A lot of our mind work occurs at a non-conscious level. We can be propelled into action or aware of the emotions that we may feel but not always fully aware of the thoughts inside of us. In fact, our thoughts may be more private and more painful to identify than our emotions. We may remember that an interaction with a relative made us sad or angry but not what really was unfolding in our minds.
In day-to-day interactions, we do not have the time to examine our thought processes in detail. We rely on shortcuts that usually work. When you see a friend cry, you automatically offer consolation and your relationship grows stronger. You may be driving. In the corner of your eye you catch a shadow that looks little like a person. You are likely to apply a simple “better safe than sore” rule, slow down and check the road more carefully. It may have been just a shadow, or it may have been a real person and you just avoided an accident. Analyzing our assumptions in such situations would feel strange. We simply act. In such cases our thinking shortcuts might be lifesavers.
Now imagine getting upset by friend’s tears because somehow you feel stuck or a little voice in your head warns you that this is yet another repetition of a highly unpleasant scenario that will end with you getting blamed for everything. What if you start interpreting your friend’s frown of pain as indication of their anger towards you? What if you start feeling guilty? Such conclusions may derive from life experiences, but we have hard time putting them in context. If your friend has been in genuine distress and needed you but you were not able to help because of the automatic thoughts that emerged in this situation, your inability to act will have an impact on that friendship. Coming back to our driving example: what if you conclude that “better safe than sore” means that you should not be driving at all. Sometimes our thinking shortcuts are beginning to misfire. When that happens, we get immobilized and unable to decide what to do. Our options may appear to be fraud with danger or just plainly useless.
Examining our thoughts may be a bit disturbing -- our better judgment gets under a microscope. We may experience the task of reviewing our thoughts as yet another situation in which we end up by getting blamed. After all, if our thoughts were “right”, we would not be in pain. Yet, thinking shortcuts are understandable. To be able to reorient ourselves, we need to become aware of our automatic thoughts even if the task is not very pleasant. Only then we can put these thoughts in context.
Below are examples of thinking shortcuts along with their benefits, costs and possible reorienting questions that might be helpful to ensure that we are not going on autopilot and risk ending up worse than we started.
PERSONALIZATION is a tendency to interpret most events as being about oneself or being caused by oneself. Personalization increases our sensitivity to danger as we pay close attention to how the world impacts us. No matter how hard we try to put
ourselves in the shoes of another person, we have no choice but to perceive the world through our own senses. Costs of personalization include very high interpersonal sensitivity that might result in self-blame (when we believe ourselves to be responsible) or a need to blame others (when we think that we are being treated unjustly). This allows us to correct our mistakes and remain attuned to relationships around us. However, it is also possible to be immobilized with self-blame or lose relationships due to unnecessary confrontations. If you notice that you are personalizing, ask following questions:
Is it really about me?
Who else is involved?
What is really mine to do?
Is it more about the situation than about me?
JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS typically reduces reaction time when seconds count. Is it a shadow or a pedestrian? Clearly, sometimes it is better to jump to conclusion and act on the side of safety. Is my neighbour just trying to be nice or is she a
meddler? We are better off postponing judgment on this one. The costs of jumping to conclusions include a tendency to react in rigid ways and a risk of creating self-fulfilling prophecies. Just imagine someone who assumes the worst of people and engages in preemptive confrontations to protect themselves? The attacked individuals are likely to respond with surprise or retaliation and hence prove this person’s original assumption. Some of the re-orienting questions could include:
What is the evidence for my conclusion? Is it enough?
Is it possible to draw different conclusions here? If so, what could these different conclusions be?
Is there something I am not paying attention to?
Do I tend to jump to the same conclusion all the time irrespective of who is involved?
PREDICTING THE FUTURE is a tendency to assume that future will unfold to match our current world view. It allows for future planning and gives us a sense of security and predictability in our lives. Many persons stay in unpleasant relationships or
stressful jobs simply because they know what they are dealing with and knowing is somehow easier than trying something else. In such circumstances we have two factors at play: (1) a tendency to assume that the future will repeat the past, especially the painful events, and (2) fear of the unknown or the unpredictable. Planning is a useful way of predicting the future. When we plan, the thoughts in our mind follow a sequence of: “when this and this happens, I can do this and this”. Planning is helpful. The unhelpful way of predicting the future leads to stagnation as in: “this and this is bound to happen and there is nothing I can do about it, so there is no use trying”. You can challenge this by asking:
Do I always predict the same thing all the time?
What is the evidence for my prediction? Is there evidence to the contrary?
Is there something I can do to change the outcome?
Could there be more than one outcome? If so, what could those outcomes be?
Would the impact of the dreaded outcome be as bad as I am predicting?
GENERALIZING is assuming that things that happen once will happen all the time or in many different situations. Generalization promotes learning – we learn by seeking and identifying patterns. We know that cars will stop on red and go on green and we are absolutely correct to generalize that rule everywhere we go. We also know that cars drive on the right side. Such generalization keeps us safe on the road provided we do not insist on following that rule in UK or Australia. As silly as this example may seem, it teaches us that we need to have some knowledge of the context before we apply what we have learnt through our own life experiences. We have to train ourselves to detect exceptions to our own rules.
Everyday generalizations can be quite subtle but still lead to a lot of unnecessary pain. Imagine that you have just dealt with a difficult conversation with someone who was rather inconsiderate. This may lead you to engage in a following chain of thoughts: “this person was really inconsiderate in their remarks, I was made a fool, people do not care whether they hurt me or not, people are just so inconsiderate, nobody cares about me, I am a fool who will always be treated this way….” By now, you can see where all this can go and how hurtful and immobilizing such process can become. In such situations, ask the following:
Am I generalizing based on one or two events?
What is the evidence for my conclusion?
Could I have different interpretations?
Is there something different, unique about this situation that I have not encountered before?
ALL-OR-NONE THINKING makes us believe that events or people are either good or bad, without allowing any room for the middle ground. This way of thinking makes our decisions faster. We approach the “good” and walk away from the “bad”.
Shadow in our peripheral vision while driving is “bad” and we need to react right away. We stop and potentially avoid an accident. Yet, more often than not, things in life are much more complex. Our best friends may let us down while the task we may have dreaded for months turns out to be not as bad as we thought. Keep in mind that we are wired to first think in terms of "white and black" and are only able to extrapolate the “gray” as a second step. The problems happen when we forget about that second step.
EMOTIONAL THINKING happens when our emotions serve to validate our thoughts. It takes quite a bit to distinguish our thinking from our emotions and, as our thoughts and emotions usually match, such emotional thinking is often correct. Holding an infant or getting a hug from a friend feels good and it would be silly to analyze that. However there is no need to blame yourself for being callous if you don't feel warm and fuzzy when holding a drooling bundle or to assume that your friend harbours ill intentions because the hug did not feel right. Let's try a different example: A person who is afraid of snakes starts shrieking when the creature slithers across their TV screen. That person knows that they are not in danger, but still has hard time containing their emotional response. We know that we engage in emotional thinking if:
Our reaction changes more with mood than with circumstances;
Our reaction is rooted in physical body response and not facts;
Our reaction does not seem proportional to the circumstances;
Our behaviours match our emotions instead of our goals;
We try to justify our reaction by insisting that we would not have reacted the way we did if it were not warranted.
“SHOULDING” and preoccupation with fairness and blame go hand in hand. Shoulding creates an illusion of control. No amount of “should haves” can change the past, yet a person with this tendency cannot move beyond past events. Sometimes reframing works. For example instead of saying “this should not have happened”, say “it is awful that it happened”. The net result is that we acknowledge our experience but are able to leave it in the past.
Perhaps the worst of the "shoulds" is "I should not be feeling this way". If we think in this manner, we end up by viewing our own pain as a form of moral violation. We feel what we feel. People affected by depression might lead lives that look amazing on the outside and yet feel a great degree of emotional turmoil -- that seemingly unwarranted emotional pain is the reason for the diagnosis. Our morality is defined by our actions, not our feelings.
CONFIRMATION BIAS is a tendency to pay attention to information that confirms our point of view, and to discount information that is not aligned with our beliefs. Confirmation bias allows us to maintain a steady world view and creates predictability. At the same time it impedes our ability to consider other possibilities. If someone whom you believe to be inconsiderate is late, their lateness confirms your evaluation and it might be very hard for you to sympathize with their explanation. Practice looking for and considering evidence that might disprove your conclusions. If your conclusions are correct, they will withstand such scrutiny.
Thought records help with building a habit of examining evidence for and against our conclusions. Such habit ensures that we act based on facts instead of rooting our decisions in potentially flawed assumptions. Click here to find some relevant worksheets.
