Cognitive Restructuring Techniques for Reframing Thoughts

Do you ever find yourself following a certain train of thought, without consciously deciding to go down that path, that takes you to a sad or upsetting conclusion?

I’m going to assume you answered affirmatively since you’re human! (If you’re not a human, feel free to skip this piece.)

It’s in our nature to come up with schemas, or thought patterns and assumptions, about how things work. Without them, we would have to approach every problem as a brand new one, with no pre-existing experiences, problem-solving techniques, or lessons learned to draw from.

The issue with these schemas is that they are not always accurate. We do not always come up with the best and most effective methods for solving problems, but these methods can get saved to our subconscious anyway.

Fortunately, all hope is not lost if you have internalized a faulty perspective! There is an effective, evidence-backed process of reframing or restructuring these faulty ways of thinking that can help you right the biased, skewed, or just plain inaccurate beliefs you hold.

Read on to learn about cognitive restructuring and how it can help you improve your thinking.

Before you read on, we thought you might like to download our three Positive CBT Exercises for free. These science-based exercises will provide you with a detailed insight into Positive CBT and will give you the tools to apply it in your therapy or coaching.

What Is Cognitive Restructuring or Cognitive Reframing? A Definition

Cognitive restructuring, or cognitive reframing, is a therapeutic process that helps the client discover, challenge, and modify or replace their negative, irrational thoughts (or cognitive distortions; Clark, 2013).

It is a staple of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and a frequently used tool in a therapist’s toolbox because many of our problems are caused by faulty ways of thinking about ourselves and the world around us. Cognitive restructuring aims to help people reduce their stress through cultivating more positive and functional thought habits (Mills, Reiss, & Dombeck, 2008).

Although it may seem overwhelmingly difficult to change your own ways of thinking, it is actually comparable to any other skill – it is hard when you first begin, but with practice, you will find it easier and easier to challenge your own negative thoughts and beliefs.

What Role Does CR Play in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, is built on the idea that the way we think affects the way we feel. It is easy to see the logic behind this idea, and the implications of faulty ways of thinking.

Cognitive restructuring was first developed as a therapeutic tool of CBT and Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy, or REBT (Mills, Reiss, & Dombeck, 2008). CBT practitioners quickly found that it was an adaptable and flexible tool that could help a wide range of people dealing with all kinds of problems, whether the problems were due to outside factors, internal issues, or both.

This method of addressing problems and promoting healing makes up the bulk of CBT sessions and offers dozens of techniques and exercises that can be applied to nearly any client scenario. Applied correctly, it will help the client learn to stop automatically trusting his or her thoughts as representative of reality and begin testing his or her thoughts for accuracy (Mills, Reiss, & Dombeck, 2008).

To learn more about how CBT uses cognitive restructuring techniques, watch this video of CBT founding father Aaron Beck discussing this method.

Magnification, Overgeneralization, and Other Cognitive Distortions

There are so many ways our thinking can play tricks on us that it’s almost surprising that we think in a more functional way most of the time! These tricks are known as “cognitive distortions” in psychology.

Cognitive distortions are faulty or biased ways of thinking about ourselves and/or our environment (Beck, 1976). They are beliefs and thought patterns that are irrational, false, or inaccurate, and they have the potential to cause serious damage to our sense of self, our confidence, and our ability to succeed.

One of the most common cognitive distortions is magnification or minimization, a damaging distortion that affects how we evaluate the things that happen to us (Yurica & DiTomasso, 2005). You can read more in our cognitive distortions article about magnification, overgeneralization, and other common cognitive distortions.

Cognitive Restructuring Techniques: Socratic Questioning, Guided Imagery, and More

Luckily, although cognitive distortions are stubborn and surprisingly insidious thought patterns, there are ways to combat them! Cognitive restructuring techniques have had great success in identifying, challenging, and replacing faulty ways of thinking with more accurate, helpful, and positive ways of thinking.

Increasing Awareness of Thoughts

The first step toward fixing faulty thinking is to identify your faulty thinking. Increasing your awareness of your own thoughts, particularly your overly negative or biased thoughts, is a vital piece of this process.

It will take time and effort to improve your awareness of your own thoughts. It’s not a natural practice for people to stop in the middle of experiencing an intense emotion and think about how they got to where they are! Although it is difficult, you will find that the outcome is worth the effort.

Begin looking for cognitive distortions by turning on your internal “radar” for negative emotions. Think about when your depression, anxiety, or anger symptoms are at their worst. If it’s too difficult to start with your emotions, start with behaviors instead. Ask yourself what behaviors you would like to change, then identify what triggers those behaviors.

You can think of these situations as “alarm” situations, or situations that alert you to the presence of one or more cognitive distortions.

Some example alarm situations include:

• You notice a feeling of anxiety before going out with friends. Your heart races, and you sweat.
• You start arguments with your partner after you’ve had a meeting with your boss. The arguments always start over something minor, like chores.
• When a big assignment is due at school, you put it off until the last minute. Small assignments are no problem.
• You feel depressed when you have to spend an evening alone. You feel so lonely that you can’t take it.

Consider these alarm situations and think about similar situations in your own life. Are there scenarios that frequently bring out uncomfortable or painful emotions? Do certain situations tend to have a larger than expected impact on your mood?

Do your best to identify as many triggering situations as you can, and the more specific they are, the better! It’s incredibly helpful to have a list of your most common or most significant triggers when beginning your cognitive restructuring work.

Socratic Questioning

Socratic questioning is a very effective cognitive restructuring technique that can help you or your clients to challenge irrational, illogical, or harmful thinking errors.

The basic outline for this technique is to ask the following questions:

1. Is this thought realistic?
2. Am I basing my thoughts on facts or on feelings?
3. What is the evidence for this thought?
4. Could I be misinterpreting the evidence?
5. Am I viewing the situation as black and white, when it’s really more complicated?
6. Am I having this thought out of habit, or do facts support it?

Thoughts are a running dialogue in our minds, and they can come and go so quickly that we can barely understand them, let alone have time to address them.

The first step is to identify the thoughts that you feel need to be questioned. Think of a specific thought that you suspect is destructive or irrational, especially one that pops into your head quite a lot.

Next, consider the evidence for and against this thought. What evidence is there that this thought is accurate? What evidence exists that calls it into question?

Once you have identified the evidence, you can make a judgment on this thought. Weigh the evidence for the thought and the evidence against the thought, and decide whether it is more likely to be accurate or false. Determine whether it is based on the facts or on your feelings.

Next, you answer a question on whether this thought is truly a black and white situation, or whether reality leaves room for shades of grey. This is where you think about whether you are using all-or-nothing thinking, or making things unreasonably simple when they are truly complex.

This detailed Cognitive Restructuring Worksheet uses “Socratic questions” to encourage a deep dive into thoughts that plague you, and offer an opportunity to analyze and evaluate them for truth. If you are having thoughts that do not come from a place of truth, this worksheet can be an excellent tool for identifying and defusing them.

Guided Imagery

You probably already know that visualization can be a great tool for relaxing, managing pain, getting anxiety under control, and neutralizing anger.

You may not have known that it can also be an extremely effective method of cognitive restructuring.

There are three main categories of guided imagery that a therapist can guide their client through cognitive restructuring:

1. Life Event Visualization
2. Reinstatement of a Dream or Daytime Image
3. Feeling Focusing

CBT therapists looking to support their clients using guided imagery might point them toward recordings they can purchase, many of which accompany CBT workbooks or come as guided audio meditations.

Alternatively, practitioners may wish to pre-record their own audio that guides their clients through cognitive restructuring exercises.

Using a digital psychotherapy platform such as Quenza (pictured here), these pre-recorded audio clips can be sent directly to the client’s smartphone or tablet, where they will be available to complete when needed, such as during moments of pain or anxiety.

The advantage of distributing these recordings via such a platform is that the therapist can then track the completion of the sessions from their own devices. This may provide useful content for exploration during in-person therapy sessions, such as regarding the timing and frequency with which clients choose to engage with cognitive restructuring exercises.

Let’s now look more closely at key types of guided imagery exercises for cognitive restructuring.

– Life Event Visualization

This technique involves having the client identify a specific event or theme that is the focus of the therapy sessions (Edwards, 1989). This event could be something recent and particularly salient, like an argument with a loved one, or something from the past that still has a strong impact on the client, like being bullied or a harsh rejection from childhood. If the focus is on a theme, the client will keep this theme in mind and let an image arise organically.

– Reinstatement of a Dream or Daytime Image

This imagery technique focuses on a specific image that the client has already had. The image could be one that the client encountered in a dream, daydream, fantasy or previous guided imagery session. Wherever it came from, it will hold some inherent meaning to the client and may cause the client to feel anxious, sad, upset, or another emotion intensely.

– Feeling Focusing

The final imagery type is characterized by the client focusing on a feeling he or she is experiencing in the session, and letting an image arise from the feeling. An image will usually arise spontaneously, but if not, a technique called multisensory evocation can help to clarify an image. For this technique, the therapist will direct the client through an exploration of the senses to help sharpen the image and identify more detail.

Once the client has an image in mind, the therapist will move on to assessing the meanings that the image hold for the client. There are several assessment techniques a therapist may use, including:

1. Prompted soliloquy – the therapist directs the client to identify as an object or entity from the image (e.g., a client who visualized a lake drying up was directed to “be the lake”), and speak from the position of this object or entity (e.g., the client would speak about how it felt to be the lake, and what its drying up meant).
2. Interview – in this technique, the client will once again take on the role of an object or entity from the image, and the therapist will ask specific questions of the client in this role.
3. Prompted dialogue – similar to the previous techniques, this technique involves the client taking on a role and addressing one of the other objects or people in the imagery (e.g., the client could identify as the lake and address the trees around the lake).
4. Prompted descriptions – this basic technique simply refers to the therapist’s use of frequent questions about what the client is seeing and feeling.
5. Prompted transformation – the therapist may suggest that the client shifts or changes the image; this can be especially helpful when the current image has reached the end of its usefulness as a discussion piece.

However a therapist and client work together to identify the meanings attached to the image, the next step will help them to begin challenging, restructuring, or replacing harmful assumptions and beliefs.

Some of the techniques a therapist may use to guide a client through restructuring include summary and reframing, directed dialogue, prompted dialogue, directed transformation, and prompted transformation.

– Summary and Reframing

This restructuring method refers to the therapist’s summarizing what he or she has learned from the client and suggesting alternate beliefs or assumptions based on the client’s image. This is generally a first step in restructuring, as it is a gentle introduction to the idea of changing what may be deeply or even unconsciously held beliefs.

– Directed Dialogue

In directed dialogue, the therapist instructs the client to take on the role of one of the objects or people from the imagery and deliver specified lines in that role. The client may direct their speech to another object or person in the imagery or simply make statements to no one in particular. This technique can help the client consider the possibility of new beliefs and begin to modulate their own assumptions.

– Prompted Dialogue

This technique is not as direct as the previous technique, but it can be just as powerful. Instead of telling the client exactly what to say in their role from the image, the therapist will direct them to come up with their own words to capture a specific idea.

– Directed Transformation

This technique also has the potential to be very powerful. In directed transformation, the therapist will direct the client to make a change to the image. The change may be to direct one of the individuals in the image to take a new action or to edit, enhance, or erase an object from the image.

– Prompted Transformation

Like prompted dialogue, this technique gives the client a bit more freedom to make their own changes to the image. Instead of directing the client in exactly how to change the image, the therapist will encourage the client to think of a way to change the image that will further a goal or help it become more positive (Edwards, 1989).

Thought Records

Keeping thought records is an excellent way to help you or your client become aware of any cognitive distortions that went previously unnoticed or unquestioned, which is the necessary first step to restructuring them (Myles & Shafran, 2015). There are several different ways to structure a thought record, but the main idea is to note what recurrent thoughts are coming to mind and the situations in which they come up.

A popular thought record (described in more detail later) instructs you to record the situation, thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and alternate thought.

As an example, you may fill this out with the following descriptions if you are having trouble being alone with depressive symptoms:

• Situation: Everyone’s busy, so I’m spending an evening alone with no plans.
• Thoughts: No one wants to hang out with me. I’m just wasting my life, sitting here alone.
• Emotions: Depressed.
• Behaviors: Stayed home all night and did nothing. Just sat around having bad thoughts.
• Alternate Thought: I’m alone tonight, but everyone is alone from time to time. I can do whatever I want!

Alternatively, if you are struggling with procrastination, you might fill out the thought record as follows:

• Situation: A difficult assignment is due at school.
• Thoughts: This is so much work. I’m horrible at this stuff. I don’t think I can do it.
• Emotions: Anxious.
• Behaviors: Avoided the assignment until the last minute. Had to rush my work.
• Alternate Thought: This is a difficult assignment, and it’ll take a lot of work. But I know I can do it if I break it into small pieces.

Writing this information down will give you or your client a way to consider what they may not have noticed before, and find patterns in their thinking that can point to specific distortions in their cognition.

In the next section, we’ll go over one such worksheet that can be used to record potentially distorted thoughts.

Decatastrophizing or “What If?” Technique

This technique is basically asking “what’s the worst that can happen?” and following a scenario logically through to completion (Dattilio & Freeman, 1992). We often suffer from assumptions or anxieties about the worst possible outcome that could happen, even if that outcome is (a) not very likely, and (b) not going to ruin our lives even if it does!

Decatastrophizing or asking yourself “what if?” will help you or your client determine what is likely to happen, reduce irrational or unreasonable anxiety, and see that even the worst-case scenario is manageable.

A worksheet covering this technique will also be included below.

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5 Cognitive Restructuring Worksheets (PDF)

If you’re hoping for some hands-on tools to help you with cognitive restructuring, you’ve come to the right place! A few of the best worksheets and handouts for cognitive restructuring exercises are described below.

Thought Record

This simple worksheet is very easy to use, but it can be extremely helpful for enhancing your awareness and identifying potentially damaging thoughts.

There are six columns in this thought record, with space for up to five separate instances.

In the second column, the user is instructed to describe the situation. This should include the five “W”s and one “H” (i.e., who, what, where, when, why, how), if applicable. Write down everything you can think of that contributed to the environment and to encouraging or promoting the thought that follows.

Write down this thought in the third column. It should be a thought that you identified as potentially harmful, illogical, or outright false. Be specific and write out the whole thought.

In the next column, think about the emotions that accompanied this thought. How did you feel when this thought popped up? What emotions did it seem to bring with it? What emotions did it cause? Anger, shame, sadness, guilt? Write down whatever emotions it engendered.

Use the fifth column to record an alternate thought, especially if the original thought is one that you find unenjoyable or unhelpful. The alternate thought should be something that you find plausible, but that is more positive and realistic than the original thought.

In the last column, note the outcome of this exercise.

Use this Thought Record Worksheet as much as needed, whether that is once every couple of days when a problematic thought pops up, or several times a day when a recurring thought returns to plague you. Keeping a log will help you identify patterns and discover the triggers and potential fixes for the negative, automatic thoughts you are suffering from.

ABC Belief Monitoring

Similar to the Thought Record worksheet, this worksheet is a great way to help you or your client identify the link between situations, thoughts and beliefs, and the feelings and actions that follow.

Sometimes it is difficult for us to connect the triggers of our thoughts and beliefs with the outcomes of those thoughts and beliefs. Use this worksheet to help you or your clients discover these connections.

In the first portion of the worksheet, you will identify the antecedents or triggers (the “A” in ABC) of the belief or thought. Describe the situation as best you can.

In the second section, identify the belief or thought (the “B” in ABC) that you had about the situation. Make sure to note all thoughts or beliefs that arose if you had more than one. Be specific about them. After you have identified the thoughts and beliefs, rate how true you find them to be on a scale from 0% (not true at all) to 100% (absolutely true). Consider each thought or belief, and take some time to assign them an accurate rating.

In the third and final section, list the consequences (the “C” in ABC) of the thought or belief. Describe how you felt when this situation occurred, what you did in response, and how others reacted (if applicable). Do your best not to shy away from the truth, even if it’s difficult to admit how you responded to the situation or acknowledge how others reacted.

Use this ABC Functional Analysis worksheet to keep tabs on any automatic beliefs or thoughts that tend to pop up for you, especially in times of stress or situations that don’t go your way. The first step to restructuring harmful or problematic beliefs is identifying them!

Behavioral Experiment

This worksheet is an excellent way to practice several helpful restructuring techniques and methods of reframing. It also allows you to use your imagination and think about how your current habits and behaviors could bring about future outcomes, whether positive or negative.

In the first section, labeled “Original Belief,” write down something you believe to be true. It should be related to something meaningful to you, and it should be tied to a potential cognitive distortion. Describe what you expect to happen, and how you would know if your belief came true. Next, rate how strongly you believe it will actually come true on a scale from 0% (not strong at all) to 100% (extremely strong).

In the next section, you will do a little experimenting. Think of an experiment that could test this prediction you have, and note the situation that would need to unfold (when, where, who, etc.). Identify which of your safety behaviors, or behaviors you use to protect yourself from anxiety, sadness, or disappointment, would need to be dropped to conduct the experiment.

Write this in the next circle if there is an alternate belief you may need to adopt. Again, rate in on a scale from 0% (not strong at all) to 100% (extremely strong). Note how you would know if your prediction came true or not.

The next step is the biggest one – go out and conduct the experiment.

Once you have completed the experiment, come back to the worksheet and answer the rest of the questions.

The section following the experiment covers the outcome of the experiment. Describe what happened, and don’t skimp on details! Once you have penned a good description of the outcome, determine whether your prediction was accurate.

Write down what you learned from your experiment, and determine how likely it is that your original belief will come true in the future. Finally, rate how strongly you agree with your original belief now that you have completed your experiment and examined the results.

The beauty of this worksheet is that it can be used for a wide variety of beliefs, predictions and behaviors, from big to small, positive to negative, meaningful to trivial, and everything in between.

Completing these Behavioral Experiments will help you challenge your assumptions about how things work, as well as your beliefs about how things should work. Use it as often as you like to keep track of any potentially damaging distortions and maintain awareness about your deeply held beliefs.

Positive Belief Record

This worksheet offers a surprisingly simple and straightforward, yet evidence-based method of challenging potentially harmful or inaccurate beliefs you may hold.

To dive into this worksheet, direct your attention to the top of the sheet. You will find two clouds – one where you can record the belief you would like to modify or replace, and a second space where you can come up with a new, more positive belief to replace it.

Underneath the two beliefs is a section where you can record some evidence for the new belief or against the current belief. This evidence can provide support for the new belief, call the current belief into question, or do both at once. It should be fairly easy to find this kind of evidence, especially if the current belief is one that you have identified as a belief that is likely to be inaccurate or illogical.

There is enough space on the worksheet to come up with ten pieces of evidence that support the new belief or cast doubt upon the current belief, but feel free to use another sheet of paper if you need more room! This evidence can include experiences you have had, something someone else has said to you, or anything else you can think of that supports the new belief or sheds doubt on the old belief.

Use this Logging Positive Beliefs worksheet whenever you identify a thought or belief that you realize is distorted, inaccurate, or biased. It will help you come up with ways to combat it and replace it with a new, more positive, more realistic thought or belief.

Theory A Theory B

However important, real, or pressing our problems seem to us, they are often a different kind of problem than we think. This exercise can help your client see many problems as problems of belief or worry instead of situation or fact.

Take a blank sheet of paper and split it into two columns, labeling them as “Theory A” and “Theory B.”

Under Theory A, describe your problem as one of fact. Under Theory B, describe your problem as one of worry.

First, identify your problem and describe it under Theory A. Finish the sentence prompt “The problem is…” with a description of the problem as you currently understand it.

Next, provide evidence that this problem is real, and that you are interpreting the situation correctly.

Finish up the Theory A column by answering the question: “What do I need to do if Theory A is true?” In other words, determine what you would need to do to solve your problem or, if it is unsolvable, address the issues that come with this problem.

When you have finished with the first column, move on to the second column and Theory B.

Describe the problem again, but this time from the perspective of the problem as one of worrying rather than fact. Consider the idea that the real problem is in fact the belief you have or the worry you carry.

Next, provide evidence for the problem as one of belief or worry instead of fact. Think of any evidence you can find that lends support to this interpretation.

Finally, answer the same question you did at the bottom of the first column: “What do I need to do if Theory B is true?” Consider what you would need to do to address your problem if it is interpreted as a problem of worry rather than fact.

Compare the two columns once you have finished. You will likely find that the second column describes a problem that is much more realistic and manageable, and that your “to-do list” at the bottom is much simpler and more straightforward in the second column.

Use this exercise whenever you want to reframe a problem to make it tamer and more manageable.

What If…?

This last worksheet will help you change your perspective on some of the most common situations you encounter or think about. It is based on the natural human tendency to finish the thought “What if…?” with negative situations or events.

While we often veer toward the negative possibilities, there are usually an equal number of positive possibilities that we simply fail to recognize. The consequence of considering only negative outcomes is clearly not a happier and healthier you – a more balanced perspective will help you to approach life with a more positive and realistic attitude.

The worksheet juxtaposes two columns with two separate ways of looking at the world: one negative, and one positive.

On the left side, the column is labeled “Negative ‘What if…?’”

On the right side, the column is labeled “Positive ‘What if…?’”

As you have probably guessed, your instructions are to fill out the left column with “glass half empty” ways of completing a “What if…?” thought, and to fill out the right column with “glass half full” ways of completing such a thought.

There is plenty of room to write in each column, so do your best to fill them! At the least, you should try to make sure you come up with as many positive sentence completions as negative ones. Negative ones tend to come easier to us, but it’s important to consider the positive possibilities as well.

Once you are done, ask yourself these two questions:

1. How does each kind of “What if…?” make me feel?
2. Which is more likely than the other?

Consider your answers to these questions for each pair of “What if…?” scenarios. You will likely find that you feel much better thinking about the positive ones than the negative ones. If you are being honest with yourself, you will probably find that the positive outcome is more likely to occur than the negative one.

Pull out this What If Bias worksheet whenever you or your client is having trouble considering the positive along with the negative. This exercise can help you restructure your thinking to correct distortions like disqualifying the positive, mental filter, catastrophizing, minimizing, and overgeneralization.

Challenging Negative Automatic Thoughts

In this worksheet, the reader will be guided through questions challenging negative automatic thoughts (or cognitive distortions).

The questions are based on strategies which include:

1. Examining the evidence for and against
2. Exploring the idiosyncratic meanings of these thoughts
3. Exposing the bias and distortion in these thoughts
4. Expanding one’s perspective
5. Experimenting, both behaviorally and cognitively

Here are some of the questions:

1. What facts support this thought? What existing evidence contradicts it?
2. What would the worst possible outcome be, if this thought were true?
3. Am I using a past experience to overgeneralize?

Use these questions to guide your thinking about the evidence for negative automatic thoughts, the implications if they are correct (and if they are incorrect), and how they should be modified, restructured, or replaced.

A Take-Home Message

In this piece, we covered the topic of cognitive restructuring. We defined cognitive restructuring (or cognitive reframing), identified some of the most common distortions that can be addressed through cognitive restructuring, covered several different techniques for modifying or replacing these distortions, and provided worksheets and handouts that can help you or your client on this journey to more positive and effective cognition.

I hope you come away from this piece with a new understanding of this valuable CBT tool, and an interest in learning more about the fascinating way that our minds work.

Have you tried any of these techniques, either as a therapist or as a client? How did they work for you? Are there any techniques you found effective that were not included here? Leave us a comment and let us know your thoughts on the subject!

Thanks for reading!

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. For more information, don’t forget to download our three Positive CBT Exercises for free.