How To: Use the Triple Column Technique

In Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy Revised and Updated, David Burns writes about a method for developing a more effective self-evaluation system.

Overview
The Triple Column Technique is a proven practice for improving internal self-critical dialogue. The approach includes three main parts:

1. Training yourself to write down critical thoughts that run through your mind.
2. Learn why these thoughts are distorted.
3. Practice talking back to them to develop a more realistic self-evaluation system.

Summary of Steps

• Step 1 - Create the Triple Column Technique table.
• Step 2 - List your self-criticism.
• Step 3 - Identify cognitive distortions.
• Step 4 - Identify rational thoughts.

Step 1 - Create the Triple Column Technique table
To create the table for the Triple Column Technique:

1. Draw two lines down the center of a piece of paper to divide it into thirds.
2. Label the left-hand column “Automatic Thoughts (Self-cricitism)
3. Label the middle column “Cognitive Distortion”
4. Label the right-hand column “ Rational Response (Self-defense)”

Step 2. List your self-criticism.
In the left-hand column, write down all the hurtful self-criticisms you make when you are feeling worthless and down on yourself.

Step 3 – Identify cognitive distortions.
In the middle column, write down the cognitive distortions. Using the list of 10 Distorted Thinking Patterns , see if you can identify the thinking errors in each of your automatic negative thoughts. The 10 Distorted Thiking Patterns are:

• All-or-nothing thinking
• Overgeneralization
• Mental filter
• Disqualifying the positive
• Jumping to conclusions (Mind reading, fortunate teller error)
• Magnification or Minimization
• Emotional reasoning
• Should statements,
• Labeling and Mislabeling,
• Personalization.

Step 4 – Identify rational thoughts.
Substitute a more rationale, less upsetting thought in the right-hand column. Don't try to cheer yourself up by rationalizaing or saying things you don't objectively believe are valid. Instead, try to find a more objective fact. Your response can take into account what was illogical or erroneous about your self-critical automatic thought.

Example Triple Column Technique
Burns includes an example of a Triple Column Technique:

Automatic Thought	Cognitive Distortion	Rational Response
(Self-Criticism)		(Self-Defense)
I never do anything right.	Overgeneralization	Nonsense! I do a lot of things right.
I'm always late.	Overgeneralization	I'm not always late. That's ridiculous. Think of all the times I've been on time. If I'm late more often than I'd like, I'll work on this problem and develop a method for being more punctual.
Everyone will look down on me.	Mind reading; Overgeneralization; All or nothing thinking; Fortune teller error	Someone may be disappointed that I'm late, but it's not the end of the world. Maybe the meeting won't even start on time.
This shows what a jerk I am.	Labeling	Come on, now, I'm not a "jerk."
I'll make a fool of myself.	Labeling; Fortune teller error	Ditto. I'm not a "fool" either. I may appear foolish if I come in late, but this doesn't make me a fool. Everyone is late sometimes.

My Related Posts

• 10 Distorted Thinking Patterns
• Your Thoughts Create Your Feeling
• 13 Negative Motivation Patterns

13 Negative Motivation Patterns

How do you get your motivation back?  You need to first know the negative thought patterns that take away your motivation. In Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy Revised and Updated, David Burns identifies thirteen negative motivation patterns.

Thirteen Negative Motivation Patterns
According to Burns, there's 13 procrastination and do-nothingism mindsets:

• Hopelessness
• Helplessness
• Overwhelming Yourself
• Jumping to Conclusions
• Self-labeling
• Undervaluing the Rewards
• Perfectionism
• Fear of Failure
• Fear of Success
• Fear of Disapproval or Criticism
• Coercion and Resentment
• Low Frustration Tolerance
• Guilt and Self-blame

Thirteen Negative Motivation Patterns Explained
Burns explained the following 13 procrastination and do-nothingism mindsets as follows:

• Hopelessness – Any activity will seem pointless because you are absolutely certain your lack of motivation and sense of oppression are unending and irreversible.
• Helplessness – You can’t possibly do anything to make yourself feel better because you are convinced that your moods are caused by factors beyond your control, such as fate, hormone cycles, dietary factors, luck, and other people’s evaluations of you.
• Overwhelming Yourself – You may magnify a task to the degree that it seems impossible to tackle. You may assume you must do everything at once instead of breaking each job down into small, discrete, manageable units which you can complete one step at a time. You might inadvertently distract yourself from the task at hand by obsessing about endless other things you haven’t gotten around to doing yet.
• Jumping to Conclusions – You sense that it’s not within your power to take effective action that will result in satisfaction because you are in the habit of saying, “I can’t,” or “I would but …”
• Self-labeling – The more you procrastinate, the more you condemn yourself as inferior. The problem is compounded when you label yourself as “a procrastinator” or “a lazy person.”This causes you to see your lack of effective action as the “real you” so that you automatically expect little or nothing from yourself.
• Undervaluing the Rewards - You feel the reward simply wouldn’t be worth the effort.
• Perfectionism – You defeat yourself with inappropriate goals and standards.
• Fear of Failure – Because you imagine that putting in the effort and not succeeding would be an overwhelming personal defeat, you refuse to try at all. Several thinking errors are involved in the fear of failure. One of the most common is overgeneralization. You reason, “If I fail at this, it means I will fail at anything.” This of course is impossible. Nobody can fail at everything. A second mind-set that contributes to the fear of defeat is when you evaluate your performance exclusively on the outcome regardless of your individual effort. This is illogical and reflects a “product orientation” rather than a “process orientation.”
• Fear of Success – Because of your lack of confidence, success may seem even more risky than failure because you are certain is it based on chance. You may also fear success because you anticipate people will make even greater demands on you. Because you are convinced you must or can’t meet their expectations, success would put you into a dangerous and impossible situation. Therefore, you try to maintain control by avoiding any commitment or
  involvement.
• Fear of Disapproval or Criticism - You imagine that if you try something new, any mistake or flub will be met with strong disapproval or criticism because the people you care about won’t accept you if you are human and imperfect. The risk of rejection seems so dangerous that to protect yourself you adopt as low a profile as possible. If you don’t make any effort, you can’t goof up.
• Coercion and Resentment - A deadly enemy of motivation is a sense of coercion. You feel under intense pressure to perform – generated from within and without. This happens when you try to motivate yourself with moralistic “shoulds” and “oughts.” You tell yourself , “I should do this” and “I have to do that.” Then you feel obliged, burdened, tense, resentful and guilty. You feel like a delinquent child under the discipline of a tyrannical probation officer. Every task becomes colored with such unpleasantness that you can’t stand to face it. Then, as you procrastinate, you condemn yourself as a lazy,
  no-good bum. This further drains your energies.
• Low Frustration Tolerance - Your frustration results from your habit of comparing reality with an ideal in your head. When the two don’t match, you condemn reality. It doesn’t occur to you that it may be infinitely easier to change your expectations rather than to bend and twist reality.
• Guilt and Self-blame - If you are frozen in the conviction that you are bad or have let others down, you will naturally feel unmotivated to pursue your daily life.
  

Key Take Aways
I think motivation is an important part of daily life. Knowing the set of negative motivation patterns can help you identify counter-productive self-talk that can get in the way of taking action. Here's my key take aways:

• Add a buffer for tolerance in your day to day.  Rather than get frustrated when things go wrong, ask how yourself how you might avoid it next time.  For example, if you're always late because you get stuck in traffic, leave earlier.  When things go wrong, learn from them, but don't get frustrated.
• Test your assumptions.  Don't talk yourself out of everything.  Prove it with action, and many times you'll be pleasantly surprised.
• Start with something simple.  Don't bite off more than you can chew.  It's better to leap over small hurdles, than build a giant wall in front of yourself.
• Change your self-talk.  You can beat yourself up, or you can lift yourself up.  Turn mistakes into lessons and carry forward lessons learned.  

My Related Posts

• 10 Distorted Thinking Patterns
• Motivation or Action First?
• Motivation without Coercion
• Coercion is a Deadly Enemy of Motivation
• Little Steps for Little Feet
• Little Steps for Meetings
• Little Steps for Housework
• How To Use the TIC-TOC Technique
• Learn to Endorse Yourself
• How To Use the But-Rebuttal Method
• How To Use a Pleasure-Predicting Sheet
• How To Use a Daily Record of Dysfunctional Thoughts
• How To Use an Antiprocrastination Sheet
• How To Use a Daily Activity Schedule

Your Thoughts Create Your Feelings

In Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy Revised and Updated, David Burns writes:

"It is not the actual events but your perception that result in changes in mood. When you are sad,your thoughts will represent a realistic interpretation of negative events. When you are depressed or anxious, your thoughts will always be illogical, distorted, unrealistic, or just plain wrong."

World, Thoughts and Mood
Burns explains the relationship between the world, your thoughts and your mood:

1. World - a series of positive, neutral and negative events.
2. Thoughts - you interpret the events with a series of thoughts that continually flow through your mind. This is called your "internal
   dialogue."
3. Mood - Your feelings are created by your thoughts and not
   the actual events. All experiences must be processed through your brain and
   given a conscious meaning before you experience any emotional response.

Radio Dial Example
Burns illustrates the point with an example:

"Your blue moods can be compared to the scratchy music coming from a radio that is not properly tuned to the station. The problem is not that the tubes are
blown out or defective, or that the signal from the radio station is distorted
as a result of bad weather. You just simply have to adjust the dials. When you
learn to bring about this mental tuning, the music will come through clearly
again and your depression will lift."

Key Take Aways
While it's a simple concept, it has some pretty profound impact:

• Your thoughts create your feelings.
• You get what you focus on. If you focus on the negative side of a situation, your mood will reflect it.
• How you interpret what happens in your life is important. The meaning you assign to events and experiences shapes your thoughts and your mood. There's something to be said for rose colored glasses.

It's another reminder that it's not what's on your plate, but how you eat it.

My Related Posts

• 10 Distorted Thinking Patterns