What is Thought Challenger?

Thought Challenger helps to improve mood, decrease anxiety, and to feel better by teaching you how to recognize and change unhelpful thinking.

• Creating a New Challenge: Tap on the “New Challenge” to enter unhelpful thoughts that are making you feel bad. Follow the steps on the screen to learn how to:

– Take a good look at your thoughts
– Notice patterns in the way you think
– Come up with more balanced or true thoughts

• Reviewing Your History: Select “History” to see your completed Thought Challenges. Look at them for motivation, to learn about patterns in your thinking, and to see the progress you are making.

How is Thought Challenger used?

• The first page describes the purpose of the app which is to help users neutralize negative, unrealistic, or unhelpful thoughts. Below are the rest of the instructions. 

• Here is how your mentee can create a new challenge. They enter their unhelpful thought, and walk through the process of creating a more rational thought. If your mentee is struggling to come up with a thought, there are examples within the app.  Here you can also assist your mentee in creating a new challenge. If you have spoken to them and heard them express any negative or unhelpful thoughts, you can help them identify those and add them as a challenge to this app. 

• When your mentee creates a challenge, they will be prompted to first “Catch It”. This is where the mentee should enter the unhelpful thought.

• Then the app will prompt the mentee to “Check It”. Here the mentee is prompted to think critically about whether their thought is reasonable.

• Next, the app will prompt the mentee to “Select Distortion.” The app lists common distortions that guide negative thinking. Here, if your mentee is struggling to understand which distortion is guiding their negative thought, you can assist them identifying the distortion that best fits their thought.

• The app will then prompt the mentee to “Review” and provide the mentee with tips for overcoming their distortion.

• Finally, the app will prompt the mentee to “Change It.” This is where the mentee should enter a more realistic thought. The app also provides examples of realistic/balanced thoughts. After going through these steps, your mentee may still be unsure of how to come up with a more realistic thought and you, can help them with this by walking them through the aforementioned steps and helping them brainstorm.

• The app also allows users to review their history. When your mentee is coming up against an unhelpful thought that is similar to one they have previously worked through, you can suggest that they review their history to remember how they previously neutralized that unhelpful thought.