Maladaptive Thinking Habits Flashcards
Black and white thinking
Things are bad or good–no grey area. Any mistake is a failure. Seeing events in categorical terms.
Labeling
Attributes negative events to fixed personal characteristics. Also leads to labeling others.
Perfectionism / Need to be right
Basing your sense of self on never being wrong or making a mistake. Leads to defensiveness, anger, and guilt/shame when wrong.
Overgeneralization
Seeing a single negative event as part of a pattern.
Victimization
A form of overgeneralization where some force causes all the bad things that happen in life.
Negative filter
Focusing on the negative instead of the positive.
Discounting the positive
Treating positive as the status quo and not appreciating it, instead focusing on things that go wrong. Finding negative explanations for positive things.
Magnification
Exaggerate negatives and downplay positives. Taking one small negative out of proportion.
Catastrophizing
Magnifying the negatives that could occur in the future. Assuming things will turn out badly. Avoiding risk.
If-only thinking
Focusing on how much better your life would be if you changed one choice made in the past.
Mind-reading
Assuming you know what people are thinking, and that they are usually thinking bad things about you.
Emotional reasoning
Emotions dictate your actions without considering logic. Assuming your emotions reflect the way things really are.
Worrying as
The belief that worrying can cause something to happen. Worrying about things outside of your control.
Externalization of self-worth
Basing your self worth on how you think others perceive you. If people are happy with you, you’re happy. Thought pattern of people pleasers.
Negative comparisons
Base your self worth on how you compare to others. Need to be better than others in order to be okay with yourself.
