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Think Positively

June

No matter what some cynics will tell you, if there are aspects of your life that you
find yourself unable to cope with on a daily basis, seeking the help of a good counseling
service could quite possibly change things for the better. This has certainly proven true
for me. One of the many ways that Wendy, my counselor through the University of
Iowa's Women's Resource and Action Center, has helped me out was by photocopying
pages 8-12 of a self-help book called The Feeling Good Handbook*, and handing these
pages to me at the end of my third or fourth session with her, with the instruction to read
them before returning the next week. Now, I know what you're thinking: "It's called 'The
Feeling Good Handbook'? How LAME!" Well, maybe. I wouldn't know, I've only read
pages 8-12. But on those four pages is a list of ten forms of twisted thinking; as I read
them, I was surprised to see in print the sort of thought patterns that I had been practicing
which had led to misery and painful depressive episodes.
Without further ado, here are 10 forms of twisted thinking that you should watch out for:
All-or-nothing thinking. "You see things in black-or-white categories. If a situation
falls short of perfect, you see it as a total failure." Engaging in this sort of thinking will
often lead to the failure of long-term projects; when results don't roll in right away, you
feel completely discouraged.
Discounting the positive. "You reject positive experiences by insisting they 'don't
count'." This form of twisted thinking "takes the joy out of life and makes you feel
inadequate and unrewarded."
Emotional reasoning. "You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the
way things really are." A good example of line of reasoning would be something like, 'I
feel so worthless. I must have nothing to offer to those around me.'
Jumping to conclusions. "You interpret things negatively when there are no facts to
support your conclusion." This form of twisted thinking can be further broken down into
mind reading ("without checking it out, you arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting
negatively to you") and fortune-telling ("predicting that things will turn out badly" when
you in fact have no evidence to support such pessimism).
Magnification. "You exaggerate the importance of your problems and shortcomings",
and/or you "minimize the importance of your desirable qualities". Thus your flaws
become food for obsession.
Mental filter. "You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively, so that
your vision of all of reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors a beaker
of water." For example, twenty people compliment you on something and one person has
a negative opinion of it; that negative opinion is what you keep coming back to.
Over generalization. "You see a single negative event... as a never ending pattern of
defeat by using words such as 'always' or 'never' when you think about it." For example,
when I experience a depressive episode, I will often end up thinking that it will never
end, that I will always be feeling this way. And then there are the ones that I have come
to think of as 'The Big Three'.