The actual process, after language and concepts, includes five steps:
Awareness- the subject must become aware of his/her automatic and core thoughts. Since ninety-five percent of everything we do is nonconscious, this might take some practice. One can infer from automatic thoughts what core thoughts [about self and other] or substantive thoughts [about future prospects or the cause of success and failure] are. This is because human beings are coherency systems: our beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors
Attendance- as the subject learns to identify his/her thoughts, it becomes important to learn how to pay attention to them. Automatic thoughts are like reflex behaviors such as breathing or blinking your eyes. You can control both, but only as long as you concentrate on the behavior. The same is true of your thoughts. The reason that so much of what we do is nonconscious is because through repetition and habit the central nervous system learns how to behave. In order to change your thoughts, at will, therefore, you will need to learn to attend to those thoughts for periods of time. Usually, there are tools such as journals or daily notes to help.
Analysis - as the subject attends, or pays attention, to what s/he is thinking, s/he must also determine whether the thoughts s/he has are true, valid and useful. This is where a helper is most useful, since we will tend to evaluate these thoughts the way we always evaluated them. The helper may need to dispute the thoughts and/or ask the subject to explore certain experiences in order to see whether their original beliefs hold up. The process of dispute, however, is not conflict. It is a process of uncovering and sharing evidence. The subject and helper become Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson seeking as much evidence as possible to prove or disprove. One major method is to identify how well the thought, feeling and behavior chain has helped the subject reach his/her personal goals. If the subject is dissatisfied with life in some substantive way, it probably means that there are thought which are holding him/her back because of the cycle of behaviors they cause.
Alternative thoughts must be developed for those thoughts that are self-defeating. This takes some creative thinking*, which is a skill. People with the most problems in living are often the most rigid and unable to create alternative thought very easily. Again, a helper may be useful to teach the subject how to think creatively using the three basic tools of attention, escape and movement. The benefit of this three part structure is that it opens the way to the development of an infinite number of methods for directed creativity and the helper or subject can create his/her own techniques. As each alternative thought is developed, it is analyzed for validity as was done with the original thoughts. The more alternatives the better, since it enables the subject to choose what best suits them.
Adaption to the new thoughts is also a learned process. If you remember, we said that the reason that so much of what we do is nonconscious is because through repetition and habit the central nervous system learns how to behave. The subject now needs to train his/her central nervous system differently. This may require practice or the use of a mantra - self verbalizations* of the new thoughts, but gradually the new way of thinking will begin to occur reflexively. This causes of course different feelings and results in different behaviors which equally result in different responses from others. If well done, the problems in living that had been substantive in the past, diminish or disappear.
