ISSUE #22 cont'd -- Information about

COGNITIVE DISTORTION #2

Many of you may be familiar with the concept of “cognitive distortion” type of thinking that can trigger or certainly make depression worse.  A lot of “experts” in the field believe that what we think is responsible for our depression and someone, I’m not sure who, developed a list of different types of thoughts we have that can cause or make our depression worse.

I thought I might post one a week as a reminder of how we might be feeding our depressive-type feelings. I sometimes suffer depression and I know I am guilty of some of these kind of thoughts. It’s good to be reminded and certainly helps as a way of checking and reminding ourselves that there is another way and that, most of all, there is hope. We can change the way we feel by changing the way we think.

So here’s number two for the week.

#2.  Overgeneralization

Here is where you conclude that because one thing happened to you once it will happen again and again. Of course, it’s an unpleasant thing that happened too. For example, a bird “craps” on you and you think “See. Birds are always crapping on me.” But if you were to look back you might not find another time when it actually happened before.

Many of us think this when it comes to being rejected by someone else. Say you ask someone out on a first date but the person says they have a previous engagement. You automatically think “I’ll never get a date with her/him or anyone else. I’m going to be alone and miserable for the rest of my life.” Because you were turned down once you think you will always be turned down.

So why go there at all? Maybe you feel hurt and disappointed that you were turned down and you think I never want to experience that again. Of course, you feed it with things like “They just made that excuse. They are not really interested in me.” And on and on. What a great way to protect ourselves but what a great way to destroy our self-esteem as well and lead us into the spiralling down of depression. Plus, it’s not based on any fact. You can’t predict the future. Yes, you may be turned down many times in your life but there’s also the very great possibility that your offer will be accepted many times. It’s essentially down to faulty thinking and that can get you into a lot of trouble.