Unhelpful Thinking Styles

• Mental Filter:

a "filtering in" and "filtering out" process, or a sort of "tunnel vision" of focusing on only one part of a situation and ignoring the rest. Generally the focus is on the negative parts of a situation and disregarding the positive parts. This results in the whole

picture being labelled as negative by what may have been only one single negative detail.

 

• Jumping to Conclusions:

We often jump to conclusions when we assume that we know what someone else is thinking, also known as mind reading. We can also engage in predictive thinking when we make predictions about what is going to happen in the future.

 

• Personalisation:

Involves blaming yourself for everything that goes wrong or could go wrong, even when you are not responsible or may only be partly responsible. This may result in you taking 100% responsibility for the occurrence of external events. 

 

• Catastrophising:

occurs when we blow things out of proportion and view the situation as terrible, awful, dreadful, and horrible, when in reality the problem is quite small.

 

• Black & White Thinking:

involves seeing only one extreme or the other. You are either right or wrong or good

or bad. There are no inbetweens or shades of gray.

 

• Shoulding and Musting:

by saying “I should...” or “I must...” can put unreasonable demands or pressure on yourself and others. Although these statements may not be always unhelpful they can at times create unrealistic expectations.

 

• Overgeneralisation:

occurs when we take one instance in the past or present, and impose it on all current or future situations. If we say “You always...” or “Everyone...” you are likely to

be overgeneralising.

 

• Labelling:

We label ourselves and others when we make global statements based on behaviour in specific situations. We may continue to use a certain label even when it is not

100% accurate.

 

• Emotional Reasoning:

involves making judgments about yourself or a situation based on your feelings. For example, the only evidence that something bad is going to happen is that you feel like something bad is going to happen.

 

• Magnification and Minimisation:

In this thinking style, you magnify the positive attributes of other people and minimise or in some cases cannot even see your own positive attributes.