You’ve learned about self-defeating thoughts—negative ideas that are alarming, unrealistic, and/or passive. These thoughts can make it harder to manage pain. They often happen automatically, slipping into your mind without you even realizing it, making coping more difficult. To manage these thoughts, it’s important that you practice noticing them. This exercise will simply involve tracking your thoughts and making note of those that are self-defeating.
identify your own self-defeating thoughts
Now that you know what a ‘self-defeating thought” looks like, it is time to identify your own. Simply noticing or observing your thoughts will help you to realize that:
- thoughts are temporary mental events
- thoughts are not necessarily true
- you don’t need to become emotionally entangled in your thoughts
- you can let some thoughts simply pass by
- you can examine other thoughts more closely and challenge them if that seems helpful
- you are not your thoughts
Track your self-defeating thoughts on a piece of paper or on your phone for a day or two. Then come back and enter some examples in the “Identify Self-Defeating Thoughts” form. Save the form and upload to your Goalistics certified nurse practitioner or psychologist, if you have one.
understand, identify, challenge and replace, practice
