Limona - Reframing Negative Thoughts
Designed for joint engagement between children ages 13+ and a mental health professional. Click on Limona to access the conversational chatbot designed on Playlab for light support with reframing negative thoughts using lemon-themed puns and surface-level guidance from Cognitive Behavioral Sciences. This tool is not designed to replace therapy, rather serves as a reflection tool that can become a starting off point for deeper conversations with a mental health professional.
15 common cognitive distortions identified in conversations:
Filtering
Ignoring positive events and focusing only on the negative. This can lead to a distorted view of reality, emphasizing only the bad and missing the good.
Polarized Thinking (Black-and-White Thinking)
Seeing things as either all good or all bad, with no middle ground. This can result in extreme thinking patterns where nuances and complexities are ignored.
Overgeneralization
Making broad interpretations from a single or few events. For example, believing that one bad experience means all future experiences will be bad.
Jumping to Conclusions
Assuming the outcome of an event without any definitive evidence. This includes "mind reading" (assuming the thoughts and intentions of others) and "fortune telling" (predicting future events, usually negatively).
Catastrophizing (Magnifying or Minimizing)
Exaggerating the importance of negative events or inappropriately shrinking the significance of positive events.
Personalization
Believing that one is responsible for events outside of their control. This distortion leads individuals to believe that they have more influence over events and outcomes than they actually do.
Control Fallacies
Believing that everything that happens is either a direct result of one's actions (internal control fallacy) or completely out of one's control (external control fallacy).
Fallacy of Fairness
Operating under the assumption that life is supposed to be fair, and feeling resentful when one perceives that it is not.
Blaming
Assigning fault to others for one’s own problems, or conversely, taking too much responsibility for the problems of others.
Shoulds
Holding rigid rules for how oneself and others should behave, and feeling angry or guilty when these expectations are not met.
Emotional Reasoning
Believing that something is true because it feels true, regardless of the evidence.
Fallacy of Change
Expecting others to change to suit one’s own needs and desires and believing that one’s happiness depends on these changes.
Global Labeling (Mislabeling)
Generalizing one or two qualities into a negative global judgment. For instance, failing at a specific task and then labeling oneself as a complete failure.
Always Being Right
Feeling the need to prove that one's opinions and actions are correct, often ignoring the opinions of others.
Heaven’s Reward Fallacy
Believing that sacrifices and self-denial will eventually be rewarded, and feeling bitter when the reward does not come.
List of cognitive behavioral techniques covered in the app
Journaling: Involves recording thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in a structured way, which helps in identifying patterns and triggers in one's thinking and emotional responses.
Unraveling Cognitive Distortions: Focuses on identifying and understanding the common distorted thinking patterns one experiences, such as all-or-nothing thinking or overgeneralization.
Cognitive Restructuring: This technique helps to challenge and change unhelpful and distorted thoughts by examining the evidence for and against them, and replacing them with more balanced thoughts.
Exposure and Response Prevention: Mainly used for treating OCD, this involves gradually exposing a person to a feared object or obsession and teaching them to refrain from the compulsive behavior previously used to reduce anxiety.
Interoceptive Exposure: This technique is used primarily to reduce the fear of bodily sensations associated with panic and anxiety by deliberately eliciting them in a safe environment to learn they are not dangerous.
Nightmare Exposure and Rescripting: Used for individuals experiencing frequent nightmares. It involves recalling the nightmare, writing it down, and then changing the ending to something positive or neutral.
Play the Script Until the End: A technique used for anxiety disorders that involves thinking through a feared event to its worst-case scenario to help realize that one could cope with it, thereby reducing the anxiety associated with the thought.
Progressive Muscle Relaxation: This involves tensing then relaxing each muscle group in the body systematically to reduce physical tension and associated anxiety.
Relaxed Breathing: Teaches controlled, slow, and deep breathing to help manage physiological symptoms of anxiety and stress.
Behavioral Experiments: These involve testing beliefs by comparing the outcomes of different thoughts and behaviors in real-life scenarios. This helps to determine which thoughts are more accurate and which behaviors are more effective in achieving one's goals.
Thought Records: This intervention involves tracking negative automatic thoughts, the emotions they evoke, the situations in which they arise, and the cognitive distortions they involve. Thought records help individuals challenge and change these thoughts to reduce emotional distress.
Pleasant Activity Scheduling: Involves planning enjoyable, fulfilling activities to combat patterns of avoidance and increase positive experiences. This can be particularly effective for depression, helping to break cycles of low mood and inactivity.
Imagery Based Exposure: This exercise uses visualization of a distressing memory to elicit the associated emotions and cognitions. The individual then works through these emotions in a safe space, which can help reduce the emotional impact of the memory.
Graded Exposure: A systematic approach to facing fears by gradually exposing oneself to feared situations, starting with the least scary and building up to the most frightening. This helps reduce anxiety through controlled, incremental exposure.
