Anxiety 1

Some of my faves asked me to post some of the handouts that I got while I was doing a group class on handling anxiety.  I found these to be super helpful, so maybe they’ll help someone else, too.

One of the things that really helped me was being able to put words to what I was feeling and how I was reacting to things.  Once I could identify what I was doing, I was better able to stop doing it.  I put examples in parenthesis.

Definitions of Cognitive Distortions
Source: Burns, D.D. : Feeling Good – The New Mood Therapy

1) All or nothing thinking: You see things in black and white categories.  If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.  (If I don’t make an A on my math test, I’ll never get into college.  If my child isn’t fully potty trained by 2 years old, I’m a bad parent.)

2) Overgeneralization: You see a single negative event as a never ending pattern of defeat.  (Often characterized by the words "always" and "never."  I always get passed over for a promotion.  I’ll never get anywhere in life.  I’ll always be bad at socializing.  I’ll never make any friends.)

3) Mental filter: You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors the entire beaker of water.  (The weather forecast says that it’s going to rain on my wedding day.  The pictures will be awful.  Everyone will be cold and wet and miserable.  I may as well not even get married because the whole thing is ruined now.  I look fat in this bathing suit.  Everyone’s going to laugh at me because I’m fat.  I’m not going swimming with everyone else because I’m disgusting.)

4) Disqualifying the positive: You reject positive experiences by insisting they "don’t count" for some reason or other.  In this way, you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences.  (I only made that basket because I got lucky.  I only look good in that picture because it was retouched.)

5) Jumping to conclusions: You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion.

     a) Mind reading: You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you and you don’t bother to check this out.  (The people sitting in the waiting room all think I’m crazy.  They probably expect me to pull out a gun and start shooting.  The guy taking my order at McDonald’s thinks I’ve had enough Big Macs and that I should go home and eat some vegetables so I can lose some weight.)

     b) The fortune telling error: You anticipate that things will turn out badly and you feel convinced that your predicition is an already established fact.  ("What if" statements are a big one here.  What if I never get a boyfriend?  I’ll never get that job.  I missed the bus the first time I tried to take it, so I’ll never be on time for the bus.)

6) Magnification (Ccatastrophizing) or minimization: You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your goof-up or someone else’s accomplishment) or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own accomplishments or the other fellow’s imperfections).  This is also called "the binocular trick."  (Mag: I sent an order to the wrong address and I’m going to get fired.  This bruise has been here a long time.  Oh God, I have cancer and I’m going to die. / Min:  I only sing well when other people are singing with me and can drown me out.)

7) Emotional reasoning: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are.  "I feel it, therefore it must be true."  (I’m afraid to fly because the plane is going to crash and I’ll die.  The house is always a pig sty, so there’s no reason to bother cleaning it.)

8) Should statements: You try 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.  "Musts" and "oughts" are also offenders.  The emotional consequence is guilt.  When you direct "should statements" toward others, you feel anger, frustration and resentment.  (I should keep my opinion to myself.  I should have known better.  I must get straight A’s.  I shouldn’t feel anxious.)

9) Labeling and mislabeling: This is an extreme form of overgeneraliztion.  Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself: "I’m a loser."  When someone else’s behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him: "He’s a damned louse."  Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded.

10) Personalization: You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event, which in fact you are not primarily responsible for.  (It rained on the day of the picnic.  I picked the worst day possible for a picnic.  My son is failing math and it’s all my fault because I’m a bad parent.)

I want to follow this with a handout we got about how to "untwist your thinking," but it took me so long to type this entry up that I think I’ll wait until the next entry for that.