Unhelpful Thinking Patterns: How To Deal With Them
As humans, we like to assign meaning to all of our experiences, but we often make false assumptions about those meanings.
These errors are known as cognitive distortions and with the current chaos in the world, where worry, stress, uncertainty, and anxiety are at the forefront of our minds, we are no doubt making a few more errors than we’d care to admit.
But we need to remember that all our experiences in life are just noise. And what we choose to tell ourselves about this noise will determine the outcomes of our life.
Here are five common unhelpful thought patterns, and how we can deal with them:
Unhelpful Thought Pattern #1: DELETION
To avoid sensory information overload, we only pay attention to certain aspects of our experience and ignore the rest. When we’re anxious, we often develop ‘tunnel vision’ where we focus solely on the negative aspects of situations and delete any positive aspects. Do you ever focus on the one person who doesn’t like you, rather than the other twenty who do? Sometimes the whole picture can be coloured by a single negative detail.
How to Deal with It:
Recognise that you may not have all the information needed to understand the situation fully. Use deletion in a positive way; instead of focusing on negative aspects of a situation, focus on the positive. Techniques like meditation and mindful thinking focus your mind on your breathing and can help clear negative thoughts.
Unhelpful Thought Pattern #2: GENERALISATION
Have you ever taken public transport and been delayed by another passenger who can’t find their ticket and thought to yourself ‘this is typical, people are so stupid’ and you become tense and angry? Or maybe an ex cheated on you and now you believe that ‘ALL MEN/WOMEN’ are BAD? Or do you ever get thoughts where you feel like nothing goes right for you, or that you’re just unlucky? One of the ways we learn is by taking information and drawing broad conclusions, assigning meaning to those conclusions. Sometimes, if we have a negative experience, we form disempowering beliefs about ourselves and others, and they stick.
How to Deal with It:
Put things into perspective. How true is it that ‘nothing ever goes right for you?’ Consider how many other people in the world might also be having transport issues at this exact moment? When you judge all people as ‘stupid,’ you make yourself angrier and are less able to effectively deal with relatively minor mishaps. Be less judgmental. It's also helpful to avoid using words such as “always” and “never”. Ask yourself: Am I being realistic when I'm overgeneralizing things?
Unhelpful Thought Pattern #3: JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS
Do you ever make a negative interpretation or prediction, even when there's no real evidence to support your conclusion? This sort of thinking is often based on what we think other people feel towards us. It can show up as ‘mind reading’ (everyone is laughing at me) or as ‘fortune-telling’ (I’m not going to get the job).
How to Deal with It:
You can never know for certain what other people are thinking, so challenge your negative assumptions. Take a step back, adopt an objective perspective and consider the evidence available to you. Do you have enough information or evidence to conclude that everyone was laughing at you at that party or that you’re not going to do well at your interview? Most of the time, people are usually so preoccupied with their own thoughts, that their reactions have nothing to do with you; don’t personalise everything.
Unhelpful Thought Pattern #4: MINIMISATION
Minimisation is where we play down our own positive attributes and assign multiple negative labels to ourselves: ’’I’m so fat, I’m so stupid, I’m not clever enough to do that.’’ It’s important to note that there is a difference between a throwaway comment or fishing for compliments, as opposed to people who truly believe these negative labels. Minimisation makes us susceptible to being abused, mistreated and taken advantage of as these behaviours against us correlate with how we define and describe ourselves.
How to Deal with It:
Minimisation is a defence mechanism employed to help us through adversity, but its power to generate distorted thinking causes more damage in the long term. Starting a daily journal in which you take note of only the positive experiences you’ve had in your day (no matter how minor they are), practicing gratitude, and focusing on building a foundation for self-worth and internal validation will allow you to cease minimalizing your worth and self.
Unhelpful Thought Pattern #5: MAGNIFICATION (AKA CATASTROPHISING)
Do you ever take a minor negative event and blow it completely out of proportion? Perhaps you assume that someone hates you because they haven’t replied to your text straight away? Or that your boss is going to let you go because you made a simple mistake at work? Or maybe you get panicked when something is wrong physically and during self-diagnosis, determine that you have a terminal illness (health anxiety at its worst - I blame google!)
How to Deal with It:
You can nip catastrophic thinking in the bud by acknowledging it for what it is; just thoughts! People commonly catastrophise when they’re anxious. Take a more objective stance and consider less terrifying explanations. Weigh up the evidence and put things into perspective. Focus on what you could do to cope with the situation and the people or resources that can help you. No matter what catastrophic assumption you’ve reached in your mind, it’s unlikely that the world is going to end, even if your assumption does come to fruition. And, if the worst-case scenario did happen, keep in mind that you’re most likely capable of surviving and growing stronger and more resilient as a result.
Remember, unhelpful thinking is usually an automatic habit – it is something we are often unaware of.
Start by seeing if you identify with any of these patterns of thinking and ask yourself whether they shape or hinder your current perception of reality. Only then, can you start working towards changing your unhelpful thinking patterns.
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