Consortium for Defense Psychology

By Stefanie Araya 

As a social worker, I often use the phrase, “If you can name it, you can tame it.” I am a big proponent of clarity and clearly identifying both the behaviors we want to avoid and the behaviors we want to implement to promote wellness, and I have found that the three circles exercise does exactly that.

The three circles exercise was first introduced in Sex Addicts Anonymous (SAA) as a recovery tool to define sobriety, identify boundaries, and promote recovery-oriented behaviors. While this worksheet was initially created for individuals experiencing sexual addiction, I have found in my work as a social worker that its principles translate well across many forms of addiction. 

It has proven to be a helpful tool for clients to clarify “bottom line behaviors” and identify ways to live a more meaningful and value-congruent life. 

Three Circles Exercise:

Outer Circle:
In the outer circle, clients identify the things that help them live a life that feels aligned with their values. It is a way for them to clearly outline what a life of recovery looks like for them. It may be spending time with family and friends, attending church, exercising, praying, listening to uplifting music, or meditation. The idea is for clients to list as many people, places, or things that uplift them and help them spark joy in their lives.

Middle Circle:
The middle circle are behaviors that lead to vulnerability. This may be people, places, or things that increase the likelihood of relapse but don’t necessarily cause relapse. This is essentially, a list of things that client’s need to have boundaries with. For some, it may be frequenting a specific restaurant, spending time with a person they use to drink with, social media, secret keeping, or isolating.

Inner Circle:
The inner circle is our abstinence list. This is the things that clients must stay away from to maintain sobriety. For some, this could be alcohol, prescription medications, pornography, bars, clubs, etc.

Putting it in Practice:
The three circles exercise can be a meaningful tool for clinicians to help clients clearly identify their recovery behaviors, boundaries, and what they are truly abstaining from. It allows us to name addiction and recovery with greater clarity, which can make the process of taming it feel more intentional and manageable.

The opinions in CDP Staff Perspective blogs are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Science or the Department of War.

Stefanie Araya is a Licensed Independent Social Worker located in South Carolina and works as a Military Mental Health Social Worker at the Consortium for Defense Psychology (CDP). She is also a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist (CSAT) and a Certified Sex Offender Treatment Professional (CSOTP).

References:
Blevins, T. (2023, January 19). SAA three circles for addiction recovery. Oak Mountain Coaching
Miller, J. (2025). Recovery from sex and love addiction: An exploration of the lived experience of twelve-step affiliation in Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (Doctoral dissertation, Alliant International University). ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. https://www.proquest.com/openview/a4cd4bd0649cb1b34108e220825f59 1a/1

The weekly Research Update contains the latest news, journal articles, and useful links from around the web. Some of this week's topics include:  

● A Qualitative Preliminary Study of Ukrainian Healthcare Providers' Perspectives on Service Member's Mental Health Since the Russian Invasion.
● National trends in mental health outcomes among U.S. combat veterans by war era.
● Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in war: a comprehensive review of subtypes, risk and protective factors, and therapeutic approaches.
● Telehealth and Hybrid Service Use for Major Depression and Substance Use Disorders Among U.S. Adults, 2022–2023.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE 8 OCTOBER 2026 RESEARCH UPDATE

By Aditi Venkatesh, M.S.

Most of us have negative, irrational thoughts from time to time. If we assume that these thoughts are logical or true, they can shape how we see the world, how we feel, and even how we behave. In my own clinical work, I see how easy it is for patients I work with to fall into these mental loops without even realizing it. Such thoughts are normal occasionally; however, they can become harmful when they are more frequent or are higher in intensity. Clinically, we call these thoughts cognitive distortions, but I prefer to think of them simply as “thinking traps.”

From an evolutionary perspective, these thinking traps are not personal flaws but adaptive survival mechanisms that have gone into overdrive. In high-stakes environments, being hypervigilant and preparing for worst-case scenarios can be helpful in surviving. However, when these survival-based thinking traps are present in daily life, they can become rigid patterns, potentially misinterpreting low-stress situations as high-stress or threatening situations.

For active-duty service members and veterans, navigating unique occupational stressors, unpredictable schedules, and transitions can increase levels of stress. Studies consistently show that elevated stress and anxiety go hand-in-hand with an increase in thinking traps, and it works both ways. This is critical to keep in mind, especially given that over 10% of active-duty service members and 20% of veterans navigate mental health challenges.

Therefore, identifying these thinking traps and learning how to manage them are some of the most important tools we have for protecting our patient’s and our own overall mental well-being.

Spotting Common Thinking Traps in Everyday Life: The Beck Institute identifies several thinking traps that tend to surface when running on low battery or high stress. Here are few of the thinking traps I see most often:

• All-or-nothing thinking: Viewing situations in black-and-white terms without any gray. (Example: “If I don’t execute this task perfectly, all of it is a complete failure.”)
• Catastrophizing: Predicting the worst possible outcome without considering realistic probabilities. (Example: “If I make a mistake during my presentation, my leaders and peers will lose all respect for me.”)
• Disqualifying or discounting the positive: Rejecting positive experiences or successes. (Example: “I excelled on my evaluation, but it was just luck.”)
• Mind reading: Believing you know what others are thinking without any evidence. (Example: “My commander didn’t say hello to me as we passed by each other, so he’s certainly angry with me.”)
• ‘Should’ and ‘must’ statements: Operating with rigid rules for how you, others, or the world must be. (Example: “I should be able to handle all this stress without feeling exhausted.”)

When these thinking traps go unchecked, we can easily get stuck in negative feedback loops that drive up anxiety, stress, burnout, and depression.

Using CBT Techniques to Take Back Control: In cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), a modality of therapy developed by Dr. Aaron Beck and expanded by Dr. Judith Beck, our goal isn’t forced optimism or toxic positivity. Instead, we focus on training your brain to test automatic thoughts against reality. CBT is a structured, evidence-based framework that focuses not only on positive thinking, but three core steps: identifying, challenging, and restructuring cognitive distortions.

What this Looks Like when Working with Military Patients: Working with active-duty service members and veterans requires adapting standard CBT techniques to respect and incorporate military culture. Rather than framing a patient’s thoughts as simply “irrational,” I find it far more effective to start by validating that tools, such as catastrophizing, served a vital tactical purpose in operational environments. Following this validation with socratic questioning allows us to collaboratively evaluate whether those same thoughts are still serving them well in daily life as a military service member, veteran, or civilian. By challenging the thought and testing the evidence for their thinking traps, we can frame cognitive restructuring as a practical skill to improve their mental and physical well-being. I’ve seen this to be a way to help military patients manage their unhelpful thinking patterns without undermining their military experiences.

Ultimately, learning to identify and restructure thinking traps is about restoring control and overall mental well-being. For military service members, veterans, and those of us who support them, mastering these cognitive techniques can provide a sustainable and effective way to manage the irrational, automatic thoughts experienced.

Which of these thinking traps do you see yourself, or the military patients you work with, making the most?

The opinions in CDP Staff Perspective blogs are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Science or the Department of War.

Aditi Venkatesh, M.S., is a fourth-year doctoral candidate in the Medical and Clinical Psychology Ph.D. program and a graduate research assistant with the Consortium for Defense Psychology (CDP) at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland. Currently, her research focuses on eating- and weight-related concerns in United States military veterans, with a long-term focus on combined research and clinical work in military and veteran behavioral health. 

References 
Beck, J. S. (2020). Cognitive behavior therapy: Basics and beyond. Guilford Publications. 
Division, A. F. H. S. (2026). Diagnoses of mental health disorders among US active component service members, 2020-2024. MSMR, 32(12), 25-35. 
Kline, A. C., Panza, K. E., Nichter, B., Tsai, J., Harpaz-Rotem, I., Norman, S. B., & Pietrzak, R. H. (2022). Mental health care use among US military veterans: Results from the 2019–2020 National Health and Resilience in Veterans Study. Psychiatric services, 73(6), 628-635.
Mercan, N., Bulut, M., & Yüksel, Ç. (2023). Investigation of the relatedness of cognitive distortions with emotional expression, anxiety, and depression. Current Psychology, 42(3), 2176-2185. 
Shi, Y., Zhang, Y., & Lei, L. (2026). Unmasking mental distress: exploring the spectrum of cognitive distortions associated with symptoms of anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation. Cognitive processing, 27(1), 227-238.
Shickel, B., Siegel, S., Heesacker, M., Benton, S., & Rashidi, P. (2020, October). Automatic detection and classification of cognitive distortions in mental health text. In 2020 IEEE 20th International Conference on Bioinformatics and Bioengineering (BIBE) (pp. 275-280). IEEE.