When a person experiences a distressing emotion such as anger, it is usually preceded by a number of unhelpful self-statements and thoughts. Often there is a pattern to such thoughts and we call these, "unhelpful thinking styles".

People use unhelpful thinking styles as an automatic habit. It is something that happens out of our awareness.

However, when a person consistently and constantly uses some of these styles of thinking, they can often cause themselves a great deal of emotional distress. This information sheet describes a number of "unhelpful thinking styles".

As you read through them, you might notice some thinking patterns and styles that you use consistently. Some of these styles might sound similar to one another. They are not meant to be distinct categories but to help you see if there is a kind of pattern to your thoughts.

Mental Filter:

This thinking style involves a "filtering in" and "filtering out" process – a sort of "tunnel vision," focusing on only one part of a situation and ignoring the rest. Usually, this means looking at the negative parts of a situation and forgetting the positive parts, and the whole picture is coloured by what may be a single negative detail.

Jumping to Conclusions:

We jump to conclusions when we assume that we know what someone else is thinking (mind reading) and when we make predictions about what is going to happen in the future (predictive thinking).

Personalisation:

This involves blaming yourself for everything that goes wrong or could go wrong, even when you may only be partly responsible or not responsible at all. You might be taking 100% responsibility for the occurrence of external events.

Catastrophizing:

Catastrophizing occurs when we “blow things out of proportion“., and we view the situation as terrible, awful, dreadful, and horrible, even though the reality is that the problem itself is quite small.

Black & White Thinking: This thinking style involves seeing only one extreme or the other. You are either wrong or right, good or bad and so on. There are no in-between or shades of grey.

Shoulding and Musting:

Sometimes by saying “I should…” or “I must…” you can put unreasonable demands or pressure on yourself and others. Although these statements are not always unhelpful (eg “I should not get drunk and drive home”), they can sometimes create unrealistic expectations. Overgeneralization:

When we overgeneralise, 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…”, or “I never…” then we are probably overgeneralizing.

Labelling:

We label ourselves and others when we make global statements based on behaviour in specific situations. We might use this label even though there are many more examples that aren’t consistent with that label.

Emotional Reasoning:

This thinking style involves basing your view of situations or yourself on the way you are feeling. 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 Minimization:

In this thinking style, you magnify the positive attributes of other people and minimize your own positive attributes. It’s as though you’re explaining away your own positive characteristics.

Catch it, Check it, Change it

Challenging and learning to replace these thoughts is one of the best ways to help us deal with stress and anxiety, improve how we sleep and really boost our mood. In time, this can really make a difference to our mental health and well-being.

If you can learn to take a step back and challenge unhelpful thoughts by thinking about what evidence really exists to support them, over time you can succeed in changing them into more positive ones.

We encourage you to journal your thoughts and the emotions you feel- which will be explored in your next Mental health consultation.