ALWAYS BEING RIGHT

 

People with this faulty thinking process will go to great lengths to prove they are right at all times. They will become irritated and even irate if someone confronts them with facts that contradict them. Being wrong at any level is not acceptable to them and they will demonstrate high anxiety from the inner turmoil if challenged.

 

 

"Always being right" thinkers believe their behaviors, ideas and opinions are absolutely correct and they will continue to prove it until they feel they have some thread of ‘correctness’ to the discussion. Once they believe they have proven their ‘correctness,’ whether or not others acknowledge it, they find intrapersonal peace until the next time someone disagrees with them. People who have this cognitive distortion will not let disagreements end and will not agree to disagree if it hints they are wrong. They will continuously ‘dig’ until they find something, anything, that will prove them at least partially right, then they are satisfied.
 

What to do?
 

• Listen! Recognise and accept that you may not have all the answers, moreover there isn't always one right answer.

• Focus on what you can learn from someone else's opinion.

• Remember that you are a human being, accept your vulnerable humaneness.

•  Be open minded and respect other people's views, choices, opinions.

•  Accept that there are many thing that you don't know and it's OK if you don't know everything.

• Can you tell to yourself that "Doesn't matter who's right"?

Being right is addictive, it stops you from listening, exploring and learning, so don't trap yourself in your own mindset.

EMOTIVE LANGUAGE

Words are powerful things, and certain words have an emotional influence that can colour our thinking - very often in unhelpful ways. We can describe events to ourselves in terms that can either inflame our reactions or calm them down.

 

Emotive words are used to provoke emotion and sometimes to obscure rationality. It can cloud our thinking with emotion or steer us onto a side path. If I said that "this girl is unbelievably rude" instead of "she's not always very friendly" I will instantly feel defensive when the next time we meet or I will try to avoid this person altogether. My language might affect other peoples opinions too. If I told someone "that girl is unbelievably rude" I might plant a negative attitude and create a prejudice in that persons mind, so when he will meet the girl I was talking about he might see her as unbelievably rude without a question.

Emotive language is one of the main reasons why people end up convincing themselves that they will be unable to tolerate situations that they perfectly capable to cope with. It' important to remember that analogies and metaphors do not constitute proof.



How to stop yourself from using emotive language?

• When thinking or talking about emotionally inflammatory scenarios check your vocabulary and make sure you are not throwing fuel on the fire of your negative thoughts.

• Strive to achieve the most neutral, objective tone that you can.

•  When recalling a distressing situation try to look at in in detached way.

Of course it is very hard to think objectively about a scenario that has had a strong emotional impact and it might be difficult to accept that it is often our language that colours our perceptions and feeds our anxieties and low moods.

FORTUNE TELLING

I'm pretty sure you are very familiar with this one. It's when you know how something's going to turn out. Let's say you're revising for your exam and in your mind you're already telling yourself that you're going to fail. Here predictions turn facts, a possibility is turned into a probability.

This is why so many of us hold ourselves back in life. You might avoid going to the social gathering just because we think there won't be anything that will interest you, you decide not to book an outdoor holiday because you predict that it will rain anyway, you might decide not to apply for this job, because you think you won't get it anyway. We can get stuck in this vicious circle and never move on, if we let our thoughts being taken as facts and develop a really low-self esteem.

How to challenge this?

• Identify exactly what your prediction is — exactly what will happen and when and where it will happen;

•  Examine evidence for and against your fortune telling.

• Ask yourself: 

1. How many times your predictions never happened?
2. How can you prove that your thought is right or wrong?
3. Are your fears responsible for fortune telling? 

•  Identify your fears and check what really happens when you embrace them. 

We direct this kind of thinking not only to ourselves but also to others, especially when we don't agree with other people's choices, lifestyle, etc. We might say to them "your relationship is not going to work" or "with a haircut like that you will only get laughed at". What I want to say here is that we simply can't predict anything, so it's not fair to put other people down. Life is not that simple, so why would we impose our opinions on other people (and ourselves) when there's very little chance the things we predict will ever happen. Accept that you just don't know and stay open to various of possibilities. 

EMOTIONAL REASONING

This thinking pattern has become a habit for us that we might not be even aware of doing this. Emotional reasoning happens when our feelings tell us what reality is about situations, ourselves, and others. Here feelings become facts. 

You feel guilty, 'you must've done something wrong', 'you feel attacked, he must be getting at you', 'you feel scared, something awful is about to happen', 'If you feel fat, that means you're fat', etc..We treat our feelings as if they were evidence for the truth of our negative thoughts, when the truth is that our emotions cloud out judgement and make it hard for us to see things clearly.




How to escape from this thinking pattern?

• Recognise that your emotions are not necessarily accurate guides when it comes to establishing the facts and the truth.

• Set your feelings to one side and consider what hard evidence there may be that supports your conclusions.

• Consider other possible explanations.

• Ask yourself: "Would someone else be reacting to this situation in the same way?"

Of course emotions are important for the information they provide, but they have to be interpreted in an objective way to understand what they mean.

MIND READING

In my opinion mind-reading is the most common thinking errors in which we engage almost every day. You probably recognise statements like 'She thinks I'm an idiot", "They thought I am useless", "He thinks he is the center of attention" etc. We are simply making assumptions about other people, their thoughts and intentions all the time. The problem is that most of the time we make assumptions that people are forming negative conclusions about us.

We leap to conclusions about other people's motives and attitudes on the basis of very little hard evidence. We are especially inclined to do this when those motives and attitudes affect us directly. People who's self-esteem is not that high especially engage in this kind of thinking pattern.

Lets look at the examples like these:

A thought: "She completely ignored me in the shop today" - we are quick to jump to these kind of conclusions when a person we know didn't acknowledge us in a public place for example.
True reason: She never saw you in the shop. Why can't we just seek for reasons instead of assuming the worst and causing ourselves all sorts of problems?

A thought: "He thinks I'm unattractive, because my teeth are crooked."
True reason: "Nice woman - if only I wasn't married.."

We take our own negative opinions about ourselves (which we define as facts) and we believe that others are in agreement with us. The trouble here is that when we make these kind of assumptions we leave ourselves exposed to all kinds of misunderstandings and paranoid projections.

The fact of the matter is that we have no way of thinking for certain what another person is thinking unless they choose to tell us! 

BLACK & WHITE or ALL OR NOTHING THINKING

 

 

It won't be difficult to recognise this thinking error. It is characterised by a tendency to view things in extremes - either good or bad; right or wrong; best or worst etc. When black & white thinking dominates in our heads we don't see any shades of grey or any middle ground in between. This applies to ourselves, other people, events and situations.

Black & White, All or Nothing or in other terms Polarised thinking would insist that if you're not thin, you must be fat; if you're not a winner, then you're a loser; if it's not the best, then it's rubish, etc. For some it is very convenient to classify reality in convenient boxes and these thinkers usually spend a great deal of time and energy to impose their classification system on other people. But life isn't that simple!
Many people with 'perfectionist' type tendencies will think in this way and often set up unrealistically high standards for themselves to which they can't live up.

What are the dangers of this distorted process of thinking?

This kind of thinking goes hand in hand with strong moral judgements and self-evaluations that can cause a great deal of unnecessary distress. People who think in rigid ways put themselves and others under intense pressure.
Black & White thinkers tolerate no dissent - after all, in their eyes there is only one right way. This kind of polarised thinking leads to a great many evils in society including racism, bigotry, sexism and political extremism.
When applied to oneself the result of this thinking is an inevitable reduction in self-esteem as the person experiences a negative self-image.


What to do before falling into this extreme polarised thinking?

• It's important to recognise that people can see and experience things in different ways.

• Remember that perceiving a question, or situation in more flexible, sophisticated ways are likely to be better for your mental health.

• Watch out for terms in your speech and thinking such as 'should', 'ought to' and 'must' that may indicate the presence of unhelpfully rigid assumptions about yourself and the world. 

• Try to embrace the grey, try to find and recognise that the middle ground also exists.

• Learn to see that your values and convictions as a matter of personal choice rather than obligatory for everyone.

• Expose yourself to other views that don't necessarily fit in with your own and see if you can find any common ground with those who told them.

Remember that the belief that perfection is possible and the belief that a person's worth is determined by achievement are two irrational beliefs that feed this kind of thinking. It only limits our perspective, increases chances for depression, makes us less willing to compromise, and makes us less adaptive. So next time when you hear someone saying that "Children should be seen and not heard" recognise that this is an extreme opinion which can be challenged.

CATASTROPHISING

Catastrophising is a feature of an anxious and highly stressed person. You've engaged in this kind of thought process or observed others doing it. It is a tendency to exaggerate the consequences of an action, thinking about it as a catastrophic event. When we engage in this kind of thinking we get a sense of threat that things will not only be bad, they will be really bad! 

Lets say you forgot to set your alarm and overslept. Now you will be late for work. If you are prone to catastrophising you might start thinking that this event is some kind of the end of the world - now that you overslept and are late to work, your employer will think you're irresponsible, you will be fired and will be unemployed for a very long time, because of that you'll become depressed and poverty-stricken.

Here we see that during this kind of thought process a highly active imagination is in use showing a negative scenario which results in belief that disaster is inevitable. It's hard to appraise the significance of a situation realistically, and triggers even more stress and higher levels of anxiety.
When we're catastrophising with 'should' style thinking about other people or life in general it often leads to anger.


How to stop yourself from falling into doom-laden thinking?

• Accept that catastrophising is a symptom of your anxiety and/or stress and nothing more.

• Remember that 99.9 percent of the time "What if's" and worst case scenarios never occur.

• Ask yourself:

1. On the scale of all the bad things that have happened to you in the past or could happen in the future, how bad could this event be?
2. If I had no choice but to deal with the very worst thing that could happen in this situation what would you actually do?
3. Learn to look at your thoughts, feelings and behaviours as outsider. What would you say to your friend if he/she was immersed in this kind of thinking? Can you apply this to yourself too?
4. Is there anything good about the situation?
5. In there any way to fix the situation?
6. What can I control in this situation and what I can't?

Don't let your imagination run riots with frightening scenarios, don't be your own enemy.

FILTERING AND MAGNIFYING

You must have heard the saying "Making mountains out of molehills". That's exactly what magnifying is - when we exaggerate the importance or frequency of events that fit with our beliefs. Filtering, as a name suggests, is when we only accept an information that fits with our preconceptions and disregard any other equally legitimate information that contradicts our notion. 

This kind of thinking is so common that it causes heated debates and  fights when people don't want to let go their rigid way of thinking and refuse to open their minds to other opinions, facts and possibilities. We also often create distorted pictures of ourselves. 

How often have you been in a situation when you pull out negative things out of context, isolated from all good experiences around you, and made them larger and more awful than they really were?  In my opinion, it's a warning sign of a low self-esteem and feeling of worthlessness.



How to prevent yourself going down this road?

• Try to see the whole picture - take into account all facts, even if they don't seem to fit with your beliefs and expectations.

• See whether you can build a case for opposite of what you currently believe. For example, instead of thinking that you ruined the party by saying something silly, focus on your performance which you were praised for. 

• Check that you're not blowing certain elements out of proportion. Did other people react the same way as you did?

Be aware of your thinking, learn to challenge yourself and free yourself from narrow-mindedness...

SELF-BLAME

When we engage in self-blame we are literally emotionally abusing ourselves! Why would we do this to ourselves? The answer is simple - sometimes we fail to recognize our own humanity, we demand too much from ourselves, we hold too much responsibility even for things that are out of our control. Blame leads to shame and self-blaming means self-shaming.

Self-blame is especially common among sexual assault, rape and childhood sexual abuse survivors, and people suffering from depression, so it is important to free yourself from this toxic thinking and help those around you to do the same.



How to stop blaming yourself?   

• It's important to remember, that we are human beings, we aren't perfect and we are not going to get it right every time.  

• Recognise that a lot of things happen beyond our control. If you were a victim of a crime you're not to blame. We happen to end up in the wrong place at the wrong time, we just can't predict the future...  

• If you are going to make yourself accountable for something then make sure you see the bigger picture and seek evidence. Don't let negative bias to take over and turn on your logical thinking.

• If you learned that you are to blame for something, don't dwell on it. Accept it and learn from mistakes.

• Learn to accept what you can't change and focus on changing what you can.

Self-blaming is self-destructive, and engaging in this kind of thinking you're not doing any favours to yourself, it only makes matters worse. If you want to free yourself and move on, only you can change it.

BLAME

Blaming is the total opposite of personalising in that it's the fault of other people, circumstances, the world that something has happened or whatever problem has occurred.

People who blame other people, circumstances or the world for their misfortune, or whatever happens to them, do that because they avoid taking any personal responsibility. For instance, when the conversation with a friend or family member turns to a row, some people are quick to blame others for 'misunderstanding', 'lack of listening', 'being selfish', 'flaring up', 'bringing up the subject'... etc. By doing that they try to unload any responsibility, although they might not always be aware of that, and fail to understand their contribution to the problem.

Often blaming is also a defensive manoeuvre for people who are unable to accept and tolerate the possibility that they might be at fault in some way. It's natural for us to feel that we're right and others aren't, we tend to be blind to our own flaws. Although, when we are aware of our flaws, we don't want them to be discovered by others, so we start to cover them up and live in fear to appear less than perfect. The thing is that no one is perfect.

Isn't just easier to accept the fact that you are just a vulnerable human being, weather you're a man or a woman. Blame is destructive, it makes people bitter and angry. Children often blame their siblings or other kids, because they haven’t yet learned how to be responsible for their actions, and they're afraid that they'll be loved less if the truth comes out. Are you still a child?


How to stop blaming others and why?

• Ask yourself - "If everything is someone else's fault, then what part do I play in my own life?"

• Look for evidence for or against your blaming statement. Yes, sometimes others are at fault and they need to know it and take responsibility. But being able to accept responsibility when it's right means we actually become less helpless and passive.

• Remember you can only grow by perceiving true feedback about youself. Seeing objectively where you went wrong is how you improve and develop.

• Accept that there is absolutely no shame in being able to admit to yourself or others that you made mistakes. Quite the opposite - it shows real strength of character. 

• Apologise if you know you're in fault, admit that you too are human and make mistakes. People will respect you for it.

Blame affects relationships, it causes hurt, mistrust and break friendships. If people feel you blame them unfairly, they will resent you. They may even come to hate you. Instead of wasting your energy on blame seek the way to get over the problem.

 

PERSONALISING

Some people take blame for things that are not necessarily their fault even though they are not under their control. Say your colleague passes you in the street and barely acknowledges you apart from a wry smile. Instinctive reaction would be to take it personally. You might think “Have I done something wrong? She's normally very chatty.” You suddenly feel uneasy and try to figure out what you might have done, when your colleague actually was thinking “I need to get to the loo”.

Some people are insecure about reality and tend to 'see' these insecurities in the actions or/and words of others, and take things personally. We are social animals, we want to be acknowledged, valued and loved by others, and we are very quick to feel uneasy, hurt, guilty and sad when it's not confirmed, when we feel rejected and ignored.

What are the dangers?

Taking things perosnally can lead to large misunderstandings, and it can fracture relationships. One can start living in fear of rejection and be uncomfortable with himself, develop low self-esteem, avoid socialising, therefore blaming himself even more.

What to do?

• Remember that not everything that happens is because of you. If someone's not very chatty with you on a certain occasion as they normally are – think that there can be something related to them (i.e. worried about something, having a bad day, headache... the list is endless).

• Don't be afraid to communicate and ask for clarity. You'd be surprised by answers.

 

We need to look inside ourselves, question ourselves, and try to stop that inner critic. Although some reactions are instinctive, we can still gain control of it by opening our minds. We need to find our wounds and heal them, speak our truths kindly and calmly without a fear. Whatever happens, it's not always about us!

LABELLING

Isn't it crazy how many distorted thinking habits do we have? Labelling is another one, and in my opinion it's evil. It happens when we attach a description to ourselves, other people, things or events. These descriptions can be very negative, humiliating, hurtful, ugly words which only cause all sorts of problems.

Lets look at terms like 'failure', 'loser', 'stupid', 'worthless', 'incompetent', 'clueless', the list is endless. We label ourselves when we concentrate and criticise our behaviour, intelligence, confidence, appearance. The same applies when we label others. People are prone to judge miraculously fast. When someone looks, talks or behaves odd we are likely to say or think 'weirdo', seeing overweight person we might label them as 'fat'. Doing it in mind also counts!

What are the dangers of labelling?

Labelling is especially dangerous. Firstly, the most important danger here is that it lays the foundations for verbal abuse and bullying. Secondly, lets say if you tell someone or yourself that he, or she, or you are 'useless' you only cause discouragement from further activity and improvement.

Studies prove that labelling is especially destructive if a person suffers from low self-esteem and can trigger depression. It causes nothing but friction, and tends to generate negative emotions such as shame, guilt, anxiety, self-loathing and decreases self-confidence. It may also fuel anger, outrage and even rebellion. 

Sometimes labels can be attached to people since their childhood days by other children, or parents, or other authority figures. Children are sensitive to labels, they can carry it to adulthood and use it against themselves, and also others. 

How to avoid this kind of thinking?

• Try to separate a person's behaviours from the person as a whole, don't attack his or her identity. Only by recognizing this can we improve the relationships by communicating in a different way.

• Before you're tempted to call someone 'irresponsible', stop and think again. Maybe they were distracted or simply forgot, there could be numerous reasons. 

• Talking about self-labelling try to accept that you behaved in a pathetic way, or did something silly. Don't call yourself 'stupid' because of some single action. Words hurt as much as physical pain. Separate what you did from self, move on, and work on improvements.

We are vulnerable human beings, we're not perfect, we do things we regret, we make mistakes, fail to achieve what we go for, make bad decisions and criticise people. It's a part of our existence, but as human beings we can also make a difference and be in control of our words, and thoughts, stop hurting ourselves, and others. 

SHOULD / MUST

This is a common thinking pattern and it won't be difficult to regocnize because most of us believe that the world, situations, things, and people should or must be in a certain way. 

Other words like 'ought to' and 'have to' also fall into this category. To make matters worse, we also apply demands to ourselves. How often do you think you say or think that 'people should be...this an that..'', 'I should've.. done this or that..; 'I should be married by now..'; 'I must always be on time...' etc.

What happens when we engage in rigid way of thinking? 

 

Firstly, it limits us in our lives, makes us inflexible and narrow-minded. Secondly, we criticize, condemn and complain about whatever that's violating the 'should', 'must', 'ought to' or 'have to'. We are creating a reality which is entirely of our own fabrication, we stick to it and if the things don't work or people behave the way we believe they 'should' it causes anger, frustration (and guilt when we applying demands to ourselves), it basically generates bad feelings.

How to get back to the 'real' world of how things are as opposed to 'should be'? 

• The first step would be to realise that things do not have to unfold in a certain way. Then change the rigid words (and your beliefs at the same time), otherwise you'll still end up feeling bad. 

• If you're tempted to say that 'people should behave in a certain way', the healthy thinking option would be to prefer – 'I preferred people behaved in a certain way'. Here you have more flexibility to cope when thing's don't happen this way, thus it reduces the chances of you feeling bad.

• When you are tempted to apply demands to yourself, try to reframe them. Instead of 'I must' say 'I would like to', 'It would be nice' etc. That would help to avoid guilt, anger and frustration. 

• Ask questions, for example instead stating 'She shouldn't be so rude' try 'How could she be so insensitive?'.

Let 'the critical parent' go, be open-minded and accept that things are just the way they are. We would like some things to be different, but most of the time it's beyond our control, so why to waste energy and feel angry about things which we cannot control?

GENERALISING

If I told you something like - 'I never do things right'; 'All men are chauvinists'; 'I always end up in the longest queues' etc. - Would you think I am right? 

 

How often do you think you use words like - always, never, everyone, nobody, the world is... etc.? Most of us are vulnerable to generalising. People who incline in this kind of thinking are simply making assumptions about the way the world works, which can only be conclusions drawn from a single unpleasant experience or discrete piece of information.

What are the dangers of this kind of unhealthy thinking? 

One of them is that it makes hard for you to bring any past positive experiences to mind and you may start believing it is true and 'make it happen' (i.e. if you think that nobody likes you, you may start making little effort to engage with people and avoid them).

What to do? 

• Pause and think;
• Question yourself;
• Train yourself to look for exceptions to your own rules;
• Look for evidence;
• Change habits, it all comes with time.

 

Dalai Lama said 'The mind is like a parachute, it works best when it is open'. Why not to look at people and things as unique and independent? Generalisation just causes prejudice, hurt and conflicts. It's not only unhealthy thinking but also destructive.

 
 
 
 

NATURE OR NURTURE?

As scary as it might sound people don't choose their own developmental path. How we turn out depends on where we've been.

It all starts at conception. Who we are begins with our molecular blueprints. As much as we believe that we are the drivers of our behaviour, unfortunately we are not the ones. The driver is our brain which is beyond our control and consciousness.

People's brains can be vastly different - influenced not only by genetics but by environments in which they grew up. Many factors can influence how we turn out, starting with substances used by a mother during pregnancy, maternal stress, and low birth weight, ending with child neglect, abuse and head injury which can cause problems in mental development.
As I mentioned earlier this week also a slight change in the balance of brain chemicals can cause large changes in behaviour.

Presumably the one important question raises here - 'Do we have a free will?'. The answer is - no good evidence exits to support that.

So, we are each constructed from a genetic blueprint and born into a world of circumstances about which we have no choice in our most formative years... Is it clear how much the conscious you gets to do any decision at all?

HOW TO RAISE A SMART BABY?

Some might think that new high-tech toys for baby's is a breakthrough to a faster and better brain development. Please don't assume that. 

 

 What your baby needs to boost their brainpower is YOU!

• For every minute a baby is in front of a screen, they are not engaged with a loving, familiar caregiver because infants learn from loving adults who are their best learning tools. What mattered to babies a hundred or thousand years ago is still what matters today;

• Reading aloud and talking often to their small children and babies, also playing and paying attention to their interests and using these interests to foster curiosity, ultimately stimulates your baby's brain growth and promotes faster brain development;

• Don't just read to your child read WITH them, otherwise you'll turn a child into a passive recipient, which will cause them getting far less out of the experience then if you engage them in the process;

• Simply loving and nurturing your baby will do wonders for child's brain power;

Next time when you'll be tempted to plant your child in front of TV or computer screen, think twice, and spare your time to interact with them. Your time to your child is an invaluable and irreplaceable gift!

MALE OR FEMALE BRAIN?

Illustration by Robert Neubecker

 

There is a common belief that men are smarter than women just because they have bigger brains. Well, that is a myth, and the truth is that the weight and size of a brain has nothing to do with intellectual ability! Moreover brain has its own ''gender'' ! ! ! 

Some facts:


• Albert Einstein’s brain weighed less than the average weight of a human brain!

• The male brain is on average up to 10% larger than a female's;

• The female brain have more nerve cells and connectors, therefore working more efficiently than male's.

• The male brain tend to perform tasks generally with the left-side, which is the logical/rational side of the brain.

• The female brain use both sides of their brains because a female brain has a larger corpus callosum, which means that it can transfer data between the right and left hemispheres faster.

• You certainly have got either systemising male or empathising female brain despite your biological gender and sexual orientation.

• The type of brain you have will influence your feelings, behaviour, talents and weaknesses.

I think it's time to appreciate each other as equal human beings whether you're man or woman. Darwinian theory has influenced and supported the idea that men were superior to women, which was already within many cultures. How can we challenge gender stereotypes?

WHO AM I ?

         Me it's not a physical body. Me is something greater, something that has no end, something really deep, immense, something that is impossible to be fully understood. Looking at yourself is like wandering in an endless maze with hundreds of dead ends. It feels like you're constantly throwing yourself a challenge, looking for that right way which could bring you to the right answers. Is there such a thing like a right answer? I've been looking for so many answers all my life, I still do. It's so exhausting. What I am today is how I went through things in my life. There are things I clearly remember, there are other things which I'm not sure about, there are even more things that have been forgotten.. Memory is even a more complicated web, which you can't always trust. So, how can you access to the right answers?

       

       We are constantly seeking for answers and meanings. We are always asking questions, if not out loud then silently in our minds. Our minds are buzzing 24/7, it's like it has a life of it own, a huge cosmos which cannot be understood. So, you, including me, are wandering in its endless space not knowing where to turn and how to comprehend its complexity...