Episode #129

Behavior & CBT

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is equal parts thoughts and behaviors.

How can you identify behaviors that you might want to adjust?

How can you use CBT tools to adjust your behavior?

Join me, Dr Julie Osborn, as I share with you how behaviors fit with CBT.

Click to listen now!

Full Episode Transcript

Hi, it's Dr. Julie, and I'm a doctor of psychology and a licensed clinical social worker specializing in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. I'm here to help you bring the power of CBT into your own life.

So welcome. I appreciate you being here. I wanted to read a message that somebody sent to me on my Facebook page, where you can find me under Dr. Julie Osborn.

And he said,

“I've just discovered your podcast and listened to a few episodes. This is a wonderful podcast from what I've listened to. I scroll through the topics and so many jump out of me that I just don't know where to catch up. I'm starting at the beginning and I'm so excited. I love the way you explain things. You can tell. You have great knowledge, and I'm very privileged to have found this. I am based in Melbourne, Australia.”

So thank you to my listener and reaching out. And I love hearing from people all over the world. I never thought I'd be reaching people in Melbourne when I first started, but it's really fun hearing from you guys. So again, send me messages, ideas, questions. I love hearing from you.

And before the podcast is over, I'll go over all the places you can find me. And again, I'm really appreciative. So today, I wanted to talk about something that is in the Mind Over Mood book by Dr. Creenberger and Dr. Podesky, the one I talk about all the time, Mind Over Mood. And if you're wanting to get that book and you go on to my website, and if you hit the tab that says Store, if you scroll past merchandise that's on there, you will see two books, Mind Over Mood and Feeling Great by Dr. David Burns. If you click it on, it will just directly take you to Amazon. So it's just the easiest way to find it, you're buying the right book. So I wanted to share with you that that's the easiest way because I know a lot of people want to make sure they're buying the right one, and it's the second edition. But that's where I would suggest you going, and if you want to get the book and get started. So the chapter I'm going to talk about today is in Chapter 11, for those of you that have the book already.

And in Chapter 11, we're talking about underlying assumptions and behavioral experiments. I talk to people all the time that the B in C, BT is behavioral. So it's cognitive behavioral therapy. So yes, I know I talk a lot about the cognition part. Write your thoughts, identifying your hot thoughts, challenging them, coming up with more balanced alternative thinking. But the behavior part is really important as well. One thing to know if you're really struggling with, say, depression, anxiety, whatever moods, anger, feeling insecure, overwhelmed, if you're really struggling, you just feel like, Oh, my God, it's so hard, and I just can't even figure out what I'm thinking, and I don't have the energy to write in a book or anything like that. You can always change your behavior faster than your thoughts. An example is you may feel depressed, right? And I would say, Could you at least go outside and walk down to the corner, stop sign and come back home, or go take a walk around the block, go take your dog out. Whatever it might be. That's a behavior that I don't have to think differently. I don't even have to feel differently, but I can go do something.

And just moving and Getting yourself out can make your first steps to getting better and can really make a difference. I've had people share with me using my mantra that you want to make decisions based on what's best for you, not how you feel, that that was the one thing that got them out house because they just couldn't seem to get themselves to do anything else. So it really does work if you're willing to try and say, Okay, what's the behavior changes I can make, even though I don't feel like it, even though I'm having a hard time changing how I'm thinking, although I'm having a hard time letting go of this feeling, what's something I can do that would be good for me? And that's something I can check off my box for the day and know that I'm starting to go in the right direction. So I really want to talk more about the behavioral experiments and what would those look like for you. So I'm going to give you a bunch of different ideas, and you obviously figure out what's going to work best for you. This is your therapy. This is your treatment plan.

It's not about comparing it to others. It's saying, what's going to work for me? What can I push myself if I have to? What can I make myself do to start feeling better? And what's an experiment even look like? I have a lot of people ask me, which is a fair question. So to take a step back from that for a second, we want to identify what your underlying assumptions are, and then we're going to follow it up with the behavioral experiments. So again, if you have the Mind Over Move book already, I'm on chapter 11. I'm going to borrow some examples from the book today and obviously share with you some of my own ideas and things I've worked with with other clients, but just want to give you some direction on where I'm working with the book. So underlying assumptions, let's figure out what those are, first of all. Those are thoughts that operate below your awareness, just under the surface. And these are rules, basically, that you live by. And each of us have hundreds of underlying assumptions. So you can help yourself identify assumptions by thinking of them as, If I do this, then that happens.

So in the chapter, you will see a whole page on this exercise where the authors put if and a line, and then then another line. So if I speak up in class, then people are going to stare at me. If I answer the wrong answer in class, then people will laugh at me. So I said if then, we do all the time. And that's why we have hundreds of these underlying assumptions, and they really affect our behavior. They determine what we're going to do. So I'm I'm going to share the first example in, again, chapter 11 that I thought was a really good example the author shared. It was about a married couple, and the husband was very focused on being punctual wherever he went, and they had a party to go to. And the party started at 7:00, and he wanted to show up at 7:00. And they talk about in the book that he was raised to be there on time wherever he was going. And when he wasn't, he wouldn't be showing respect to the host. So his thought was that if I'm invited to a party at 07:00 PM, then I need to be on time.

I'm expected to be on time and not disrespect the host. So his if then was that if I'm late, then I'm disrespecting the host. So that's where he's coming from, okay? But he's got a wife who didn't grow up with those same rules and looks at it differently. So she looks at it that 07:00 PM is a suggested time. And if we arrive on time, it'll put pressure on the host. So she was raised like, seven, yeah, that's when it starts. But whenever you show up, and if we show up right on time, there's going to be pressure on the host, and you got to have everything together. So it's a really interesting example, right? If here's one person is like, Oh, if we show up, it's disrespectful. And she's thinking, If we show up, it's too much pressure. So they're always arguing every time they're going out somewhere, and he's ready, and he's bugging her and texting her, Where are you? Where are you? And she's like, Why are you getting upset and you're taking all the fun out of this. I'm just getting ready, but she didn't start as early as seen. So you can see that when you have these underlying assumptions of how others should be or how you want to be, and they may be getting in the way, it can really cause some relationship problems.

This makes me think about when I talk to people about doing premarital therapy, what are your underlying assumptions about finances, raising the kids, maybe what religion are you going to follow? Or what's that going to even look like? Who's going to pay the bills? What things we're going to do on our vacation? There's a lot of underlying assumptions like, Oh, I enjoy this. My partner is going to enjoy this. Or I'm a saver, so she's probably a saver. Or whatever that looks like in this issue about being on time and place comes up all the time for people in general, not just relationships, but friends also. So these are things we really want to be clear on. What are our underlying assumptions? Are they causing What are my friends? What are my coworkers? What are my partners? Also underlying assumptions. And we need to be clear about them. And if they're not working for us, what can we do to change them and test them? So we're going to get into that, too, as I go along. So if you're like, Okay, so what do I do if I have this underlying assumption? We're going to figure that out as well.

So going back to this couple. So since he's ready early and she's not, they're fighting all the time. And it just takes the joy out of the evening, probably. They get to the party. They're probably irritated with each other. He's probably pissed off they're late. She's pissed off maybe they're too early or that he was just ragging on her or nagging her the whole time. So these things can definitely be worked out, but We need to be able to know what our underlying assumptions are, because just like our hot thoughts, most of us really don't know what our assumptions are. We're not paying attention to them, but we're living off of them. They're the rules we follow, like I said, right? But it's really affecting our lives and our daily activities. So when you can identify your underlying assumption, it also allows you to have a deeper understanding of the roots of your behaviors and your automatic thoughts. So remember, all your thoughts are automatic. Once you write them down, then we figure out which ones are facts, which ones are hot thoughts, hot thoughts, thoughts that aren't 100% true. So just repeat that, when we can identify our underlying assumptions, it will allow you to have a deeper understanding of the roots of your behaviors, why do you choose to do things the way you do, and what your automatic thoughts are.

And then when you get to know what your underlying assumptions are, it gives you the opportunity. You guys know I love that word opportunity. Everything can be an opportunity in your life to assess whether your underlying assumptions are beneficial or not, and creating new underlying assumptions that may work better for you. So many of your underlying assumptions can explain the same behavior in you that's the same of others, even though you can't really see it, right? You think it's negative, meaning like this couple I mentioned, they both had good intentions, but it was just based on their own assumptions. And that's why you want to remember, too, you cannot assume you know someone else's underlying assumptions just by looking at their behavior. Because if the husband was judging the wife, he's thinking she's disrespectful, she doesn't care. But they both had good intention in respecting the host. She don't want to put pressure on the host, and he didn't want to think he was disrespecting the host. So it's really interesting. He was coming from the same place, he was coming from a good place, but they were irritated with each other because they really didn't understand why they both were behaving the way they were.

And the underlying assumptions you figured out can also be the most important level of your thoughts to identify and test. The most important because our automatic thoughts are always happening, and those come up in specific situations, right? We're in a situation and it's like, Okay, I'm feeling anxious. What am I thinking? Whatever my mood is, what are my thoughts? But understanding your underlying assumptions, why I say they can be the most important level of your thoughts to identify and to test is because they're going on all the time. Because they're underlying, we're really not paying attention to them, and we're just reacting, thinking that's the way that we should be or others should be as well. Let me give you a couple of other examples, too, that I'm taking these ones from the book as well because they're so good, is that when we are anxious, many of our hottest thoughts are the if-then assumptions. Some examples are, If I talk, then I'll make a fool of myself. I use this I went a little earlier, but this relates, I know, to many situations. If my heart beats fast, then it means I'm having a heart attack, or if something bad happens, then I can't cope.

Those are all if-thens that are related to when you're feeling anxious. In your relationships, many misunderstandings come about because each person holds different underlying assumptions, as I've been talking about. So one partner might assume, If you care, then you'll know what I want without me asking asking. That's when I hear a lot. The other partner may assume, If you want something, then you'll let me know. Well, nobody's needs are going to get met because I'm waiting for you to give me something that I think you should know, and I'm waiting to give you what you want because I'm thinking you're going to let me know. How many times does that happen? You should know I want flowers. You should know that's my favorite restaurant. You should know this, you should know that. All the shoulds, rights for scolding each other. And I tell people, you can never assume that your partner is going to know everything you're thinking, no matter how long you're together, because we're always growing and developing and finding new interests. And that's what having good communication is about, is sharing new things and say, You know what? I used to really love when you did that, but now I'd really like you to do this instead.

Okay, thanks. I appreciate that. Now that's important to me. It really wasn't before. Okay, I can do that for you. So that's where the communication comes. But these underlying assumptions and no one's communicating, no one's needs are being met. And also behaviors that we do to extremes such as alcohol or drug misuse, over eating, and perfectionism are often driven by our underlying assumptions. So if alcohol is an issue for you, you may say to yourself, if I drink, then I'll be more social. So that gives you permission to do that, right? If I've had a hard day, then I deserve to eat a large dessert. That also gives you permission. Or if something is imperfect, then it is worthless. That's a tough one. I don't know where you go from there because none of us are perfect. And talking about perfectionism, I want to add a little bit. The perfectionism with your own behavior is that you're afraid to make a mistake. And another cognitive aspect to think about is what we call perceived perfectionism. So this is when you think others also expect you to be perfect and that they won't respect or love you if they see you not being perfect or flawed.

So first, I want to be perfect, but my underlying assumption is this perceived perfectionism that others also expect me to be perfect. I won't be respected, I won't be loved if they see that I'm not perfect or flawed. So I repeated that because something I really want you guys to take in. You may have this going on and you don't even know it. How do people see me? Based on how they see me is how they're going to treat me. So again, the if then. If I'm perfect, then they'll love me. If I'm perfect, then they'll respect me. Now, I don't want to get off topic here, but I talk about perfectionism is really interesting is that most people aren't really attracted to perfectionists because they are intimidated thinking they're always perfect, and we don't think we are, so we're They're like, Eeh. You know, that when people are more authentic and genuine and show their flaws, people are more attracted to each other because being authentic is something that's attractive. So your underlying assumptions could really be pushing people away. It's coming from a good place, you want to do well, you want to give others.

If I give others, if I buy them gifts, if I do everything they ask, then they'll always be my friends. I mean, I could go on for hours with you guys giving you the if-then sentences. You know, that's why you can see why it's so important to understand your underlying assumptions. So now that you understand what an underlying assumption is, the best way for you to test them, because they occur in many different situations, so there's definitely lots of opportunities, is to challenge them through behavioral experiments. So a behavioral experiment is a test with, again, the if-then rule, and asking yourself, Is it accurate? Is my thinking accurate? Is what we're looking for? So one question to ask yourself is, did what I think was going to happen actually happen when you do the experiment? You want to try multiple experiments. You want to do lots of little ones because you need to have enough of them to see that your if then is incorrect or if you're doing a new one and trying something different, if that is correct and if it's accurate. Another experiment you can do, too, is just asking others if they hold the same assumptions.

I know you might be like, What? I never thought of that. I don't want to ask somebody because then they're going to know I'm thinking that way. But let me tell you, we all have a lot of the same thoughts, believe it or not. And the ones that we're trying to hide are probably more alike than not. So saying to somebody, Do you sometimes maybe not speak up in a meeting because you're afraid you're going to look silly? Or do you not maybe go to a party where you know there's going to be dancing because you don't think you're a good dancer, people are going to laugh at you? What things do you not do or avoid or do you overcompensate thinking, If I do that, others will love me more? So asking people this, it's a great question. I think you have a great conversation. People are like, Oh, my God, yeah, I do that, or I used to do it, and then I realized it wasn't working for me, so I changed. So it's a great way to just start talking and saying, I've been thinking about this, or sharing that you listen to the podcast.

Dr. Julie suggests I just ask somebody like, Do you ever do this? Because this is my underlying assumption that I do all the time. I'm trying to see if I'm more alike than others than I don't, than I realize. And how others see it as well. So let me give you an example going back to perfectionism. If you're a perfectionist, that when you aren't perfect and you still get a good reaction from people in your life. That's how you can prove that your assumptions are wrong. And with perfectionism, realizing you aren't as unique or special in this way, because sometimes that's what you tell, If I do this, that makes me special. Like, your uniqueness can kill you. It can keep you isolated and alone. We want to be together. We want to be connected to each other. And for you to realize you're really like everyone else, and that can be really liberating. So doing an experiment where, say you're in a classroom or a meeting and you purposely give the wrong answer, which I know sounds horrifying, but it's an experiment and see what people do. People snicker or laugh or make fun of you?

Probably not. Most of them, if you're in a class, probably aren't even trying to answer because they don't want to be embarrassed, or they might have thought, Oh, my God, that's the same thing I thought. That was my answer. I'm glad I didn't say nothing. But you want to have that experiment I was like, Okay, if I give the wrong answer on purpose, no one's going to even notice or react to me. That would be an experiment. If I don't offer to do every single thing my friend wants me to do, but I do a couple of things, will they still be my friend? Will they still want to hang out with me? There's lots of different scenarios. I don't think there's really a bad experiment out there that you could come up with, well, if it's not self-harming, to say, Okay, let me do the opposite of what I've been doing. Let me do what I'm really fearful of, and see what happens. Let me understand my underlying assumptions. If that couple I talked about earlier said, I was raised that it's really disrespectful if I'm late. I needed to work with you on this.

Maybe we can come up with no more than 10 or 15 minutes late, and the wife might be like, Okay, I can go with that, because I I don't want to be exactly on time, but 15 minutes late, I'm comfortable with. So if we talk about and we can come up with a plan, and you guys could really... If this is your situation with somebody, that could be an experiment the couple could do together. So let's show up at 7:15 and let's see what happens. Does anybody care? Is anybody upset? Or is everybody just happy when we show up? And for both parties, that could be an experiment to see nothing bad happened. Nobody was assaulted, nobody felt pressure. It's all good. And now we can have a better relationship and understand where we're both coming from and what our underlying assumptions are doing to us emotionally to get so frustrated with each other and really hurt the relationship, which is not what we want to do. We want to go to this party and have a good time together. So whether you use the Mind Over Mood book or you want to just take out a piece of paper, I want to give you some guidelines for planning the behavioral experiments.

So there's a whole chart in the book that you can use, but you don't need to do that. You can just write this down. So the first thing is we want to, of course, write down the assumption that we're testing. So let's just, again, to make things easy, using the couple, the assumption we're going to test is that we're going to be 15 minutes late and everything's going to be okay. You want to first write down how to do that and figure out what is the assumption I really want to see is true or not. I want to test. Okay, the second step is you're going to make specific predictions. So make sure that the experiments you plan are going to lead to new information so then you can evaluate your underlying assumption. And so by making specific predictions, that's one way you can do that. So then either your old or your new assumption will tell you what happened. So again, the prediction for the party is everyone's going to be happy we showed up and it's all going to be okay. Nobody's going to mention whether we were earlier or late or on time or late.

So when you write down the specific predictions, you can really look back and say, Oh, yeah, my underlying assumption is false. That's not something I want to continue to do. Or my specific prediction that things went well, I'm going to continue to do this. This just works better for me. You also want to break the experiments up into small steps. That's number three. Because when there's small steps, they're definitely easier to do. Everything that you learn in each step you take, you can keep taking bigger steps and building on and building on them. In chapter 14, which is understanding anxiety, there is what the authors call fear ladder. So This is basically if you have a piece of paper and say on the top, you want to put down what your goal is, and you go to the bottom of the paper and you just start writing baby steps. This is my first thing, my next thing, my next thing, my next thing, until I reach my goal. So I So think about that when it says, Breaking experiments into small steps. What's the first step I'm going to do? Maybe it's just figuring out what my underlying assumption is.

And then figuring out how can I test this? What's the environment I want to test this in? What are the What are the specific predictions I want to make? So breaking up into small steps. And every time you have success, you're going to be more courageous to go do a bigger step and a bigger step until you reach your goal. So as I mentioned a minute ago, you want to do a number of experiments, right? So you really need to do numerous experiments for you to really believe it, because otherwise, you'll be like, Well, that was at one time, right? So if it's speaking up in a meeting, in a classroom, in a social conversation, that might be different experiments. I'm going to say something in my classroom. I'm going to say something in a meeting I'm going to. I'm going to say something when I'm in a group. So when I say something, meaning if you're answering a question or you I want to join in the conversation, right? Those are some experiments you can do. See what feedback I get, that people are interested in you or people don't judge you. Those are all different environments, but you can be doing the same experiment.

And the more and more you do, the more confidence you get. And you can do the same thing or the same experiment in the same place. So if it is in a classroom and you start just participating more and taking opportunities to answer a question or to ask the teacher a question, and you don't get scared at or made fun of or laughed at like maybe you're afraid it will happen. Over time, you'll just be comfortable doing it. So that's important to do a number of experiments. Usually, one and done is not enough. Also, you want to do problem solving and don't quit. So when the experiments don't turn out the way you hoped, maybe it's time to problem solve, but not to quit. It's a good idea to anticipate problems that might occur before you begin doing the experiment. So that's, again, one of the charts they have in the book, which is really cool, is asking you, what are some possible problems that might happen? So you're thinking ahead of time, and what would you do if that problem occurred? So there are many different ways you can plan this out to make yourself feel comfortable so you can actually take the steps.

So just because things don't go well, right? I mean, that's life. Things don't always go well. They don't always go the way we predict them to be. They don't always go the way we want them to go. So we need to plan for that, and we need to say, Okay, how do I need to do this differently? So I can see that possibly my new assumption or the way I really do want to be, I can make that work for myself. And then the last step is to write down your experiments and their outcomes. So we already wrote down our experiment, but then we want to go back to that list and write down what is the outcome. So it's super helpful to write down your your experiments and your outcomes, because writing them down makes it more likely that you're going to learn from them because you can go back and not just say, Oh, I was lucky that went well. But it's like, No, I did this step and this step, and this was my outcome. And I keep getting the same positive outcome over and over and over again. And you can learn from your good experiences, you can learn from your bad experiences.

Everything's an opportunity to grow and learn and tweak things. I thought this was going to go well. It didn't. What could I do different? What are some of my CBT tools that I could maybe bring into my experiments to make them more successful. And again, going back to your underlying assumptions, can just be so powerful because I'm like, Oh, that's why I do that. That's why I am not making changes. That's why I don't feel like I'm getting to be successful in my goals that I have. That's why I keep drinking or having that dessert in my when I'm trying to cut back, because I tell myself, If I do this, I will feel better. If I have a glass of wine, I will feel relaxed. Versus, If I don't have a glass of wine, I can do something different. If I watch a TV show, if I take a hot bath, then I will feel relaxed. There's lots of other things you can choose. It's not just one thing, right? But we want to first understand, What are my underlying assumptions? There's a few more More different exercises you might find really helpful if you're going through Chapter 11 in the Mind Over Move book to help identify the underlying assumptions.

I'm going to go over them a little bit with you guys, but you can look it up yourself. If you write down an experience that you want to change. If you identify behaviors that you keep doing, even if it would be better for you not to do them, staying up late watching TV, as I mentioned already drinking too much, I mentioned over eating, criticizing someone, dating the wrong people, if you're cleaning the house all the time. You want to write down the behavior with, if I clean the house all the time, then it makes me exhausted. And then it'll say, If I don't clean the house all the time, then I will have more energy for things I like. So that's one exercise they have in there. They have one about avoiding situations or not avoiding them. There's also an area where you can write down if you have really strong emotions, very specific. Some examples they give is someone criticizing you, if you make a mistake, if you get interrupted, someone tries to take advantage of you, what underlying assumptions might explain your reaction. They talk about, too, if a telemarketer calls you, right?

If a telemarketer calls me, they don't care about my time, right? There's my assumption. Versus this person's trying to make a living, doing a job, not out to get us. But that's our assumption. And so I think most of us are like, Oh, my God, it's a telemarketer, and we get annoyed. So if they call me, then it means they don't care about my time. And then you can challenge that and say, Why did I react so harshly? Instead of just saying, No, thank you, and hang up and move on. Some people get so pissed off, then they hold to that anger, and it's not good for them. So there's lots of different ways to look at and identify what are your underlying assumptions. You guys know I love that. This is my book I use. So just a lot of good stuff to think about, to go over, and to really start understanding yourself better. And that's what we want to do. It's one of our goals, is to understand ourselves better, understand what we're thinking, which thoughts create our moods, Why are we acting the way we are? What isn't working? What do we want to change?

What do we want to stick with? And then I just want to review. I know I mentioned this a little early in the podcast, but at the end of all of this, after you do your experiments and you're looking at the outcome, again, you want to ask yourself, what actually happened compared to what my predictions were? That's why it's fun to write them down early before. Does the outcome match what I predicted would happen? Did anything unexpected happen? And if things didn't turn out as you wanted, how well did you handle it? That's a great question, right? Again, we're not looking for things to be perfect, just better. And when it didn't work out, how did I handle it? Did I handle it based on one of my underlying assumptions that I don't like? Or did I try something different? And I'm like, You know what? That felt pretty good. I want to do that next time. So again, there's lots of different options here. I know I went over a handful. You might be even more creative and come up with other experiments. Sometimes maybe you might even get some ideas from people that are close to your life because a lot of times we can see other people's underlying assumptions when they tell it to us.

If I don't listen to you or do everything you ask me to, you're not going to be my friend. That's an underlying assumption they have. Maybe I have the same one. So you can't guess without knowing, but sometimes just having conversations with people, people will share that. I'm scared if I say this or that, that you're going to get upset. I'm scared if I'm honest, that you're going to overreact. If someone's thinking that about me, what are my underlying assumptions? That if somebody tells me the truth about something they don't like about me, that really means they don't care, that they're selfish, they're not thinking about me. Those are all underlying assumptions that most likely are not true, especially if this is someone that's important to you in your life. So just slow down. Take out the piece of paper, start writing down situations you're struggling with, asking yourself, What are my thoughts? That if this, then that. And be like, Oh, That might not be true. And what do they say about assumptions? Or what does assume stand for? Is making an ass out of you and me. Meaning that usually my assumptions are not true.

A lot of times I'm like, I wish I didn't assume that. I wish to ask more questions. I wish I would have taken time to figure out what I was even thinking before I reacted. Most of our assumptions are not true. Sometimes they are, most of them are not. But let's at least look at them and figure out which ones aren't true and that we could be doing better and being happier with our lives and having better relationships and becoming more of the person we really want to be, which is one of the goals here by all of us working together and learning the CBT tools and growing and being more aware and being more mindful and feeling better about who we are for ourselves and for the relationships that we're in.

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