Tool Overview
People struggling with behaviours of concern often feel a great deal of shame, self-blame and guilt. They may judge themselves harshly and beat themselves up about their behaviour. This often happens when people stop their behavior and start thinking back on how their behaviors affected them and others.
Often this leads to engaging with more problem behaviours because doing so makes them feel better, if only temporarily. It can become a vicious cycle. As a SMART facilitator, it is important to model and encourage self-acceptance.
When to Use This Tool
How To Use This Tool
Related Tools
View all- Worksheet
The ABC's
The ABC Model is a good way of understanding how we can help change our feelings and behaviour by challenging our thinking.
- Worksheet
Unhelpful Thinking Styles
Psychologists have identified a number of typical unhelpful thinking styles. Familiarising yourself with them can help you recognise them quickly so you can challenge them and reframe them as more helpful or balanced thoughts.
- Tool
Disrupting Unhelpful Thinking
Disrupting involves challenging and testing our thoughts to gain a more accurate perspective, enabling informed decision-making rather than impulsive reactions.
Tool Overview
The ABC Model is a good way of understanding how we can help change our feelings and behaviour by challenging our thinking.
When to Use This Tool
The ABC Model is a good way of understanding how we can help change our feelings and behaviour by challenging our thinking. It helps us uncover beliefs that are not helping us /contributing to the behaviour we are trying to change.
This exercise may be done in the group setting but can also be very useful for participants to look at between meetings.
How To Use This Tool
When working with urges: To analyze a lapse/relapse or to develop coping statements for an anticipated lapse/relapse.
In the event of a lapse, the question to ask is not “What made me do that”, but rather, “How did I talk myself into it?” It is not the urge (A) that causes the lapse (C). It is our beliefs (B); our irrational self-talk.With emotional upset:
The ABC Model can also be used to work with emotional upset or frustrations that may occur at any point in the recovery journey. The ABCs allow us to discover our unhelpful beliefs which contribute to emotional upsets. Disputing helps us eliminate our irrational thinking so we can both feel better and do better. In SMART Recovery we teach that we feel the way we think; it’s not unpleasant events that disturb us, it’s the way we think of them. By changing our thinking, we change how we feel.Identifying and Disputing Unhelpful Thinking.
Disputing is a process of challenging the way we think about situations. It’s about trying to look at thoughts more accurately. Disputing unhelpful thinking can help us make more informed decisions about thoughts instead of just acting on them. Balanced thinking leads to effective new beliefs.
