![]() PERSONALIZATION: You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event, which in fact you were not primarily responsible for. “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. Example: I always fail when I try something new I fail at everything. You’ll leave the meeting feeling deflated thinking about the ‘negative’ feedback, even though there were so many positive takeaways from the same conversation.Another activity to try is identifying negative automatic thought patterns. Also known as black-and-white thinking, or all-or-nothing thinking, this is when we think in terms of extremes, such as either we’re perfect or abject failures. For instance, imagine that your manager has praised you a dozen times in your performance evaluation, but suggested two ways in which you can improve. ![]() “ Most of the time, these types of ‘shoulds’ are assumptions… the intensity of response can be enormous,” says Samson.ĭiscounting the Positive: This is another kind of cognitive distortion, where you tend to disregard your successes and strengths and instead focus on your failures and weaknesses. You “should” get recognition from your boss in the form of a raise or a promotion right? If you don't, you think you’ve failed and that catapults into feelings of resentment and self-doubt. Should Statements: You just pulled off the biggest event of the year for the company and you’re expecting to be rewarded for it. The all-or-nothing ANT invokes polarised emotions within you: good or bad, success or failure, without any sort of middle ground. You start chastising yourself, thinking of yourself as incompetent and being convinced that you'll never find something else. Instead of thinking productively of the next step, you spiral. However, Samson focuses on three of the most common kinds of ANTs: All or Nothing, Should Statements and Discounting the Positive.Īll or Nothing: Imagine you’ve been laid off from your job for any number of reasons. There are about a dozen categories of Automatic Negative Thoughts - All or Nothing Thinking, Overgeneralisation, Discounting the Positive, Jumping to Conclusions, Catastrophising/Minimising, Emotional Reasoning, Should Statements, Labelling and Mislabelling and Personalisation. ![]()
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