Great article. It really highlights many of the cognitive distortions that people tend to have, such as:

Emotional reasoning
Mind reading
Selective attention and negativity bias
And disqualifying the positive.

Recognizing these distortions can play a big factor in a persons understanding their own thought patterns.

Recognizing ones cognitive distortions and challenging the unhelpful thoughts is a very CBT like approach which is an evidence based therapeutic practice (as you know). I think that your advice to the couple is really good. It will likely take practice but with time it could have a big impact on them in a positive way.

Below is a CBT worksheet that lists many of the common cognitive distortions that people have. You may find it helpful as a worksheet to give them. They can practice recognizing their own cognitive distortions.

Something that a friend of mine recently pointed out to me and which is sort of relevant to this idea of thinking in terms of feelings and even to buddhism in a way, is that people often say that they "just want to be happy." The problem with this is that happiness is not a state of being, happiness is an emotion. A person cannot live in a state of permanent happiness anymore than they can live in a state of permanent anger. Happiness tends to be fleeting just like our other emotions. So instead of striving to always feel happy it may be more realistic for a person to feel content in life. If they feel content then they are doing pretty good overall lol.

I hope it works out for Clarice and Dennis and they take your advice of challenging their negative cognitive distortions :)

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