Briefly describe the five steps involved in cognitive restructuring.​

Answers may vary. Several discrete procedural steps are involved in cognitive restructuring.
1. Assist clients in accepting that their self-statements, assumptions, and beliefs largely determine their emotional reactions to life's events: The power difference between you and clients is likely to become heightened when you present a goal of changing how they perceive themselves or their world. Mistrust and suspicion may be particularly acute with minors, members of a racial or ethnic minority, and clients who are involuntary. Thus, in the first step, it is important to provide clients with an explanation and your rationale for selecting cognitive restructuring as an intervention procedure.
2. Assist clients in identifying dysfunctional self-statements, beliefs, and patterns of thoughts that underlie their problem: Once a client accepts that thoughts and beliefs mediate emotional reactions, your next task is to help the client identify the associated thoughts and beliefs relevant to his or her difficulties. This step requires a detailed exploration of events related to problematic situations and antecedents, with particular emphasis on cognitions pertinent to the distressing emotions.
3. Assist clients in identifying situations that engender dysfunctional cognitions: Identifying the places where cognitions cause stress, the key persons involved, and situations in which the client feels demeaned helps you and the client to develop and tailor tasks and coping strategies to specific situations. Self-monitoring between sessions is a concrete way for a client to monitor and recognize cognitions related to difficulties around problematic events.
4. Assist clients in replacing dysfunctional cognitions with functional self-statements: As clients become aware of their dysfunctional thoughts, beliefs, and images, the goal is to help them recognize the connection to negative emotional reactions. Having done so, an additional goal is to help them cope as an intermediary step to learning new behavioral responses. Coping strategies typically involve self-statements that are both realistic and instrumental in diminishing or eliminating negative emotional reactions and self-defeating behaviors.
5. Assist clients in identifying rewards and incentives for successful coping efforts: When clients have mastered new statements and behaviors, you should reinforce their accomplishment by coaching to observe and credit success.