3) Selective Abstraction (Mental Filter)

'Selective abstraction' is when you conceptualise a whole situation on the basis of one detail that is taken out of context.  You pick out one negative detail and think about it exclusively, thus perceiving the whole situation as negative.

For example: In a maths exam a student finished the paper but was sure she had missed 17 questions out of the 100. For days after the exam she couldn't stop thinking about those 17 questions and came to the conclusion that she should drop out of college. However, when she received the results of the exam, she scored 83 and got an A*!

When you are depressed, you mentally filter out everything positive, and because you are unaware of this 'filtering process' you conclude that everything is negative. It is a bad habit that causes you to suffer unnecessarily.

Automatic thoughts: Tom and Katie didn't come to my party. I must be a horrible person. No one likes me.

Possible answers: You invited 20 people to your party and only two didn't come. 18 of your friends did come! They wouldn't have come if you were a horrible person and they wouldn't have come if they didn't like you; therefore lots of people like you! Have you actually asked Tom and Katie why they didn't come? They probably had previous arrangements and it was nothing to do with you so don't take it personally!

Picture Source: http://www.yaelweinberg.com/517188/Contact

2) Overgeneralisation

When you draw a general conclusion on the basis of a single incident you are overgeneralising. You irrationally conclude that one thing that happened to you once will occur over and over again, or already has occurred many times before. For example, the common statement - "things are always going wrong for me" is often said after one bad thing has happened. However, when you take a step back and thing about this statement you will realise that this is a huge overgeneralisation! Things are not always going wrong for you, you just tend to remember the bad things over the good! Or another example, I was driving in my car the other day and a bird crapped on my window. I was really annoyed and thought to myself, "That's just my luck, birds are always crapping on my window!" But when I actually thought about this experience, I realised that it was the first time it had ever happened to me. This is a perfect example of overgeneralisation.

The pain of rejection is generated almost entirely from overgenralisation. A friend of mine recently asked a girl out. When she politely rejected because of a previous engagement he thought to himself that he would never get a date and he would be single and lonely forever. In his distorted cognitions he concluded that because she turned him down once, she would always do so, and that since all women have exactly the same tastes, he would be endlessly rejected! Overgeneralisation? I think so! 

Learn to talk back to these damaging statements based on single events...

Automatic thoughts: I was so irritable with my boyfriend this morning. I'm a terrible girlfriend and a horrible person.

Possible answers: The fact that on a particular day, at a particular time, in a particular circumstance, I was irritable, does not make me a terrible girlfriend or a horrible person. I can't reasonably expect never to be irritable, and making myself depressed by writing myself off completely is not going to help me to be nicer to my boyfriend when he next comes over.

Ideas taken from "Feeling Good, The New Mood Therapy" (David D. Burns). 

1) Dichotomous Reasoning (black-or-white/all-or-nothing thinking)

Dichotomous reasoning refers to your tendency to evaluate your personal qualities in extreme, black-or-white/mutually exclusive categories. It is the most common kind of negative thinking, and is the main cause of many problems including anxiety and depression. For example, a straight-A student may believe that they are a total failure because they received a B on an exam. This all-or-nothing thinking forms the basis for perfectionism. It causes you to fear any imperfection or mistake because you will then see yourself as a complete loser, and you will feel inadequate and worthless, leading to anxiety. It can cause depression because when you think you have to be perfect, you feel trapped by your own unrealistic standards.

This way of evaluating things is unrealistic, because hardly anything in life is either one way or the other. For example, no one is absolutely amazing or totally stupid, and no one is all good or all bad! Look at the floor of the room you are sitting in now. Is it perfectly clean? Or is every inch piled high with dust and dirt? Or is it partially clean? Absolutes do not exist in this universe. If you try to force your experiences into absolute categories, you will be constantly depressed because your perceptions will not conform to reality. You will set yourself up for shaming yourself endlessly because whatever you do will not measure up to your exaggerated expectations.

Examples: Automatic thought: I did that really badly, I might as well not bother at all
                Possible answer: The fact is, I didn't do it as well as I wanted to. That does not mean that it was no good at all, I can't expect to get everything 100% right. If I do, I'll never be satisfied.

Are you applying this kind of black-or-white thinking to yourself? Look for the shades of grey.

(Some of this has been taken from the book "Feeling Good, The New Mood Therapy" by David D. Burns)

Errors In Logic: Cognitive Distortions

Errors in logic are simply thinking errors (cognitive distortions). By identifying these thinking errors and testing them as hypotheses rather then facts, we can investigate and challenge these negative thoughts to see if they are indeed logical. Alternative ways of thinking can be substituted for the original negative automatic thoughts which are more balanced, and reflect the persons experience more accurately.

Here are a list of the 10 most common cognitive distortions that form the basis of all depression:

1) Dichotomous reasoning (black or white/all-or-nothing)

2) Overgeneralisation

3) Selective abstraction (mental filter)

4) Discounting the positive

5) Arbitrary inference (jumping to conclusions)

6) Magnification/minimisation (binocular trick)

7) Emotional Reasoning

8) Shoulds ("musturbation")

9) Global judgements

10) Personalisation

Over the next 10 posts I will be looking at each of these individual thinking errors and explaining what they mean so we can look at ways to challenge them. This should help to stop some of your negative thoughts as you will begin to see that a lot of them are completely illogical, and hopefully this will begin to make you feel better!

YouthNoise

I just thought I would let you know of a really cool website I came across on the internet. It is called www.youthnoise.com and it is an American website that aims to "empower young leaders to act for the causes they care about locally and nationally".  I have very recently become one of their featured bloggers and I wrote my first post the other day! I think it is a great idea to have a specific place for young people to blog about the things they are interested in and it is a place where us young people feel that we have a voice and are actually listened to; there is also a real sense of community even though the users are worldwide! I have read a number of  the blog posts and I have been able to search for blogs on things that interest me, and so far I have been really impressed!

A Breathing Technique For Relaxation

My first video post! Please let me know what you think!

Create a Continuum

Many teens (including me) have an unrealistic view of themselves, or situations that they are in. They usually have extreme, black and white views, magnifying every detail of the problem and they can't recognise anything in-between. This is where creating a 'continuum' can be an extremely helpful tool in distinguishing how 'bad' something is, or to what extent it is 'bad'. It can help you to review your understanding of worth, goodness or weakness.

To explain what exactly a 'continuum' is, lets take an example of a teenager with severe feelings of guilt, and they believe themselves to be the most evil person in the world.

They should begin with a straight line representing the extremes of good and evil - good at one end, and evil at the other. Then, they should place an X on the line representing where they see themselves and it is likely that they would put the X nearest the evil end. They should contemplate their own, personal evil attributes, before putting other evil characters on the continuum. Adolf Hitler or Josef Stalin may be interesting individuals to consider. The teenager will then probably find themselves having to extend the line to accommodate the newcomers. Then they should fill in the extreme good end of the scale, writing people down that they admire, who they know. Then what about placing other more famous people, such as Mother Teresa. They'll probably need to extend the continuum in the opposite direction. Then finally they should put down other friends and acquaintances in the continuum as well.

At the end of this process, the teenager may still not like themselves very much, but at least they should begin to question their assumptions of being the most evil person on the planet.

You can also use this method to asses how bad situations actually are that you find extremely difficult and it will help you to put many things in your life into perspective. Don't just try to visualise it in your head, writing it down is much more effective as you will see the full picture and it will help you to view things in context.