Changing Self-Defeating Thoughts

Changing Self-Defeating Thoughts

Often, what and how, a child feels about him or herself is the result of feelings that have arisen from an accumalation of many experiences. These feelings generalize into one general feeling that becomes habitual and set over time, appearing automatically even when the new situation the child is not necessarily related.

For example, a child may think "I am no good at math." or "Everyone thinks I'm stupid." When, in actuality, these thoughts are not indicative of reality.

Changing these self-defeating thoughts requires cognitive restructuring of thought processes in the brain. One way to help your child do this is to talk the child through the experience. I will give you an example.

The child says, "Everyone thinks I'm stupid." You respond with, "What makes you think that?". The child says, "Because everyone was laughing when I answered a question wrong in class." You then say, "How did that make you feel?" The child says, "Terrible!" You say, "Okay, let's think of some reasons the other kids might have been laughing and write them down."

Begin a list of possible scenerios. For example:
The other kids were not laughing at you but at
what you wrote.

The kids laugh at everyone who gets a problem
wrong, not just you.

You have laughed at other kids when they got a
problem wrong, but that didn't mean you didn't
like the kid who got the problem wrong, did it.

After exploring several options for reasons why the children laughed, ask the child how they would feel in each of the given scenerios. For example, the child might say, "I would not feel so bad if I knew the others were laughing at what I wrote instead of who I am." Then, encourage the child to keep that thought in mind the next time a situation arose where other children laughed at him or her.