7 Thinking Patterns That Hold You Back in Life
Learn these errors to silence your inner critic.
“It’s all my fault.” “He should have thanked me.” “If I can’t get an A from this exam, I’m a failure.” “My boss definitely hated my presentation.”
These were the usual passengers in my many trains of thought. They came naturally and felt like they were obviously correct.
But as I learned more about the mind in my psychology classes, I began to realize they were not the healthiest thoughts and most often, not very objective.
If similar thoughts are familiar to you, your thinking is affected by thinking errors. Being stuck with thinking errors affects your self-esteem and is one of the main culprits of depression¹ and anxiety.²
Letting these thinking errors run freely in your mind might be damaging to your mental health, career, and relationships.
To fix these thinking patterns you have to first recognize them. Below, I will describe the most common thinking errors and what you can do to fix them.
1. All-or-nothing Thinking
With this thinking error, we see the world, other people, and ourselves in black and white.
Life is not black and white. Nobody is completely good like a Disney princess or completely bad like a Disney witch. A person you are angry with is not completely bad or a person you love very much is not completely good. And they don’t need to be.
Many perfectionists have this thinking error. They think they are failures if they can’t reach their unreasonable expectations.
Example: “If I don’t get straight A’s on exams, I am a failure and useless.” A more objective view is that “I should keep my GPA as high as possible. As long as I keep working hard, success will come.”
Perfection does not exist; excellence may be attainable.
2. Focusing On the Negative (And Ignoring the Positive)
You might realize you have a hard time accepting compliments. You might think that person is just being kind. This type of thinking stems from low self-esteem.
When you don’t like things about yourself you might be too harsh on yourself without even noticing it. Focusing only on the negative distracts us from an objective and healthy perspective.
Example: After getting 95 questions correct in a 100-question exam, you think only about those 5 wrong answers and ignore the 95 questions you got right. This is neither healthy nor just. But we can get stuck on these small negatives and forget how good of a job we did.
3. Catastrophizing
We believe, our thoughts to be just and true all the time. Sometimes we can’t even discern realities from our opinions and beliefs. We don’t doubt their rightness for a moment. But are our beliefs really true every time?
Many times, we think of the worst and the last thing that could happen, first. This leads us to unnecessary worry. When we have a bad thought, we should look at it and see if there is evidence for it. Because often we don’t base our thoughts on evidence.
Example: Not hearing from a loved one who went out, could incite us to think the worst. We might think about all the bad things that might happen to them. But this wouldn’t be objective as you might know that person went out before and had no problems. We need to remind ourselves of evidences like this and stop ourselves when we realize we are assuming the worst.
4. Labeling
Labeling is most common when someone makes a mistake. For example, it is not objective to label someone in our lives as useless when they make a mistake or to label ourselves as useless when we make a mistake ourselves.
We cannot label a person based on a single behavior.
Example: I occasionally think “Oh I ate too much ice cream, I’m a pig.” Now this is not really objective because I usually eat healthy but sometimes it is hard to notice how harsh you are to yourself.
Labels like this imply you have no good qualities. But that’s not the case, you might just overeat sometimes and there is nothing wrong with that. Labeling yourself only makes you feel bad and affects your self-esteem.
5. Mind-reading
Imagine a person is listening to you and her eyes dart left and right, you might think that she is bored with you. “Look, she is not even listening to me”, you might complain. But you don’t know that. Maybe she is listening attentively or has remembered something very important to do.
Try to notice whether you are reading minds or not. The more you notice it, the less you will do it and the better you will feel.
Someone may seem angry but don’t assume that. Maybe they are not upset, or if they are, it may have nothing to do with you.
Example: Believing your presentation didn’t go well because nobody asked questions. There could be so many reasons for people not asking questions. They might’ve understood it well or they might be feeling anxious to ask in a crowd. You can never know what they think, so try to notice that you don’t know their actual opinions and your thoughts are only assumptions.
6. ‘Shoulds’
Constantly speaking conditionally to yourself, to others, or to the world order in terms of ‘shoulds’ is not going to do you much good.
Thinking everything as “I should do it, it should be, he should do it” can cause your mental health great harm in the long run.
Because even though these thoughts have been shaped over time, they may be disconnected from reality.
Every person is different and we cannot expect them to live by our rules.
The world is full of exceptions.
Example: You might have an expectation that “A person I am polite to, should be polite to me.” Because of this rigid rule, you may feel angry with the other person at the slightest coldness.
But it wouldn’t be just to expect people to adhere to all our standards. They might not even be aware of the rules you set in your mind for them.
7. Personalization
Personalization is taking responsibility for some negative thing that is not entirely your fault.
This thinking error can be very insidious and invisible.
When someone does something you don’t like, you may take it personally. For example, if someone bumps you on the street, you might think that he is doing it on purpose, and that he is annoyed with you.
But there could be a million reasons why that person did that: maybe he didn’t notice you, maybe he was in a real hurry, maybe he lost someone he loved very much that day, like his mother, and he was devastated.
If you knew the reason, would you be so offended? I’m sure many people would be more tolerant. When people do something that affects you, if the first thing that comes to your mind is “He did that on purpose,” this is a bit problematic.
Because if we look at our own lives, we don’t go out of our way to be mean to someone. This would be very odd for us. So, the other person probably wouldn’t do the same.
Example: You might have a date you were excited to go but he cancels it at the last minute and wants to reschedule it. You might think you are somehow responsible and assume he didn’t like something about you but there could be a million reasons why he cancelled.
Solutions
An important first step in fixing our thinking errors is to recognize them throughout our daily lives.
When you catch a negative thought try to write it down.
The second thing you can do to fix your thinking errors is to challenge them with an opposing thought.
For example, if you made a mind-reading error before by assuming your boyfriend didn’t answer the phone because he is angry with you, you can challenge this thought by thinking about other realistic things that might keep him busy. He might be in traffic or in a meeting etc.
Writing down these thoughts is very useful to recognize and understand them.
Another great technique is Socratic questioning³. In Socratic Questioning you test the assumptions and evidence you have on a certain thought and try to challenge and reframe that thought.
It helps you reflect on your thoughts, beliefs, and assumptions and notice any bias that might not reflect reality. This technique is best done with a psychotherapist, but the framework can be useful for working on your thinking patterns on your own.
In sum, thinking errors are responsible for the anxiety and sadness you experience daily. By recognizing and challenging them, you can improve your mental health and live a happier, more confident life.
Sources
1. Bathina, K.C., ten Thij, M., Lorenzo-Luaces, L. et al. Individuals with depression express more distorted thinking on social media. Nat Hum Behav 5, 458–466 (2021).
2. Kuru, E., Safak, Y., Özdemir, İ., Tulacı, R. G., Özdel, K., Özkula, N. G., & Örsel, S. (2018). Cognitive distortions in patients with social anxiety disorder: Comparison of a clinical group and healthy controls. The European Journal of Psychiatry, 32(2), 97–104.
3. Clark, G.I., Egan, S.J. The Socratic Method in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy: A Narrative Review. Cogn. Ther Res 39, 863–879 (2015).
4. Grinspoon, P. (2022, May 4). How to recognize and tame your cognitive distortions. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/how-to-recognize-and-tame-your-cognitive-distortions-202205042738
