Happiness Isn't Brain Surgery
Happiness Isn't Brain Surgery
42 -Address Cognitive Distortions to Stop Being Miserable

Anger and Fear are responses to a threat. Depression is a response to a loss or a sense of hopelessness and helplessness. All of these feelings can contribute to misery. When you feel a feeling, the first step is to accept it. Don't fight it thinking you should or shouldn't feel a certain way. You feel how you feel. These feelings, it is our brain’s way of telling us that there MIGHT be a problem… When we accept them without question, we often feel unpleasant feelings unnecessarily. The next step is to figure out what is causing the feeling and figure out what to do to improve the next moment.

Cognitive Distortions or unhelpful thoughts are what counselors call the self-talk that is responsible for triggering unpleasant emotions. below you will learn about the different types of unhelpful thoughts and ways to deal with them. I go into more detail on each of these things in the video.

1. All or Nothing. Things rarely happen ALL the time or NEVER. Find the exceptions.
2. Personalization. Many times we take things personally that have nothingto do with us. Find other explanations which may have caused the person to act a certain way or the bad thing to happen. Maybe the lasagna got over cooked because the thermometer on the oven went out, but because you are a bad cook.
3. Magnification /catastrophizing. Yes, things might be bad, but is the sky falling? In reality (that means use the facts) what is the worst thing that is LIKELY to happen?
4. Fallacy of Fairness / Heaven’s Reward. Life is not fair. Look at what rewards you did get. They may not be tangible. They may be things like feeling good about yourself or being proud of someone else.
5. Filtering or Disqualifying the Positive: Look at the good AND bad.
6. Overgeneralization means assuming because something happend one time, everytime you encounter that situation it is going to be the same. Find the exceptions, the past doesn’t have to repeat
7. Jumping to conclusions-Mind Reading. Don't assume you know what other people are thinking or what their intentions are. Get the facts.
8. Emotional Reasoning. Just because something feels scary doesn't mean it really is. Get the facts
9. Blaming… “You made me do it.” To deal with this, always eamine what your part was in teh issue. Did you communicate your wants and needs clearly? Did you jump to conclusions and get upset?
10. Always being “right”: Try to explore ways you can both be right from a certain point of view.
Connect With Us