Testing The Hypothesis: Think like a scientist to defeat your self-doubt
By: Dani Weiss
Tags: Mental Health, Self Improvement, Productivity, Anxiety, Psychology

When to Test the Hypothesis Instead of Worrying

Testing the hypothesis is based on the traditional CBT technique of challenging your thoughts. In this process, we attempt to notice automatic negative thoughts and reframe them into something more positive.

Hypothesis testing is a slightly less common variation in which we notice an unrealistic thought pattern, assess it rationally, and then actually test our assumptions. This can be powerful for stubborn, action-based thought patterns such as the “I can’t do [x]” statements listed above.

You should consider hypothesis testing when you are trying to form or break a habit but notice that a recurring, counterproductive thought gets in the way. Let’s look at an example.

Hypothesis Testing Step By Step

Identify the Goal: Hypothesis testing is usually, but not always, used when you have a goal. Some therapists suggest hypothesis testing for compulsions while others use it for smaller-scale problems such as procrastination. For this example, consider the following scenario: you are a graduate student studying for an exam. You’ve been studying for hours, but you can’t bring yourself to take a break. The goal, in this case, is to get out of the library and clear your head. You know this is good for you, but cognitive distortions are telling you that you’ll fail if you stop studying. Identify the Stumbling Block: If you’re driven to hypothesis testing, there’s some kind of recurring thought or fear preventing you from taking an action. Be as specific as possible: what are you afraid will happen if you don’t take this step? Why can’t you go to dinner, send an email, talk to your partner about a conflict?

These first steps form your hypothesis: If I do [x], then [y] will happen.

If I leave the library for an hour, I won’t get through all the chapters and I will fail my test.

Now, you can do one of two things:

Evaluate the hypothesis logically. Drawing on your past experiences, background knowledge, or advice from friends, decide whether your hypothesis actually makes sense. Write it out if you have to, but here’s a hint: if you have anxiety, the answer is usually a resounding no way. If you can talk yourself into this truth, congratulations! Go forth and do the healthy thing with less fear. If not…

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Test the hypothesis. If you can’t reason your way out of the anxious thought, give yourself permission to test the hypothesis on a small scale. In the library example, you might formulate a very specific plan: you will leave the library for ten minutes and walk around outside. At the end of those ten minutes, you will see if the break really impeded your progress like you’d feared. Be objective. The goal of this exercise is to confront your brain with concrete evidence that it’s being irrational (which, if you’ve gotten this far, you probably know subconsciously that it is.) Feeling a little stressed when you get back does not prove the hypothesis that you would surely fail your test if you took a break.

Whether you outline your hypothesis or actually test it, the outcome should be similar. That is, you develop an experience that counteracts the anxious thought, making it easier to resist that line of thinking in the future.

What if the Hypothesis is True After All?

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Being brave doesn’t mean you aren’t scared. Being brave means you are scared, really scared, badly scared, and you do the right thing anyway. — Neil Gaiman

In testing a hypothesis with a scary outcome, you’re accepting the possibility that the outcome could, theoretically, come true.

Now, most of the time, when you’re using this strategy to combat anxiety, that’s not going to happen. In fact, if you’ve done the first step of assessing how realistic your fear is, you’ll almost never run into a situation where the hypothesis is correct.

That’s the beauty of this strategy: you trust yourself enough to do something uncomfortable, even though you’re afraid something bad could happen. Each time things go right despite that fear, you reinforce your ability to sit with difficult emotions and push through irrational thoughts. And each time things go right despite that fear, you start to reroute the cognitive distortions that got you there in the first place.

In other words, the more hypotheses you test, the less anxiety you feel about similar choices in the future.

And if something does go wrong, that doesn’t mean that you made the wrong choice in challenging your assumptions. Let’s say you were too afraid to send a draft to your editor because they might not like it. You decide to challenge this hypothesis and send the draft anyway, only to find that they don’t like it. In fact, it turns into your worst-case scenario: they critique the concept, the execution, the length…you never should have sent it at all, right?

Right?

Wrong!

Anxiety initially had you believe that you wouldn’t be able to bear it if your editor didn’t frame this draft as award-worthy. In reality, while you might feel like crap for a little while, those emotions aren’t going to kill you or even end your writing career. You are not your emotions, and although you’ve put yourself into a vulnerable position, you now know that you can handle such situations when do happen.