Exercise 2: Your negative thoughts
Write down a list of your most common negative thoughts.
With each of these, identify the associated feeling.
Now list your behaviour that resulted from the thoughts.
Here is an example:
Thought – ‘what’s the point?’
Feeling – hopelessness
Behaviour – give up trying
Once you have done this, identify how negative thoughts and feelings could contribute to the decision to view sexual images of children or entertain sexual fantasies about minors.
An example of this might be:
Thought – ‘what’s the point?’
Feeling – hopelessness
Behaviour – give up trying
Negative thinking is often triggered by thinking errors which fall into three main categories:
- Catastrophizing/Awfulizing – making things seem worse than they really are, getting things out of proportion
- Generalizing – taking one occurrence and thinking it will always apply, e.g. believing you will never pass your driving test because you failed the first time
- Negative focus – always focusing on the negative aspects of a situation rather than looking at the positives, e.g. rather than be pleased about passing an exam, being upset that you did not get a higher grade.
Spend some time reflecting on your thinking errors.
How to Manage Negative Feelings
The following will help you deal with some common negative emotions but can also be applied to others.
