CBT Cards / Content library / Guides

Choose more precisely, without making the system more complicated.

18 CBT Cards-owned guides: six contrasts, six progressions, and six decision rules. They navigate existing reviewed practices rather than creating another advice engine.

Contrasts

Tell similar-looking processes apart.

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Progressions

Make a useful move smaller and gradual.

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Decision rules

Narrow a choice while preserving safety boundaries.

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How to use this layer

These guides extend the owned content library. They are navigation and explanation, not diagnosis or an independent recommendation system. Full structured fields are in data/content-guides.json.

Safety: genuine danger, protective boundaries, required safety/professional/accessibility rules, and medical, legal, financial, or safeguarding decisions override these guides. Linked reviewed-practice boundaries control.

6 guides

Contrasts

Each contrast uses one practical discriminator.

Observation vs Interpretation

Discriminator: Ask whether a neutral observer with the same raw information would necessarily write the same sentence.

Related: Test Your Prediction

Reflection vs Replay

Discriminator: What new information or usable action did the last round produce?

Related: Reflection or Replay?

Useful Check vs Certainty-Seeking Check

Discriminator: If the check produced no new information, would it still feel necessary because uncertainty remains?

Practical Problem vs Hypothetical Worry

Discriminator: Can you name a specific next action that changes the situation rather than only changing how certain you feel?

High Standard vs Moving Standard

Discriminator: Could you write the finish criteria now and agree not to raise them merely because stopping feels uncomfortable?

Related: Set the Good-Enough Contract

Responsibility vs Identity Verdict

Discriminator: Does the sentence identify a behavior or choice that can be reviewed, or does it end the analysis with a person-level label?

6 guides

Progressions

Each progression gives a gradual route and a stop condition.

From Prediction to Observation

Route: Move from a feared conclusion to one bounded piece of information. Stop if the action would involve genuine danger, a required rule, a high-stakes decision, or an irreversible material consequence.

Related: Test Your Prediction

From Rechecking to One Clear Review

Route: Separate required checking from extra checking used mainly to remove uncertainty. Do not reduce safety, legal, professional, compliance, accessibility, safeguarding, or other materially protective checks.

From Avoiding to Approaching

Route: Make contact with one safe part of an avoided task without turning the first step into a demand for completion. Do not use approach language to override genuine danger, protective boundaries, recovery needs, accessibility needs, or qualified professional guidance.

Related: The Smallest Approach Step

From Endless Polishing to a Stopping Rule

Route: Replace an undefined feeling of done with criteria that can actually be met. Use only where quality is discretionary; required exactness, safety, compliance, accuracy, or professional standards control.

From Identity Attack to Specific Review

Route: Keep accountability while moving from a global label to something reviewable. Do not use reframing to minimize harm, avoid accountability, or erase materially different duties and responsibilities.

From Worry Loop to Deliberate Review

Route: Protect practical action while limiting repeated engagement with a non-urgent unresolved possibility. Do not postpone urgent action, concrete risk, required decisions, or problems where delay could materially worsen the situation.

6 guides

Decision rules

Each rule narrows a choice between existing reviewed practices.

Can More Thinking Produce a Practical Action?

Question: Can you name a concrete action that can reasonably change the situation now or at a known time? Urgent risk, safeguarding, or time-sensitive concrete problems should not be postponed by this rule.

Required Check or Extra Check?

Question: Does this check satisfy a real safety, professional, legal, compliance, accessibility, safeguarding, or materially protective requirement? When uncertain whether a check is genuinely protective, preserve it rather than using this rule to remove it.

Hard to Start or Hard to Stop?

Question: Is the main bottleneck that you cannot begin a safe task, or that you cannot decide when an ordinary discretionary task is finished? Do not lower required exactness or approach situations that are genuinely unsafe or protected by legitimate boundaries.

Specific Event or Whole-Person Verdict?

Question: Are you reviewing a specific behavior or outcome, or turning it into a global statement about who you are? Specific language should preserve real responsibility, consequences, and repair rather than soften them away.

Prediction or Observation?

Question: Is the difficult sentence directly observed, or is it a prediction or interpretation about what the facts mean? Do not turn medical, legal, financial, safeguarding, or other high-stakes uncertainty into a self-directed behavioral experiment.

Related: Test Your Prediction

New Information or Another Replay?

Question: Did the last round of thinking produce a new fact, decision, repair, lesson, or concrete next action? Do not stop analysis when important information, accountability, or a concrete decision is still genuinely missing.