Vicious Cycle of Thoughts and Feelings
When you write your thoughts, feelings and behaviours into your CBT diagram you can see that all these factors are joined together.
That’s good news, because you can change any of these factors and it will change the other three.
So you always have something you can change.
You needn’t get stuck in here!
But there’s a very important interaction that happens in here – between what you think and what you feel.
Have you noticed the vicious cycle that happens between the way you think and the way you feel?
This is an especially vicious cycle because it feeds upon itself.
That is, it needs nothing from anywhere else.
What happens is that the more you think these negative thoughts and the more you feel these negative feelings
And it goes around and around and around.
Notice though, that you are becoming MORE negative and that you are feeling truly stuck in this cycle
When you get into this cycle, know this… the only thing to do is to get out.
How can you interrupt this Vicious Cycle?
One way you can get out of this Vicious Cycle is to use a mindful breathing exercise and try to allow thoughts and feelings to gently pass through you, while you focus on your breathing.
You can intervene more powerfully however if you use strategies that:
Help you separate from your thinking, such as talking to your mind, visualizing what you are doing with your thoughts, singing your thoughts, and replacing words and stories
Help you separate from your feelings, such as sitting quietly with the feeling, noticing the feeling sensations in your body, labeling the feelings, and breathing into the feelings