Reattributional Pie for Negative Thinking
CBT for DepressionAnother classic example I'll give you in depression is around attributions. We know that people who are depressed more typically make negative internal attributions for perceived failure. So if something bad happens, they tend to say it's my fault or it's something I did. And when you hear a negative attribution for an outcome, it can be an intervention, an effective intervention to stop the client.
Don't just accept, you know, this negative attribution, but ask them what actually occurred and almost break it down step by step, you know, in terms of what are what the event was and what other people were doing and to see whether or not the attribution makes sense. A very specific technique, a reattributional pie Typically, in the first instance, the client sees themselves as the only responsible agent. So they get a hundred percent of the pie, so to speak. But what you can do is ask them about other factors that are involved and see if you can cut the pie into smaller pieces. And by doing that at the end, almost always the responsibility of the client goes down.
I'll give you one example. Client of mine who is having regular arguments with their partner. She said that they'd had another fight and she was to blame. And I said, let's go back and look at the situation what happened. We discovered that the situation had occurred late at night. The husband had been away drinking with some friends, came home, was belligerent.
Raised the issue started to be verbally assaulted, basically, of my client. What they were fighting about was money. And so this had been a chronic problem. So I said to her things like, well, do you think the fact that it was late at night had anything to do with the fact that you had this argument that you were both tired? And she said probably a little bit. And I would say, well, how much?
You know, maybe five percent, ten percent. Do you think the fact that your husband was drunk at a bearing and she would say, well, yes, of course. Well, how much? You think the fact that it was money, which is a chronic problem for you, was part of the problem. So we were able to take the hundred percent responsibility that she took in the first instance, and whittle it down again till at the end, she had about forty percent responsibility. And then I said to her, so now when you look at the situation this way, where you are responsible.
You have some responsibility for what occurred, but many other things were also involved. Does that change your sense of responsibility overall? Of course, she said yes.