So following on from the other video about thought challenging, I'm now going to show you how to do it. Some of you maybe are familiar with it already, because you’ve had CBT before or you've read books, etc. It's always good to touch base and just check in with and remind yourself of things that might have been helpful previously. So I believe that thought challenging is part of what has given CBT its sort of status as this really successful way of managing strong negative emotions. But I also think sometimes this technique is what gives it a bit of bad press. Some people feel quite infantilized about it. Oh, yeah, my therapist has made me write down my thoughts, etc. I try to encourage people to sort of move away from that thinking really because there is a reason why we ask people to write down their thoughts at least for a while in the beginning. And to kind of show you just how unhelpfully we tend to think. When you put it down on paper, it seems so much more challengeable somehow.

So this is an example of one that Harit and I just drew up together for this video. Let me just move my camera so you can see it. Yeah, so the imagined situation is, you know, worried about rudely interrupting my boss a couple of times, in a very ADHD way. I'm sure many of you have been there, and then ruminating heavily about it afterwards, that social post mortem that many people can do with ADHD, or social anxiety. So the situation led to pretty strong emotions as 60% anxiety 30% Shame 30% embarrassment, it's possible to have different emotions going on at the same time, don't forget shame and embarrassment can often lead to anxiety or shame-based anxiety, it can be quite different difficult to diffuse between that and normal anxiety, as it's kind of all in the melting pot really, isn't it? And we asked people to record the physical sensation just to help them to kind of separate really like if you think about that five areas model, just reminding people that the situation leads to the thought, the thought leads to the feeling, the feeling leads to the physical sensation.

So in this imagined scenario, we got a bit of a tight chest, churning stomach, shallow breathing, and started jiggling my leg, which are all possible things that someone with ADHD might do. So from this imagined scenario, we had unhelpful thoughts. I interrupted several people, including my boss in that last meeting, they're going to think I'm rude. I'm being judged by them, my boss won't consider me for a promotion, and my chances of moving forward in this company are over. I'm a complete idiot. Now, a common mistake people make when they're doing thought challenging is that they just write one or two thoughts, there tend to be the obvious more surface level ones. Don't forget, there are often thoughts about thoughts. So what we call the metacognitive process, in this situation it's metacognitive worry. Thoughts about thoughts about thoughts, you could start off with a worry somewhere here and end up somewhere over here in this completely catastrophic way of thinking.

And that's deeply unhelpful but guess what, most of us do it, most of us are guilty of doing it. And what I would strongly encourage you to do is take the time initially, as you're getting to learn this technique, to really think about where you went with that initial thought that you were able to record. And the reason why I have highlighted two of those thoughts in red is that it's particularly important if you want to do this well, to record what the hot thought is. So the thought in that list, where there's the most heat, typically not always, it's because it's closest to a core belief. And many people with ADHD have fears of judgement. Many people with ADHD often you know, think themselves to be a bit daft stupid or useless or whatever.

So that's why I picked those two out in this imagined scenario. But it's important that it's where the heat is for you. And the reason why we asked you to do that is that that's the thought that you need to challenge the most, it will tend to be strong cognitive bias, and very likely to be deeply irrational. And yeah, it's likely to carry the most heat. So remember, once we've sort of recorded where we're at with what the unhelpful thinking is, and what the hot thought is, and what the thoughts about the thoughts were, it's, then I would encourage you to breathe, especially if you're anxious. Just try to centre yourself, step away from yourself. So remember trying to get into that wise mind, the helicopter thinking, stepping away from yourself looking in, so objectify the emotion connected to those thoughts? Looking down, right, what's going on for Steve here? Yeah, well he's freaking out about interrupting his boss, how can we help him? What can I say to him that's helpful, not positive, helpful. Or for some people it's more helpful to think, what would I say to a friend? And I would ask the question if that's different to what you're saying to yourself, then you really need to think about that, don't you?

So from my removed perspective, I was able to rationalise and generate some helpful, more balanced, realistic thoughts. And I said to myself, actually, nobody said that I interrupted, I only worry that I did that. I tend to over analyse the situations, it's probably because of my ADHD, I worry, and I'm kind of hyper-sensitive to that kind of scenario. I have no evidence to suggest I'm being judged. Remember, thoughts aren't facts. My boss and co-workers liked other comments I made and agreed with me a couple of times. I'm not an idiot, my ADHD makes me struggle in these situations. I ran out of space there. But in theory, I could have gone on to say other helpful things. And the outcome of which is that my anxiety or my hypothetical anxiety went down from 60 to 15. Shame from 30, to 10. Embarrassment, from 30 to five, it's not necessarily about eradicating it, it's about reducing it, regulating the distress enough to function better, to function more clearly, to think more clearly, to learn to be kinder and more compassionate to ourselves.

Now, I think it's worth saying that this is not easy, it will often feel clunky. And mechanical. At first, you think gosh, I don't want to do this every time, well hopefully, you can learn to do it quickly over time in your head. But in the early days, I'd really encourage you to write it down on one of these sheets, which as I said in the previous video, we're very happy to send you over a blank copy of one of them. And then you can just print some out, or there are some CBT apps out there which are very good, and you can just record them on your phone if that feels a bit more socially acceptable or accessible for you. I think just finally, I want to say a couple of other things, and that is a rule of thumb for me here as a CBT therapist is the quicker you get from the unhelpful to the helpful column, the less time you spend in that higher distress column. The more helpful balanced alternative thoughts you generate, especially if you target the hot thoughts, the more the emotion will come down. Essentially, with practice, one can learn to regulate their emotions much better. But it takes practice. And I guess it's down to you how motivated you are to learn that. Good luck with that everyone. I will probably do another video later on or a recording where we revisit that and just, you know talk about common difficulties that people find with that process, but I hope it's helpful to you.

Take care.