By Tiffany Lavine

 It is the process of changing one’s negative or faulty thoughts into more accurate and beneficial ones.  As you change your thoughts, you will change your belief, your emotions and your behavior.

 Cognitive Restructuring is a technique or a tool that can be used to change thinking patterns or rebuild thoughts.  The idea of cognitive restructuring would encourage the cessation of the negative thought and the replacement with a positive, yet realistic, thought.  For example instead of ‘I am useless and stupid,' the person could replace with ‘I am capable and very good at writing.

 Gain awareness of detrimental thought habits  Learn to challenge them  Substitute life-enhancing thoughts and beliefs

 The cognitive restructuring theory holds that your own unrealistic beliefs are directly responsible for generating dysfunctional thoughts/emotions and their resultant behaviors, like stress, depression, anxiety, and social withdrawal, and that we humans can be rid of such emotions and their effects by dismantling the beliefs that give them life.

 The Practice of Cognitive Restructuring (Course content)  Cognitive restructuring. (2011, March 5). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 15:43, March 11, 2011, from ognitive_restructuring&oldid= ognitive_restructuring&oldid=