Distorted Thinking Patterns
The skillset of our over-protective mind
“The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation, but your thoughts about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking.”
Our minds have evolved to be very good at threat detection/response. For better or worse, this required the mind to maintain a tendency to over-simplify and negatively-bias the “truth and reality” of how things actually are. This encouraged acting quickly for survival/safety. If we forget that this is our mind doing its job, we will be quick to react to a lot of unnecessary fearful or self-critical thinking (sometimes they are true/helpful but most times they are just a signal or notification, not a call-to-action or avoidance).
Benefits of Distorted/Negative Thinking
Before just engaging in the usual “this is all negative, it’s all bad”, we need to understand why we have such a difficulty time getting our mind to see things more realistically. There are a lot of advantages to thinking that is distorted, biased, skewed, or over-simplified. Although it may not serve us well today, overly-negative and self-critical thinking was very important for our ancestors to survive:
Excessively thinking about or remembering memories of danger led them to be able to recognize and learn to respond to danger effectively
Having limited perspectives or less nuance and complexity about things narrows or accelerates decision-making for survival and comfort
Assuming things would go bad or that things are bad allowed them to react much quicker or to plan in advance
Feeling “inadequate” (in strength, resources, wealth, food, supplies, power, etc) persistently pushed them to do more or better all the time just in case, striving for personal growth, resilience, and better outcomes
Comparing to others taught them what they needed to do or not do to belong and increase chances of belonging to survive
Assigning an explanation (whether it was truly you or something else or not…) to something helps us feel like we can change or control it
When we notice our thoughts, we can see how they fit into certain patterns of maladaptive thinking patterns. Having a label or language to identify distorted thinking patterns (cognitive distortions) makes it easier to recognize what and why the mind does what it’s doing and when. It’s like recognizing when you are standing or sitting with “poor form and posture”: engaging with distorted thinking patterns is like thinking with poor form and posture. Review the following to increase awareness to which distorted thinking patterns you tend to engage with:
➖ Negative Filter
Focusing and dwelling on negative aspects of things while ignoring or filtering out positive aspects; diminishes or rejects personal positive qualities/contributions (focuses/dwells on shameful imperfections).
😤 Should Statements
Rigid expectations or rules about self, others, the world, life, the future ("should, shouldn't, must, ought, have to")
🔲 All-or-Nothing Thinking
Seeing situations in absolute, binary, clear-cut categories (“all good or all bad”), ignoring nuance, complexity, and shades of gray about situations (the “upsides and downsides" to every situation),
🔎 Exaggeration / Minimization
Magnifying the importance/consequences of negative events while downplaying positive/neutral events.
⛈️ Pessimistic Forecasting
Jumping to negative conclusions, thinking about the future (limited evidence) in catastrophic worst-case scenarios (“catastrophizing”).
😰 Over-Generalization
Assumptions based on limited evidence or single/few event(s). Difficult events are assumed to be a never-ending pattern of defeat (“this always happens”).
🔮 Mind Reading
Assuming what people think about us with limited evidence.
😓 Personalization
Assuming excessive personal blame/responsibility for something without enough evidence.
🏷️ Labeling
Attaching global labels to self or others based on specific behaviors or events ("I made a mistake” vs “I am a failure”).
🎭 Emotional Reasoning
Assume and reason things based on how we feel (our feelings = “reality”) regardless of any supporting evidence or logic (“I feel it so it’s true”).
When we are able to proficiently identify our mind’s distorted thinking patterns, we can dig deeper into any thought or feeling to recognize how and when our mind is just telling us “that same ol’ story” again. *
*Regardless of how false, irrational, or cruel it might be…