by Joanna Wilczynska MAQuestioning your thinking patterns and being aware of your thought biases is a useful skillset to have.
Being stuck in a negative thinking loop won't help solve the problem; it will make you feel progressively worse by creating bigger & uglier stories in your mind, often from a single thought. That single thought or trigger is like a single snowflake which, if not caught in time, will create an avalanche
Ask yourself:
- What am I feeling/thinking?
- How long have I been feeling/thinking about this?
- What has brought this about?
But most importantly...
- Is this true?
- What's the evidence for/against?
- Is there a different way of looking at this?
Actively questioning your thoughts and trying to reframe them helps to stop feeling overwhelmed, upset and bad about yourself. None of those help move on and grow.
There are many negative thinking patterns that we (very often) apply subconsciously. Some of those are:
- all or nothing (black & white thinking), e.g. do it right or not at all
- mental filter (only paying attention to one element), e.g. focusing on our failures only
- overgeneralising (always, never, etc.), e.g. everything is always wrong, everyone hates me
- emotional reasoning (assuming because we feel something, it must be true), e.g. I feel embarrassed, so I must be a fool
- personalisation (blaming yourself/others for something that wasn't entirely in your/their control), e.g. this is my fault
- labelling (assigning labels to ourselves/others), e.g. I'm useless.
Which of those do you use?
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