Whenever you experience any kind of negative
emotion, the feeling is always accompanied by a set of thoughts. If you can identify unhelpful
thinking habits, you can start to notice them. That can help you to distance
yourself from those thoughts, and see the situation in a more helpful way. Unhelpful
thinking habits very often occur just before and during distressing situations.
1.
Black and White
Thinking: Here you tend to only see the extremes of a situation. You
either see one extreme or another and this is why it’s called black and white
thinking. You will for instance either see the good or bad, the right or wrong,
the sad or happy, the left or right.
Because of your extreme way of viewing things, there is
never a middle-ground. You are unlikely to view things in an unbiased and
neutral way. Black and white thinking is a form of all-or-nothing thinking.
Thinking this way is very detrimental because it immediately makes you feel
inadequate and worthless. The reality is that “absolutes” do not exist.
2.
Catastrophizing: Here
you tend to completely blow things out of proportion and make them out to be a
lot worse than they should be. The reality of the situation might be quite
insignificant and small. However, because you’re in the habit of
catastrophizing, you always tend to make your problems larger than life thereby
making your problems even more difficult to overcome. Or you might have a chest
pain and immediately you think to yourself that it’s a heart attack.
Or, you have a slight disagreement with your partner and you
immediately think that this argument will end your relationship. Or for
instance, you think you might have left the kitchen stove on, and you are
already imagining your house burning down in rubbles. You might have a tendency
to catastrophize in order to make yourself feel important, to win the sympathy
of other people, or simply because you want to add more excitement to your
life.
There might actually be quite a number of reasons why you
might indulge in catastrophizing. However, the reasons don’t matter. What
matters is that catastrophizing can lead to significant “phantom” problems
(only real in your imagination) that slowly but surely take over your entire
life. They aren’t real, but they feel real and soon things become overwhelming
and you quickly lose control.
3.
Emotional
Reasoning: Here you tend to base your view of a particular situation in
accordance with how you’re feeling. Therefore your feelings dictate how you
perceive a situation despite evidence to the contrary. As such you might choose
to feel bad about something that is going to happen just because you are
feeling miserable in the moment.
You are therefore using your current emotional state as a
barometer that directs how you will view your life and circumstances. You
automatically tend to believe that what you’re feeling is the truth. However,
it’s only true for you, and the feelings that someone else experiences might be
very different. And it’s these differences that determine how you perceive a
situation, what decisions you make, and what actions you inevitably take.
4.
Jumping to
Conclusions: You make quick assumptions about how things are and what
they’re going to be like in the future (predictive thinking), or you will
assume that you know what someone else is thinking (mind reading). These
conclusions are not based on fact, but rather based on your feelings and
personal opinions. They can often lead you astray down the wrong path. It’s
rather about prematurely judging a situation before you have the necessary
supportive information to back-up the conclusions you are making.
This is especially unhelpful if you are making negative
conclusions about people, events or circumstances in your life. In another
instance, you might make negative assumptions about people’s intentions.
Misreading people in such a way might cause unnecessary friction in your
relationships.
5.
Labeling:
Here you tend to label yourself or other people in certain ways based on
behavior in very specific situations. These labels you make form your belief
systems. Therefore the more times you use these labels the stronger your
beliefs become. This can be a good thing, however, it’s unhelpful when you tend
to label things a certain way despite the facts and evidence that are
inconsistent with the labels you are making. Labeling involves making global
statements and/or generalizations about you or about others that are based upon
behavior in very specific situations.
Instead of describing the specific behavior and taking it in
isolation, you choose to create labels that are negative and absolute. In such
instances, it’s not about the behavior in the moment; it’s rather about making
judgments about all future behavior based on what you have just observed. A
single incident doesn’t define who you are. Likewise, a single incident,
action, or behavior doesn’t define who other people are. For this reason, it’s
important to be very careful of the labels you make throughout your day. Don’t
go making unjustified global statements about yourself or others that are based
upon specific situations.
6.
Magnification
and Minimization: Here you tend to magnify the positives attributes of another
person, while at the same time minimizing your own positive attributes. You are
essentially devaluing yourself — bringing yourself down — while raising the
stature of other people. In this scenario, you tend to explain-away everything
you have going for yourself including your positive traits, characteristics,
and achievements as though they don’t matter.
This unhelpful thinking style involves magnifying the
positive attributes of other people, while at the same time minimizing your own
personal attributes. In other words, you are exaggerating your own “negatives”
(weaknesses) while at the same time understating your own “positives”
(strengths). Likewise, you tend to exaggerate the positive characteristics of
other people while understating their negatives.
Here you have an
inability to accept anything positive in your life, and will instead go out of
your way to turn these events into something that’s negative and unhelpful. The
more you dwell on the negatives, the less you are able to appreciate the good
things in your life.
7.
Mental Filter:
This is a form of tunnel vision where you only tend to focus on a part of
something and you ignore the rest. Your vision of reality is based on your
flawed perspective of the negativity you see in each particular situation. This
often involves filtering out all the positives and only bringing into conscious
awareness all the negatives of a situation. You tend to ignore the positives
and the opportunities you are presented with.
You might, be in the habit of focusing on the small and
insignificant details of a situation. As a result, you feel absolutely
miserable. Mental filtering also occurs when you reflect on your past
experiences... This is how a person suffering from depression might think.
Likewise when you feel disappointed, angry, hurt, or when experiencing low
self-esteem — this too is a clear indication of mental filtering.
8.
Overgeneralization: You
might take one instance from the past and use that as a “predictor” or
barometer for a current or future situation. Whenever you use the words “He
always… She always… Everyone… You never… People never… I never…” you are at
that moment overgeneralizing. Overgeneralization involves taking a single piece
of evidence or single isolated cases and then imposing them on all current or
future scenarios. In other words,
If something happens to you once then it will probably
continue to happen to you over and over again. Making these broad conclusions
about how things will be in the present based on very little evidence in the
past can leave you feeling as though you have no control over your life. You
end up feeling helpless and disheartened that your life doesn’t rest in your
hands.
9.
Personalization: Here
you tend to blame yourself for your problems and for everything that goes wrong
in your life. This will be true whether or not you are responsible or partly
responsible for the problem or misfortune. Taking responsibility for things is
admirable. It can end up being a very burdensome habit-of-mind that leads to
very strong feelings of guilt and regret.
Personalization is a form of self-inflicted guilt that can
often lead to shame and the feelings of inadequacy. It is when something
unfortunate happens that you tend to blame yourself for. Taking responsibility
for every negative thing that isn’t fully within your control is a very
self-defeating behavior. Sometimes things are simply out of your control. You
must accept and live with that. Sometimes things will be your fault. You take
what is then you make the best of every situation, and you move on from there.
10.
Predictive Thinking:
Here you are making predictions about something negative that will happen
sometime in the future. You are putting so much weight on the negatives of the
situation that you end up experiencing a lot of unnecessary stress and anxiety.
11.
Shoulding and
Musting: Here you tend to put unreasonable demands and pressure on
yourself and on other people to do certain things. You tend to say, “I must… I
should… You must… You should…” These statements provide insight into the
standards you tend to uphold and the things you expect of yourself and others.
These standards can of course at times be helpful, however at other times
“shoulding” and “musting” can create unrealistic expectations that you or
others will struggle to live up to. This involves using common statements that
start with “I should…” or “I must…”
These rules dictate how you will behave, and how you expect
others to behave in different situations. When these rules are violated you end
up feeling disappointed and angry. It’s fantastic to have positive expectations
about you and about others; however are these expectations realistic? And, are
they realistic in all situations? Maybe you’re making unreasonable demands. And
if you are, then that leaves you open to disappointment, anger and frustration.
Moreover, directing these statements at other people can create a lot of
resentment and turmoil within your relationships.
“The world we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot
be changed without changing our thinking.” (Albert
Einstein)[i]
[i] Sources used:
·
“10
Unhelpful Thinking Styles Sabotaging Your Success” by Adam Sicinski
·
“UNHELPFUL THINKING HABITS or Cognitive Distortions” by getselfhelp.co.uk
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