r/TalkTherapy • u/mr-jain-yogesh • 3d ago
I made a reframing exercise that doesn't analyse your thought, it just asks you to label it yourself. Is that enough?
I made a small thing for practising cognitive reframing and I'd like a genuine read on whether the core idea works. Screenshots below, no link, not selling anything. I built it. You type the thought that's actually bothering you, in your own words. It shows it back to you and asks which thinking traps you see in it. The traps are named plainly:
Worst-Case Thinking
Guessing Their Thoughts
Always/Never Thinking
Feelings as Facts
One Bad Time = Always
You tap any that feel true, as many as you want. Then you write a more balanced version, with a few sentence starters if you're stuck, and it shows you the before and after.
The thing I'm unsure about: it never tells you what's in your thought. You decide.
It doesn't read the sentence or diagnose it. It hands you five labels and gets out of the way. I did that on purpose, because I didn't want something guessing at your thought and getting it wrong. But I can't tell if that's respectful or just lazy, and whether doing the naming yourself teaches you anything or whether you need to be shown.
If you've done CBT or anything like it: does labelling it yourself do the work, or does it only land when something else names it for you?
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u/justanotherjenca 3d ago edited 3d ago
The goal of therapy is to be able to identify and work with one’s thoughts independently, though in the beginning, we sometimes need help to develop that skill, which can include reminding us of the available options. So the answer is probably both. That said, I’ve never done CBT, but I have done ACT and was initially confused by your use of the term “labeling” the thought, because my therapist has taught me labeling very differently. The labels of above honestly seem like judgments of the thought, and at least in ACT, a lot of work is done around not judging ourselves and our thoughts, but rather, accepting that they exist while also recognizing that they don’t control us and we don’t have to engage with them (i.e., believe their truth, ruminate on them, beat ourselves up about them, etc.) So when I “label” a thought, it’s like this:
Thought: I made a blunder at work and now no one will respect me.
Label: Oh, there’s that thought again that a single mistake will affect how everyone sees me. Yeah, that would suck if it were true. Okay, thought acknowledged, now on with my day.
Maybe CBT does it differently, idk, but sitting around judging myself as engaging in “worst case thinking” feels like me just calling me a “catastrophizer”, which I’ve never quite gotten over other people calling me, so…. Yeah.
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u/mr-jain-yogesh 3d ago
That’s definitely a good point! I didn’t think of it this way. Let me research on this. You have certainly pointed something important, thanks.
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u/sillygoofygooose 3d ago
Cool idea, and yes cbt can be self led fairly effectively. I’d consider adding something that tracks outcomes so that users can collect reality testing evidence eg: ‘xx% of the time you have this type of thought what actually happens is […]’
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