RECOGNIZE YOUR THINKING PATTERNS … HOW TO IDENTIFY AND REPLACE NEGATIVE THINKING AND REPROGRAM YOUR BRAIN
By Dr. Pascale Piron
Recognizing our Thinking Patterns
In everyday exchanges in our personal and professional lives, we experience thoughts and make interpretations regarding our circumstances. These thoughts and interpretations can have strong influences on our feelings. Below are several distorted thinking patterns that can trigger negative feelings and lead to states of depression and anxiety:
Black or white - Viewing situations, people, or self as entirely bad or entirely good but nothing in between
Exaggerating - Making self-critical or other-critical statements that include terms like never, nothing, everything, or always.
Filtering - Ignoring the positive things that occur to and around self but focusing on and accentuating the negative
Discounting - Rejecting positive experiences as not being important or meaningful.
Catastrophizing - Blowing consequences out of proportion in a negative direction.
Judging - Being critical of self or others with a heavy emphasis on the use of should have, ought to, must, have to, and should not have.
Mind reading - Making negative assumptions regarding other people’s thoughts and motives.
Forecasting - Predicting events will turn out badly
Feelings are facts - Because you feel a certain way, reality is seen as fitting that feeling
Labeling - Calling self or others a bad name when displeased with a behavior
Self-blaming - Holding yourself responsible for an outcome that was not completely under your control
Identify your Thoughts
Apply these common types of distorted thinking to your own way of thinking.
List at least three examples of your own thoughts that lead you to feeling depressed and/or anxious.
Describe the event that prompted you to feel depressed and then describe the thoughts that promoted the bad feelings.
Replace your Thoughts
Now try to replace negative, distorted thoughts with positive, more realistic thoughts that can help you feel happier.
Refer to each of your examples listed above and write a positive thought that you could have used to make you feel better.
The Brain Rewired
In Rewire your Brain, Dr. John B. Arden, https://drjohnarden.com/portfolio-items/rewire-your-brain/, discusses the science of neuroplasticity and how neurons and their messengers, neurotransmitters, function in the brain. Dr. Arden describes ways in which the brain reorganizes itself when having new experiences. In essence, the more neurons fire together, the more they wire together. The application of changing thinking pattern is rooted in rewiring automatic thoughts:
Recognize the way we think
Change the thinking pattern that is unhealthy
Practice the new thinking pattern
Repetition is rewiring
Understanding how distorted automatic thinking patterns rooted in the brain can be uncovered and processed in psychotherapy through a psychodynamic theoretical lens. Psychotherapy will serve to understand the messages received and observed in childhood and how we found our place and our value in our families and other social circles and environments. It can help us to understand why we think the way we do, and to prepare us for change.
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