10 Ways Of Twisted Thinking

[abbeypgb]

I found this on a site and thought I might try to start a discussion about it if anyone is interested. I fit pretty much every catagory to a tee!

Crazy Desire

The Ten Forms of Twisted Thinking

From "The Feeling Good Handbook" by David D. Burns, M.D. © 1989

As you work through your recovery and become more skilled at using The Four Agreements and The Five Steps, you will find yourself becoming more aware of twisted thinking as part of your Borderline view of the world around you. These guidelines of twisted thinking from Dr. David Burns are invaluable to help you as your proceed on your journey of healthy, happy living.

1. All-or-nothing thinking - You see things in black-or-white categories. If a situation falls short of perfect, you see it as a total failure. When a young woman on a diet ate a spoonful of ice cream, she told herself, "I've blown my diet completely." This thought upset her so much that she gobbled down an entire quart of ice cream.

2. Overgeneralization - You see a single negative event, such as a romantic rejection or a career reversal, as a never-ending pattern of defeat by using words such as "always" or "never" when you think about it. A depressed salesman became terribly upset when he noticed bird dung on the window of his car. He told himself, "Just my luck! Birds are always crapping on my car!"

3. Mental Filter - You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively, so that your vision of reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors a beaker of water. Example: You receive many positive comments about your presentation to a group of associates at work, but one of them says something mildly critical. You obsess about his reaction for days and ignore all the positive feedback.

4. Discounting the positive - You reject positive experiences by insisting that they "don't count." If you do a good job, you may tell yourself that it wasn't good enough or that anyone could have done as well. Discounting the positives takes the joy out of life and makes you feel inadequate and unrewarded.

5. Jumping to conclusions - You interpret things negatively when there are no facts to support your conclusion.

Mind Reading : Without checking it out, you arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you.

Fortune-telling : You predict that things will turn out badly. Before a test you may tell yourself, "I'm really going to blow it. What if I flunk?" If you're depressed you may tell yourself, "I'll never get better."

6. Magnification - You exaggerate the importance of your problems and shortcomings, or you minimize the importance of your desirable qualities. This is also called the "binocular trick."

7. Emotional Reasoning - You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: "I feel terrified about going on airplanes. It must be very dangerous to fly." Or, "I feel guilty. I must be a rotten person." Or, "I feel angry. This proves that I'm being treated unfairly." Or, "I feel so inferior. This means I'm a second rate person." Or, "I feel hopeless. I must really be hopeless."

8. "Should" statements - You tell yourself that things should be the way you hoped or expected them to be. After playing a difficult piece on the piano, a gifted pianist told herself, "I shouldn't have made so many mistakes." This made her feel so disgusted that she quit practicing for several days. "Musts," "oughts" and "have tos" are similar offenders.

"Should statements" that are directed against yourself lead to guilt and frustration. Should statements that are directed against other people or the world in general, lead to anger and frustration: "He shouldn't be so stubborn and argumentative!"

Many people try to motivate themselves with shoulds and shouldn'ts, as if they were delinquents who had to be punished before they could be expected to do anything. "I shouldn't eat that doughnut." This usually doesn't work because all these shoulds and musts make you feel rebellious and you get the urge to do just the opposite. Dr. Albert Ellis has called this " must erbation." I call it the "shouldy" approach to life.

9. Labeling - Labeling is an extreme form of all-or-nothing thinking. Instead of saying "I made a mistake," you attach a negative label to yourself: "I'm a loser." You might also label yourself "a fool" or "a failure" or "a jerk." Labeling is quite irrational because you are not the same as what you do. Human beings exist, but "fools," "losers" and "jerks" do not. These labels are just useless abstractions that lead to anger, anxiety, frustration and low self-esteem.

You may also label others. When someone does something that rubs you the wrong way, you may tell yourself: "He's an S.O.B." Then you feel that the problem is with that person's "character" or "essence" instead of with their thinking or behavior. You see them as totally bad. This makes you feel hostile and hopeless about improving things and leaves very little room for constructive communication.

10. Personalization and Blame - Personalization comes when you hold yourself personally responsible for an event that isn't entirely under your control. When a woman received a note that her child was having difficulty in school, she told herself, "This shows what a bad mother I am," instead of trying to pinpoint the cause of the problem so that she could be helpful to her child. When another woman's husband beat her, she told herself, "If only I was better in bed, he wouldn't beat me." Personalization leads to guilt, shame and feelings of inadequacy.

Some people do the opposite. They blame other people or their circumstances for their problems, and they overlook ways they might be contributing to the problem: "The reason my marriage is so lousy is because my spouse is totally unreasonable." Blame usually doesn't work very well because other people will resent being scapegoated and they will just toss the blame right back in your lap. It's like the game of hot potato--no one wants to get stuck with it.

Don't forget to review the Ten Ways to Untwist Your Thinking as part of your Five Step work!

[Bravia80]

Thanks, Abbey!

I fit every category too.

[abbeypgb]

It's amazing how before I found BPD I felt like I didnt fit anywhere. But now I found it or it found me It fits me like a glove.

Thanks, Abbey!

I fit every category too.

[hummm_mabbe]

Hi guys

The above categories are nothing specifically to do with BPD, they are just the common ways that peoples thoughts can be thought of as maladaptive, be it in anxiety, worry, depression or any mental health situation. Please dont take them as some type of diagnosing instrument as pretty much every human being on earth will have these to some extent, just some will have it more than others.

Some people find cognitive strategies aimed at 'untwisting' your thinking helpful, others find them less so but they are good place to start.

Ross

[Data]

A very good post, thanks very much.

Although Ross is correct that everyone has these, I believe people with BPD will have them a lot more.

These categories can also be found here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_distortion.

[abbeypgb]

Yes I would have to agree with you too Ross this is not a way to diagnose someone with BPD just guidelines of how someone with BPD mostly think.

[hummm_mabbe]

I think these principles are awesome though - they are where I started my recovery back in 2003, and they open your eyes to many of the automatic processes that go on within us without realising, so taaaa for putting them up

Ross

[abbeypgb]

I think these principles are awesome though - they are where I started my recovery back in 2003, and they open your eyes to many of the automatic processes that go on within us without realising, so taaaa for putting them up

Ross

What has helped in your recovery?

[hummm_mabbe]

I think these principles are awesome though - they are where I started my recovery back in 2003, and they open your eyes to many of the automatic processes that go on within us without realising, so taaaa for putting them up

Ross

What has helped in your recovery?

Oo thats one o them questions that could go on for a LOOOOOOONG time Ive had a few different types of therapy, many drugs and tried a lot of self help things, as well as mindfulness and meditation. I think that each person is different to a degree, and really everything you pick up adds a little bit. Even if its poo, you know thats not helpful for you and you try something else. Everything adds a little bit, so its hard to say what was the most helpful. CBT was defo the thing that broke it all wide open for me though, great place to start.

The biggest thing for me though has been realising that I need to focus on actual relationships, and not just technique and principle. I realised I was trying to 'fix' myself with the books or in the therapy room so i could go out and be the person I thought I needed to be. Self acceptance has been a huge learning curve but a very important one for me. Emotional honesty to myself and others has sort of been an outgrowth of that. I guess the CBT stuff and a lot of the insight things were helpful to work on the inner things, but ultimately my problem is relationships and so I have to work directly on them, and the intermediate stage of that has been working directly with emotions and the past a lot. Therapy is kind of my relationships laboratory lol. Tis scary expressing real feelings to me T, especially anger, but this has been quite a revelation.

Oh emotional imagery has been helpful too, to help me connect with feeling and work through scary emotions and things.

Ross

[Narcissa]

Thats my life on paper!

[Crow]

I laughed at the Mental Filter one. I do that all the time! I have been stewing about a comment my psych made to me last week. She probably didn't even mean anything by it and it wasn't even "critical" but I keep fixating on it.

[lauraw2693]

Another one that fits every category here, some are a big problem

[angel tears]

My t talks alot about black and white thinking alot, its either one way or the other with no shades of grey in between, but like saying somebody is either all good or bad when infact most people are good with different shades of what we call bad inside of us and we all do bad things or make wrong choices.

Of course there are evil people too like murderers etc but in general we are all different shades, thats what makes us individuals

Ok, waffling over lol x

[Bravia80]

I'm doing DBT at the moment and quite a few of the principles here are the same as what we learn with DBT.

Thanks, Abbey!

B. x

[abbeypgb]

My t talks alot about black and white thinking alot, its either one way or the other with no shades of grey in between, but like saying somebody is either all good or bad when infact most people are good with different shades of what we call bad inside of us and we all do bad things or make wrong choices.

Of course there are evil people too like murderers etc but in general we are all different shades, thats what makes us individuals

Ok, waffling over lol x

I am a total black and white thinker and the older I get and the more I read up on the more I realise how much I actually do it. I find it hard to see the grey in people its much easier in my brain to put them in a black or white catagory

[abbeypgb]

I'm doing DBT at the moment and quite a few of the principles here are the same as what we learn with DBT.

Thanks, Abbey!

B. x

I rang the local Royal brisbane hospital about DBT and I had to leave a message for the psych to call me back to get info on it but ill let you know how i go.

[abbeypgb]

I think these principles are awesome though - they are where I started my recovery back in 2003, and they open your eyes to many of the automatic processes that go on within us without realising, so taaaa for putting them up

Ross

What has helped in your recovery?

Oo thats one o them questions that could go on for a LOOOOOOONG time Ive had a few different types of therapy, many drugs and tried a lot of self help things, as well as mindfulness and meditation. I think that each person is different to a degree, and really everything you pick up adds a little bit. Even if its poo, you know thats not helpful for you and you try something else. Everything adds a little bit, so its hard to say what was the most helpful. CBT was defo the thing that broke it all wide open for me though, great place to start.

The biggest thing for me though has been realising that I need to focus on actual relationships, and not just technique and principle. I realised I was trying to 'fix' myself with the books or in the therapy room so i could go out and be the person I thought I needed to be. Self acceptance has been a huge learning curve but a very important one for me. Emotional honesty to myself and others has sort of been an outgrowth of that. I guess the CBT stuff and a lot of the insight things were helpful to work on the inner things, but ultimately my problem is relationships and so I have to work directly on them, and the intermediate stage of that has been working directly with emotions and the past a lot. Therapy is kind of my relationships laboratory lol. Tis scary expressing real feelings to me T, especially anger, but this has been quite a revelation.

Oh emotional imagery has been helpful too, to help me connect with feeling and work through scary emotions and things.

Ross

Hi Ross,

I have been going to therapy for about hmmm lets see since I was about 12 and I'm now 30. I started off with CBT and I can tell you I could write a book on CBT, but I found it didnt work for me. I'm not tooting my own horn but I am quite intelligent and I found that I know everything about CBT but putting any of this stuff into practice is a different story.

You are right about self acceptance and I think that has been one of my biggest problems. I haven't accepted myself as me, I am still trying to be the person I think I should be and that is hard work. I keep wondering to myself when will i believe it is ok to just be me?!

Abbey

[hummm_mabbe]

Hullo Abbey

I dont know if you have heard of it, but Schema Therapy is designed to work with those things where you have 'parts' of you locked away you are afraid to show, and the 'masks' you place over the top. It targets bringing out the 'real' you underneath and slowly helps you to let go of the things that cause you to focus only on what you feel you 'should' be. Its very effective on working with personality structure in this way.

Its history is basically that therapists realised that CBT doesnt help a great deal of people, and so they wanted to build something that could help those CBT didnt. This was usually what they call the 'characterological' patients - people with personality disorders or much deeper issues that CBT cannot touch. 'Schemas' are patterns of behaving, feeling, thinking and body sensations that go deeper even than core beliefs and assumptions, and on top of those are the coping styles, all of which can crystallise together and form what schema refers to as 'modes'.

If you are a person who overcompensates for painful feelings, or is afraid of what others will think and so suppresses their 'real' self, you could be thought of as having an 'overcompensator mode' or a 'detahced protector mode'. Essentially, ways of behaving, being, feeling and relating to yourself that are formed from all of the above. The therapy will work directly with those parts of the self to try to find out why they need to exist, and to find out what lies underneath. It uses techniques from a number of therapies and disciplines to do this, including gestalt, cognitive behavioural, object relations, attachment theory and psychodynamic therapy. However to work in this way you would need to seek out a therapist who has been trained in the 'mode' approach to the therapy, which at the moment may be difficult as most therapists seem to have only so far been trained in the 'schema focused' type of it. That said they can be found if you wanted to find one.

Just an idea if you seeking out another thing to tack on to your considerable therapy history!

Ross

EDIT: You have probably tried it, but I am finding mindfulness meditation hugely helpful for acceptance.

[Saharah Blue]

I think this is one of the most useful post I have come across in years. I fit way too many, lol. But it helps so much to see them spelled out and sorted into something I actually can come back to, instead of relying on my almost absent memory in T for such things.

your great, ty,

Sah

[Saharah Blue]

EDIT: You have probably tried it, but I am finding mindfulness meditation hugely helpful for acceptance.

[Villan]

something i read the other day and liked myself - i think it fits in here - but if not then sorry...

it kinda goes with the "should" statements...

obviously being a rebel i dont like having to do things, so this helps me loads...

instead of saying i HAVE to, try saying i CHOOSE to...

example:

I HAVE to get up and go to work

becomes

I CHOOSE to get up and go to work, because I CHOOSE to avoid the consequences of not doing so...

kinda give you back a lil power... if yo get what i mean...

anyway... there you go...

K x

[Christine001]

they all fit me too and only just realising this having felt I was different and was an alien since young. I am 45 now.