Distorted Thinking in Mental Health Flashcards
To understand and prevent the thinking errors we are prone to in poor mental health.
Filtering, Negative Tunnel Vision
Looking at only one element of a situation to the exclusion of everything else, i.e picking out a single negative detail and letting it colour your perception of the entire situation. Or selectively remembering or listening to only those aspects or memories which leave us angry, depressed etc.
Polarized Thinking
An insistence on dichotomous choices, normally between two extremes of a situation. Perceiving the world in black and white terms and therefore failing to
understand the nuances. I.e if you are failing to achieve your own standards then you must be a failure, you cannot be somewhere in between.
Generalization
Making broad and generalized conclusions based on a single or limited piece of evidence. E.g letting one bad experience of something affect all future choices about whether to do it again. Sweeping absolute statements are probably generalizations, for example failing to do one piece of work once does not mean you will not be able to do good work in the future.
Mind reading
Making assumptions about what others are thinking or feeling and what motivates them based on limited or no evidence. Particularly it is present when we make arbitrary conclusions about how people are reacting to us or the things we do. It is often manifested as a projection of either our own anxieties or reactions which we extrapolate to the minds of others.
Fortune Telling
Assuming we have the capacity or evidence to judge what will happen in the future be it in an hour or a year. We often jump to negative conclusions either about what will happen or what is happening beyond what we know. We can challenge this style of thinking by asking about the evidence for our predictions or conclusions.
Catastrophising
This is when we assume based on limited or no evidence that the worst possible outcome is either likely or definite. Often starting with ‘what if?’, this thinking assumes a correlation between our fears and outcomes. It can often lead to a self-fulfilling
Personalisation
Personalisation is the tnedancy to relate eveything to yourself, we percieve everything that happens as directed towards ourselves. A major apsect of personalisation is the tendancy to make constant comparisons between ourselves and those arround us. . It is based on the underlying assumotion or belief that we have limited self-worth. You interpret evything as a that happens, that people say or do as a clue towards our own self-worth. We should instead focus on our own value and trying to be the best version of ourselves that we can be.
Control Fallacies
Fallacies of control mean we can often feel externaly controlled by forces, people or events can affect the basic structures of your life. It can lead us to believe that we cannot change or be responsible for our own lifes, we blame others or factors supposedly beyond our control.
Instead you shoud accept the things you cannot chage and take manageable steps to changethe things actually in your control.
Fallacy of Fairness
This style of distorted thinking comes about when we apply legalistic, hyper-ethical or contractual rules to interpersonal relations. Fairness is often subjective and unlike the law we cannot defer to a court in personal relationships. We can tend to define fairness in a self-serving way and we can locked into biased conceptions of fairness. Other people rarely agree with our conception of fairness and refusing to comprimise can often lead to a breakdown of relationships and arguments.
Emotional Reasoning
This style of thinking is defined by the belief that the way we feel emotionally must be true or imply true things. I.e if i feel guilty then i must have done somthing to be guilty about. Our emotions are not valid nor are they informed by reason. Don’t always believe in your emotions, they can be false or distorted.
The Fallacy of Change
You are the only person you can control, this fallacy assumes that if you pressure or manipulate people enough they will change to suit your needs and behaviour. It assumes that your way of living is absilutely correct and that your happiness is dependant on other people. Your happiness depends upon the thousands od deciscions you make each day.
Gloabal Labelling
Using small bits of evidence or actions to make a global generalisation. E.g someone that dosn’t come and see you once is a cunt, or a boss who makes a few mistakes and unfair decscions is an imbecile. These generalisations have a grain of truth to them but are also excesive and steryotypes.
Blaming
When we feel angry, hurt or upset we feel as though we need somone to blame our feelings on. We can also use blame when we are responsible because we feel it’s exculpatory. For example your GF asks you to do the dishes but you have loads of work and haven’t slept, we blame our GF when really it was our responsibility to tell them. In systems of blame we always believe people are doing things to us and we don’t recognise how we coluld be responsible.
Shoulds
This distortion involves opperating arround a rigid sets of shoulds. We believe the rules are right and indisputable, this leads us to be constantly judging and finding fault with ourselves and those arround us, this means our opinions and actions rarely change. If somone challenges our way of doing things we get angry because we have our list of shoulds:
- I should be able to solve every problem quickly
- I should be a genius
- I should never feel angry or guilty or sad
- I should be totally reliant
Being Right
You view ever accepting that your wrong as a sign of weakeness. You have to continually prove yout right even if it means getting angry or rude. You arn’t interested in the veracity of others opinions hen you could in fact be learning or even if you know them to be true. This can make you lonely because being right is more imortant than your relationships
