CBT: Probability Pie Charts

This post is part of a series of posts exploring Cognitive Behavioural Therapy [CBT] techniques, their application, and my experiences with them.  All posts in this series begin with the tag 'CBT' so you can use the search feature of this blog to read the other posts.

This CBT technique is another data driven technique that employs analysis of your thoughts which I like for many different reasons but perhaps most of all it appeals to the geeky/nerdy side of me that likes crunching numbers and working with data.  The purpose of this technique is once again to provide context to our thoughts.  Context is becoming a recurring theme and it props up quite a bit in CBT in fact I would say it forms the foundation of most CBT techniques that ultimately each is designed to put everything you are experiencing in context in an attempt to alter your behaviour or more precisely to alter your cognitive behaviour, which is just another way of saying thought process.

Whenever we have anxiety that is centred around possible outcomes to any given situation or potential situations that we expect to find ourselves in, it is often the case that this anxiety stems from our belief that a given outcome is the most likely, and that whenever those situations occur, if they do, that the outcome we are expecting will happen.  The purpose of this technique is to provide context in order to challenge this belief and break the association that it has with our thought process and the influence it is having over our behaviour.  To that end, we need once again to take the situation and the expected outcome and set them to one side for a moment.  We then need to consider all possible outcomes that we can think of, and be as inventive as we can in the process.  The purpose here much as it was with Devil's Advocate is to provide alternative perspectives that differ from the one that we have settled upon.  The expected result that we think is most likely has been decided as the most likely by our ego, and ordinarily we do not question our ego as we see this as an attack on ourselves. 

In a healthy mind that is balanced, two distinct personalities exist, one is known as the Id, and generally it represents darkness, that's not to say that it is inherently negative, but simply to say that it is generally unknown to us, we don't get to explore it much, it exists entirely in our unconscious mind and it is hidden from direct interaction.  It is also fed by experience and fed by data that we accumulate over time, so it can become biased and skewed towards one outcome more than another.  The other personality is the superego, this personality spans all three levels of the mind, conscious, subconscious, and unconscious.  The superego generally represents lightness but again that is not to say it is inherently positive, but rather that it represents the best of all outcomes, or idealisation.  These two personalities are balanced by a central ego that keeps the two in check.  The ego is the only one of these three elements that we directly interact with, and it is the only one we formally recognise as a personality, the others we tend to think of as elements of a personality but not distinct personalities in themselves - but for the sake of this technique there is no real difference between being a personality element and being a fully formed personality, the only defining barrier to that classification traditionally would be control, in that the ego is the only one of the three that actually has control over you, the other two usually don't - usually.

When a mind is unhealthy or has become unbalanced, the ego favours one side more than the other, or to use an analogy if your mind was a corporation with 3 people on the board of directors the CEO has a favourite and listens to them more than the other director and gives their argument very little weight.  The purpose of this CBT technique is to override the ego and to explicitly challenge their conclusion by looking at each situation and allowing each side to air their view.

To that end, with our expected result put to one side for a moment, we can take the situation that we are anxious about and start thinking of alternative results that could arise.  In this process we list as many as we can, being as inventive as we can, whilst still remaining realistic in the process.  The purpose here is to draw out expected results from both the superego and the Id and when done so effectively it should be quite easy to identify where those thoughts are stemming from.  Once you have compiled your list you then add your original expected result to it and then take the list and assign a probability percentage to each outcome as to how likely that outcome would be in reality.  Once you have assigned a probability you then need to draw a pie chart, this can be done approximately with pen and paper or you can use a spreadsheet or a word processor or an online chart tool to create a pie chart that represents the situation and the results.

The final product of this technique is a pie chart that provides a visual representation of the probability of each outcome showing your original expected outcome in context, once again context is key.  With this in hand you can see how balanced or unbalanced your thought process has been in assigning weight and magnitude to the original expected outcome.

I like this technique as I said before for many different reasons, but beyond the sentimentality I hold for employing data and analysis, this technique for me has proven to be the easiest one to produce something conclusive.  The fact that it centres around logic and reason but in a way that helps process that into something visual and easier to process is perhaps the reason I would encourage everyone to try this technique, even if you aren't suffering from anxiety and feel you have no need for CBT at all and are merely reading these posts out of curiosity and intrigue as to what you might find, if you want to try any technique, this one is perhaps the least "harmful" one to experiment with if you have no need.  That's not to say that any of these techniques could provide lasting harm if used without need, I just wouldn't encourage you to use the others unless you actually feel like you need them as their effectiveness over time is generally diminished if overused, with a few exceptions.