We humans are interpretive processors and are constantly trying to make sense of the world around us and rely on our perceptions to help us survive. Because we experience our thoughts as essential, we often just follow the ones that capture the most attention in our mind, or even in society. But what if thoughts are not as reliable as they are perceived to be? What might make a thought reliable or unreliable? Are there certain types of thoughts that should always be disbelieved?
Aaron Beck spent some effort investigating the types of thinking that occurs when someone is depressed or otherwise mentally struggling and was able to identify 10 patterns of thinking that indicate some sort of cognitive distortion is occurring in which our processes are generating suspect content. He called them Cognitive Distortions, but they are sometimes called Unhelpful Thinking Styles:
Each of these patterns may occur in a single instance but it is more likely you are prone to ruts of distortions, cycling between two or three of the same patterns whenever under some sort of duress/stress. Sometimes the stressors are external, like a job loss or an illness, but more often the stressors are internal, like a negative belief we have or painful memory that has been activated. However, the emotional stress of negative internal and external experiences is what most often distorts our thoughts.
What needs to happen first is to identify the thought patterns that you are most likely to get stuck in if feeling stress (of any type), do this by becoming an 'observer' of your own thoughts. This takes practice, I recommend writing some thoughts down everyday to see if any are distorted, highlight those and look for patterns across a couple weeks' time.
Once you see some patterns in your thinking that are distorted, you are ready to work on releasing the thoughts as they occur, and there are several ways to do this.
1. Try the opposite thought strategy: for example, when catastrophizing to the worst case scenario, switch the thought to catastrophize the best case scenario, if over personalizing something switch to depersonalizing it. But you will need to repeat this strategy until the perception-process-feeling-thought loop is broken, which can take various amounts of time.
2. Thought Replacement: thoughts are not responsive to suppression methods, and research has shown that try to supress a thought means you actually will think it more. Instead, try replacing the thought with a more desirable or useful one (replacement will work better if you just repeat one or two new thoughts over and over until you diminish the attention given the distorted thoughts). Mantras can work well with this strategy.
3. Challenge the thoughts by using demanding truth-oriented rubrics: If you were in a totally different mood or feeling, would you still have the same thought? Can you independently and outside of your own mind corroborate the thought with at least 2 other external and reliable sources? If you were going to teach this thought to another human, how would you explain and justify your reasoning without bias? You can also try a truth tree, and if you are not willing to do all that work, why would you just believe your thought anyway?
4. Dig deeper into underlying processes generating the distorted thoughts. For instance, if you feel lonely and think "no one likes me", over personalizing and using a mental filter, try figuring out where the thoughts are coming from, such as a negative belief about yourself or an abandonment wound from a previous relationship, or feeling rejected. Then ask yourself, what do I need to self sooth and release my mind from this process right now? Choose a healthy behavior that helps meet that need and the thought loop will likely be broken.
If you find that you are dealing with a high number of distorted thoughts and need help reducing their disruptive nature, seek some professional support. Thought restructuring is a very common process that most therapists and coaches address in session regularly as thought distortions are among the most common problems people struggle with. Learning to observe instead of believe your thoughts can be a real game changer in how you process yourself, others, and even the world around you.
MANTRA: I am comfortable releasing my thoughts and understand that truth is hard to know.
