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Our Approach: A Deeper Look
The Core Idea: It's the Story, Not necessarily the Event
Our emotional responses are not usually caused by external events alone, but by our interpretation of those events. However, there are times when things may be truly dangerous or undermining and it serves us well to be aware of such circumstances and respond appropriately.
(Section 2)
The Cycle: Thoughts, Feelings, Sensations, and Actions
Our inner world operates in a constant feedback loop: A Thought creates a Feeling, which creates Sensations in the body, which inspires an Action, which then seems to confirm the original Thought. This app helps you intervene at the thought to break the cycle.
(Section 3)
An Example in Action
(Section 4)
Identifying Your "Unhelpful Lenses"
Over time, our minds can develop mental habits—"unhelpful lenses." They are like wearing glasses that distort your vision, making things seem more hopeless, personal, or catastrophic than they might be. This app intends to help you identify which lens you might be looking through.
(Section 5)
The Goal: Balanced, Clear Thinking
The goal isn't to force "positive thinking," (and thereby force ‘positive feeling’,) but to build the real-world skill of clear thinking. Its primary purpose is to help you see the crucial difference between a powerful feeling created by the thought (e.g., "I feel like a failure") and an objective fact (e.g., "I've succeeded in other areas, so this situation doesn’t define me completely").
By repeatedly practicing this in a safe, offline space, the user develops the mental acuity to recognise these patterns on their own, in the moment. It's a private training ground for your mind, designed to help you respond to life's challenges with more balance and intention, rather than being controlled by automatic, negative reactions.
Who is this app intended for?
Anyone who has an interest in thinking more clearly; and particularly anyone who is currently engaged with Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and needs some help in ‘rewriting’ the unhelpful distortions in thinking.
What is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).
Cognitive
refers to any mental process we may become aware of- (thoughts, mental images, ‘little voice in the back of the head’ etc) and ‘the sense we make’, or the meaning we apply to our experiences.
Behavioural
refers to the behaviours we adopt as a result of what we think, believe and feel; and the interactions we may have with other people.
Therapy
in this instance, identification of ‘unhelpful (partially or fully untrue) thoughts’ and correcting these so that we have a clearer and more objective (fact based) perspective of ourselves and others.
‘This space’
In other words, we do this to ensure that the sense that we make of the events in the world match the actuality. When we do this, as a wise person once said, our responses are likely to be appropriate and proportionate. We may find by, for example, acurately evaluating the degree of our feeling state/s change as will our (unhelpful) behaviour/s.
What is an ‘Event’?
An ‘event’ is anything that triggers a thought (cognition), which in turn affects how we feel, whether the body system is relaxed or not, and what we do or don’t do as a consequence of all of these.
Example:
1- What would happen to the feeling of fear if we could ‘erase’ the thought:
“That dog is big, it might be dangerous; it will bite me if I get too close”
If there was no thought at all
would we still have the feeling of fear?
The answer of course is NO, the feeling would not be there.
2- If the thought is not there and the feeling is not there, would we still have tensions etc. in the body?
3-and if the thought, feeling and tension was not present
4-Would our behaviour still be the same?
Would we still avoid the dog?
This brief example illustrates the importance of what we think- or ‘the sense we make’ of events will affect how we feel and what we do; HOWEVER- How do we know the dog is dangerous and will bite us?
Where is the evidence that the dog is dangerous? Or not Have we just assumed something about the dog based only on its size and nothing else? We need more EVIDENCE on which to base our judgement of the situation; the optimal position to be in is to see things as objectively as possible, because then our responses are likely to be appropriate and proportionate.
We can see in this example how our thought ‘the dog might be dangerous’ may seem to be reasonable. However, if we do not test the validity of our understanding of the circumstances, our actions are likely to be based on incomplete information.
We might always ‘avoid the dog’ because we assume it is dangerous, but in reality, we don’t have enough information to know whether the dog is actually dangerous or not. If left unreviewed, the assumption may become a repeating ‘pattern’ (avoiding a dog) over time.