Weighing the evidence
Steps 5 and 6 are the heart of a thought record. You treat the hot thought as a hypothesis, something that might be true, false, or somewhere in between, and look at what supports it and what doesn’t. When a therapist and client do this together, it’s called collaborative empiricism. Here, you’re the investigator, and the thought has to answer to the evidence like any other claim.
Facts and interpretations
The rule for both lists is the same. Evidence means facts, things anyone who was there could confirm. A useful test is whether a camera would have recorded it.
- “She looked at her phone twice while I was talking” is a fact.
- “She was bored” is an interpretation.
- “I felt embarrassed” is a feeling.
Interpretations and feelings are normal, and they have a place in the record, in steps 2 and 3. In these two steps they’re what you’re testing, so they can’t count as evidence.
Evidence for
Start here, and be fair. It’s tempting to rush past this step to get to the part that feels better. Don’t. Your feelings made sense for a reason, and writing that reason down honestly does two things. It shows you’re not dismissing yourself, and it makes whatever you write in the next step more believable. A record that skips this step often produces a balanced thought that feels like spin.
Evidence against
This is usually the hardest step. A strong feeling narrows attention toward whatever fits it, so the other side really is hard to see in the moment. That’s what the questions are for. None of them has a right answer built in. Each one points somewhere you may not have looked yet.
Is it fact or my reading? Would a camera have caught this, or is it how I took it?
What else could explain it? Try to come up with two or three other possibilities, even ones that seem unlikely at first.
What happened before? Has something like this happened before, and how did it actually turn out? Have there been times the thought wasn’t true?
What would someone who cares about me point out? People who know you often see what you’ve left out.
What would I say to a friend? Most of us hold ourselves to a harsher standard than anyone else.
Am I leaving anything out? Especially things that don’t fit the thought, or good things I’ve discounted.
Worst, best, most likely. What’s the worst that could realistically happen? The best? What’s most likely?
If the worst happened, then what? What could I do, and who could help? This shifts the question from whether something bad will happen to whether you could handle it.
How much will this matter later? In a week, or a year.
These questions come from a tradition therapists call Socratic questioning or guided discovery. Christine Padesky, one of its best-known teachers, argued that good questions help a person discover something new rather than steer them toward the therapist’s conclusion. One study found that sessions with more of this kind of questioning were followed by larger drops in depression.
When the evidence supports the thought
Sometimes, looking honestly, the thought holds up. That happens, and it’s worth knowing. A thought can be accurate. For those times, step 7 ends with this instruction: “If the evidence mostly supports the hot thought, write what is true and what you can do about it.” Sometimes that means taking action. Sometimes it means accepting what can’t be changed and taking care of yourself. The balanced thoughts article covers this.
References
- Tee, J., & Kazantzis, N. (2011). Collaborative empiricism in cognitive therapy: A definition and theory for the relationship construct. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 18(1), 47–61. doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2850.2010.01234.x
- Padesky, C. A. (1993, September). Socratic questioning: Changing minds or guiding discovery? [Keynote address]. European Congress of Behavioural and Cognitive Therapies, London. padesky.com
- Braun, J. D., Strunk, D. R., Sasso, K. E., & Cooper, A. A. (2015). Therapist use of Socratic questioning predicts session-to-session symptom change in cognitive therapy for depression. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 70, 32–37. doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2015.05.004
- Greenberger, D., & Padesky, C. A. (2016). Mind over mood: Change how you feel by changing the way you think (2nd ed.). Guilford Press. guilford.com
Helpful links
Educational content, not medical advice or a substitute for professional care. Ready to try one? Fill in a thought record online, read how to do one step by step, or print one.