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Three C’s Technique
Nikki and Anne Heart ♥ May 27, 2025
The following highlights basic information regarding a technique. More information can be obtained through many informational sites regarding this technique and other techniques to help improve your wellness.
Learn to identify and evaluate unhelpful and inaccurate thinking by using the Three Cs Technique
What is the Three Cs technique?
It is a technique used in Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) to help manage negative thinking. The process involves identifying unhelpful thoughts, questioning their validity, and replacing them with more helpful perspectives.
The technique encourages you to:
- Catch a negative thought as it happens
- Check the thought for accuracy
- Change the thought to a more balanced one.
1st Step is CATCHING:
Identify and become aware of unwanted thoughts that are distressing or out of place.
Example of an unwanted thought:
- “I hit someone in the road while driving.”
2nd Step is CHECKING:
- Examine the thought
- Ask yourself if the thought is accurate
- What is the source of the thought
- Is it a helpful thought
- Is it based on facts or distorted thinking
Using the example in the 1st Step “I hit someone in the road while driving,” check your unwanted thought as follows:
- Examine the thought: Why do I believe I hit someone?
- Ask yourself if the thought is accurate: Can this be possible that I hit someone?
- What is the source of the thought: Did I just hit a pothole?
- Is it a helpful thought: How does this thought benefit me?
- Is it based on facts or distorted thinking: Why do I believe I hit someone?
3rd Step is CHANGING:
- Replace the unhelpful or inaccurate thought with a more helpful or accurate thought.
- Generate an alternate explanation or focusing on a more rational positive perspective.
Again using the example in the 1st Step, “I hit someone in the road while driving,” change your unwanted thought as follows:
- Replace: I must have hit a pot hold, or maybe a stick in the road.
- Generate: There is no way I could have hit a person. There is no evidence of that happening. It would have been more impactful and I would have had damage to my car. It must have been a bump in the road.
Three Cs technique can possibly help with negative thinking
This is only one of many techniques that can possibly help with negative thoughts.
Since the brain can learn, mold and adopt, using a technique over and over again may cause your mind to become adjusted to it. You may start developing patterns for the technique. Therefore, not be as effective.
Alternating different techniques may be a more helpful solution.
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Note: All information in both “Nikki’s Story and Mom’s Story” are based on detail journals covering seven years of Nikki’s life on prescription drugs.
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