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Distorted Thinking Escalates Anger
Try to experience being angry without angry thoughts. Try to experience being sad, happy, or jealous without their corresponding thought processes. You can't do it! Our thoughts and feelings are interlinked. So the way we think is of the utmost importance. Humans are the only creatures that can think about their thinking. The next time you find yourself feeling sad or tired or bored, consider the thoughts you've been entertaining that brought on that feeling. You can change the way you are feeling by changing your thoughts. Sometimes, many times, our thoughts are distorted. We are not consciously aware of the distortions. By reviewing these 15 thinking distortions and making your friend or partner aware of them, you can playfully catch each other thinking distortedly. We all distort our thinking but to eliminate most, we can remain more objective about life around us. It makes life work a lot easier.
All-or-Nothing-Thinking - You look at things from all or nothing categories Mind Reading - You assume people are treating you badly and that you know their true motive Fortune Telling - You automatically predict that things are going to turn out badly Magnification - You blow things out of proportion, you make mountains out of molehills Minimization - You trivialize, you reduce the mountain down to a molehill Emotional Reasoning - You reason from how you feel, not from logic or reality Inflamatory Labeling - You exaggerate a single characteristic implying it is the whole picture (jerk, loser, liar, selfish, stupid, SOB) Blaming - He did it to you and he should not get away with it! It is all his fault and I am blameless. Personification - You blame yourself for something that you are not entirely responsible for. Negative Filter - You dwell on the negatives and ignore the positives Demanding - Your desires are elevated so that others MUST obey you. (they have to...ought to...got to...must) Commanding - You believe that people should act or not act in certain ways. When they don't, they have broken your commandment. Entitlement - You believe that you deserve to have it your way. If things don't go your way, then, WATCH OUT! Catastrophising - It is always going to turn out bad. It always has, and it always will be. |