Adaptive Thinking (part 2)

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Adaptive Thinking

It is time to return back to the topic and skill of adaptive thinking. To remind you, last session we covered the coping log and how we could start to notice our thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations once we are in the stressful situation. We discussed negative automatic thoughts and thought distortions in particular. The goal of this skill is to identify NATs and cognitive distortions and replace NATs with adaptive thoughts that will improve management of stress and NF symptoms.

Identifying NATs and Thought Distortions

Let’s begin by reviewing your Coping logs from last week. Got it? Great! Last week, we asked you to choose a stressful situation and to identify your physical sensations, behaviors, emotions, NATs, and thought distortions. Let’s take a few moments to review this coping log together. Feel free to pause the video or slow down this presentation to really understand the coping log.

• What physical, emotional, and behavioral SR warning signals did you notice?
• What NATs did you notice?
  • Were you able to identify any NF-Specific NATs? For example, NATs about your NF symptoms or experiences with NF.
• Did you start to notice that your NATs follow a pattern?
• Did your NATs tend to fall into a pattern of certain thought distortions?

Remember, the important part of this exercise is to increase your awareness of these thought distortions that you might be prone to. We all tend towards our own pattern of distortions that affect our interpretations of stressful situations and everyday life. As we identify these patterns, we can replace them with more adaptive thoughts that better serve us.

Now that we’ve identified NATs and cognitive distortions, we can work on building adaptive perspectives!

As we discussed last week, most negative emotions have an underlying belief. Positive emotions, such as compassion, confidence, and forgiveness, also have their own underlying beliefs. Just like unhelpful thoughts can bring about negative emotions, positive thoughts and beliefs can generate corresponding positive thoughts. Adaptive thinking involves fostering thoughts that reflect the underlying beliefs of positive emotions. By thinking in a way that will bring about these emotions, we can buffer and cope with our stress and NATs. Take a few moments to think about this and when you are ready, you can move onto the “Creating Adaptive Perspectives video!”