Part 4

To understand how to do detective work on your thoughts using an experiment, see Bailey’s example:

Bailey’s Story

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“I found it hard to listen at school.”

— Bailey

Here is an example of the first experiment Bailey did.

  
    1) My thought (rate how strong from 0 to 10):
  
     If I hand my homework in, I will fail because of not listening at school (9/10).
 
I will feel like a failure every day for a week (8/10).
  
    2) How can I test the thought.
  
    Hand a homework sheet in I had been putting off.
  
    3) Results:
  
     When I handed my homework in, I felt relieved. I did not fail.
  
    4) What I learned:
  
I didn’t fail. My feelings of failure were lower than if I had not handed it in.

    5) My new thought (rate how strong new thoughts are from 0 to 10):
  
    If I hand in homework, I will not fail due to not listening at school (8/10).
I will feel like less of a failure if I hand my homework in (9/10).

After the experiment, Bailey felt better. It’s important to try lots of experiments to change thinking.

The next experiment Bailey did was to talk to the teacher. Bailey’s thought was “the teacher will be angry and not let me hand my homework in late”. Bailey tested this in an experiment by talking to the teacher. The teacher was kind and said Bailey could have longer and suggested Eli as a study buddy.

Bailey was also feeling different and having thoughts like ‘my friends will think I’m weird if they know how upset I am’. To test this thought, Bailey shared a bit of what was going on with Eli in a study session, who was nice and also talked about feelings of stress. It made Bailey feel less different: Eli didn’t think Bailey was weird.

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