Negative Thinking
by Vlad Ungureanu
Negative
Thinking
• Cognitive distortions
• Roots of cognitive distortions
• All or nothing
• Filtering
• Overgeneralization
• Catastrophizing
• Internal Control Fallacy
• External Control Fallacy
• Emotional Reasoning
• Fallacy of Change
• Heaven’s reward fallacy
• Global labeling
• Vicious circle
• Fixing cognitive distortions
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Cognitive distortions
• Exaggerated or irrational thought patterns that are believed to perpetuate negative
emotions and thoughts
• Cause individuals to perceive reality inaccurately and distort the way event outcomes are
assimilated by an individual
• Reinforce negative thoughts or emotions with each repetition
• Can affect self esteem, stress levels, the way we behave and our mental state
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Roots of cognitive distortions
• Being educated that if you are not the best, anything less is not relevant
• Being educated to be too competitive, perfectionist or an over achiever
• Being educated that you do not deserve love or that you are not good enough for that
• Constant negative reinforcement for failure or partial failures
• Linking emotional involvement with rewards, social acceptance or close group affection
• Self-esteem based on external factors, not internal ones
• Difficulty adjusting to new situations, lack of a support group or high stress due to
inadequate skills or aptitudes
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All or nothing mentality
• If an outcome does not seem to be perfect or does not seem to have the maximum
expected result then it is pointless or meaningless
• Usually not based on results but on internally generated negative predictions
• Usually results in not engaging in activities or behavior
• Imposes unrealistic targets for any time consuming activity
• Increases stress for possible future failure if activity or behavior is engaged
• Demotivates if not all steps are perfectly followed
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Filtering
• Filtering out and downplaying all the positives while putting extra focus on the negatives
• As a result any negative outcome will cancel a series of positive outcomes
• This prevents self-esteem from growing organically, based on real life actual results
• On the long run it leads to excessive negative perspective on life and own capabilities
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Overgeneralization
• The process of optimizing the decision making process based on a single, possible but not
verified idea
• The mental pattern of expecting that if something went wrong at some time, the same
event will have a negative outcome all the time
• Leads to an inability to self-motivate or act due to the fact that all events, that had
previously failed will also fail if they are retried
• Is usually described verbally by the usage of overly generic terms like “all the time”, “every
time”, “always”, “never”
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Catastrophizing
• Any perceived negative outcome is considered to be the worst thing that can happen
• The belief that good or normal events are usually followed by negative events
• On the long run it leads to the belief that life is just a series of negative outcomes and
problems that occur without any control or prevention
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Internal control fallacy
• Perceiving other peoples results or feelings as a direct outcome of own actions or behavior
• It means taking responsibility for other peoples state of mind, behavior and happiness
• Usually this reflects in a sense of guilt or inadequacy when other people seems angry, sad
or when they are having a bad day
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External control fallacy
• Perceiving the self as a helpless victim of fate
• Usually described as the inability to improve due to external factor
• On the long run it leads to blaming others for failure
• It also means that there is no need to change anything, because others are to blame and
there is nothing to improve.
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Emotional reasoning
• How we feel is automatically true
• Whatever we believe is true and is accepted as being the undeniable truth
• If work, our behavior or external factors seem negative, they generate negative emotions in
regard to our own selves which in turn are accepted as being true
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Fallacy of change
• Having rigid, even fixed, criteria for happiness
• This leads to expecting or pressuring people around us to change to ensure we achieve
happiness
• This also means that people see happiness as an external manifestation, when in reality
happiness is a always internal
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Heaven’s reward fallacy
• Magical thinking that our sacrifices or self-denials are somehow tracked and will have some
expected results over a long period
• Encourages mind to take difficult (negative for the self) decisions in the hopes that a
magical force, an authority or other people will somehow understand, appreciate and repay
the effort
• On the long run leads to big frustration and anti social behavior
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Global labeling
• Taking a single attribute of a person and making in relevant and representative for the
whole person
• This extends to groups, races, places, nationalities
• Usually it manifests as being very quick to judge others based on the most obvious trait
• On a personal level it usually means that a negative thought is enough to describe us
completely
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Vicious circle
• Expecting external confirmation, validation or positive reinforcement
• Self imposing principles and self-denial as a measure of own value
• Relying on negative predictions and living in the future
• Competing with other people
• Being afraid of loosing what you have
• Getting stuck on mistakes
• Running from any pain, failure or discomfort
• Avoid making decisions
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Fixing cognitive distortions
• Discover your self-worth (journaling) and separate it from your performance
• Focus on understanding, accepting, manifesting and growing positive qualities and
outcomes
• Find real, believable evidence for your positive or negative thoughts (challenge the
distortions)
• Mentally follow the most negative scenario to it’s outcome and prepare a backup plan for it
• Thoughts change behavior and behavior changes thoughts
• Keep track and always prepare small, easy to achieve steps
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THANK YOU!
Vlad Costel Ungureanu
[email protected]
This is a free course from LearnStuff.ro
– not for commercial use –
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