“sTINKING THINKING”

When working with clients, how they think is a topic of every session. Human beings have instinctual thinking systems that navigate us toward negativity for survival purposes. Clinicians often refer to them as ANTS (Automatic Negative Thinking Systems). 

The problem is that we massively overuse negative thinking and it can lead to “stinking thinking” about ourselves and how we interact with the world. In fact, there are 10 unhelpful thinking styles that human beings engage in that can lead to a host of issues for how we treat ourselves. I refer to the unhelpful thinking styles as a spider web. Once we engage in one, we flick the metaphorical spider web, send vibrations, and wake up the whole system. What I mean is once we engage in one unhelpful thinking style, the others tend to get moving and follow in tandem because they are all interconnected (like webs). 

I believe that knowledge is power and when we are aware and mindful of what these negative thinking styles are, we can identify when we are doing them and reframe our thoughts to be more realistic and rooted in trying to understand what we are feeling instead of thinking in those moments. 

Here is a brief overview of the unhelpful thinking styles: 

All or Nothing Thinking (Black and White Thinking): Leaving room for only two options and limiting our experience when the world is comprised of many shades of grey.

Mental Filter: Filtering out information and only focusing on certain aspects of a situation; often filtering out information that may not be in alignment with our opinion or viewpoints.

Jumping to Conclusions (Mind Reading): Making assumptions about what others are thinking with limited information and/or making assumptions to predict the future.

Emotional Reasoning: Making assumptions that because we are feeling a certain emotion that it must be true. This one can be tricky so I use an example to help folks understand better.

Let’s say I tripped and fell and felt embarrassed. Instead of just saying ‘that was embarrassing’, emotional reasoning will tack on ‘I am embarrassed so I must be an idiot’.

Labeling: Calling ourselves names mostly in light of when we make mistakes. 

Overgeneralizing: This happens when we take one instance of a situation and making the assumption that this is how it will be every time. In essence, it is when we ascribe a situation to be a pattern when we don’t have enough data to know if it will actually become a pattern. 

Catastrophizing/Minimizing: These are paradoxical ideas where in we either spin situations into tornadoes and make them much larger than they are or minimize situations or behaviors to make them seem less important than they are. 

Disqualifying the Positive: Discarding positive things that happen and focusing on only the negative aspects of a situation. I like to give an example that many people can relate to. 

Let’s say you have a performance review at work and in 7 out of the 8 categories you received glowing remarks, but in one area, your boss thought you could use improvement. If you are disqualifying the positive, you will discard the 7 accolades and hyperfocus on the area that needs improvement.

Should/Must: Assigning words of permanence that are critical or judgmental to make ourselves feel guilty and/or putting us in a headspace that we are somehow not good enough or have already failed before starting. 

When my clients use ‘should’ language, I often ask ‘should according to whom’? Because then we have to admit that ourselves or others are placing unnecessary guilt around a situation. 

Personalization: This can happen two ways. One being where we take responsibility for things that we do not need to be accountable for. The other is blaming other people for your own actions and refusing to take any responsibility for yourself. 

After reading those, we can see how easy it is to use them together as they are all closely related. The goal isn’t to irradicate these unhelpful thinking styles because, remember, ANTS is a built-in system. What we can do, is catch when we are engaging in them and ask ourselves what we are feeling instead. Feelings are more accurate when it comes to understanding a situation than just bypassing emotion and going straight to thinking. 

Remember from my last blog, slow down, be the tortoise. Unhelpful thinking is a byproduct and going too fast in situations.