Cognitive Distortions: XTC Meetup Agenda

A wise man once told me, XTC is group therapy for angry people to share their problems[1]Others may tell you that XTC is the Extreme Tuesday Club. It may have been founded around Extreme Programming but I've yet to have a session related to XP practices :P They definitely meetup every fortnight on Tuesday though :). With that in mind, I submitted a random candidate into the vote for the next session...

The results of the vote[2]The XP topic came second to bottom, further proof that XTC only liked XP before it was cool.

Turns out almost everyone wanted to talk about it! So on February 20th you can join us at The City Pride to talk about The 10 Cognitive Distortions. We will be reflecting on the thoughts that drive us and if they are potentially making you unhappy.

The focus should be on thoughts that reflect your opinion of yourself. Factual statements like "I don't know Scala" should be discarded. Thoughts like "I should be better at Scala" are the ones you want to go after, especially if they make you stressed or frustrated.

The rough agenda will be:

1. Get into groups to collect together "Negative Thoughts"
2. See what Cognitive Distortions match up
3. Think about the positive and negative effects of the thoughts
4. Now shake off the distortions and rewrite the thoughts, whilst preserving the positive effects!

Between now and the session, if you jot down any negative thoughts you have then it will give you better examples to work with. Look forward to seeing you all there![3]Free pizza and rants, what's not to love?