It's Time to Take Out the Trash

Our Thoughts Affect How We Feel

The way we think affects how we view the world. It impacts our mood, our emotions, and our behavior.

Mind trash, mental garbage, cognitive distortions, faulty thinking, cognitive errors... Whatever you call it, we all have it. Our brains sometimes provide us with the wrong information.

Yep, believe it or not, our brains sometimes lie to us!

How we view the world relates to how we cope with anxiety, relationships, and deal with hardships.

We all have internal biases in the way we perceive ourselves and the world. Cognitive distortions, or how I lovingly refer to them as mind trash or mental garbage, are irrational thoughts rooted in our own internal, core belief system, and unbeknownst to us, we reinforce every day.

Mind trash consists of inaccurate or false patterns of thinking and believing. These irrational, negative thinking patterns, if not challenged, have the potential to really affect our mental health and overall well-being. What's so difficult is that these negative thinking patterns are often so automatic and ingrained in us that it happens without us even knowing. So, the first step is to learn to identify mental garbage and how it affects us.

Common Unhelpful Ways of Thinking

Catastrophizing-

You expect the worst. You magnify the negative shit and minimize the positive stuff. Blowing things way out of proportion; Making a mountain out of a molehill... You get the idea...

Emotional Reasoning-

You think and feel it; therefore it has to be true...

You think you are awful and a failure, so you must be that way...

Discounting the Positive-

You receive compliments from a colleague about a recent presentation. You reject the compliment and think that your colleague is "just being nice", and you really didn't do a good job.

Overgeneralizing-

You make a conclusion or judgment based on one single situation or episode. For instance, you apply for a new job and don't get a callback. Therefore, you ascertain that you won't ever get another job.

All or Nothing Thinking-

You think in terms of black or white only, not gray. In other words, you think that something is "always" or "never", or you can only be the best or the worst. There's no middle ground.

DBT in Philadelphia, Lancaster, York, Lebanon, and Harrisburg.

You don't need to be held prisoner by your own mind trash. There is help available. If you feel stuck with your own mental garbage and want help learning what to do, give me a call at 717-685-5074 or click here to schedule your own free, 15-minute consultation for counseling.

In my private therapy practice, I specialize in anxiety therapy, trauma counseling, and the treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder using DBT. If you’re interested in learning how I help, click here.