is a real thought). It is important to expose the thoughts underneath the feelings!
Try asking questions like āwhat is making you scared? What do you think might be going on?ā; this can help them (and you) identify the thought processes that are causing and maintaining the worry.
Helpful and Unhelpful Thoughts
It can be beneficial to explain that there are helpful and unhelpful thoughts. Sometimes it can be useful to use a Traffic Light system to discuss our thoughts.
Once the young person can identify unhelpful or āredā thoughts it may be useful to introduce Thought Challenging as often our unhelpful thoughts can be untrue or an exaggeration.
Some examples of Thought Challenging Questions could be.
- Am I exaggerating?
- Is this true?
- Am I making this out to be worse than it is?
- Is this thought helpful?
- Is this thought rational?
Click these links below to find out more…
Well-being Toolkit Introduction
Looking after our Physical Self