Common thinking traps
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00:00We all make mistakes and sometimes we do this with our thinking which leads to a
00:05strong emotional reaction which is where the kind of anxiety cycle triggers it.
00:10But if we understand some of the more common thinking errors that we make we
00:16can kind of spot them in our thinking and say aha I know what this is. So let's
00:21go through some of these thinking traps now and maybe you'll be able to identify
00:25some in your own thinking or next time you worry you'll say oh I know that
00:29that's a common thinking trap and being able to identify that can often take a
00:34lot of the sting out of it. So the first one is catastrophizing. So this is where
00:39something small turns into something huge. So we spot a mistake we made at a
00:45presentation at work for example we think in oh no my boss is going to be
00:50really angry and they're going to fire me and I'm gonna lose my income and I'm
00:53gonna lose my house. That's catastrophizing because actually it's
00:58taking this little thing and it's blowing out into the worst possible
01:02scenario when likely your boss might not even notice it or it won't be a big
01:08deal. Probably not going to be made homeless because you made a mistake in a
01:13PowerPoint presentation. Next is all-or-nothing thinking. So all black
01:20and white thinking is often known. So an example of this might be saying I need
01:26to get an A in my exam or I'm a failure and like a B would be a failure. Well
01:31actually a B's a great grade or it's certainly not the end of the world and
01:37there's some gray area there right like a B isn't quite what we wanted if we
01:41wanted an A but it's also better than a C and a D and an E. But we can often get
01:48ourselves into this mindset of it must be this way or everything is is ruined
01:53or like my day must be perfect if one bad thing happens today the whole day is
01:58ruined. But actually our days are often gray there's some good there's some bad
02:02in there. The next is predicting the future or overestimating. So for example
02:11if I don't wash my hands and then I'm definitely gonna get ill and I'm gonna
02:17get I'll get some kind of food poisoning and of course that might
02:22happen it is possible we don't want to say the chance of zero is that but it's
02:27a pretty low chance right we're massively overestimating the probability
02:31if we think just skipping one hand washing while we're making a salad is
02:35gonna lead to to food poisoning in days in bed. Mind reading so this is kind of
02:43predicting other people's thoughts so a good example of this it might be
02:47someone we know passes us on the street and they don't acknowledge us and we
02:51assume we know what they're thinking they're really mad at us and they
02:55ignored us because they're mad at us. Actually there might be loads of things
02:59going on another person's mind maybe they're upset and they're just tunnel
03:03vision maybe they've got a podcast or music on and they're just not paying
03:07attention and maybe they've forgotten our name and they're too embarrassed in
03:12case we we call them out and spot them or something like that there's loads of
03:16reasons and similarly let's say we're in a restaurant and it appears like
03:21someone's looking at us and we assume they're judging us and maybe they're
03:25looking at someone else maybe they're looking at our food maybe they are
03:28interested in us but they're not judging us in a negative way lots of different
03:33possibilities but when we assume that we know what the other person thinking
03:37that's called mind reading. Personalization similar so let's say
03:43someone is angry and we kind of assume or it must be something that we've done
03:48like actually there could be loads of different things that angry but whenever
03:52we see it or it must be us everything is about us we are always the one that
03:58done something wrong. Emotional reasoning so this is a I feel bad so I must be bad
04:06let's say we feel guilty about something or remorseful say maybe we did
04:13make a mistake maybe we're just misinterpreting the situation but then
04:17we assume that it's a character trait of us so okay well I feel bad so I must be
04:24seriously ill because there's no other reason why I would feel bad other than
04:29that I was seriously ill and so how I feel is a reflection of my physical
04:34health or my character or something like that. Then we've got fixed rules so these
04:40things like shoulds or musts or for example I must get all of my work done
04:45today no matter how much work I get how many emails come through that I'm
04:51supposed to process I must get it all done today and we can end up getting
04:55really stressed about trying to get through all of this work and trying to
05:00get it all completed when actually there's an unrealistic amount of work
05:03but because we have a rule that says all my inbox must be empty by 5 p.m.
05:09then it causes us a lot of stress because we get trapped in this rule but
05:14actually we could say well that's just a rule I made myself or it's a rule I
05:17would like to keep but it's not always practical to keep it again we're looking
05:21at that gray area. So these are just a couple of the thinking traps so we went
05:27through catastrophizing all-or-nothing or black-and-white thinking predicting
05:32the future overestimating mind reading personalization emotional reasoning and
05:37fixed rules look out for these in your everyday life typically it comes down to
05:43two things that kind of catastrophizing and overestimating things are gonna be
05:49worse than they actually are or things are more likely to go wrong than they
05:55actually are just see if you can spot those and especially times when you're
05:59anxious can you see any of those thinking traps in the way you're
06:03thinking