Cognitive Flexibility

Chapter 8 of Unified Protocol for Transdiagnostic Treatment of Emotional Disorders: Workbook looks at one part of our emotional experiences—our thoughts—and describes how thoughts are very important for influencing how we feel. The chapter describes our tendency to get stuck in automatic patterns of thinking, which we refer to as thinking traps. This treatment describes two specific types of thinking traps: jumping to conclusions and thinking the worst. Next, readers are encouraged to identify their own patterns of negative thinking to generate alternative interpretations. The overall goal is to be more flexible in our thinking, referred to as cognitive flexibility.