Untangling Your Thoughts: An Introduction to CBT | Wildflower Center for Emotional Health

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Ever catch yourself making a choice you knew wasn’t the best – and wonder why you did it anyway? Maybe there was a moment that stirred up a strong emotion you did not expect, or a first impression of someone that stuck with you no matter what. The truth is, our thoughts have a way of shaping how we feel and what we do – and we often have more influence in that process than we realize. One effective way to tap into that influence is through Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which offers practical, structured tools to challenge unhelpful thoughts and help you feel more in control of your responses.

What is CBT?

CBT is an evidence-based psychotherapy that explores the connection between thoughts, feelings and behaviors. It was developed in the 1960s by psychiatrist Aaron Beck, who noticed that many of his patients with depression exhibited “cognitive distortions” – inaccurate patterns of thinking that influenced how they felt and behaved. This observation led Beck to suggest that disorders like depression or anxiety might not be purely mood disorders, but rather cognitive ones (Chand et al., 2023). To explain this, he created the cognitive model, which illustrates how thoughts can affect emotions and behaviors, and vice versa.

How Our Thoughts Affect Us

The cognitive model suggests that a situation can trigger an automatic thought – an immediate interpretation of what’s happening – which then leads to a reaction involving physiological responses, emotions, and behaviors. For example, imagine you texted a friend and they haven’t replied after a few hours. Your automatic thought might be, “She’s annoyed with me” or “He does not care about me.” While these thoughts might be true, they often arise quickly without thorough evidence and instead stem from deeper, underlying core beliefs about yourself.

Core beliefs like “I am too much” or “I am unlovable” are strong sentiments shaped by lifelong experiences. They heavily influence how you perceive situations – especially when there is little evidence available to challenge them in the moment. Connected to these core beliefs are intermediate beliefs, which are conditional rules or assumptions linking situations to core beliefs. For instance, an intermediate belief might be, “If I reach out to express myself, people will get overwhelmed and pull away” or “If people cared about me, they would respond quickly”.

Emotions, Physical Reactions and Behaviors

If you were having the thought “She’s annoyed with me”, it’s easy to imagine that it wouldn’t create a pleasant emotion. You might feel isolated, hurt, worried, embarrassed or even frustrated. Physically, your body could respond with an elevated heart rate, quickened breath, increased body temperature, sweating, or muscle tension. These emotions and physical sensations often influence your behavior. You might become avoidant or defensive, call someone else to vent, angrily text your friend again or even cry.

Understanding Cognitive Distortions

CBT is powerful, not only in helping us understand the timeline of internal processes that lead to a reaction but also in teaching us how to influence our thoughts or behaviors to create more helpful emotions and responses. One key method is by identifying cognitive distortions – negative biases that shape automatic thoughts (Rnic et al., 2016).

While everyone experiences cognitive distortions from time to time, they are especially common in individuals with mental health disorders, such as anxiety and depression (Chand et al., 2023). Recognizing which cognitive distortion you’re experiencing can help you step back and reevaluate your thoughts before jumping to conclusions. It’s also important to remember that a single thought may involve multiple cognitive distortions (Beck Institute, 2018).

Some cognitive distortions include:

All-or-nothing thinking: If I am not a total success, then I am a failure.
Overgeneralization: This date was a disaster –therefore, I will never have a good date again.
Filtering out the positive: Even though I got a good grade on that test, it doesn’t mean I am competent. I was lucky.
Jumping to conclusions (mind reading): She didn’t respond to my text, so she must be mad at me.
Catastrophizing: I failed that test. At this rate, I’ll never get into a college and I’m going to fail at life.
“Should” statements: I should be way more successful than I am right now.
Personalization: He was standoffish with me because I did something wrong.
Labeling: I am a loser.

Applying CBT: Challenging and Changing Thoughts

Based on this list, the thought “She’s annoyed with me” could be described as either mind reading or personalization. You don’t know for sure that your friend is annoyed; instead, you’re interpreting her lack of response as a reflection of yourself. Even if you later find out your thought was true, it’s likely that this automatic thought caused distress because it was based on faulty reasoning and anxiety rather than solid evidence.

So how can CBT change these thoughts and behaviors? Therapists using CBT work to evaluate and reshape inaccurate thoughts and beliefs through a method called cognitive restructuring (Ezawa & Hollon, 2023). One common technique is to “put your thoughts on trial” by examining the evidence for and against them. For example, a therapist might ask you to look for evidence supporting the thought “She’s annoyed at me” as well as evidence that contradicts it. Evidence for the thought could include your friend usually responding quickly or a recent disagreement between you two. Evidence against it might be that you thought your friend mentioned having a busy workweek recently or that she may have left her phone at home. So, how might you feel if you changed your thought to, “She must be busy”? You might feel more trusting or even indifferent. Your heart rate might stay steady, and your body temperature could remain calm. With this shift in thinking, you might find it easier to refocus and return to what you were doing – without those unpleasant emotions weighing on you.

Thought Records

Between sessions, your therapist might ask you to keep a log of your thoughts, emotions and behaviors using a thought record. While thought records come in many styles with varying complexity, at their core they include columns for the situation, the thoughts, the emotions, and the behaviors (Dubord, 2011). You may also be asked to label your thought with a cognitive distortion or rate how much you believe the thought before and after challenging it. Sometimes, you might write down what you would do differently based on your new, alternative thought. Many people find it helpful to complete their thought record in real time, as distorted thoughts arise, or as a reflexive practice at the end of the day. Whatever approach you and your therapist choose, finding a method that works best for you is key to maintaining a sustained and beneficial practice.

CBT Can Benefit Anyone

While CBT is most commonly used in therapy to treat anxiety and depression, its techniques can benefit anyone. Our brains are wired to respond quickly to events based on personal biases, but these automatic reactions can sometimes cause more harm than good to our emotions and behaviors. By learning to challenge these automatic thoughts through CBT, we can significantly improve our overall well being. For more information on various cognitive and behavioral approaches used at Wildflower, check out this page on our website.

Here are additional resources to support your learning:

Websites

The Beck Institute website offers helpful information and training about CBT. It is a trusted resource created by experts who developed CBT and supports both professionals and anyone interested in learning how CBT can benefit their mental health.

The Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT) is a great resource for all things CBT. ABCT offers webinars, conventions, and publishes its own journal.

MoodGym is an online program that teaches CBT skills to manage stress, anxiety and depression through five interactive modules.