ABSTRACT
Combining techniques designed to restructure COGNITION with physical RELAXATION procedures is known as cognitive-behavioral modification, or intervention and sometimes THERAPY, and it is used to modify the manner in which people apprehend, interpret and respond to situations or specific stimuli. This is a technique for breaking down unwanted habits of thought and replacing them with more positive ones: cognitive restructuring. Cognitive restructuring is intended to use intellectual and percep-
tual SKILL to alter the way people view situations, or stimuli in the environment. It is based on the premise that stimuli do not automatically imprint themselves on human senses: they are subject to interpretation. Responses to stimuli are the result of interpretations of them rather than the stimuli in themselves. The properties we infer or conjecture rather than the objective properties of the stimuli are crucial to the way we think and act toward them. The two basic steps in cognitive-behavioral programs are to divide
the unwanted thought or behavior into small managable sections and then systematically associate these with more positive, useful thoughts or emotions. The questions posed are, for example: Is this idea or mood rational or helpful? Is it too demanding of instant gratification to be valuable in the long term? Once the NEGATIVITY is recognized, the person links the thought or emotion to more positive states. Constant repetition of a positive association makes it eventually automatic. For example, someone may be reluctant to return to a gym where
she has witnessed a distressing incident (such as a fellow exerciser’s collapsing and being administered emergency treatment). She might be reminded that the chances of a recurrence are small and that, at the gym, she enjoys the company of friends, becomes fit, and has other agreeable experiences. Other examples of cognitive restructuring include COPING, SELF-
TALK, and CENTERING, all of which are aimed at changing the athlete’s response to stimuli, rather than the stimuli themselves. Like all types of cognitive restructuring, they assist in managing an athlete’s interpretation of what might otherwise be perceived as threatening situations. A related way of solving problems is by visualizing a problem, dis-
secting it into chunks, and then using our visuo-spatial capacities to put them all on paper in words or pictures. Then the person links them together in some ordered way, so that a pattern becomes evident. Individually, the problems may appear too many and large to solve, but by visualizing them as an entirety, novel solutions might arise.
