Last post I spoke about an excellent article on thought holes from Renne Jain’s article in Edutopia. Ok so the fancy term is ‘cognitive distortion’, but try engaging a group of tweens with that as an opener. The point is that we all fall into mental traps that make it easier to avoid solutions to challenging situations. In simple terms, we replace thinking with feeling.
If you see that your tween is stuck in a thought hole, here are some guiding questions to help them challenge the thought, and move from a place of feeling to a place of more objective thinking.
Identify; what thought hole are you in right now?
Where are you on the thinking _____ feeling spectrum?
Could this be causing you to exaggerate or emphasize parts of this situation?
If this was happening to someone else, would you see the situation differently? Explain
What advice would you give this person?