Checking Your Thinking Errors in Uncertain Times

A pandemic, an economic crisis, political tensions, and weather and power crises.  How much can one country, one family, one person handle?  This is a question many of us have been asking ourselves for the past 12 months and a question I found myself asking last week after watching the sad and catastrophic events that unfolded in Texas with power outages, unusually cold temperatures, and unsafe drinking water. 

As a result of the events in Texas and 12 months into the pandemic, I decided to write a short blog about how common thinking errors can make our stress and anxiety worse and share some basic steps for calming down those racing thoughts, high emotions, and over-active behaviors.

Thinking Errors

Many of us engage in what therapists call thinking errors or cognitive distortions.  These are thought patterns that tend to be inaccurate and based on assumptions and perceptions rather than based on facts.  Learning about our patterns of thinking can help us to catch, modify, or change distortions and amplifications of the actual facts. As I discussed in my last blog, “3 States of Mind,” we must have a general awareness (mindfulness) that we are engaging in these thinking errors or cognitive distortions before we can do anything to change them or to cope with them.

o   Overgeneralizing

• One negative event means everything is negative, all things will turn out bad.

o   All or Nothing/Black or White Thinking

• Unable to find the middle path or the shades of gray in a situation.

o   Catastrophizing

• Assuming the worst. 

o   Fortune telling

• Making assumptions and negative predictions.

o   Blaming

• Blaming yourself for anything that goes wrong around you.

o   Magnifying

• Magnifying the size of your problem.

o   Filtering

• Focusing only on the negative.

o   Mind Reading

• Thinking others are thinking negative thoughts about you.

•  Assuming you know what others are thinking.

o   Emotional Reasoning

• Thinking something is true, therefore it MUST be true.

o   Should Statements

• Believing things need to be a certain way.

o   Labeling

• Putting negative or inaccurate labels on yourself or others.

o   Discounting the Positives

• Positive experiences or attributes are minimized or ignored.

How to Change Thinking Errors?

1.     Focus on the present moment (Mindfulness) and identify that you have engaged in a thinking error.

2.     Check the Facts - Our emotions can have a big effect on our thoughts about events and, therefore, our actions.

• Name the emotion you are feeling (remember this from the first blog?)

• What are the FACTS or the evidence that prompted this emotion?

  • Not the facts that you have added or subtracted so they fit your emotions or your thoughts.

• What are your interpretations, assumptions, and thoughts about the event?

  • Are there other possible interpretations?

  • Can you look at all sides of the situation and all points of view?

• Label the threat.

  • Is it a real threat? Are you really in danger? Sometime we can feel threatened, but it is only a perception.

    • If so, use problem solving skills to avoid the danger, seek help.

  • Is it only a perception of threat or danger?

  •  Does my emotion AND the intensity of the emotion fit the ACTUAL FACTS?

3.     Next, reframe the thought into a new, realistic, and ACCURATE thought.  

4.     Notice how this revised thought changes either the emotion, or the intensity of the emotion, or how you think about the situation you are in.

5.     You can now make a more informed choice on what to do and how to cope based on accurate information and “balanced thinking”, hopefully, from your Wise Mind (last week’s blog).

Conclusion

When you review the last week, the last month, or the last year of your life what thinking errors have you been engaged in?  Some common themes I have seen in my office are statements such as.

• “There’s nothing to do. Everything is closed” (All or Nothing)

• “Politics has hardened everyone.  There are no good people anymore.” (Overgeneralizing)

• “I got to into a disagreement with a co-worker. I always screw everything up.” (Blaming/Overgeneralizing/Possibly Discounting the Positives)

• “I got a C on my chemistry test.  I am never going to get into college. I always screw things up.” (Catastrophizing/Overgeneralizing)

• “I feel so lonely. No one likes me or cares about me.” (Feelings as Facts/Emotional Reasoning)

• “The party went really well, but I wish more people would have been there. It would have been better if we played different music.” (Discounting the Positives.)

• “My friend has not returned my text messages.  She does not care about me. I am sure she’s with her other friends. They’re probably talking about how much I annoy them.” (Mind Reading)

Catch the thoughts and see if you can find the “space of gray”, find a more accurate depiction of what really happened and be sure it is not just your opinion or an assumption. Look for the evidence that supports your thought. If you find that you are not engaged in a thinking error then see if there is a solution to what happened, if so, use your problem-solving skills. This may include confronting the situation, apologizing, studying more, changing your behavior, etc. 

Remember

Emotions and behaviors are set off by our thoughts and interpretations of events.
Event -> Thoughts -> Emotions

Our emotions can also have a big effect on our thoughts about events.

Event -> Emotion -> Thoughts

Examining our thoughts and checking the facts can help us change our emotions.

** When our emotions are balanced, we are more likely to find our Wise Mind and to respond/behave from a more balanced and more effective place.

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