Stop Believing Everything You Think- CBT Tips and Tricks

You've been studying CBT. You know what automatic thoughts are. You can name Beck's cognitive triad. You understand the difference between all-or-nothing thinking and overgeneralization.

And yet — at 10pm over a practice test — your brain is producing some of the most creative cognitive distortions you've ever seen. And you're accepting all of it as fact without blinking.

This week's episode does something a little different. We turn the clinical lens around. On you.

What we cover:

🧠 Beck's Cognitive Triad — negative view of self, world, and future — and why one bad practice test score can activate all three corners simultaneously

🔍 The Six Cognitive Distortions that show up most in pre-licensed therapists preparing for their licensing exam — all-or-nothing thinking, mind reading, catastrophizing, overgeneralization, emotional reasoning, and should statements — with a specific reframe for each one

🛠️ The Three-Step Thought Record — catch it, check it, replace it — a practical tool you can use tonight when your brain starts telling stories

💛 The Friend Technique — the most powerful CBT intervention you're probably not applying to yourself

📊 What the evidence actually says — because feeling unprepared and being unprepared are two completely different things, and it's time to check which one you're actually dealing with

Three exam-style multiple choice questions at the end covering CBT concepts tested across the NCE, NCMHCE, and LCSW exams — including the Beck vs. Ellis distinction, cognitive distortion identification, and the friend technique.

You already know these tools. This episode is about using them on yourself — with the same care and rigor you'd bring to a client.

Resources:

📚 Access the CBT Cheat Sheet and full resource library → [JOIN LICENSURE LIFELINE CIRCLE — link here]

📩 Get the free weekly study guide delivered to your inbox → [SUBSCRIBE TO THE NEWSLETTER — link here]

🎙️ Simplify your practice with SimplePractice → [SIMPLEPRACTICE FREE TRIAL — link here]

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Let me ask you something before we get into today's episode. Have you ever caught yourself thinking, I'm not smart enough for this exam? Or maybe everyone else seems to have it together. Why don't I? Or the classic, I've been in sessions with clients. Why does this multiple choice question about Ericsson make me feel like I've never opened a textbook in my life? If any of these landed, good. You're in the right place today. Because here's the thing: those thoughts, they're not a truth. They're stories. They're in there's 60 years of very good science explaining exactly why your brain generates them. And more importantly, what you can do about it. It starts with a psychiatrist named Aaron Beck. And honestly, the way he stumbled onto one of the most important discoveries in history of psych of psychotherapy is kind of wonderful. Beck was trained as a psychoanalyst in the early 1960s. He was treating patients with depression using the standard Freudian approach approach of that time, digging into the unconscious drives, exploring early childhood, the whole thing. And he expected to find something specific. According to his psychoanalyst analytic theory, depressed patients should have a deeply buried desire to suffer, a kind of unconscious self-punishment drive. So he started paying very close attention to what his patients were actually thinking during the sessions. And what he found was not that that wasn't even close. They weren't thinking about self-punishment. What he found was much simpler and much more interesting. His depressed patients had a constant stream of spontaneous negative thoughts running through their heads. Thoughts about themselves, about the world, about the future, and these thoughts weren't buried deep in the unconscious. They were right there on the surface, automatic, rapid, largely unexamined. He called them automatic thoughts. And he noticed something remarkable. When he helped patients identify and examine these thoughts, their mood started to shift. Not because they uncovered some deep unconscious conflict, but because the thoughts themselves were distorted. They weren't accurate reflections of reality. There were stories the mind had constructed, and the mind had accepted them as fact without even questioning it. That insight became the foundation of cognitive behavior therapy, CBT. The idea that how we think shapes how we feel, and that we have more power over our thinking than we realize. Beck wasn't trying to revolutionize psychotherapy. He was just paying attention. And what he noticed changed everything. Today we're going to use that framework not on your clients, but on you. Specifically, on the unhelpful stories you might be telling yourself about lice about the licensure process. Because I promise you, if you're studying for your exam right now, your brain is generating some very creative fiction. And it's time to fact check all of it. Hey everyone, welcome to Licensure Lifeline, the podcast that helps you build the clinical knowledge and confidence you need to pass your exam and show up well in the room. I'm your host, Matt Lawson, and today we are doing something a little different. Not DSM criteria, not ethical codes, no memorizing the difference between classical and no parent conditioning for the 14th time. Today we are turning to the clinical lens around a bit on to you. Specifically, we're talking about the stories that we tell ourselves about this process. Don't run away just yet. We're going to cover some really great techniques and strategies and stuff around CBT, stuff that you will need to know for your for the test, but I'm going to frame it in a way that I'm hoping actually helps with any anxiety you have around the test. So we're going to look at those stories through the framework of CBT. Not because you need therapy, but because you literally know how to do this. And it's time to use them on yourself, which why not? I mean, we have these tools, we have these strategies. Like we can use them to improve our lives. But before we get into that, just a couple of quick announcements. The circle group is up and going. I will have a link in the show notes, but you can also go to the new website, license your lifeline.com, and just tab on over to the group. You'll get all the information you'll need. There is two weeks free to kind of take a look around and see if you like it and see if it's for you. This is a combination of kind of an online community and a learning platform. And this is pretty organic. Like I'm building this, you know, as part of like week after week as we go. And you know, there's already a chunk of information, quizzes, cheat sheets, um, the podcast are on there as well, just a couple of a bunch of other things and tools that you can use that I uh hope you will support you in passing these tests. Um, the newsletter is going great and growing like crazy. Thank you to everybody that has already subscribed. Um you can again go to license your lifeline.com and the link to the newsletter is there as well. I'll also have that in the show notes for you to take a look. But again, this is just another piece, another tool that you can use as far as part of your process to really solidify these things, along with kind of a rundown and summary of the show. I had some more stuff in there just to kind of help out with other aspects of the test. Okay, that's it for announcements. Let's get into the show. First up, what's in the news? All right, let's hit what's going on in the world of mental health this week. And fair warning, one of these stories connects directly to what we're doing in today's episode in the way you find general might find generally interesting. So, first up, this one is worth paying attention to. Mental health clinicians have started asking clients how they're using generative AI chatbots to support their emotional well-being between sessions. This is no joke. Um, I have several clients that are using chatbots kind of in between sessions as an extra therapist, basically. Um, they're kind of using them as like live journals, it sounds like it's kind of neat. I've actually had people send me their chats from their chatbot as part of kind of pre-session work, um, which is kind of neat. So, you know, it's worth asking your clients if they're using them or how they're using them. Um, one of the really interesting things about this for you as a future clinician is this isn't going to replace therapy, right? This is actually really neat. It's filling this gap between sessions where a lot of the work takes place. Um, so you know, it it really is kind of this nice little thing where we can continue with some of the work that we're doing between sessions, of course, at the prompts are right. Um, so it's worth uh questions, worth sitting with um with your clients and really talking to them about like how they're using these things, if they are. Um, next up, and this one is very useful to know, over 40% of applicants encounter delays in licensure processing due to unrecognized degrees, meaning their programs didn't meet state board requirements. Around 86% of states rely on nationally recognized exams like the NCMHCE, um, while the remainder administer state developed tests tailored to local regulations. It is very unfortunate that this is a fact that we have to be on top of. I know when I started in the program that I was in, it was not K-Crep approved. And it was something that luckily by the time I graduated, um, they had worked on. And we were the first class that actually had to take the NCE in order to graduate. Um, so you know, this is something that is you need to check, you need to make sure this is a thing. Like, like they said, most schools do, but it's not a hundred percent. So just make sure you're on top of that because the last thing I want to see anybody is have to do all this freaking work and then find out that the school they went to and they paid tons of money for um isn't even nationally recognized. Lastly, we are wrapping up mental health awareness month. This year's theme from uh the mental uh Mental Health America is good more good days together, focusing on community support and personalized approaches to mental wellness. And here's the stats that stop me. Nearly one in four adults are struggling with their mental health, and half of them aren't getting help because of provider shortages. Over 137 million Americans live in areas with mental health provider shortages. I bring that up not to add the weight, um, a weight for you guys to carry, but to just reframe it because you're needed. It is nice. You're going into a situation where you're needed and wanted. Um, and you know, it's it is like it's one thing to be a therapist in in a big populated city. Um, it's another thing to kind of see needs outside of that city and see if you can fulfill those needs. There's so many places that just don't have therapists. This is another really nice thing about telehealth. Um, I think I've something I've said before. We get to reach people that wouldn't get therapy otherwise. Um, I have clients in the mountains here in Colorado that I would not be able to work with otherwise because especially in the winter, it is impossible for them to get anywhere to see me. So, you know, this is like we are we are serving a purpose, people need us. All right, that's it for the news. Let's get on with the rest of the show. Before we get into the meat of this podcast, just a quick word from the sponsors. Um, simple practice. Here's the thing about the licensure journey that nobody really prepares you for. You spend years in grad school learning how to be a clinician. You study for your exams, you accumulate supervision hours, and then one day you pass, yay, you're licensed, and suddenly you also have to run a business. It's a pretty wild thing, actually. Um, even in large practices, you are kind of like your own little small business within a business. Um, you know, a lot of places have their own marketing departments, have their own billing departments, have their own scheduling departments. A lot of places don't. And especially those places that don't, um, something like simple practice really comes in and does great. Simple practice takes that piece off the table. The all those things that you you know are have to do in order to keep up with your clients and gives you more time to be that clinician for the people that need you. They offer a free trial if you go now, and um, I will have the link in the show notes that you can use to get that free trial and just check things out. I have used it myself in other practices. It really does work great, very seamless, and I highly recommend you give it a shot. All right, folks, let's get into the main body of this podcast. We're gonna talk a little bit about your brain, specifically the stories it tells itself when you're studying for a licensure exam. Because I have to be honest with you, some of these stories are genuinely impressive in their creativity. Your brain is working overtime, and sometimes it really is not in your favor. Let me paint a picture. It's 10 p.m. You've been studying for two hours. You just got seven out of ten questions wrong on a practice test covering career development theory, and your brain, your very well-trained, clinically sophisticated brain, immediately begins to generate content. I should know this by now. Everyone else in my cohort seems fine. What's wrong with me? I've been seeing this clients for two years, and I can't answer a question about Holland codes. What does that say about me as a clinician? Maybe I'm just not cut out for this. And then, and this is my favorite. I knew this last week. I literally knew this last week. So now I'm gonna going backwards and I'm actively getting dumber. Sound a bit familiar, just a little bit familiar. Here's what's happening. You're doing yourself, doing to yourself exactly what your future clients are going to do to themselves. You're taking a narrow, a neutral event, a practice test score, and constructing an elaborate narrative around it that feels completely true and is almost entirely fiction. The irony is it's not lost on me. You are training to help people identify and reframe distorted thinking thinking. And your distorted thinking is sitting right there, completely unchallenged and running the show. This strategy, learning how to do this with yourself, is one of the best ways to learn how to do it with other people because you're going to hear similar stories that you're that you tell yourself. I cannot tell you how freeing this was for me to really get this and just get how often I was doing things like shooting myself to that to death. If you know um R E B T Albert Ellis, you're gonna know that. Um, but you know, it is like these these stories that we tell ourselves can just be damning. And it's so important that we understand this about ourselves so that we can support other individuals that struggle with this. Um, so let's start with what happens in the first place. Aaron Beck didn't just identify automatic thoughts, he noticed that they tended to cluster into recognizable patterns, predictable, predictable ways that minds distort reality. He called them cognitive distortions. And here's what's important to understand about cognitive distortions they're not a sign that something is wrong with you. They're a feature of human cognition. Your brain is trying to protect you. This is a protective factor your brain is is using um because it feels good, trying to prepare trying to prepare you for the worst, trying to motivate you, trying to make you sense uncertainty. It's just doing it badly. The problem isn't that you have these thoughts. The problem is that you've probably never stopped to examine them. Beck's whole insight was that these thoughts feel true. They arrive with a kind of authority. They don't announce themselves as distortion, they show up as fact. Statements like, I'm not ready, feels like a fact. Or everyone else has this together, feels like a fact. Um, or I'm going backwards, feels like a fact. I remember this one time talking to this individual, and we just were discussing kind of this this distorted they thought that they had about themselves. It was uh uh it was about self-esteem. And you know, it it was so interesting how seated that he was in this idea that he wasn't a good enough individual. And even saying something like, I am a good individual, he was so conditioned to say that he wasn't. It felt more like a fact than saying he was a good person, even though they both were on pretty even ground when you really think about it. But oftentimes, none of these things that we tell ourselves are actual facts, they're interpretations. An interpretation can be examined, which brings us to the three cognitive distortions that show up on most consistently in pre-licensure therapy for pre-licensure therapists going into the licensure process. And I didn't make this up, right? You will recognize all three of these immediately. Distortion number one, all or nothing thinking, also called black and white thinking. This is one of the this is the one that turns a practice test score into a verdict on your entire career, right? Um, here's what it sounds like in the license in the license year context. I got a 68 on a practic practice test. I'm going to fail. I don't understand Bowen's definitions of self. I don't understand the family system at all. Um, I studied for three hours and I still feel lost. Studying isn't working. Notice what's happening here. One data point becomes a total conclusion, a partial understanding becomes no understanding, a difficult session becomes a failed strategy. So let's reframe this. Introduce the word yet and the word sum. So here we go. Let's try these again. I got a 68 on the practice test. I haven't mastered this material yet. I don't understand some of Bowen's concepts yet. Studying has been hard, harder than I expected this week. That doesn't mean it isn't working. One word changes the whole trajectory of thought yet, implies a future where things are different. Some prevents one area of confusion from contaminating everything else. Again, these it just seems like basic semantics here. You're just switching up some words. It is so powerful to put these in regular phrasing, sentences, things that we tell ourselves, things that our clients tell themselves, just getting people to use a couple of different words here and there for these things that they keep on telling themselves in their heads can be game-changing. Distortion number two, mind reading. Oh, this one. Um, this is where you decide, right? With complete confidence and zero evidence, what everyone else is thinking and experiencing. I cannot tell you how often I deal with this with relationships. Um, when I'm doing relationship counseling, um, this this is a big one. So here's what it sounds like. Everyone in my cohort seems to be so calm about the exam. They must all be more prepared than me. My supervisor probably thinks I should be further along by now. Or other people aren't struggling with this material like I am. Here's what's actually happening. You have no idea what your cohort is experiencing privately. You're comparing your internal experiences, all the doubt, anxiety, and late night panic to other people's external presentations. I mean, seriously, how often do we do this for things like social media? Um, where we compare what we have in our heads to the things that we're seeing. So everyone is is studying for the licensed exam, right? Um, and they have their own private version of a 10 a 10 p.m. um practice test spiral. Um, they're just not posting it on Instagram. So the reframe becomes replace the assumption with a question. I wonder if other people are finding this as hard as I am, and then actually asking someone. You will be amazed at what what they say. The moment you you say, I've been really struggling with research and statistics section to a colleague, and the response is almost always, oh my god, me too. The mind reading distortion thrives in isolation, right? Um, community dissolves it. This is why I think it's so important, and I'm putting together the circle group community, because I think we need to get some of this stuff out of our heads um and and and reality check it against other people that are going through something similar as ourselves. Next up, another big one here. Distortion number three, catastrophizing, also known as making a very large problem out of a medium-sized problem or something as a something times even a small problem. Here's what it sounds like. What if I fail the exam? What if I fail it twice? What if I can never pass and I can never get licensed, and I wasted all my time and money, and I'm never going to be a therapist? And now we're catastrophizing about the catastrophe. We've left the building entirely. Catastrophizing has a very specific quality. It moves fast. Um, one what if leads to another, leads to another until you're you imagine an outcome that is both extremely unlikely and extremely vivid. Your nervous system responds to that vivid image outcome the same way it would respond to actual happenings. This is, and I'm sure I don't know if you've like heard this, modern anxiety, um, which was a great tool on planes of wherever, um, when there's something big trying to chase us down and eat us, um, you know, got kind of pushed into present anxiety, like modern anxiety, right? Where things like a test become the thing on the plane that's trying to come and eat us, right? We have our brain has translated that into an actual an actual threat to our lives, um, and it catastrophize. So the reframe becomes slow it down with probability and coping. So two questions, uh two questions here. What is the realistic probability of this outcome? Not zero, be honest, but also not in um certainty that your brain is implying. Second, and this one is a more powerful one. If this did happen, what would you do? Because here's what catastrophizing never accounts for. You're resourceful, you have coped with hard things before, right? I mean, you take the test again. You can take the test as many times as you need to. It's not that big of a deal. I've not one time been asked how many times did you take the test, other than with people that I'm working with to help them study for the test. But nobody else has really asked me as a clinician. Like, no, no clients sat across to me and said, How many times have you taken this test? Um, nobody cares. And you know, even if I told them that it would mean very little. Um, so you know, we gotta. Start thinking of this, and when you answer the answer these questions, what would I do? questions, the catastrophe usually shrinks back to the actual size of the problem. All right, let's get into something else here. Um, a three-step tool. So here's a practical piece. Something you can actually use tonight or tomorrow morning, or the next time your brain starts telling stories. It's a three-step process spec called thought the thought record. I'm going to give you a simplified version that can that you can use, um, do in your head really, in about a c like just two minutes. So, step one, catch it. Notice the thought. Name it. My brain is telling me I am not ready. You don't have to believe it or argue with it just yet. Just notice it. Just notice it's there. This sounds easy and it actually is harder than it's you sound than it sounds. Um, automatic thoughts move fast. And so we have to be prepared to catch them. This this is conditioning. Um, and you know, this is how we present it to our clients. Like it's not something that they're gonna get overnight. It's something that they're they've been conditioned to just skip over these thoughts and we have to recondition them to catch them. So a useful phrase here becomes I'm noticing the thought that blank. I'm noticing the thought that blank. I'm noticing the thoughts that I should be further along. I'm noticing the thoughts that everyone else has this figured out. I'm noticing the thoughts that I might fail. The act of just naming the thoughts here creates a small but meaningful distance between you and it. You are not the thought, you are the person observing the thought. Okay, step number two, check it. Ask the thought a few honest questions. What's the evidence for this? Not what does it feel like? What is the actual evidence? Is this all or nothing thinking? Am I mind reading? Am I catastrophizing? What would I say to a client who came to me with this exact thought? The last question is the most useful one because you already know how to do this for other people. You've been trained. The challenge is extending that same compassion and rigor to yourself, and you'd extend it that you'd extend to someone else sitting across from you in the office. So, step three here is replace it. Not with toxic positivity. You know, we're not sitting there just thinking good thoughts and trying to put on rosy cover colored glasses or whatever. Um, so we want stuff like everything is fine. You're not gonna say things like everything is fine, and I'm definitely gonna pass the test, right? That's not what we're going for here. Um your brain will just reject that outright. But you might want to replace it with something honest and accurate. I'm not ready just yet because I'm in the process of getting ready for for this, and there's still time. Everyone else has this figured out because I don't actually know what other people are experiencing privately. I might fail because failing is possible, and if it happened, I would handle it and try again. These aren't feel-good affirmations, they're accurate, and accurate is what your brain can actually work with. So here's what here's the takeaway I want you to get from all of this. You have been learning CBT, so you can use it with your clients, but the most immediate person who needs a thought record right now might be you. The licensure process is hard, the exam is legitimately difficult. The pre-licensed years are full of uncertainty and comparison in moments where the gap between who you are and who you think you are should feel very wide at times. That's real. I'm not dismissing it. What I'm saying is that your brain is probably adding a significant amount of additional suffering on top of the real difficulty, and you have the tools to reduce the additional suffering. You have been learning them for years. I'm not saying therapists always get it right, but we have different tools and other people around us for the most part that we can actually use to benefit our lives. Um, this isn't just about helping people, it's often about uplifting ourselves. You are more prepared than you think. You are further along than you feel. The fact that you care this much enough that you're listening to a podcast about exam prep at whatever time you're listening to this is not evidence of inadequacy. It's evidence of exactly the kind of clinician you are becoming. All right, how about some multiple choice questions? Question number one: a pre-licensed therapist is preparing for her licensing exam. After receiving a lower than expected score on the practice exam, she thinks, I failed this practice test, which means I'm definitely going to fail the real exam. This thought pattern is best identified as a overgeneralization, b all or nothing thinking, C catastrophizing, or B or sorry, D, personalization. Answer is B, all or nothing thinking. All or nothing thinking, also called black and white thinking, involves viewing situations in absolutes, extreme categories with no middle ground. One practice test score becomes a definitive verdict on the entire exam outcome. There's no room for nuance, for partial progress, or for the reality that one data point doesn't determine the whole picture. Question number two: a counseling student notices he is convinced that his classmates are all more prepared for their license exam than he is, despite having no direct knowledge of their studying habits or anxiety levels. According to Beck's cognitive models, this thought pattern is best described as a magnification, b emotional reasoning, c mind reading, or D selective abstraction. The answer is gonna be C. Mind reading is the assumption that you know what others are thinking or experiencing without any actual evidence. The student has constructed a complete narrative about his classmates' internal states based on their external presentation. He becomes he's comparing his insides to his outs. A therapist working from a CBT framework asks her client, What would you say to a close friend who came to you with this exact thought? The intervention is best described as a thought stopping, b cognitive restructuring through the friend technique, C, systemic desensitization, or D paradoxical intention. This one's gonna be B. This is classic CBT technique, sometimes called the compassionate friend technique or the double standard technique. The core insight is that most people apply far harsher standards to themselves than they would ever apply to someone they call they care about. By asking the client to respond as they would to a friend, the therapist creates distance from the self-critical thought and accesses a more balanced, compassionate perspective. Alright, folks, that is gonna be a wrap for today. Here's what I want you to walk away from three things. One, your brain is not your enemy, it's just trying to protect you with some very dramatic, very dynamic storytelling. Catch the thought, check the thought, replace the thought. That's the whole game. You will appreciate knowing this for yourselves. You're gonna be able to help other people the same. The three distortions that show up most on the licensure um process are all or nothing thinking, mind reading, and catastrophizing. You know how to spot all three. More importantly, you know what to do with them when they show up at 10 p.m. at night over a practice test. Number three, and I mean this, you are further along than you feel. Feeling unprepared prepared and being unprepared are two completely different things. One's is a one is a cognitive distortion, the other is a fact. Check the evidence before you decide which one you're dealing with. Before I let you go, it's Mental Health Awareness Month, and the theme this year is more good days together. I love that because honestly, that's what this show is all about. Not just passing the exam, but building a community of clinicians who take their own mental health as seriously as they take their clients. You can't pour from an empty cup. I am not getting with that. Um, it is not just a catchy little phrase. And you definitely can't pour from a cup that's been catastrophizing for three hours. Take care of yourselves, and until next time, never stop learning.