Your mind could become your biggest enemy, especially when the mind is filled with negative thoughts. People who have persistent negative thoughts often face difficulty in maintaining a positive frame of mind. As a result, they suffer from low self-confidence or self-esteem and often shy away from social events.
Negative thoughts do not appear suddenly, as psychologists have noted clear thinking patterns that lead to negative thoughts. This article will discuss the common negative thinking patterns and find proven ways of eliminating the negative thoughts for holistic mental rejuvenation. Besides embracing good habits to improve mental health, it is crucial to identify negative thinking patterns to eliminate negativity and embrace positivity.
Common Negative Thinking Patterns
After studying human negative thinking patterns, experts have noted some common traits. Understanding human minds is complex since everyone thinks independently and differently. Still, there are a few common patterns that help psychologists and therapists provide mental counseling or therapy. In the following section, find a guide to these negative thinking patterns.
1. Thinking All-or-Nothing
All-or-nothing thinking, also known as black-and-white thinking or polarized thinking, is a clear trait that leads to negative thoughts. As the pattern name suggests, this type of thinking pattern typically leads to extreme thoughts. For example, you either consider a thing or outright reject the thing – there is no in between.
Fear of making mistakes often comes from an all-or-nothing thinking pattern. Such people tend to avoid taking action, fearing making a mistake. Sometimes, past experience of failure may trigger such a negative thought pattern. In the fear of repeating the same mistake, people often develop an all-or-nothing thinking pattern. The common way of overcoming this cognitive distortion is embracing confidence to defeat self-destructive thoughts.
2. Overgeneralization
Generalization happens when the human mind identifies a pattern involved in one or multiple actions. There is nothing wrong with generalizing things to an extent since it often helps in quick decision-making. However, overgeneralization is not good, as it is a common negative thinking pattern.
A common example of overgeneralization is that people often consider that bad things always happen to them. Everyone undergoes both good and bad slices of luck. But some of us feel extremely depressed when something does not go as planned. In such cases, overgeneralization creeps in and causes cognitive distortions.
3. Mental Filters
A mental filter refers to the opposite thinking pattern of overgeneralization. Even though it is the opposite pattern to overgeneralization, the outcome remains the same. Both these thinking patterns often lead to mental hardships, low self-esteem, and other mental barriers.
Think about a scenario where you have received 20 feedback forms from different people. Now, among those 20 feedback forms, 19 forms possess good feedback, while one form contains negative feedback. If you have a mental filter, cognitive distortion, if you think about the negative feedback too much, rather than being happy with 19 good feedbacks.
4. Jumping to Conclusions
Jumping to conclusions is also a common negative thinking pattern that human minds may develop due to multiple reasons. People jump to conclusions quickly due to affirmations received from others on a particular matter. In such cases, you blindly follow others without investigating the matter based on the available evidence.
Nowadays, social media fake news has become a real concern. A large number of people tend to trust whatever they see on social media and develop quick conclusions. Such traits expose the negative thinking patterns among a large number of people. Jumping to conclusions is a common cognitive distortion that should be dealt with by rational or logical thoughts.
5. Emotional Reasoning
Emotional reasoning is another cognitive distortion that makes you reliant to a large extent on your intuitive thoughts. For example, you are expecting an event and must be speculating on the outcome of the event. Emotional reasoning happens when you tend to think that the outcome of the event will happen according to your thinking.
For example, many people do not drive, thinking that driving is unsafe. Making such a conclusion, even without trying to drive, is a negative thinking pattern. People having such a cognitive distortion should assess a situation logically instead of thinking emotionally. Undergoing life skills awareness therapy may also help in this matter.
Conclusion
So, these are the five negative thinking patterns commonly noted among human beings. Overcoming negative thinking traits can be challenging, especially when you do not undergo professional therapies. Ignoring the negative thinking patterns can lead to various psychological challenges. Therefore, it is crucial to consult a professional therapist to improve mental health conditions and regain self-esteem or confidence.
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