Page 175 - Nutrition Counseling and Education Skills: A Guide for Professionals

weight today, but hardly any”
7. Emotional Reasoning: Negative feelings are considered true. “I feel inadequate so it must be.”
8. Should Statements: To try to motivate oneself: “I should eat fruit and I shouldn’t eat cake.”
9. Labeling and Mislabeling: For example: “I’m a pig.” or “I’m a failure.
10. Personalization: Seeing oneself as the cause of a negative event. For example: “What happened was

my fault because I am inadequate.”
11. Tunnel Vision: One sees the negative in situations. For example: “She can’t do anything right.”
12. Mind Reading: People think that they know what others think and feel: For example: “She is not

interested in being my friend.”

Box 8-2 ■ Cognitive Distortions

Cognitive Restructuring

Cognitive restructuring techniques refer to a variety of approaches the counselor may use to assist in
modifying the client’s thinking and the assumptions and attitudes underlying them. Based on learning theory,
it involves unlearning maladaptive associations between stimuli and our responses as we learn new ones.
While much self-talk is harmless, the focus is on the false thoughts, inferences, and premises. Thus the
counselor attempts to become familiar with the client’s thought content, feelings, and behaviors in various
situations or events and helps the client identify specific misconceptions and distortions and to test their
validity and reasonableness. Changing the thoughts to positive ones can modify and improve one’s feelings
and behaviors.

CASE ANALYSIS 3

“When I go out to a restaurant, I won’t get my money’s worth if I don’t eat the food they serve.”
YOUR RESPONSE:

Phases of Cognitive Behavior Modification

Cognitive modification consists of three phases, not necessarily in progression. They include (1) recognizing
the problem, (2) exploring it, and (3) making changes. The aim is to produce changes in the thought processes
maintaining a behavior that needs to change.

Recognizing the Problem
The first step involves helping the client recognize and understand the nature of the problem. A basic
principle is that people cannot change a behavior without increasing their awareness, raising their
consciousness, or noticing a pattern in how they think, feel, and behave, and the impact of the behavior in
various situations.

Rarely does a person recognize that thinking processes are a source of the eating problems which is the
reason why homework is necessary. This is true in eating disorders, overweight, and other dietary changes.
The counselor can enlist clients in a collaborative, investigative effort to learn and understand. Clients self-
monitor by keeping a written log of self-observations to become aware of the relationship between negative

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