Name It to Change It: Stinking Thinking

Everyone worries once in a while. Worry becomes a problem when it starts negatively impacting your life. You may start feeling like it's spiraling out of control and becoming too excessive. You seemed to have gotten stuck in what I like to refer to, stinking thinking.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

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Stinking thinking is basically negative thinking. This repetitive thinking you seemed to have gotten stuck on leads to your feelings of worry and anxiety. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

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Some of these unhelpful patterns of thinking include: ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

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• Mental filter: we filter in son information while filtering out other⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

• Catastrophizing: blowing things out of proportion ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

• Black and white thinking: this is also referred to as all or nothing, you see one extreme or the other, no middle ground ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

• Should/Must: unrealistic expectations are placed when using these statements⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

• Overgeneralization: taking one instance and assuming it's like that for everything, you know if you are using this if you are using words such as, always and never.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

• Labeling: making global statements about ourselves, for example ”I am so clumsy.” these statements are typically negative and we are using one specific behavior to define us. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

• Emotional reasoning: with this pattern of thinking you base yourself and others based on how you feel. Typically you have no other evidence to suggest your thinking is true besides how you feel.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

• Minimization: when you minimize your attributes, you ignore the positive and focus on negative attributes of yourself ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

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Keeping in mind this shortlist of unhelpful thinking patterns I encourage you to keep a journal this week and start writing down some of your stinking thinking.

Remember you cannot change what you do not name.