An analogy that may be helpful in explaining the relationship between thoughts and feelings:

Many young people have 'playlists' on their MP3 players/ipods. Certain songs affect the listener's mood. This can be helpful (even sad songs can certainly sometimes make a listener feel better by making them feel that what they feel is understandable), but some songs DO make us feel low, and if we played these ones repeatedly throughout a day, we would probably feel worse than if we hadn't. The thoughts in our heads are something like MP3's - we can 'run' unhelpful ones, or uplifting ones.

This analogy is helpful in that it emphasises the individual's "self-agency" (being able to influence things myself rather than being dependent on outside things or people.) What 'thinking-MP3' would you choose to run?

Using a Playlist as a Thought Blocking technique

Practically speaking, help a young person to deliberately prepare a "chill-out playlist" of songs to keep on their phone or MP3 player.

They need to select songs that are well known to them, and that are selected not because they are great music, or because they have any merit at all except that the young person knows that hearing these particular songs (they may be from heir past, etc) tends to relax/distract/soothe them in ways that other music (music they may more ordinarily listen to) may not.

Develop a drill (see Thought Blocking) so that listening to this playlist is part of the response to noticing specific (unwanted) forms of thinking.