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How to Modify Your Negative Patterns
Thought
Paulo Peñablanca
This brief document contains my interpretation and editing of the
extracts from the 'Feeling Good Handbook', an excellent book by
cognitive therapist David Burns.
Cognitive therapy is supported by reliable experiments such as
an effective technique in the treatment of depression and as a remedy
for negative and distorted thought patterns. In my opinion,
it is the best internal technique possible.
Primarily, I want to talk about cognitive distortions: paths of
thought that directs behavior and emotions
negative ones, which have (or very little) basis in reality.
Now I am going to introduce a technique to deal with and change these
distortions and negativity of thought.
If you use this exercise, you will experience immediate relief from the
emotional problems you may be suffering.
Apply it always and your automatic lines of thought will be
remodeled and modified to produce the most powerful effects in
success with women and with your emotional health in general.
Cognitive Distortions
All-or-nothing thinking: this refers to the tendency to evaluate
personal qualities in an extreme way, in categories of black or
black. For example, an eminent politician told me "because I have lost the
race for governor, I am a zero. An outstanding student gets
a notable in an exam concludes, 'now I am a total failure.'
The "all or nothing" thinking is based on perfectionism.
That creates an intense fear of any mistake or imperfection because that
I would make you see yourself as a complete loser, I would make you feel inadequate and
without value.
This way of evaluating things is unrealistic because life is rarely
completely in one way or another. For example, no one is
absolutely brilliant nor completely stupid. Likewise,
nobody is completely attractive nor totally ugly. The technical term
for this type of perception error is known as 'thinking
"Dichotomous." You see everything as black or white... the shades of gray do not.
they exist.
About generalization: You arbitrarily conclude that one thing that you
once it happens to you, it will always happen. If it's about something
unpleasant you feel upset.
Mental filter: You take a negative detail from an event or situation and you...
you are obsessed with him, which makes you perceive the entire aforementioned situation
as something negative.
Disqualifying the positive: Not only do you ignore the positive experience, but you also
how clearly and quickly you turn it into its most terrible opposite.
Jump to conclusions: You make a negative interpretation even
when you don't have the defined facts that can support those
conclusions.
-The mind reader: You conclude that someone is reacting.
negatively towards you, and you don't bother to check it.
The fortune teller's mistake: You anticipate that things will go wrong, and you...
You are convinced that your prediction is based on facts.
Magnification or minimization: You exaggerate the importance of things or
You shrink them until they look tiny.
Emotional reasoning: You assume that your negative emotions
they always reflect things as they are. "I feel it this way, so it will be
real.
Statements of duty: You direct the 'musts', 'have tos', and 'shoulds'.
towards you and towards others.
Labeling or mislabeling: Instead of describing your mistake, you put yourself
a negative label to yourself, such as 'I am a loser'.
Mislabeling is describing an event with loaded language
emotion.
Personalization: You see yourself as the cause of certain events.
external negatives of which you are not actually the main responsible.
Restructuring your thoughts
Thus, now that you have read all this and understand the ways of evil
the thought I have written is the time to change the way that
you think. The method to achieve it is deceptively simple.
First of all, discover the altered or negative thoughts that
you have or have had.
Secondly, see the cognitive distortions in which these
thoughts fit.
Thirdly, think of a goal (a rational response) that
it could be just as true or truer.
Here are some examples:
Immediate thought: I never do anything right.
Distortion: Overgeneralization
Rational response: Never? There are many times when I do things.
good.
Immediate thought: The girls hate me
Distortion: Overgeneralization, Mental filter, Mind reader.
Rational response: All the girls? Some have thought that I am
cool and they have said it. Surely there are some who won't like it,
but people are different. How do I know that everyone hates me? Have they told me that?
Did I say that or am I imagining it?
This is, as I have already said, deceptively simple, but it is the foundation of
cognitive therapy. YOU MUST WRITE THESE THINGS. It is the key.
I hand over a sheet of diagrams:
Thought
Distortion Rational response
immediate