All-or-Nothing Thinking

All-or-nothing thinking can also be called black-and-white thinking as something is either right or its wrong. This type of thinking causes one to think in extremes as they either see something as positive or extremely negative. It encourages people to seek a level of absolute perfection that is impossible to achieve. Instead of saying you are one thing or another, try saying you are blank and blank. Changing just one little word can sometimes stop this thinking pattern.

Overgeneralization

When emotions are fueled by just one experience, then a person has overgeneralized a situation by applying it to many situations. Therefore, overgeneralized thinking can often have a very negative impact on one’s willingness to try new experiences. Asking one if the strong emotions tied to an event are realistic can sometimes stop this thinking pattern.

Mental Filter

Stop and think for a moment about a glass of water and you are putting a drop of food coloring in it. Soon, the whole glass of water is the color of the food dye. The same thing happens when you pick out one negative event and dwell on it to the point where you exclude all positive experiences. It often causes a person to see all the negatives in an event, so they never see the positives. Often, journaling about the positives of a situation can help you see them.

Disqualifying the Positives

If you practice this type of distorted thinking, then you disqualify all the positive things that happen for one reason or another. You deeply internalize every negative event that happens, however, as a personal flaw. Often making a list of positive past successes helps one overcome this type of thinking because it gives you concrete data points to consider.

Jumping to Conclusions

If you do not wait until all the facts have been collected before you arrive at a conclusion, then you are experiencing this type of distorted thinking. You may have seen the illustration of two arrows with the head of one pointing inward and the other pointing outward. You automatically assume that the one pointing outward is longer. Yet, the arrows are the same length. Keeping this illustration in front of you is a great way to stop jumping to a conclusion as it reminds you to gather the facts before deciding.