Lesson 6- Thought-Based Coping

Welcome back! This is video number six, meaning that your students are officially halfway through the Coping Power program! We hope you and your students are already noticing all of the wonderful benefits the program has to offer.

As a reminder, last week we talked about the four unhelpful, automatic thought patterns, including catastrophizing, missing the positive, all-or-nothing thinking, and jumping to conclusions. Remember that catastrophizing occurs when we turn a small problem into something huge. Missing the positive is when we focus on only the negative things that are happening and ignore all of the great things. All-or-nothing thinking occurs when we assume things must be completely correct or not done at all, and any mistake is a failure. And jumping to conclusions occurs when we try to predict the future or guess what others are thinking. These types of thoughts can have a big impact on our emotions and the intensity of our emotion thermometer. As a reminder, your students are using the emotion thermometer graphic to help explain how intense their emotions are at any given time.

Unhelpful thoughts can make us feel really angry, frustrated, sad, or worried. If we’re able to change those thoughts into something more helpful, something that focuses on the positive, or on our own growth and improvement, we can bring down the intensity of our emotions, cope with challenges, and more easily solve problems.

This week’s lesson builds on those skills by engaging students in more positive, helpful self-talk. Thought coping involves the process of replacing an unhelpful automatic thought with a more helpful or realistic statement regarding a challenging situation.

Students are working to move away from thinking in extremes, like, “I always, they never” or “everything is bad, everyone hates me.” Instead, they’re now considering thoughts like, “I made a mistake, but I learned from it,” or, “I got in a fight with my friend, but we can work it out.” This will get them thinking from a strengths-based perspective: considering all of the amazing things they can do, ways they can learn, and new skills they’ve acquired as they’ve made mistakes and grown.

Students are applying this skill with a series of sample unhelpful, automatic thoughts. They are changing the thoughts in the sample items to be more helpful and considering how changing those thoughts would impact their overall emotions and the intensity of those emotions.

For this week’s challenge task, we encourage you to continue working with your students on recognizing, stopping, and now changing their unhelpful thought patterns. Throughout the week, notice opportunities where students are engaging in negative self-talk or experiencing upsetting events. For example, if a student was unsuccessful in a task and you notice them shutting down or engaging in negative self-talk, guide them through replacing their unhelpful statements with more helpful ones.

Thanks for watching! We’ll see you next week.