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MENTAL HEALTH: HOW TO THINK CLEARLY
Sally: “Judy is 5 minutes late.” Jean: “Yeah. Judy is always late.”
Bill: “That’s a pretty nice tie, Harry.”
Harry thinks: “Bill has no taste. This tie must be terrible. I’ll throw it away.”
Jean and Harry are thinking illogically. Just because Judy may have been late once or twice, Jean jumps to the conclusion that Judy is always late. And Harry does not know how to accept a compliment; he sees only the negative side.
Jean’s and Harry’s twisted logic are but two examples of a dozen kinds of distorted thoughts that hold us in their grip, producing depression, anxiety, and frustration, ruining our relationships with others, and making it difficult for us to think, to work, to love.
I call them the “dirty dozen of distorted thinking.” Psychologists call them cognitive distortions. The word cognitive comes from the Latin cognoscere, which means “to know.” Cognitive refers to what you know and believe rather than how you feel, your emotions.
Psychologists say that almost no one escapes cognitive distortions. If twisted logic is giving you trouble with your spouse, children, friends, or boss, or if you are ever anxious, depressed or puzzled over emotional problems, you too may be a victim of one or more of these “dirty dozen.”
1. “Every.” Although psychologists call the first distortion “overgeneralization,” I call it the “every” distortion. After only one or two instances of an event, you leap to the conclusion that it happens every time, or to everybody, or everywhere. A prime example of the every distortion is Jean’s twisted thinking. Jean thinks her friend is always late even though Judy may have been late only once before.
2. The shoulds. You set up impossible standards of behavior for yourself or others, telling yourself and others what should or must be done. It’s easy to fail this way. Reasonable people make suggestions more tentatively. “Such and such might be better,” they say.
3. All or nothing. Some of us see everything in terms of one extreme or the other; there is no in-between. For example, we either love or hate something, or we think everybody is either good or bad. We view everything in stringent black-and-white terms when, figuratively speaking, real life is shades of gray.
4. No! No! No! If something is even remotely negative in another person’s actions or words, you will find it and harp on it.
5. Mind reading. You really believe that you know what another person is thinking. (“I know my boss likes long memos, even though he says he doesn’t.”) Then when you act on your beliefs, you get into trouble. The success rate of all mind reading is low, no matter what you’ve seen in the movies or on television. Even trained psychologists fall into the trap. An actual test shows that psychologists could guess correctly only 50 percent of the time what their patients were thinking.
6. Catastrophizing. If you suffer from this distortion, you view everything as a catastrophe. One gray hair on your head means that you are old. One lost sale signals the end of your job. Catastrophizing paralyzes action; if you fear the worst, you won’t make a move.
7. I! I! I! You think that everything happens because of you or to you. If your best friend gets the flu, you think it’s because you served her iced tea on the rainy afternoon that she visited, and then you fret that you’re sure to catch an even worse case. Most such occurrences have more than one cause, the least of which is probably your contribution.
8. Mislabeling. With mislabeling, you tend to paint a picture of reality that you want or fear rather than what exists. You may say, “I’m a failure” and think that you really are, when all you actually did was make a mistake. .
9. Poisoning the positive. Like Harry, you find reasons to distrust and dismiss compliments or friendly moves. Such poisoned thinking discourages friendships and undermines intimacy.
10. Thoughts as things. You take something that exists only in your head and you make it real. This, in turn, leads to a form of mislabeling. You think you’re being given all the bad jobs in the office when in fact you are not.
11. Emotional reasoning. Essentially, you think, “I feel it; therefore, it must be true.” For example, you feel anxious, so you conclude that something terrible will happen to you.
12. Magnify/minimize. You either exaggerate or downplay a situation, depending on your needs rather than the reality. If you have a pimple, you may say it’s skin cancer. Or, you insult someone and minimize the effect by saying, “I was only joking.”
*112/266/5*
GENERAL HEALTH
