Cognitive Restructuring: The Power of Reframing Thoughts

Do your clients ever follow a certain train of thought, without consciously deciding to, that leads them to a sad or upsetting conclusion?

If so, they’re not alone.

It’s human nature to come up with schemas, or thought patterns and assumptions, about how things work. Without them, we would have to approach every problem as a brand-new one, with no preexisting experiences, problem-solving techniques, or lessons learned to draw from.

The issue with these schemas is that they are not always accurate. We do not always come up with the best and most effective methods for solving problems, but these methods can get saved to our subconscious anyway.

Fortunately, there is an effective, evidence-backed process of changing these faulty ways of thinking that can help correct biased, skewed, or just plain inaccurate beliefs we hold. Let’s look a little deeper into cognitive restructuring.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our five positive psychology tools for free. These engaging, science-based exercises will help you effectively deal with difficult circumstances and give you the tools to improve the resilience of your clients, students, or employees.

What Is Cognitive Restructuring? 5 Examples

Cognitive restructuring, or cognitive reframing, is a process used in therapy and mental health coaching that helps clients discover, challenge, and modify or replace their negative, irrational thoughts — also called cognitive distortions (Clark, 2013).

It is a staple of cognitive behavioral therapy and a frequently used tool in therapists’ toolboxes because many of our problems are caused by faulty ways of thinking about ourselves and the world around us (Mills et al., 2008).

This process offers a way to help people reduce their stress through cultivating more functional thought habits and building positive self-talk (Mills et al., 2008).

Some of the most common examples of dysfunctional core beliefs and the new, healthier beliefs that may replace them include:

• I don’t deserve love → I deserve love
• I am a bad person → I am a good person
• I am worthless → I am worthwhile
• It’s not OK to show emotions → It’s OK to feel my emotions
• I can’t trust anyone → I can trust some people

Common cognitive distortions

There are so many ways our thinking can play tricks on us that it’s almost surprising that we think clearly most of the time! These tricks are known as cognitive distortions in psychology.

Cognitive distortions are faulty or biased ways of thinking about ourselves and/or our environment (Beck, 1976). They are beliefs and thought patterns that are irrational, false, or inaccurate, and they have the potential to cause serious damage to our sense of self, our confidence, and our ability to succeed.

One of the most common cognitive distortions is overgeneralization, or drawing a broad and generally negative conclusion about oneself or about the world based on a single incident (Beck, 1976).

Another distortion is magnification or minimization, a damaging distortion that affects how we evaluate the things that happen to us (Yurica & DiTomasso, 2005).

You can read more about these and other distorted ways of thinking in our article on common cognitive distortions.

How Does Cognitive Reframing Work?

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is built on the idea that the way we think affects the way we feel.

When we think negatively, we often feel negatively and are likely to behave in ways that are not conducive to our health and wellbeing. Cognitive restructuring requires challenging negative thoughts instead of simply accepting them as true or unchangeable.

This method of addressing problems and promoting healing constitutes the bulk of CBT sessions and offers dozens of techniques and exercises that can be applied to nearly any client scenario.

Applied correctly, it can help clients learn to stop automatically trusting their thoughts as representative of reality and begin testing them for accuracy (Mills et al., 2008).

For a thorough explanation of how cognitive restructuring can apply to CBT for anxiety, check out this video.

When, Where & How to Use Reframing

Cognitive reframing is a good choice to use when a client is suffering from the negative outcomes of their behavior but having trouble changing the behavior. This is often due to dysfunctional underlying thoughts and beliefs, which cognitive reframing can be used to identify and address.

Reframing usually begins in a therapist’s office, but it can be implemented anywhere the client has the energy and the will to apply it.

6 Cognitive Restructuring Techniques

Although cognitive distortions are stubborn and surprisingly insidious thought patterns, there are ways to combat them. Cognitive restructuring techniques have had great success in identifying, challenging, and replacing faulty ways of thinking with more accurate, helpful, and positive ways of thinking.

Socratic questioning

Socratic questioning is a very effective cognitive restructuring technique that can help your clients challenge irrational, illogical, or harmful thinking errors.

This technique involves asking the following questions:

• Is this thought realistic?
• Am I basing my thoughts on facts or on feelings?
• What is the evidence for this thought?
• Could I be misinterpreting the evidence?
• Am I viewing the situation as black and white when it’s really more complicated?
• Am I having this thought out of habit, or do facts support it?

Answering and reflecting on these questions can help your clients challenge the beliefs that are causing them harm.

Thought records

Keeping thought records is an excellent way to help your clients become aware of any cognitive distortions that went previously unnoticed or unquestioned, which is the necessary first step to restructuring them (Myles & Shafran, 2015).

There are several different ways to structure a thought record, but the main idea is to note what recurrent thoughts are coming to mind and the situations in which they come up.

Decatastrophizing, or the “what if” technique

This technique is basically asking, “What’s the worst that can happen?” and following a scenario logically through to completion (Dattilio & Freeman, 1992).

Decatastrophizing or asking themselves “what if?” will help your clients determine what is likely to happen, reduce irrational or unreasonable anxiety, and see that even the worst-case scenario is manageable. Use these decatastrophizing worksheets in your sessions.

Guided imagery

Visualization can be an extremely effective method of cognitive restructuring.

There are three main categories of guided imagery that therapists can guide their clients through using cognitive restructuring:

1. Life event visualization

This technique involves having the client identify a specific event or theme that is the focus of the therapy session (Edwards, 1989).

This event could be something recent and particularly salient, like an argument with a loved one, or something from the past that still has a strong impact on the client, like being bullied or a harsh rejection from childhood.

2. Reinstatement of a dream or daytime Image

This imagery technique focuses on a specific image that the client has already had. The image could be one that the client encountered in a dream, daydream, fantasy, or previous guided imagery session.

Wherever it came from, it will hold some inherent meaning for the client and may cause the client to feel anxious, sad, upset, or another emotion intensely.

3. Feeling focusing

Feeling focusing is characterized by the client focusing on a feeling they are experiencing in the session and letting an image arise from the feeling.

An image will usually arise spontaneously, but if not, a technique called multisensory evocation can help clarify it. For this technique, the therapist directs the client through an exploration of the senses to help sharpen the image and identify more detail.

Once the client has an image in mind, the therapist will move on to assessing the meaning that the image holds for the client.

Imagery assessment techniques

There are several assessment techniques therapists may use, including:

1. Prompted soliloquy
   The therapist directs the client to identify as an object or entity from an image and speak from the position of this object or entity. For example, a client who visualized a lake drying up is directed to be the lake and speak about how it felt to be the lake and what drying up felt like.
2. Interview
   In this technique the client will once again take on the role of an object or entity from an image, and the therapist will ask specific questions of the client in this role.
3. Prompted dialogue
   Similar to the previous techniques, this technique involves the client taking on a role and addressing one of the other objects or people in the imagery, such as the trees around the lake.
4. Prompted descriptions
   This basic technique simply refers to the therapist frequently asking the client what they see and feel.
5. Prompted transformation
   The therapist may suggest that the client shift or change the image; this can be especially helpful when the current image has reached the end of its usefulness as a discussion piece.

Once the therapist and client work together to identify the meaning attached to the image, the next step will help them challenge, restructure, or replace harmful assumptions and beliefs.

Restructuring techniques

Some of the techniques therapists may use to guide clients through restructuring include summary and reframing, directed dialogue, prompted dialogue, directed transformation, and prompted transformation (Edwards, 1989).

• Summary and reframing
  Generally the first step in restructuring, this is when the therapist summarizes what they have learned from the client and suggests alternate beliefs or assumptions based on the client’s image.
• Directed dialogue
  The client must take on the role of one of the objects or people from an image and deliver specified lines in that role. The client may speak to another object or person in the image or simply make statements to no one in particular.
• Prompted dialogue
  Instead of telling the client exactly what to say in their role from the image, they must come up with their own words to capture a specific idea.
• Directed transformation
  The therapist directs the client to change the image. The change may be to direct one of the individuals in the image to take a new action or to edit, enhance, or erase an object from the image.
• Prompted transformation
  Instead of directing the client in exactly how to change the image, the therapist encourages the client to think of a way to change the image that will further a goal or help it become more positive.

5 Ready-Made Cognitive Reframing Worksheets

If you’re hoping for some hands-on tools to help your client with cognitive restructuring, you’ve come to the right place. A few of the best worksheets and handouts are described below.

1. ABC belief monitoring

The ABC Functional Analysis worksheet is a great way to help your clients identify the link between situations, thoughts and beliefs, and the feelings and actions that follow.

Sometimes it is difficult for us to connect the triggers of our thoughts and beliefs with the outcomes of those thoughts and beliefs.

Use this worksheet to monitor any automatic beliefs or thoughts that tend to pop up, especially in times of stress or situations that go astray. The first step to restructuring harmful or problematic beliefs is identifying them.

2. Behavioral experiments to test beliefs

The Behavioral Experiments to Test Beliefs worksheet is an excellent way to practice multiple helpful techniques and methods. It also allows your clients to use their imagination and contemplate how their current habits and behaviors could bring about future outcomes, whether positive or negative.

This worksheet can be used for a wide variety of beliefs, predictions, and behaviors, from big to small, positive to negative, meaningful to trivial, and everything in between.

Encourage your client to use it often to keep track of any potentially damaging distortions and maintain awareness about their deeply held beliefs.

3. Positive belief record

The Logging Positive Beliefs worksheet offers a simple, straightforward, evidence-based method of challenging potentially harmful or inaccurate beliefs your clients may hold.

At the top of the worksheet are two clouds – one where clients can record the belief they would like to modify or replace, and a second space where they can come up with a new, more positive belief to replace it.

Underneath the two beliefs is a section where the client can record some evidence for the new belief or against the current belief. This evidence can provide support for the new belief, call the current belief into question, or do both at once.

Use this worksheet whenever your clients identify beliefs that are distorted, inaccurate, or biased to help them come up with ways to combat and replace them with more positive, more realistic beliefs.

4. What if?

The “What If?” Bias worksheet will help your clients change their perspective on some of the most common situations they encounter or think about. It is based on the natural human tendency to finish the thought “What if…?” with negative situations or events.

The worksheet juxtaposes two separate ways of looking at the world: one negative and one positive.

While we often veer toward the negative possibilities, there are usually an equal number of positive possibilities that we simply fail to recognize. Considering only negative outcomes harms wellbeing, but learning to develop a more balanced perspective will help clients approach life with a more positive and realistic attitude.

Pull out this worksheet whenever your clients are having trouble considering the positive along with the negative.

5. Getting rid of ANTS: Automatic negative thoughts

In the Getting Rid of ANTS worksheet, clients are presented with an opportunity to identify and reframe automatic negative thoughts (cognitive distortions).

Your clients can use this worksheet to identify their automatic negative thoughts and the context or events that trigger them, as well as to develop new, more positive thoughts to replace them.

Helpful Resources From PositivePsychology.com

Our article on cognitive behavioral therapy is a great place to start building your understanding of the theory behind cognitive distortions and how they can be addressed. Our guide to positive CBT is also worth exploring, as it shows how strengths-based techniques can complement traditional CBT.

A cognitive restructuring exercise can be found in our Positive Psychology Toolkit©. This exercise boils down much of the background in this article into one concise, easy-to-use resource that walks clients through identifying, evaluating, and substituting dysfunctional automatic thoughts with healthier, more intentional thoughts. It also includes a reflection component that will help clients solidify what they’ve learned.

The Thought Record (Cognitive Restructuring) Worksheet is a great resource for putting these restructuring techniques into action. It offers a practical list of the cognitive distortions that may be cropping up, then walks clients through recognizing, evaluating, and ultimately replacing the automatic negative thoughts that cause suffering.

If you’re looking for more science-based ways to help others through CBT, this collection contains 17 validated positive CBT tools for practitioners. Use them to help others overcome unhelpful thoughts and feelings and develop more positive behaviors.

A Take-Home Message

This piece provided a quick overview of cognitive restructuring, which is also known as cognitive reframing, and the helpful techniques and tools that you can implement with your clients.

Although it’s natural for us to develop negative, unhelpful beliefs about ourselves, others, and the world, cognitive restructuring offers a way to replace and adapt those beliefs.

The suffering that comes from faulty ways of perceiving and interacting is not inevitable, and it can be avoided.

Have you tried any of these techniques with your clients? Are there any techniques you found effective that were not included here? Let us know in the comments.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our five positive psychology tools for free.

ED: Updated Nov 2025