First Steps
Your feelings and behaviors are always the result of...
What is Your Thinking?
"I have to sell drugs because I'm depressed and can't get a job."
What is Victim stance?
Everything is viewed as either one extreme or another; there is no middle ground.
What is Extreme (All-or-Nothing) Thinking?
Going wild with anger - yelling, screaming, threatening and throwing things.
What is Raging?
These are healthier thoughts that are different from our first, automatic thoughts.
What are Alternative Thoughts?
When you have the same type of thoughts over and over again.
What are thinking patterns?
"No one has ever gone through what I've gone through, so no one could understand me."
What is Unique Person Stance?
Everything that happens around you is always all about you.
What is Personalization?
A diversion strategy where you argue over the exact language used rather than trying to clarify the exact meaning intended.
What is Quibbling Over Words?
These tools help us become more aware of our thinking, teach us how to monitor our thinking, and replace our thinking with alternative, positive thoughts.
Ways of thinking that say it is alright to violate others or the property of others.
What is Criminal Thinking (patterns)?
We have a distorted idea about which rights and property are ours and which belong to others.
What is Ownership Stance?
You think you know where things are headed and make a snap decision with little or no evidence.
Trying to pit one staff member against another, hoping to decrease their authority and effectiveness, and increase our influence and power.
What is Splitting Staff?
What are Diversion Strategies, Avoidance Strategies, and Aggression Strategies?
Ways of thinking that says continuing to use alcohol or other drugs is okay no matter what you have to do to make that happen or what the consequences are.
What is Addictive Thinking (patterns)?
"I’m not going to let him think I’m weak. No one puts me down."
What is Fear of Exposure?
We forget that we pick and choose the situations we are in, at least in part, are a part of the things we are in, have choices about how we respond to each situation. This can lead us to think that we have little or no control over the events and situations we get into.
What is Actor Vs. Observer?
An avoidance strategy where we are misleading other's by hiding the truth or telling half-truths or saying "I don't remember" when pressed for detailed.
What is Lying by Omission?
Which animal hold hands when they sleep so they don’t drift apart?
What are Sea Otters?
They are the basic assumptions we make about the world, others and ourselves and they are formed in childhood as the result of our experience of the world.
What are Core Beliefs?
Because feeling the rush of our criminal behavior or using our drug of choice is so important to us, we tend to live only in the present or in the near future.
What is Lack of Time Perspective?
We focus on the details of an event or situation, but we don’t try to understand the message behind the situation. Because you can’t generalize from one situation to another, you don’t learn from past experiences. You also don’t think far enough ahead to see the outcome of your behavior.
What is Concrete Thinking?
This becomes a tactic anytime it keeps others from working their treatment program. Often we use bizarre or shocking behaviors or disclosures to stir things up.
What is Attention Seeking?
What organ gets a new lining every few days?
What is the stomach?