In a lot of ways, this is about undoing a lot of negative behaviors and mental programming you may have learned from others. It’s like switching gears in your brain so your train of thought isn’t just looping and relooping. You re-evaluate how you reflect on a situation, or even what you think about, to focus on something else. Shifting the way you think means you’re consciously stopping an established thought pattern. One gradual habit that might help is making mental shifts And when therapy is out of reach, it can be difficult to get fast treatment. Or maybe you don’t notice the cut at all… until it starts to sting.Įach person, depending on their condition and triggers, will require different approaches to medication, psychotherapy, and lifestyle changes. Negative thought patterns are like a paper cut you keep getting when you have only a vague idea of what’s causing it. Especially if they stem from general anxiety, depression, or another mental health condition. Treating your thought processes isn’t as easy or prescriptive. For instance, when you cut your finger, you can use antibacterial cream and a bandage, and after some time, the wound will close. With most external wounds, treatment is usually pretty straightforward. PERSONALIZATION: You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event, which in fact you were not primarily responsible for.One gradual habit can become a powerful mental tool “I’m a loser.” When someone else’s behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him” “He’s a damn louse.” Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself. LABELING AND MISLABELING: This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. When you direct should statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment. SHOULD STATEMENTS: You try to motivate yourself with should and shouldn’t, as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything. This is also called the “binocular trick.”ĮMOTIONAL REASONING: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: “I feel it, therefore it must be true.” MAGNIFICATION (CATASTROPHIZING) OR MINIMIZATION: You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your goof-up or someone else’s achievement), or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or other fellow’s imperfections). MIND READING: You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you, and you don’t bother to check this out.įORTUNE TELLING: You anticipate that things will turn out badly, and you feel convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact. JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS: You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion. In this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences. MENTAL FILTER: You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors the entire beaker of water.ĭISQUALIFYING THE POSITIVE: You reject positive experiences by insisting they “don’t count” for some reason or other. OVERGENERALIZATION: You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure. If so, practicing reappraisal when you find yourself thinking in this way might be helpful!ĪLL-OR-NOTHING THINKING: You see things in black-and-white categories. Below are some common negative thinking patterns – see if any of them sound familiar or are ways of thinking you notice yourself engaging in. Sometimes we may get stuck interpreting negative or distressing situations in a similar way without examining the evidence for that interpretation. Another activity to try is identifying negative automatic thought patterns.
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