Noticing our patterns of thinking can really help us emotionally
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Ever since I can remember I have been fascinated by why and how we think, and now I am fascinated by what we can do to change our thinking so that we can think better.
Do you know how you think? I suspect most of us “just think”…. We may not realise that our thinking has evolved into patterns and styles. That these patterns and styles of thinking have become habits that predict and dictate our emotions and behaviour. We don’t question that If we know what these patterns look like then we might be able to understand ourselves a little better. Having that information may allow us to pause and give ourselves room to come up with different choices and with those different decisions or choices it may result in different feelings and behaviours and subsequent thoughts. How liberating would that be, not to be so tied to the voice in your head that says you are hopeless or you are useless?
Psychologists refer to these patterns as thinking errors or cognitive distortions. We all have them and we all have favourites. I certainly do. An event occurs and our brain uses these habitual patterns to interrupt what it hears, sees and feels. It distorts this incoming noise and comes up with a negative meaning, which can result in us having negative feelings like anxiety, sadness, depression, self-blame, guilt and so on.
I have listed some of most common ones below take a look and see which ones talk to you.
Negative Thinking Patterns | Automatic thought | Meaning | |
---|---|---|---|
1 | All or nothing Black and white thinking | I can’t do anything right! | If you don’t get something 100% right you think you’re a failure. |
2 | Catastrophising | It’s a disaster | Something happens and you see it as being much worse than it is and there is no evidence to suggest it’s this bad. Making a mountain out of a mole hill. |
3 | Emotional reasoning | I don’t feel like doing this I feel stupid so I must be stupid | Because we feel an emotion we believe it must be the truth. We don’t bother to challenge to see if there is truth to it. “ I feel therefore it must be true” |
4 | Labelling | I am useless I lost my job so I am a failure | We create an over generalised label for ourselves – we allow a situation to define us – which is not accurate or rational. |
5 | Mental Filter | I got good feedback but they said I should beI got good feedback but they said I should be more assertive and that has really thrown me | This is when we focus on the negative bits of a situation, we disregard the positive even if the positives outweigh the negative. All we can think about is the negative bit. |
6 | Mindreading | I know that they don’t like me. | This occurs when we think we know that the other person is thinking something negative about us. |
7 | Overgeneralising | Everything always goes wrong | Something negative happens and we allow it to define the situation. Words like: “never,” “everything,” and “nothing” are usual with this way of thinking. |
8 | Deleting the positive | It doesn’t matter | You dismiss the positive insisting that it doesn’t count. |
9 | Self-blame | This is my fault | You see yourself as the cause |
How does knowing this help us?
- These negative thinking patterns are, likely as not, not true. However by having them you have tricked yourself into feeling emotions such as sadness, anxiety, anger, depression, low self-esteem or shyness.
- If you want to change this then you need to be aware of what you are doing:
a) Get familiar with the above and see if any of them speak to you.
b) When you have one of these negative thoughts write it down as well as how you are feeling?
c) Then ask yourself:
i) Is this true?
ii) What evidence supports this thought?
iii) If a friend was thinking this what might I say to them ?
d) Then ask yourself is there another way of looking at this? You don’t have to believe this alternative thought right away, but the more you practice this, the more you will train a new pathway in your brain to think this way and so the new belief will come and a better feeling will follow.
- If you want to change this then you need to be aware of what you are doing:
If you want to read more about this and really understand these concepts then explore the work of Aaron Beck. The psychiatrist David D Burns has a great book called Feeling Good The New Mood Therapy, which he wrote for us the public.