Thought records provide a way to press pause on your experience, determine what emotions you’re feeling in a given situation and assess how strongly you feel them. They give you an opportunity to see what you’re thinking and identify any cognitive traps you might have fallen into. Then, after determining which thought is fueling your emotional fire the most, you can play detective, collecting evidence that both supports and doesn’t support your thought. Once you’ve completed that process, you can review all the evidence and compare that to your original thought. Is there another way of interpreting the situation, given all the data, that might be more balanced? That new thought goes into the alternate or balanced thought column. Finally, rerate your emotions based on your new assessment of the situation. These are great to do when you’re about to go into a situation that you’re worrying about or dreading.
It’s really important to note that the goal of thought records is not to decrease an emotion from 100% to 0%. You might find that the first time you do one, there is only a 10% decrease in an emotion. That’s OK. Over time, you’ll get better and better at identifying your thoughts, recognizing when a cognitive trap got you, and looking for the evidence. Eventually you’ll get so good at doing these automatically, that you’ll be able to do them in your head in the moment. Keep in mind it takes time and a lot of practice writing these out, to reach that stage.