What Does Your Bubble Say?

If we were in a cartoon, what would our thought bubbles say?

We’ve talked before about where our thought patterns and emotional regulation skills come from, but how do they become distorted? As we move through life, we experience numerous situations, interactions, relationships, and trauma. All of that impacts how we view and feel about the world around us, and everyone’s perception is completely unique. There could be five people in the room together during an event, and all five could come out and tell us something different about what happened. This is because everyone views the world around us through their own mental lens that is filtered to what we have previously experienced. For example, if we say it’s going to rain, some people are extremely excited about it because they live in an area of the country where there is a drought, or maybe even because they have fond memories of playing in the rain as a child and it is peaceful for them. However, others are going to be upset at this news because they live in an area where there has been too much rain, and there is a history of damaging floods. See how our experiences can influence even our most basic interactions with the world around us?

So how do these distortions tend to impact us? Cognitive distortions can negatively impact us in numerous ways. For example, if we give a presentation and we receive a ton of positive feedback on how well we did, but there is that one person in the crowd who says “I love how you did your graphics, but there were a few slides I thought were overcrowded and hard to read”. We then discount all of that positive feedback we were given and focus solely on the negative, spiraling into the thoughts that “I did horrible, I should never have done this, I’m never gonna do this again, I can never get things right” and so on. We berate and belittle ourselves over one tiny piece of negative feedback in a sea of positive feedback.

How can we learn to change this? Well the first step is to learn to recognize when we are having these thoughts. This takes time and practice, and in the beginning we might not recognize it for a couple days. That’s ok, we are still learning. As we get better at monitoring our thoughts, we will begin to recognize these distortions sooner, and then we can focus on reframing them.

To learn more about cognitive distortions and how we can reframe them, please read our other blogs or contact us at (325)644-8757 to see how therapy can help you become a better version of yourself. I look forward to talking with you soon!