Helping Patients and their Loved Ones Achieve Greater Emotional Health
Unhealthy Thinking Patterns Connected With Depression
All-or-nothing thinking. Seeing things in black-or-white. For example, if a situation falls short of perfection, you consider it a total failure.
Overgeneralizing. Letting a single negative event imply that bad things will always happen, or that good things will never happen.
Mental Filtering. Focusing in on a single negative aspect of a situation, and blocking out everything else that may be good about it.
Discounting the positive. Ignoring all positive events, and telling yourself that they don’t count, it was just a fluke or just luck. This predictably takes the joy out of life, and leaves you feeling inadequate.
Jumping to conclusions. Putting a negative spin on an event, even though there are not facts to support your conclusion.
Mind reading. Assuming that your can tell when someone is thinking bad thoughts about you.
Fortune-telling. Feeling that you can predict that something will turn out badly.
Magnification. Seeing problems and setbacks in exaggerated and large terms, or minimizing and putting down good things.
Emotional reasoning. Assuming that your negative emotional state really reflects the ways things are.
Should statements. Thinking that things “should” be the way you want them to be, rather than, “it would be nice” if things turned out the way you wanted.
Labeling. Attaching a negative label to yourself rather than describing what happened to you. “I’m a jerk” vs. “I made a small mistake”.
Personalization and self-blame. Holding yourself personally responsible for something that isn’t completely under your control.
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