hi everybody and welcome to this presentation on metacognitive strategies
for happiness metacognition is a little bit different than regular cognition
hence the different word but what we're really doing instead of looking at
specifically what we're thinking we're looking at the type of thoughts
that we're having so instead of looking at the specific content of thoughts
we're looking to see if thoughts fall into certain categories like
over-generalized or negative or anxious people with mental health issues often
process information differently and they may focus their thoughts and have a lot
of thoughts that tend to be over generalized thinking that all things
always happen or nothing good ever happens they may focus only on the
negative instead of seeing both the positive and negative and situations or
recognize that this aspect of my life may not be going great but these other
aspects are going really well people who are depressed anxious angry often only
focus on the negative another thinking style that they often
employ is personalization they take other people's reactions and events that
happen as having to do with them so if somebody walks by them and gives them a
dirty look in the hallway they may think oh my gosh I wonder why Sally's mad at
me instead of thinking I wonder why Sally is having a bad day that has
nothing to do with me or if they are going through a checkout line and the
cashier is in a really bad mood they may think oh that person was so mean to me
they must dislike me for some reason instead of thinking gee I wonder what's
going on in that person's life that had them in such a dark space today we want
to help people examine their thinking processes and
figure out if they're using strategies and thinking strategies that are helpful
or thinking strategies that are maintaining their distress and their
upsetness often thinking patterns that maintain our distress are only based on
a negative reality and don't consider the entire picture
and we really want people to be able to take a step back and recognize that okay
this may be going bad or this may have happened but what else
an example if you're presenting it a meeting most people are listening but
one person is sitting there playing on their phone
this happens in just about every meeting every class you know wherever I've been
what is your thought process if you're focusing on the negative and over
generalizing you might think nobody was paying attention my presentation must
have been boring and they think I'm stupid the consequence to having these
thoughts is that I feel stupid and I may be afraid to present again because I
think they don't want to hear from me the next question is is this thought
pattern justified or helpful is thinking this way helping me in my job since
clearly I was presenting for a reason and the answer is no you know and it's
also not valid when all the evidence and is considered what would be a more
helpful thought pattern to recognize the positive and the negative there was this
one person that wasn't paying attention but there were 29 other people who were
so most people seem to be paying attention not everybody will like my
ideas and that's just reality but that doesn't mean that they're stupid or
wrong it just means my ideas are different than some other people in the
audience what's the consequence of this thought pattern well when I think this
way when I recognize that okay I walk out of a presentation and I say most
people paid attention they seem to be following along not everybody seemed to
agree but that's okay how do I feel well I tend to feel like I did a good job I
tend to feel like it's a good thing and I feel more positive and I don't feel
anxious and hopeless
another example you're depressed after getting a divorce you may focus on the
uncontrollability of things focusing on all of the aspects of being in
relationships that are not controllable or predictable and that is really scary
when you start thinking about being vulnerable recognizing that it can go
south people can cheat people can live bad
things can happen you know if you want to focus on all those on uncontrollable
things then you can but is that helping you feel more confident or is that
contributing to your misery rumination on all the things that went wrong in the
relationship and how quote all relationships and badly and quote nobody
can be trusted that's that over generalization again well when I think
that all relationships go bad and nobody can be trusted and I don't want to
engage with anybody else I want to stay in my house and stay by myself because
you know all other people are threatening that again contributes to my
misery and unhappiness when I'm evaluating for threat I may be
constantly on alert for signs of relationship problems in any
relationship that I ment in friendship romantic or otherwise so I may be
constantly looking at that person for microaggressions or for small
indications that they may be bored or if they look at somebody who walks by
I may be on alert and think oh that means they're cheating all of those
things I'm mind reading when I'm doing that when I'm constantly being on alert
for signs of relationship problems I'm assuming that I know what the other
person is thinking and I'm assuming that my interpretation of every event is
accurate that it indicates that the relationship is having problems my
partner or my date or whoever it is may have looked at somebody that walked by
because they had toilet paper sticking to the bottom of their shoe it may not
have had to do with anything even remotely related to our relationship it
may have had to do with that person in the toilet paper unhelpful coping
strategies in this sort of situation you're I'm depressed after getting
divorced so when I get into new relationships to prevent it from
happening again I made try to control that person I main
a get them to make sure they do everything the way I want them to do I'm
a spy on them to make sure that they are not cheating to make sure that they're
not talking to anybody else is this helpful
well no we there's a really strong chance I won't say all the time but
there's a really strong chance if you engage no matter who you are if you
engage in these types of behaviors in relationships that the other person is
actually going as a result going to become unhappy so the result of these
unhelpful coping strategies is actually creating a self-fulfilling prophecy and
creating problems in relationships when we talk about uncontrolled ability in
relationships and all those aspects that you can't control
asking the person or asking yourself in what ways is this thought pattern
helpful focusing on all the things that I can't do a daggone thing about
probably not super helpful because I can't do a dadgum thing about what would
be a more helpful thought pattern well focusing on aspects of relationships
that are controllable like my reaction to people and whether I spend time
nurturing relationships and you know what I do in relationships and
identifying aspects about reactions to scary thoughts that are controllable so
when I have a scary thought that this person is going to leave me or if this
person leaves me I couldn't survive identifying aspects to those reactions
that I can control I can choose to keep having that thought and perseverating on
it or I can choose to think something else and developing a plan
for handling those scary thoughts that is empowering and developing strategies
that I have confidence will help me feel better is going to help me start
addressing those types of thoughts
rumination on all the things that went wrong in the relationship can be
addressed by encouraging people to look at the evidence for their belief that
nobody is trustworthy and relationships are dangerous show me the evidence yes
in this particular relationship maybe this person wasn't trustworthy and this
relationship caused me some pain because it ended let's look at other
relationships and that I've had and it is anybody else in my life is there
anybody else that's trustworthy are all relationships dangerous and looking at
not just romantic relationships but looking at friendships other family
members relationships with children those sorts of things we want to help
people examine the evidence for and against their over generalized beliefs
what would a more helpful thought pattern be instead of thinking all
relationships and badly and nobody can be trusted thinking this relationship
ended badly and maybe this person can't be trusted and learning from what
happened in that particular situation if other relationships have ended badly
looking at similarities between those relationships and going okay well I can
see that there are some common themes here that maybe I need to look out for
but relationships that I have with other people that don't share those themes
like alcoholism may be healthy and may not have these same characteristics so
maybe one of the things I need to learn is that getting in a relationship with
people who have active addictions tends to end badly
and those people generally when they're an active addiction cannot be trusted
that's very different than all relationships and badly and nobody can
be trusted
after a divorce people are also often when they get into new relationships
constantly being alert for signs of relationship problems in what ways is
this hot pattern helpful well you can find indications that there are problems
in the relationship if you look hard enough because you can interpret things
to fit your beliefs instead of looking at something objectively you're going I
am looking for evidence that this person is cheating so I am going to find
evidence that this person is cheating instead of looking for evidence that
things are going well and finding evidence that things are going well
another example June is a teacher last semester 40 of her students gave her
floors and fives on her evaluation out of five so that's good
that's awesome three of her students gave her ones on her evaluation June
focuses on the three negative reviews instead of the forty positive reviews
sounds a lot like the first scenario that we talked about June begins
ruminating thinking that she's a bad teacher questioning her knowledge
questioning whether she should even be in the classroom these thoughts make her
anxious about teaching the next semester she just doesn't even want to go into
the classroom now when she goes in to teach the next class all she notices are
the students who are distracted sleeping or have unhappy expressions on their
faces she's teaching at 7:30 in the morning let's say you know there's gonna
be a lot of students who may love her but just not be happy to be up at 7:30
in the morning since she's not noticing the reactions of the rest of the
students only the ones that are unhappy she begins to believe that she is a bad
teacher and that quote everyone hates her and loses her confidence so you can
see how our interpretation of things and our what we pay attention to can go a
long way toward affecting our reactions and how we feel about life and what's
going on new strategies to address these thinking challenges become aware of your
thinking patterns including focusing on the negative and ignoring the positive
if you notice that something's going on and you check your thoughts and you're
like okay the last five thoughts I had were negative
that's what we call a clue that you might be also ignoring the positive so
intentionally turning your attention to focus not only on the negative I'm not
saying you have to ignore the negative I'm just saying also make sure that
you're forcing yourself to also identify the positive also identify what's safe
in that situation ruminating on the negative if you notice that after
something happens that's unpleasant you tend to think about it and think about
it and continue to think about it and flip it over and over and over
your head being aware of those thinking patterns and developing strategies to
stop those thoughts and using the acronym accepts or improves which are
common in dialectical behavior therapy can help you get out of that ruminating
mind that emotional mind and calm down it helps you turn your attention to
something else besides those thoughts it says okay I'm just gonna take those
thoughts and I'm gonna leave them on the shelf for a few minutes while I engage
in some other activities or I do something to contribute to society or to
help a friend or I do something that makes me happy
or I engage in actively thinking about something positive or I use my senses
like my sense of smell in order to trigger happy memories and help distract
myself for a few minutes so my adrenaline can calm down and I can get
into that wise mind that logical mind where I can think a little bit more
clearly a lot of times once you let that HPA axis that threat response system
cool off a little bit the ruminations will stop the
ruminations are only active when you are anxious or angry kind of like popcorn
you know as soon as you turn off the burner the popcorn stops popping paying
excessive attention to threats or waiting for the other shoe to drop is
another thinking pattern that contributes to a lot of people being
anxious or feeling helpless a lot of the time reminding yourself to pay attention
to the safe aspects of the situation and instead of expecting if something good
happens the other shoes gonna drop or if something bad happens something else bad
is gonna happen focusing on being mindful in the moment
of what's going right and whatever's going to happen in the future you have
no control over you can't plan or expect the future so
focus and revel in the moment identify the consequences of your unhelpful
thinking patterns on your ability to be happy and have the things and
people in your life that are important to you explore competing thought
patterns and strategies what else could I think or what else could I think about
or how else could I approach this that would make me feel empowered and
courageous and happy versus powerless and depressed and anxious and monitor
the effectiveness of the strategies you choose on your ability to be happy and
have the things and people in your life that are important to you
you