Let’s look at an exercise from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which is perhaps the most widely-used counseling intervention today.
For your consideration, let’s try this exercise called “taking your thoughts to court.”
We can use this when we’ve had negative automatic thoughts (NATs) that say horrible things like “I’m a failure” or “I’m a bad parent.”
- Take a sheet of paper and make two columns, one for “the prosecution,” and one for “the defense.”
- In the prosecution column, write down the evidence for the NAT. Now, all of us will have “they left” as evidence in the prosecution column. Our admitted mistakes are in that column.
Every parent will have mistakes in that column, and though not all mistakes are created equal, this does allow us to at least rule out the assumption that parenting must be mistake-free.
What is in the “defense” column? As parents, our job included keeping the children safe, teaching them, raising them to be independent and capable individuals, loving them, being a good role model, etc.
Filling in these columns can help us have some measure of objectivity for addressing the NATs that can cause so much distress in our daily lives.
If nothing else, this exercise should at least clarify that a variety of factors lead to a profound change in the family system such as estrangement.
Part of the work of trying to cope and heal is being intentional about remembering facts such as these. You can do this.
Although the circumstances that led to the creation of this program could perhaps be described as tragic, I am nevertheless grateful to be a part of this journey with you.
