Identifying Limited Thinking Patterns and Creating Alternative Thoughts

Posted on February 08, 2012 by Dan Becco, One of Thousands of ADD ADHD Coaches on Noomii.

1) Filtering

You focus on the negative details while ignoring all the positive aspects of a situation. To create alternative thoughts, shift your focus by placing attention on coping strategies and/or attending to positive aspects of persons/situation.

2) Polarized Thinking

Things are seen as black or white, good or bad. You have to be perfect or you’re a failure. There’s no middle ground, no room for mistakes. To create alternative thoughts, stop making black or white statements and think in terms of percentages.

3) Overgeneralization

You reach a general conclusion based on a single incident or piece of evidence. You exaggerate the frequency of problems and use negative global labels. To create alternative thoughts, quantify instead of using words like huge, awful, massive, minuscule. Also, examine how much evidence you really have for your conclusion. Replace absolutes with words such as may, sometimes and often. Replace negative labels with more neutral terms.

4) Mind Reading

Without they’re saying so, you know what people are feeling and why they act the way they do. In particular, you have certain knowledge of how people think and feel about you. To stop minding reading, make no inferences about people at all ask them why or how they feel about things. Ifit is not possible to ask (or you don’t want to) generate a list of possibilities, being careful not to draw conclusions.

5) Catastrophizing

You expect, even visualize disaster. You notice or hear about a problem and start asking, “What if?” What if tragedy strikes? What of it happens to you? To stop catastrophizing, ask yourself, “What are the odds?”

6) Magnifying

You exaggerate the degree or intensity of a problem. You turn up the volume on anything bad, making it loud, large, and overwhelming. To stop magnifying, don’t use words like terrible, awful, disgusting horrendous, etc. Remember that human beings can survive a great deal. Alternative statements; “I can cope.” “I can survive this. “

7) Personalization

You assume that everything people do or say is some kind of reaction to you. You also compare yourself to others, trying to determine who is smarter, more competent, better looking, and so on. When you find yourself assuming that reactions of others are about you, check it out. Don’t conclude the reaction has to do with you unless you have asked or you have conclusive evidence. Remember that it is not constructive to compare yourself with others we are all too complex to reduce to simple comparisons. We each have both strong points and weak points.

8) Shoulds

You have a list of ironclad rules about how you and other people should act. People who break the rules anger you, and you feel guilty when you violate the rules. To stop this limited thinking pattern, reexamine and question any personal rules or expectations you have that include words such as should, ought and must. Reflect on your value system as something personal, not something to be imposed on others.

Unreasonable Should List: I should be the epitome of generosity, consideration, dignity, courage and unselfishness. I should be the perfect lover, friend, parent, teacher, student or spouse. I should be able to endure any hardship with equanimity.I should be able to find a quick solution to every problem. I should never feel hurt: I should always be happy and serene. I should know, understand and foresee everything. I should always be spontaneous, but also always control my feelings. I should never feel certain emotions, such as anger or jealousy. I should love my children equally. I should never make mistakes. My emotions should be constant. Once I feel love, I should always feel love. I should be totally self-reliant. I should assert myself but I should never hurt anybody else. I should never be tired or get sick. I should always be at peak efficiency.

9) Emotional Reasoning

You reason from how you feel: “I feel like an idiot, so I must be one. ” Or I don’t feel like doing this, so I’ll put it off.”