Certain kinds of thoughts can intensify or prolong our emotions. Although everyone has these kinds of thoughts from time to time, two types of thoughts are particularly common in people with problems with depression or anxiety.
Probability overestimation, also known as jumping to conclusions, occurs when you think something (typically negative) is really likely to occur, regardless of information to the contrary.
- Example: having a first date not go well and concluding that you’re going to end up alone forever.
Catastrophizing is another common thinking trap that involves expecting that the absolute worst will happen and that you will be unable to cope with it when it does.
- Example: Noticing that you’re feeling slightly anxious and then being certain that you’ll have a panic attack and will be unable to complete your presentation and will be completely shamed/embarrassed in front of others.
All or none thinking: Also known as black and white thinking
- Example: “I’m either successful or I’m a failure” – with nothing in between
Dismissing or discounting the positive: When someone says something nice or positive of you, instead of accepting the compliment at face value, you find a reason why it couldn’t be true.
- Example: “He’s just trying to make me feel better, since the presentation was really pretty awful.”
Emotional Reasoning: Because you feel it, it is true.
- Example: “I’m anxious therefore this must be a dangerous situation.”
Labeling: you assign a fixed or global label onto yourself that might not take into account contradictory evidence
- Example: “I’m stupid” or “I’m worthless.”
Magnification/Minimization: focusing exclusively on one piece of information to the neglect of other potentially contradictory information
- Example: In a performance review, your boss praises you in 9 areas and gives you one area for improvement and you focus exclusively on the negative information to conclude, “my boss thinks I’m an idiot”
Jumping to conclusions using either Mind reading or Fortune-telling: Reacting to a situation as though you know the outcome because you believe that you “know” what someone else is thinking without them saying it or you checking it out or because you are treating your prediction as fact.
- Example: “Although she was nice to me, I know that she was really thinking how stupid I am.”
Hindsight bias also known as Monday-morning quarterbacking: Evaluating a situation based on information you learned after the event occurred.
- Example: “if I hadn’t gone back to get my book, I wouldn’t have gotten into the accident and missed my exam.”
Overgeneralizing: Taking the outcome of one situation to mean that the same outcome will always happen in similar situations
- Example: Following a break-up, thinking, “I’ll always be alone because any future relationship will also fail”
Personalization: Believing that you are the reason that others might be behaving negatively without examining potential alternative explanations
- Example: The girl at the grocery counter ignores your attempts at conversation and you assume, “It must be because I’m a loser” instead of thinking of alternative explanations like, she didn’t hear you, she just had a fight with her boss, etc.
“Should,” “must” statements: You have fixed ideas about how you or others should act and you overestimate the consequences of these expectations not being met
- Example: Thinking “I must never make a mistake otherwise people will think I’m stupid.”