Understanding these common thinking patterns can help you identify and challenge unhelpful thoughts during the reframing process.
Seeing things in black and white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.
Common Examples
Seeing a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.
Common Examples
Exaggerating the importance of things or expecting disaster to strike.
Common Examples
Rejecting positive experiences by insisting they 'don't count' for some reason.
Common Examples
Picking out a single negative detail and dwelling on it exclusively so your vision of reality becomes darkened.
Common Examples
Assuming that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are.
Common Examples
Making negative interpretations even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion.
Common Examples
An extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself.
Common Examples
Taking responsibility for events that aren't entirely under your control.
Common Examples
Trying to motivate yourself with shoulds and shouldn'ts, as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything.
Common Examples