The greatest enemies of success and happiness are negative emotions of all kinds. They hold you down and tire you out. This blog post covers the ways to remove them, so we can live happier more successful lives.
For this, I’m taking the sniper approach. There are many aspects of this topic, and I will be focusing on one specific one and how to deal with it, instead of skimming over many of the problems and hardly touching on them.
Disclaimer: Having come through counseling, and learning these tools, I understand that this post can never take the place of professional consulting. Seek professional care if needed. I also realize I don't have all the answers here. I plan on giving only what I have personally learned or experienced.
First, let’s understand that the negative thoughts that invade our minds are the true cause of our emotions. The opposite is also true. If we want to manage our emotions well, then our thoughts are the jumping-off point. Psychologists give this the title of "Cognitive Distortions."
Cognitive distortions - Distorted ideas or thoughts about the world around us. They are often automatic and very difficult to track down.
Epictetus - "People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them."
Types of Cognitive Distortions
We all experience cognitive distortions of some kind, so let's take a look at some of the main ones that we may deal with. Identifying is often a large part of fixing the problem, so if you notice yourself doing some of these things that's a good thing.
All or Nothing - Black and white, good or bad. No middle ground. You may have heard someone say “If I’m not successful at what I do, I’m completely useless.” That’s an example of all or nothing.
Overgeneralization - This is when something bad happens to us and we think it’s the new norm. For example, If a guy gets rejected by a girl, he may overgeneralize that all women will reject him in the future.
Filtering - This is when we pick a negative detail from a situation and focus on it exclusively. It makes us view the whole situation with a negative view.
Mind Reading - This is when you assume that you know what someone is thinking or what their reasons and intentions are. Even though your wrong most of the time. For example, “She’s not paying attention to me, I’m sure she’s not interested in what I’m saying.”
Emotional Reasoning - At the core of this distortion is the belief that what the person feels must be true. We take our emotions as proof though we lack objective information. For example, “If I feel like a loser, it’s because I am a loser.”
Jumping to Conclusions - Jumping to conclusions without all the information that we need. We end up at an arbitrary and unfounded conclusion. For example, “I’m sure that my family won’t like this food I’m making.”
Magnification and Minimization - This is when we focus on our mistakes, fears, or imperfections and exaggerate their importance. Example “OH NO! I’ve made a mistake. This is horrible! It’s awful! Minimization is the opposite extreme. This is when we minimize our qualities. For example, “I’m not smart enough for math. Getting a 90% on the exam doesn’t prove anything.”
Labels - Instead of identifying the mistake, we give ourselves a negative label. For example, “I’m a loser.” We don’t like someone’s behavior we simply label him as “He’s a jerk.”
Cognitive distortions are at one extreme or another, which I hope is clear from the examples. Please don’t hear me say that if you sad, or feeling an emotion, then you need to find a way to suppress that. We were created with emotion for a reason, and shouldn’t try to remove all traces of it. Cognitive distortions go farther than normal emotional responses, and thus, why they are called “negative” emotions.
How to remove Cognitive distortions
There is a three-step process that we should use in response to cognitive distortions.
Identify
Test
Act
Identify
First and most obviously, we must recognize and identify the thought that is being distorted. Compare it to the list we covered if you find that helpful. Also, think back to what lead up to the thought. Is there a pattern? Identify as much as you can, the pattern, the tendencies, how you normally respond, etc.
Test
Now that you’ve identified the thought, stop for a second to test the thought. Here are some ways to do that.
Ask yourself “What evidence do I have to prove that this is true?” Then ask “What evidence do I have to prove that this is false?” Force yourself to answer both sides of the question before you move on, or thinking there's only one answer.
Ask yourself “How will it help me to believe this negative, irrational thought, or how will it hurt me?”
Another way is to challenge the absolutes. Often cognitive distortions carry words like “never, always, can’t, positive, forever” and so on. Your “positive” it’ll take “forever”? You “never” have enough time? Often the simple act of catching those and using more accurate words is a large step in the right direction. For example, I absolutely refuse to use the word “can’t” if I can help it. It implies that whatever is happening is 100% out of my control, which usually isn’t the case. I “can’t” help this afternoon? That’s saying I have no control over how I spend my time. I refuse to live like that. If someone offered a million dollars to do what you “can’t” I bet you “could” very quickly.
Act
Now for the most important part. Acting on the outcome of your decision. First of all, understand that your mind is very skilled at lying to you and feeding you negativity. Something like 70% of thoughts are negative. Sometimes this makes expelling cognitive distortions quite difficult. Often the simple act of defining them as they are, (irrational distortions of reality) is a huge step in the direction of solving them.
Another way that will help is to practice compassion. Our minds often bash and rail us when in a cognitive distortion state. Imagine you were speaking to a friend who was going through this. You would be uplifting and encouraging to them. Do the same to yourself. Speaking kindly to yourself seems simple, but making a genuine effort each day to build yourself up will increase your confidence and self-esteem, and is a wonderful habit to make.
For example, when your ready to take that test, tell yourself “I’m smart, I’ve worked hard, I’ve studied the material I need to.” Over time you will develop more realistic and helpful thoughts, which increase your mood, help your thoughts be positive, and you then have an upward spiral effect.
Live it
It would be extremely unfair for me to leave you with just those 3 steps. They make it seem so simple and clean, when in fact, many times dealing with this part of the brain is messy and unclear. Let me share what it’s like to live this way, how you will see change, and what to expect.
First of all, I want you to understand that everyone fights this, and trust me, it’s better to fight it than to live in it. When you begin, you will feel very clumsy trying to navigate this part of your thought process. You may only realize one or two cognitive distortions a day in the beginning, but with time you will get better at recognizing and expelling them.
At first, it will be discouraging, many times I asked myself “Do I have to manually walk myself through each one of these?” At first yes, you will. But what you are actually doing, is reprogramming your mind and how it thinks. As time goes on, your mind will do this naturally, and with enough time, you won’t even notice you're doing it. Then one day, you will go through something hard and realize, you hardly even reacted to it. You’ll look back over time and that is when you will see the growth.
Remember that this is a process of time, not a once and done. Resolve before you even begin, to never give up. I’ve been through this, I know what it’s like. In fact, it’s not often I make a post that hits home for myself as this one does. This was a large part of my life a few years ago. Now that I'm on the other side of sorts, it's wild to look back and see the change that has happened, even in other areas of my life because of this skill.
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