Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life?
I recently read a fascinating prisoner blog post. The man has been in prison for 30 years and says he is grateful for the sentence because he has been taught how to think through cognitive reframing, and he is peaceful and happy now.
In fact, cognitive retraining of some kind has been around since the 70s. The point is to help people become aware of the thoughts and feelings that caused their problems in the past and teach them that by changing their thought processes, they can avoid making the mistakes that caused them to be incarcerated. Sounds too simple? It’s not. It takes time, but in the end, reframing requires looking at situations from a different point of view. Maybe the viewpoint of the victim, or even the viewpoint of police.
In the 90s, Canadian researchers reported that treatment of offenders is effective, but only if it addresses what they called “criminal thinking.” Like attitudes of invulnerability, domination, motivations of immediate gratification, and more. Studies have shown that hard-core criminals are often trapped in a vicious cycle of their own thinking, and that cognitive reframing can help them get out of the trap and become model prisoners, leading to model reentrants, and model citizens. It is not a panacea.
In the book, “A Man’s Search for Meaning,” the author writes: "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.” Choosing one’s own attitude is indeed a choice, and those who teach cognitive reframing help inmates to see that In the past they have not always made the best choices for themselves. The training helps them see the many possible choices available and how to make better decisions in the future.
For over 20 years, the National Institute of Corrections (NIC) has been developing and teaching a similar model called Thinking For A Change, or now shortened to T4C. The program is comprised of 25 interconnected lessons that “cater to the ongoing cognitive behavioral needs of participants.” NIC offers these classes to incarcerated people of all ages and genders and has trained more than 10,000 teachers across the United States.
Like other programs, T4C is an effort to empower people, by helping them change their thinking, which will change their behavior and eventually, their lives. The Bible says, “As ye think, so shall ye be,” and that means all of us. You don’t have to be incarcerated to make bad choices. And, while you wouldn’t think the idea of looking at a problem from another’s point of view could be so life-changing, it really is just another way of saying, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
There is nothing new under the sun,
Nancy
