Are Your Thoughts Holding You Back?

Too much or too little, never in-between. We often develop this kind of mindset after having experienced stressful events in our lives and other times; we’ve picked up this way of thinking from those around us. Ever been cheated on by your partner? Then it’s quite likely you went on to live a certain period of your life thinking “All men are cheats” or “All women are unreasonable”. Guilty! It’s safe to say that our thoughts, beliefs, experiences, whether good or bad, can have a significant impact on how we lead our lives. While the right experiences can boost your confidence to be a go-getter, the bitter ones can keep you stuck in a rut unless you’ve taken time to assess your thoughts and if they’re doing more harm than good.

When we reinforce irrational thoughts and beliefs, we begin to view the world through fixed lenses without questioning them until we face situations that challenge us to rethink ideas, views or concepts we have about the world. Other times, they’re so subtle that it may become difficult to identify them as they become a part of your daily thoughts. It might feel unsettling to accept that you may have false beliefs with your ego standing tall that “there’s no way I have any distorted thoughts.” If you’re blood and flesh — aka human, you have very likely had several cognitive distortions at some time or another.

Cognitive distortions form the basis of Cognitive Behavioural therapy, a form of psychotherapy that address a person’s negative feelings, thoughts and behaviour to help you move forward optimally by countering the negative patterns until they diminish and habitually replaced with rational thinking. One of the most crucial steps to change is to stop bullshitting yourself and become self-aware.

Cognitive distortions that may be holding you back from living your best life:

Mental Filtering: When you focus on what’s not working rather than what’s going right, you view reality based on a faulty perspective that prevents you from seeing things with an open mind. This cognitive distortion usually plays out when it comes to adverse events which magnify bitter aspects of past experiences, thus eventually triggering an impulsive response for future events.

Try: Make a conscious effort to see the good with every situation to successfully work through this cognitive distortion.

Black or White Thinking / Polarised Thinking: Have you ever started a new diet and indulged in a little piece of chocolate only to think you’ve failed at keeping up with your plan. Black or white thinking may lead you to believe that you’ve failed at sticking to your diet plan and then you end up binging on an entire box of chocolates. If you’ve been in such a situation, have you taken time to pause and rethink? “Are you where you started on your health journey? Is there absolutely no progress what so ever?

Try: Seeing just two sides of a situation often neglect the middle, which sometimes means the answers lie in the grey areas. Develop a habit of considering different interpretations and see situations in an unbiased way.

Overgeneralisation: Just because your high-school girlfriend or boyfriend cheated on you, you assume that in the future all others will follow a similar pattern. Perhaps, you’re stuck in traffic and late for a meeting because the car in front of you ran out of gas and can’t move ahead. You then think to yourself “nothing goes my way; other people are so silly for not checking if they’re low on gas/fuel and you become angry.” By taking a step back to make sense out of these situations, how true is it that statement “nothing ever goes my way?”. Reflect as to how many people might be having car trouble at this very same moment? Do you always judge the people around you? When you throw in comments such as “silly”, including the cab driver who ran out of gas, you make yourself more furious and less likely to handle minor misadventures properly.

Try: Reflect and question the evidence; you may be surprised to find that things could be different.

Catastrophizing: Your friend declines an invitation to attend the party when you send her text. Even before you give her a chance to voice out reasons for not being able to make it, you’ve concluded that she’s avoiding you. It doesn’t stop there; you go on to think she’s embarrassed to be seen with you by her other friends and has spoken ill about you to them. You decide you’re never going to be able to go out again if she doesn’t show up at this party.

Try: These are just “thoughts”. Whenever you find yourself thinking of the worst, pause and reflect. How sure are you that your friend is avoiding you or is it possible that she’s got valid reasons for declining your invitation to the party? What could be the other possible reasons for her not to be able to make it? Think about the facts and if you have enough information to come to such conclusions. Has she given you a reason to feel or think this way before? Find evidence that counters assumptions that you’ve drawn. Even if the assumption turns out to be true, you’re only becoming stronger as an individual.

Jumping to conclusions: This often stems from what you think other people feel towards you which can show up as “mind-reading” (people’s thoughts and intentions) and “fortune telling” (predicting the worst and accepting it as a fact). You’re at a family gathering; you feel judged and ridiculed because of your attire as you see your cousins laughing (mind-reading). You then think about how you’re going to fail your finals (fortune-telling).

Try: Step back; consider all the evidence you have. Do you have enough information to conclude that people at the family gathering were laughing at you or is it possible that they were sharing a joke and happened to notice you at the same time? Think of other possibilities before you jump to conclusions.

Personalisation: Do you often believe that everything others say is related to you? When things don’t go your way, you think that you’re the cause for the bad luck regardless of whether we are directly accountable for the result or not. For instance, you got home late from work and you notice that the food is overcooked. Now you think t yourself, “if only I had finished work and left work early, this wouldn’t have happened.”

Try: Are you entirely responsible for what happened? Reflect and notice that you might not be the cause for the mishaps.

Labelling: Just because you didn’t win that trophy in mathematics back in school, you cannot afford to define yourself based on one specific behaviour without considering other positive traits and actions you possess. “I’m not good enough” — a common statement that rings in your head for that one time you failed at something. What about things that you naturally excel in — public speaking, writing and so on? Labels that stem from past negative experiences reinforce beliefs that don’t serve you.

Try: Challenge the cognitive distortion that counters the labels you make in certain situations.

Victimisation: Are you someone who feels sorry or know someone who always feels sorry for himself? A victim mindset based on past/present trauma and feeling pity for themselves can be mentally exhausting. Some become so confused with those negative thoughts that they may live there forever and believe that they cannot change. Learned helplessness is unsafe because you may end up wasting precious time living in the past.

Try: By acknowledging that thoughts and feelings can be managed and changed, you can shift from a victim mindset to a growth mindset. It requires some level of honesty and introspection to demand more of yourself than consider yourself a victim of your past or present circumstances.

Must & Should — Rigid Rule Keeping: If you have a list of rules about how you or other people should behave, it’s quite evident that you get annoyed when people fail to comply. “Must” and “Should” can be helpful at times, but this standard can create impractical expectations that you or others will find hard to live up to in life. If you’re someone who works towards being considerate and kind, you might expect the same in return by failing to realize that others have their priorities. When you focus on how you “should” never let others down or do things a certain way, you may neglect your personal needs.

Try: Learn to be more flexible and replace words like “must”, “should” with “prefer” and “want”.

Emotional Reasoning: When you make decisions solely based on how you feel, this may move you from the path of reality. For example, your boyfriend or girlfriend may be spending more time at work; you become jealous and conclude that he or she might be having an affair.

Try: Pay attention to your thoughts, feelings that stem from an emotional state may not be the best way to measure reality. Take time to calm down and see if there’s evidence to support your feelings.

Minimalisation: A cognitive distortion where you may tend to minimise your positive qualities while magnifying another person positive trait. It’s a defence mechanism to lower people’s expectations of you. While having humility is lovely, it’s not beneficial when it’s at the cost of your self-esteem.

Try: Journal — take note of the positive experiences and focus on building your self-worth.

The Fallacy of Fairness: “It’s not fair that I’m not taller or richer, “It’s not fair if someone is doing well in his life”, “It’s not fair that my friend is happy in his relationship.” When you blame the world for your current circumstances, you take away your power from working towards what you want. Everyone has experienced some kind of struggle and failure, some maybe more than others. You will feel resentful and hopeless if you judge every situation based on “fairness”. Let’s face it; things may not go in your favour even if they should. But the more you dwell on the idea of “fairness”, the more miserable you will feel.

Try: Realise your strengths instead of comparing yourself to others.

Confusing feelings with facts: Defining yourself based on how you feel can be dangerous. For instance, if you define yourself as anxious, you may act anxious. If you define yourself based on emotion, you may end up assigning your identity and self-esteem to it.

Try: Stop and ask yourself — If what you’re thinking is real?

Heaven’s Reward Fallacy: An irrational thinking pattern where you hold a false belief that a divine force will soon reward self- sacrifice. For example, if you’re constantly being bullied at work or experiencing violence from a partner, you believe that going through this evident pain will eventually pay off. A lack of self-awareness about how you’re feeling can make it hard for you to set boundaries which will ultimately make you bitter.

Try: Notice your inner voice — are you saying “yes” to things when you want to say “no’. You may want to seek therapy to develop better self-awareness.

Your thoughts and interpretation of the world can have an impact on how you feel. How you feel can create certain emotions. These emotions then govern the way you interpret experiences. These interpretations and faulty thinking patterns may hold you back from seeing things for what they are. Everything begins with a thought, and it’s vital to invest time and energy into becoming self-aware and not let cognitive distortions dictate your course of life. If you find it hard to work through these cognitive distortions, it’s always helpful to seek support from a CBT practitioner.