Homework
Today, my shrink gave me a piece of paper entitled "Definitions of Cognitive Distortions."
The categories are:
All-or-nothing thinking - You see things in black-and-white categories. If you performance falls short or perfect, you see yourself as a total failure
Over-generalization - You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat
Mental filter - You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened
Disqualifying the positive - You reject positive experiences by insisting they "don't count" for some reason or other.
Jumping to conclusions - You make negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion
Sub categories are:
Mind reading - You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you and you don't bother to check this out
The fortune teller error - You anticipate that things will turn out badly and you feel convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact
Magnification or minimization - You exaggerate the importance of things (your screw up or someone else's achievement) or you inappropriately shrink things (your own desirable qualities) until they appear tiny.
Emotional reasoning - You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are
"Should" statements - You try to motivate yourself with "shoulds" or "shouldn'ts" as if you have to be punished before could be expected to do anything. The emotional consequence is guilt. Direct toward others, you feel anger, frustration and resentment.
Labeling and mislabeling - This is an extreme form of over-generalization. Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly coloured and emotionally loaded.
Personalization - You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event which in fact you were not primarily responsible for.
I am to pay attention to my internal dialogue and write down instances of using these types of thinking. According to her, I am very prone to "should/shouldn't" thinking, which I agree with. I live with a lot of guilt over things I "should" be doing - which was a large part of my previous post. I have to change my "should" into "will" or "can."
I expect this to be a challenge.
On an aside:
People in this city have to learn some fucking manners. 3 times I tried to get to the elevator to get to my doctor's office and each time some prick in a business suit hit the door close button before I could make it to the elevator. The office building has a bank of 4 elevators on both sides. When the bell rings, you have to figure out for which elevator it is and on which side. Polite people let the doors close on in their programmed time. Today's assholes couldn't wait the 5 seconds or whatever and hit the door close building immediately when they didn't see someone standing immediately in front of the doors.
In addition, due to the nice weather, the strollers were out in gangs. People shouldn't need this explained to them. When 2 people are walking in a line on the sidewalk and approach 2 people walking in the opposite direction, the polite thing to do is for one person in each group to slow down and step behind the person they are with to allow all the people to remain on the sidewalk. Not yielding the sidewalk like this and forcing some to walk in the gutter is grounds for being called a "prick" and being snarled at. Or, if it has happened more than once, for me to square my shoulders and cross-check you, you ignorant asshole.
Also, Strollers, don't fucking stroll 4 or more abreast. Not everyone has time to walk at your pace and may actually have to get somewhere. If you are going to stroll, stroll in pairs. If you are going to stop to talk animatedly about something or whatever, don't stop dead in the middle of the fucking sidewalk, you oblivious cunts. Step to one side and allow other people to continue their walking without having to suddenly dodge around you. If you get stepped on, you deserved it. Idiots.
Posted by Marmy on March 29, 2007 11:10 PM