Have you ever wondered why you can be feeling great, or at least okay one minute, and then suddenly feel ‘off’, negative or downright depressed the next.
As a way to understand what might be happening, try this exercise..... Bring to mind a recent event or encounter which left you feeling negative or in a lower mood than before. Once you’ve thought of one ask yourself how you responded/reacted to this event/situation.
• Did you proactively take control of the situation, dealing with it as necessary, in action and thought?
• Or were you reactive, taking things personally, assessing the situation using familiar and self destructive ways of thinking and behaving?
If it was the later, you are falling into what have been described as cognitive distortions or thinking errors. I am going to refer to them as ‘thinking errors’ here, because it’s an easy to understand definition and that’s what they are, errors in the way we take in, process and make sense of information.
Thinking errors are sneaky little things, they creep in unnoticed, progressively twisting our thoughts and perceptions in the most negative and unhelpful of ways. At their worst thinking errors can trigger feelings of negativity and pessimism which may lead to depression and anxiety. But once you are aware that you are using them, that awareness can be employed to overcome them, radically changing the way you think and perceive life, others and yourself.
Try another one...have you ever noticed how a thought (in the wrong direction) can drastically change your mood and the way you feel? Consider for a moment also how this might go on to affect your behaviour or the way you interact with others. Chances are you will notice a strong connection between thoughts, feelings/emotions and behaviours.
When you feel negative it is because your thoughts have been grossly distorted. It is the twisted thinking that is causing your unhappiness, not the actual event/encounter/conversation!
So we will now take a little meander through a few of the different thinking errors. Consider which ones you might inadvertently be falling into and try out the suggestions that can be used to challenge and counteract them.
All-or-nothing thinking (also known as black-or white thinking, refers to a tendency to think in terms of false extremes. You’re either on top of the world or down in the depths of despair. And if you fall short of your expectation, you perceive yourself as a total failure. Thinking in either/or categories isn’t just illogical; it’s incorrect (not to mention unrealistic).
Example: “I missed the ball. I’m a total loser” Solution: There are no absolutes in life. There are shades of grey in between, but you’ll never notice them when you discount the complexity of life and other people.
Disqualifying the positive - involves transforming neutral or positive experiences into negative ones. The worse part? Most people aren’t even aware they’re doing it. If you experience a negative event, it’s a justification of a limiting belief (“Typical This ALWAYS happens!”) And if your fortune changes for the better? Nope. It’s an exception. You can’t win.
Example: After passing an exam, you might comment, “Oh, it was nothing really. They made it easier this year.”
Solution: Cultivate an attitude of gratitude by writing down three things you’re grateful for every day.
Emotional reasoning, taking our emotions as evidence for the truth. If you recall, your feelings are a result of your thoughts, so if they’re distorted (which, if you’re feeling dis-empowered, they probably are), they have no validity. Example. “I feel worthless, therefore I am worthless.”
Solution. Challenge the validity of your feelings by asking yourself, “What thought did I just have?” Often, there’s an unconscious cue that triggered the thought and therefore the emotion.
Filtering (also known as mental filtering) similar to all-or-nothing thinking and disqualifying the positive, filtering involves focusing entirely on the negative aspects of a situation while excluding the positive. When you dwell exclusively on a negative detail, you perceive the whole situation as negative and therefore, in your mind, everything is negative. If you believe you’re unhappy, you’ll filter out any positive elements. Why? Because we tend to filter out information that doesn’t conform to our already held beliefs.
Example: You receive praise for a presentation at school but one class mate offers mildly critical feedback. You reflect on his reaction for days and ignore all the positive feedback.
Solution: Ask yourself, “What’s great about this problem? What else could this mean?”. Returning to the above example, is it possible your class mates feedback has some validity?
Jumping to conclusions When you’re jumping to conclusions, you’re reaching negative conclusions with little (or no) evidence. Two examples of this are “mind-reading” and “fortune telling”. • Mind-Reading Mind-reading is when you assume what others are thinking and feeling about you without having any concrete evidence to suggest so. Often, you respond to these assumptions as if they’re true, thus withdrawing from others without a valid reason. When mind-reading is performed regularly, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy where every interaction is further evidence for a negative belief (“I knew they hated me”).
Example: “She looked at me and then turned to her friend to whisper something. She’s gossiping about me. I just know it”
Solution: Test your assumptions. If you don’t investigate, you don’t know.
Fortune-telling (also known as the fortune teller error) Similar to mind-reading, fortune-telling is the tendency to predict the future and foresee negative outcomes. Taking unrealistic predictions as fact, can, in turn, affect your behaviour and create a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Example: “I just know I’m going to flunk my test today.” Solution: Ask yourself, “What evidence is there for my prediction?” How often are you on-point with your predictions?
Labelling - is an extreme form of over-generalisation and involves attaching a negative label to yourself or others instead of a mistake. When describing a mistake you made, it’s often front-loaded with an “I am” statement.
Example: Saying, “I’m a failure” rather than, “I failed”.
Solution: Attribute your errors to the event rather than yourself. Define yourself by your efforts, not your outcomes.
Catastrophising - is when you exaggerate the importance of your errors, fears, and imperfections. Example: “I can’t believe I said that. My life is over!”
Solution: Similar to mis-labeling, be mindful of the vocabulary you use to describe undesired outcomes. •
Over-generalisation - is when you categorically conclude that a single negative event is a never-ending pattern of defeat. If you experience a negative incident, you believe it’s likely to happen again and again.
Example: “Why does this always happen to me?!”
Solution: Universals are words like “always”, “every” and “never”. If you catch yourself saying, “I never get anything right, ” you might respond back with, really, never?
Personalisation occurs when you assume responsibility for an external event over which you have no control. When you personalise, you feel guilty because you confuse influence with control over others. This triggers feelings of guilt and self-condemnation.
Example: “My sister fell over, I should have been watching her.”
Solution: Understand that you cannot be in control of everything and everyone..
Should statements. This is when you have strict ideas and rules for how you, or others, should and shouldn’t behave. When our expectations fall short, we feel disappointed, frustrated, resentful, even angry.
Example: “People ought to call ahead when they’re running late.”
Solution: Adjust your expectations so they’re more realistic. When someone fails to meet your expectation, ask yourself what might be going on for them.
“Untwisting cognitive distortions isn’t always easy. We all have narratives that are deeply ingrained in our psychology (many of which hold us back from realising our full potential). But with a little time, attention and energy, we can begin freeing ourselves from the errors in our thinking and make meaningful progress toward the things that matter most.” (Davies. S)
