Spotting Your Thinking Traps
Stress is a normal part of life. But did you know the way we think about stressful situations can affect how we feel and even how we manage them?
Some thinking can be helpful. If your boss gives you a tricky project and you have the thought, “I’m so glad she thought of me, I can do this!” you’ll probably go into that project with a lot of energy and enthusiasm. This sets you up to do good work. If you have the thought, “I’ll never be able to do this, I always fail,” you are more likely to feel stress and other negative feelings that will get in the way of doing the project.
These kinds of negative thoughts and thinking patterns are like thinking traps. They trick us into feeling and behaving in ways that either don’t fit the situation or make it worse.
Psychologists have identified several common thinking traps that tend to increase stress, anxiety, and worry, and contribute to unhappiness. They’ve also given them names to help us remember them! Here are some examples:
Thinking Trap | What It Is | Example |
|---|---|---|
All-or-nothing thinking | Seeing things as “all good” or “all bad” | “That date was horrible. I didn’t have anything interesting to say.” |
Fortune telling | Predicting bad things will happen in the future | “If I apply for that job, I’ll only get rejected.” |
Catastrophizing | Taking a problem or negative situation and thinking the worst | “This headache is probably a brain tumor. I’m going to die.” |
Overgeneralization | Taking one negative event or detail about a situation and making it the truth about all situations | “I forgot to pay my credit card on time. I’ll never get a handle on my finances.” |
Discounting the positive | Taking something positive that happened and minimizing it so that it doesn’t “count” | “My boss said I did a good job on the presentation, but he was just being nice.” |
We all make mistakes in our thinking. Learning about thinking traps and noticing when you get stuck in negative thinking patterns can help you identify times when stress is getting the better of you.