Thinking traps are patterns of thought – usually with a negative swing – which prevent us from seeing things as they really are. Otherwise known as cognitive distortions, thinking traps are often deeply ingrained in our psyche.
By twisting our thoughts, they can make us easily jump to conclusions and make bad decisions – preventing us from seeing the bigger picture. Like this, we can wind up trapped in a vicious cycle with the potential to alter both our mood and the way in which we experience the world around us.
Bellow are some common thinking traps we may all fall into:
1.All-or-nothing thinking – seeing everything as black and white. An example might be, “I got fired. I’m rubbish at everything”. In other words, if a situation doesn’t go exactly to plan, you immediately deem it a failure. The problem is, life isn’t black and white – it’s important to be able to see the shades of grey in between.
Replace this with: “Nothing in life is perfect. Even though I didn’t get the job, it doesn’t mean I’m a failure. There are better things to come”.
2. Emotional reasoning – believing emotions to be evidence of the truth. As we explained before, how you feel is normally closely tied to the way you think. So just because you’re feeling rubbish doesn’t mean life is rubbish. An example might be, “I feel useless, therefore I am useless”.
Replace this with: “My feelings are not objective evidence for reality. I can accept all of my feelings but still move forward”.
3. Mind-reading – immediately assuming that someone is thinking something negative about you without having any evidence for it. i.e. you’re jumping to conclusions.
Replace this with: “I can’t read minds”.
4. Fortune-telling – predicting situations with only negative outcomes. An example might be, “I’m definitely going to fail the exam today”.
Replace this with: “No one can possibly predict the future”.
5. Labelling – wrongly attributing a negative label to either yourself or someone else. An example might be, “I’m a failure” instead of saying “I failed the exam”.
Replace this with: “No one deserves to be judged”.
6. Overgeneralization – whenever something difficult happens you think it’s going to happen over and over again. An example might be saying, “why does this always happen to me?” This thinking trap particularly likes words like ‘never’, ‘every’ and always’ so look out for them.
Replace this with: “I’m overgeneralizing here. It’s very possible that something different will happen next time”.
7. Personalization – wrongfully assuming responsibility for something. An example might be, “It’s all my fault we didn’t have pudding because I forgot the ice cream”.
Replace this with: “It’s nobody’s fault”.