This blog post is going to be all about the different ways in which we think negatively when you suffer from anxiety or depression. I'll do another blog post later on about how you can challenge those negative thoughts but for now, in this post, we'll just discuss the different ways we can think negatively. I do pretty much all of these things so it'll be interesting to see if any of you guys can recognise these thoughts in yourself.
Polarised Thinking
This type of thinking that is all or nothing. If a situation doesn't quite turn out the exact way you think it should you consider yourself a complete failure. So for example, if you get a bad mark for one piece of work or module, you see yourself as useless and it can lead to giving up the course and not feeling good enough at anything.
Mind Reading or Fortune Telling
This is when things are interpreted negatively with no evidence at all to support this interpretation. This is something I do all the time, I constantly think that I know what people are thinking about me or what they're saying. If someone looks at me in a weird way, I automatically think that they're saying something horrible about me or that they dislike me when I have no proof of it. Fortune telling is where you predict that something is going to happen and usually the outcome is negative. So, I always say that I would be the one who bad things would happen to. If something went wrong it would always happen to me. Even though, realistically, bad things don't always happen to me but I always perceive bad things do happen to me.
Overgeneralisation
This is where you see a single event that's negative as a never ending pattern of defeat. In this negative thinking you use words such as 'never' or 'always' when you think about it. If you look through my Twitter there is so much of this. I say things like 'I always mess up' and "I'm so fed up of constantly being sick" these types of sentences are overgeneralisations.
Discounting the Positive
Here is where you reject any positive experiences you've had. When someone tells you that you look good, or that you're pretty you don't believe them or feel as though they're just saying that to be nice to you. By discounting the positives in life it can cause you to take the joy out of life and make you feel inadequate.
Magnification and Shrinking
This is where you exaggerate the importance of your problems and shortcomings, or you minimise the importance of all of your desirable qualities. You will always focus on the one thing that went badly in a situation that was otherwise successful.
Negative Mental Filtering
With this one what you do is focus on a single negative detail and dwell on that tiny detail. This makes you vision of reality quite bleak and gloomy. An example of this is if you write a book and every one but one person tells you how good it is, you would focus on that one negative piece of feedback and that's all you'd be able to think about. Not the fact that hundreds of other people enjoyed the book you wrote.
Irrational Emotional Reasoning
You make the assumption that your negative emotions reflect the way things really are. So if you're feeling guilty its because you're a terrible person, or if you feel inferior it's because you're not worth anything.
Shoulds, Musts and Have Tos
We often direct should statements on ourselves, for example, I should have done better, or I have to get a certain grade. These statements can often lead to guilt and frustration. We can also direct them towards other people, for example, she should have stopped it before it happened, which can then lead to anger as well as frustration.
Labelling
This one is pretty self explanatory but it's basically where you attach negative labels to yourself in an extreme way. If you make a mistake you would often call yourself an idiot or that you're stupid. This form of labelling is irrational because as people, we are not the same as what we do. These labels can lead to anger, anxiety, frustration and low self esteem.
Personalisation and Blame
This happens when you hold yourself personally responsible for an event when it's not under your own control. Someone might mention that the house is untidy and you will see this comment as a criticism of the fact that you can't keep a clean house. I often do this when people who I don't know walk past me and laugh, I usually always think they're laughing at me when they're probably not.
So there are some of the ways in which we think negatively. I'm sure many of you can recognise and relate to a lot of these thought patterns, I know I do all of them. These negative thought patterns can be so detrimental to your mental health and cause serious issues with self esteem and confidence. I'll hopefully be doing a blog post in the next few weeks about how to deal and challenge these negative thoughts and feelings in order to hopefully get over them. Don't worry too much if you do see some or all of these behaviours within yourself. It happens to us all, it's just learning how to deal with them properly.
Stay awesome.
Polarised Thinking
This type of thinking that is all or nothing. If a situation doesn't quite turn out the exact way you think it should you consider yourself a complete failure. So for example, if you get a bad mark for one piece of work or module, you see yourself as useless and it can lead to giving up the course and not feeling good enough at anything.
Mind Reading or Fortune Telling
This is when things are interpreted negatively with no evidence at all to support this interpretation. This is something I do all the time, I constantly think that I know what people are thinking about me or what they're saying. If someone looks at me in a weird way, I automatically think that they're saying something horrible about me or that they dislike me when I have no proof of it. Fortune telling is where you predict that something is going to happen and usually the outcome is negative. So, I always say that I would be the one who bad things would happen to. If something went wrong it would always happen to me. Even though, realistically, bad things don't always happen to me but I always perceive bad things do happen to me.
Overgeneralisation
This is where you see a single event that's negative as a never ending pattern of defeat. In this negative thinking you use words such as 'never' or 'always' when you think about it. If you look through my Twitter there is so much of this. I say things like 'I always mess up' and "I'm so fed up of constantly being sick" these types of sentences are overgeneralisations.
Discounting the Positive
Here is where you reject any positive experiences you've had. When someone tells you that you look good, or that you're pretty you don't believe them or feel as though they're just saying that to be nice to you. By discounting the positives in life it can cause you to take the joy out of life and make you feel inadequate.
Magnification and Shrinking
This is where you exaggerate the importance of your problems and shortcomings, or you minimise the importance of all of your desirable qualities. You will always focus on the one thing that went badly in a situation that was otherwise successful.
Negative Mental Filtering
With this one what you do is focus on a single negative detail and dwell on that tiny detail. This makes you vision of reality quite bleak and gloomy. An example of this is if you write a book and every one but one person tells you how good it is, you would focus on that one negative piece of feedback and that's all you'd be able to think about. Not the fact that hundreds of other people enjoyed the book you wrote.
Irrational Emotional Reasoning
You make the assumption that your negative emotions reflect the way things really are. So if you're feeling guilty its because you're a terrible person, or if you feel inferior it's because you're not worth anything.
Shoulds, Musts and Have Tos
We often direct should statements on ourselves, for example, I should have done better, or I have to get a certain grade. These statements can often lead to guilt and frustration. We can also direct them towards other people, for example, she should have stopped it before it happened, which can then lead to anger as well as frustration.
Labelling
This one is pretty self explanatory but it's basically where you attach negative labels to yourself in an extreme way. If you make a mistake you would often call yourself an idiot or that you're stupid. This form of labelling is irrational because as people, we are not the same as what we do. These labels can lead to anger, anxiety, frustration and low self esteem.
Personalisation and Blame
This happens when you hold yourself personally responsible for an event when it's not under your own control. Someone might mention that the house is untidy and you will see this comment as a criticism of the fact that you can't keep a clean house. I often do this when people who I don't know walk past me and laugh, I usually always think they're laughing at me when they're probably not.
So there are some of the ways in which we think negatively. I'm sure many of you can recognise and relate to a lot of these thought patterns, I know I do all of them. These negative thought patterns can be so detrimental to your mental health and cause serious issues with self esteem and confidence. I'll hopefully be doing a blog post in the next few weeks about how to deal and challenge these negative thoughts and feelings in order to hopefully get over them. Don't worry too much if you do see some or all of these behaviours within yourself. It happens to us all, it's just learning how to deal with them properly.
Stay awesome.
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