There are a number of unhelpful thinking styles that can regularly come up when we worry. They're unhelpful because they're negative and they can lead you into a downward spiral of worried thoughts. We know for sure that thoughts can create feelings, and so you can soon find yourself feeling anxious, triggered by these unhelpful thoughts, and the vicious circle begins.
Which of the following unhelpful thinking styles do you recognise?
Black and white thinking: Being unable to see both the positive and negative in a situation - also known as ‘all or nothing’ thinking. You might think that everything about a situation is bad, rather than being able to see the silver-linings.
Overgeneralising: Coming to a general conclusion about something based on a very small amount of examples or evidence. A sharp word on a bad day from a colleague might become "he hates working with me" or "he thinks I'm rubbish at my job".
Filtering: Focusing on just the negative parts of a situation and filtering out all of the positive. Similar to both overgeneralising and black and white thinking, filtering is where you ignore the positive evidence or the evidence against your negative thought, only paying attention to 'facts' that 'prove' your thought.
Jumping to conclusions: Making assumptions about people and circumstances that aren’t based on facts or concrete evidence. An example of this might be a friend ignoring you when you wave at them across the street where you jump to the conclusion that they're angry with you, when actually they might just have not seen or heard you.
Fortune telling: Assuming that we know what will happen in the future. Unfortunately most of us just don't have a functioning crystal ball!
Catastrophising: Seeing the absolute worst in a situation and blowing it out of all proportion. This is the snowball of worrying - where someone hasn't called you and before you know it you're worried that they're hurt or have been in an accident. In reality, there are many other, less catastrophic, reasons why they might not have called, but you assume the worst.
Emotional reasoning: Interpreting a situation or event through the filter of how we’re currently feeling. It can be easy to allow our emotions to colour how we see the world around us but this can be a very vicious cycle if we allow our current mood to affect our rational thinking.
Personalisation: Viewing everything as a victim, taking the blame for everything that goes wrong in our lives. Don't get us wrong, personal responsibility is a very good thing, but sometimes we can make everything about us, which doesn't allow other people to be at fault or for situations that we have no control over.
These kinds of thinking patterns can easily become habits if we don't check them regularly, and the first step to breaking those habits is to notice that you're doing it. You're then in a better position to consciously change that thought into something much more productive.
Recognising that we're following these patterns is a powerful tool to break the worry habit and so we're building into WorryTree a section that helps you spot when you're using them. If you're interested in testing WorryTree's new unhelpful thinking styles section before it launches, then sign up for our virtual development team (you'll find the link on our website homepage).