Negative thought patterns

By Engr. Carlos V. Cornejo

This is from a talk given by Shade Zarai.  Do these following negative thought patterns sound familiar?  (1) Overgeneralization:  making sweeping conclusions on limited data.  For example, you did not go to the next level of your job interview and you conclude that you’re not going to get another job anywhere else.  (2) Mental Filter:  you only notice the negative aspects of an event and overlook the positive ones.  For example, everything failed in the workplace this week and ignore your previous successes.  (3) Catastrophizing: they are going to notice the typo error on my proposal paper and I will lose all credibility and might get me fired.  Catastrophizing also harps on the “what-if’s” of life such as what if I miss my alarm tomorrow, or what if I lose that client deal.  (4) Personalization: putting yourself personally responsible for a negative outcome.  For example, you blame yourself totally responsible that the team was not able to close a deal although it was a team effort.  Personalization happens also when what others say or do is perceived as directed to you.  For example, I was not invited to a project meeting therefore everyone must hate me.  (5) Labelling: an extreme form of generalization about yourself.  For example, you made an error about a report you submitted and attach a negative label to yourself and say, “I am a failure” or “I’m completely useless”.

Here’s Zarai’s advice to overcome these thoughts.  (1) Observe your thinking patterns – view your thoughts objectively and write them down asking yourself, are these thoughts factual?  Are they accurate?  Is there another way to interpret it?  (2) Replace absolutes – when we are stuck with negative distortions in our mind, we often use absolute words such as “always”, “nothing” or “never”.  Replace these absolutes with more realistic words such as “sometimes”, or “occasionally”.  (3) Shift from labels to facts – when you are not able to go to the gym for your regular exercise shift from saying “I’m lazy” to “I was not able to go to the gym today”. Or if you didn’t get the job, instead of saying “Nobody wants to hire me”, say “I did not get the job”.  (4)  Keep a record of ANT’s (Automatic Negative Thoughts) – whenever you capture a negative thought write down to the answers to these questions: “What is the thought?”, “What led you to have the thought?”, “What caused the unpleasant feelings?”  “What evidence is there that the thought is true or not true?”

The aim of her advice in general is to train yourself to search for facts rather than drawing incorrect conclusions about yourself.  Negative thinking, I believe, can also be overcome by hard work, and reliance on God.  A hard worker is someone who persists when things are going well and when they don’t until the desired outcome is achieved.  A hardworking person therefore is someone who is used to failures and has made failures his or her companion.  Negative thinking is a product of fear of failures. If you have developed that attitude of hard work and persistence you will see failures as challenges and lessons to learn.  And coupled with reliance on God who always comes to the aid of His children (provided we regularly pray to Him) who are doing their best, then negative thought patterns would gradually disappear in our life.