Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, developed by Dr Aaron Beck in the sixties, is largely based on the idea that your thoughts, emotions, and actions are connected. The way you think and feel about something can affect what you do. And as an athlete, how you think affects how you feel, and those emotions can impair or improve your performance.
Most people occasionally experience negative thought patterns, but sometimes these damaging thoughts become so entrenched that they do interfere with your training, or worse during competition. Those “faulty or biased ways of thinking about ourselves and/or our environment” are called Cognitive Distortions (Beck, 1976).
It includes:
· Black or white thinking - all or nothing thinking with no nuances.
· Catastrophizing - leads people to assume the worst when faced with the unknown.
· Overgeneralization – making a general rule after a bad experience and incorrectly apply that conclusion across the board.
· Personalization - blaming yourself for circumstances that aren’t your fault.
Cognitive Restructuring
Cognitive Restructuring is a process, within Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, during which negative patterns of thinking are located, challenged, and replaced in favor of positive alternatives. This cognitive reframing has been applied in sport and performance psychology for a long time with great results.
Distorted, anxious, or any other form of unhelpful thoughts, are largely automatic.
It means you are not consciously choosing to think them at that moment.
The automatism can go as follow: during a training session, you find yourself frustrated because of the difficulties you have learning a new sequence of punches.
You associate an action “new sequence of punches” with an emotion, “frustration”.
But in fact, a thought occurred between the new punch combination and the feeling it generated… and this unconscious thought is just your interpretation of what “difficulty” is.
Mistakes while learning a new skill can be seen as a natural part of a process, or as a shortcoming because you don’t get it quickly enough.
Cognitive Restructuring helps you catch the faulty way of thinking and generate a more constructive, non-judgmental perception of the situation you’re experiencing.
Three easy steps for efficient Cognitive Restructuring:
1/ Identify your thought pattern - self-monitoring
Over the next couple of weeks, focus on what circumstances spark your negative feelings and emotions, for example, training not going as planned, making mistakes while doing mitt work, a perceived lack of endurance, etc.
Then, rewind and focus on what you were thinking of just before you experience the negative feeling? Can you identify a thought?
Use a journal to monitor yourself.
2/ Put your assumptions to the test
Once identified, reframing thoughts first requires evidence about how (ir)rational they are.
Socratic questioning is a very effective Cognitive Restructuring technique that can help you challenge harmful thinking biases. Ask yourself:
Is this thought realistic?
Am I basing my thoughts on facts or personal feelings?
What is the evidence for this thought?
Run an athlete cost / benefit analysis: is your way of thinking advance or limit your sport performance?
3/ Create alternatives, replace negative thoughts with positive ones
The final step in Cognitive Restructuring is to come up with alternatives. Grab the list you wrote with the negative thinking patterns you identified when journaling, and come up with forward-looking, effective and reasonable alternatives.
You can create situational alternatives for specific scenarios - for instance, if you get nervous before a fight waiting in the locker room, create an alternative for that moment.
Or you can create a more general affirmation to boost your confidence - here, think about your uncompromising preparation or your team’s support, for instance.
Last, use affirmation in the present tense and be patient – only practice and consistency will help you reevaluate and change your thoughts.
Conclusion
Cognitive distortion affects us all to some extent but with Cognitive Restructuring you regain control over your thinking process and can improve your performance.
Here are some benefits of using cognitive restructuring in sports:
Improved Focus: by gaining full awareness of your thoughts, you will instantly recognize what you’re thinking and control your focus better.
Stronger Mental Toughness: when using cognitive restructuring, you will develop a stronger mindset in sports. Please, read our article “Self-Talk, Raise up mindset & skills”.
Decreased Fear & Anxiety: unsupportive thoughts are a leading cause of fear and anxiety in sports; so, by reframing your negative thoughts you will increase your confidence.
Remember, be practical, solution oriented, not just positive thinking !
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