Distorted thought patterns can increase our stress and reduce our ability to cope well with situations we are facing. You can see below a common list of some of these patterns.
If you recognise any of these tendencies in your own thinking, try the following. It will help to have a pencil and paper handy to make notes:
- Try to recall a recent time when a 'distorted thought' increased your stress and made you less able to cope. Describe the situation briefly, and your unhelpful, unbalanced thought.
- Try to remember your feelings at the time.
- Now think of ways in which your thinking was accurate, and ways in which it was inaccurate.
- With the benefit of hindsight can you think of a more balanced, accurate or helpful assessment of the situation? What do you think would have been the consequence if you had approached the situation with the more balanced approach?
This is the general process for dealing with these common thought patterns.
Stage 1 is to ask (a) is my thinking accurate, based on the evidence and (b) is it helping me to deal with the situation? Stage 2 is then to replace inaccurate or unhelpful statements with balanced statements that are more accurate and/or more helpful.
Thinking through some retrospective situations will help you to learn the pattern for dealing with a 'live' example, build resilience and help you to manage your stress.