Coaching practices for Metacognitive Therapy in a New Job

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Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

  • Some part of me secretly believes that if I keep turning the problem over I’m being responsible, that the worrying is somehow protecting me
  • My anxiety feels like this random fog that descends and proof that something’s just wrong with me
  • When I try to untangle one of these convictions in my head it just spins
  • The moment I’m in a room with people I’m trapped watching myself
  • My attention feels welded to the inside of my own head

Practices that may help

  1. Metacognitive Therapy, Made Practical
    Metacognitive therapy (MCT), developed by Adrian Wells, targets not the content of negative thoughts but the beliefs people hold about thinking itself — particularly the beliefs that worry and rumination are useful or uncontrollable. By changing these meta-level beliefs, MCT aims to stop the prolonged self-focused thinking styles that maintain anxiety and depression. A growing body of randomized controlled trials supports MCT as effective for GAD, PTSD, depression, and social anxiety, with some studies showing superiority to CBT.
  2. Use improved attention to observe metacognitive beliefs
    Apply attentional control to notice — without engaging — the beliefs that drive overthinking.
    Attention Training Technique (ATT), Made Practical
  3. Build a personal MCT case conceptualization
    Map your own vicious-cycle: trigger → positive meta-belief activates CAS → negative meta-belief sustains it → distress.
    Metacognitive Therapy, Made Practical
  4. Metacognition: Knowing What You Actually Know
    Metacognition is thinking about your own thinking — monitoring what you understand, judging how well you know it, and adjusting your approach in response. Research links accurate metacognition to better learning and decisions, but it also shows people are systematically overconfident, so the practical work is calibration: closing the gap between what you feel you know and what you can actually do.
  5. Use a challenging beliefs worksheet to work a stuck point completely
    The CPT challenging beliefs worksheet is a structured, written process for examining one stuck point at a time.
    Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT): Unsticking the Meanings That Maintain PTSD
  6. Situational attentional refocusing: shift from self to situation
    In anxiety-provoking situations, actively redirect attention outward — to the task, the other person, the environment.
    Metacognitive Therapy, Made Practical
  7. Attention training technique (ATT)
    Practice deliberately shifting attention across sounds — a drill that builds attention flexibility and reduces self-focus.
    Metacognitive Therapy, Made Practical
  8. Evaluate the outcome and adjust
    After implementing, honestly assess what worked, what didn’t, and what to do next.
    Problem-Solving Therapy, Made Practical
  9. Structured reflection on performance
    Systematically compare your performance to an expert model to build accurate self-assessment.
    Cognitive Apprenticeship: Learning by Making Thinking Visible
  10. Conduct a brief review immediately after each hyperfocus session
    Spend 5 minutes after each session noting what you accomplished, what distracted you, and one adjustment for next time.
    Hyperfocus: Directing Intense Attention to What Matters Most

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