[Music]
you know what's funny about our mind
it lies to us all the time our mind
loves to convince us
that circumstances are the cause of our
emotions
so for example you may think i'm sad
because i didn't get the job
but here's the thing it's not the
outside circumstances that make us sad
or anxious it's how we interpret them
it's how we think about them
if i don't get the job i might actually
be feeling sad
because i'm thinking oh i'm such a
failure
instead of thinking i don't have the
qualifications or
i might be sad because i'm thinking this
career will never work out
instead of thinking i need to change my
approach in the next interview
or you might be sad because you're
thinking nothing good ever happens to me
instead of i'll try again soon
when we get stuck in thought patterns
that are distorted
or untrue or unhelpful this can
contribute to depression anxiety and
other mental illness
and distorted thinking makes us less
successful in both our professional and
our
personal lives in this two-part skill
first you're going to learn about 10
common cognitive distortions
these are ways that you think that make
you feel anxious or depressed
then in part two you're going to learn
what you can do about these cognitive
distortions by changing how you think so
you can change
how you feel
[Music]
do you feel like you're never good
enough or do you put other people's
needs before your own to the point of
getting burned out
do you change the way you act or talk or
look to
please others but at the expense of your
own happiness
if this sounds like you you may be a
perfectionist or people-pleaser
perfectionism and people-pleasing can
fuel a host of issues like depression
anxiety eating disorders body image
issues low self-esteem
and relationship issues but you can
learn practical skills to change how you
think and break these habits
in the online course overcoming
perfectionism and people pleasing
i've teamed up with dr carly lebaron who
has 13 years of experience helping
clients who struggle with these issues
in her course there are five hours of
instruction on overcoming perfectionism
and people pleasing
she'll teach you how to let go of being
everything for everyone else
and how to be more real and happy
you can really get back to your
authentic self so
go ahead and start learning today check
out the link in the description to learn
more
cognitive distortions are ways that our
mind convinces us of something that
isn't actually true
but it feels true your thoughts twist
reality
and you start to feel like you're bad or
broken or deficient
or you begin to see the world as
dangerous or threatening or cruel
but here's the thing with cognitive
distortions you don't realize
you're doing it you think that the way
you see things is reality
it feels true when you think or when you
talk through the lens of a cognitive
distortion
you sound rational and accurate to
yourself
and it's habitual you've been thinking
this way for so long that it just feels
normal and natural
to think this way so is there anything
you can do about this
you can change how you feel by changing
how you think but the first step is to
learn
what cognitive distortions are and to
notice that you're using them
when you can identify cognitive
distortions you can also gain power over
them
so understanding cognitive distortions
is the foundation of cognitive
behavioral therapy
this is one of the most common and very
effective treatments for depression
anxiety and other mental illnesses
now during this episode i'm going to use
the fictional character of james
to explain how cognitive distortions
work
james is based on a couple of real
clients but all mish-mashed together
so for this example he's a manager at a
restaurant
but he would really rather be a pilot
he's in his
mid-20s he's single he wishes he was
married he grew up in an abusive home
and his father and his stepfather are in
prison
so now he's on his own and he's trying
to figure out how to live a good life
okay so using that example let's talk
about the first cognitive
distortion number one is all or nothing
thinking all or nothing thinking is when
you think if i can't do it all perfectly
or if i can't fix it
all at once i might as well not even
bother you think that you're either
perfect
or you're a failure and this is common
especially with performance so you may
say something like
i'm failing math when you're getting a c
or you think that if you can't do it
perfectly why try
right it looks like if i ate one cookie
then i've already failed at my diet so i
might as well eat the entire box
with james for example he knows that he
should save money
but he's in so much debt that it seems
pointless to try to get out
he would say things like oh i'm in too
deep so i might as well
buy this fancy watch or the next big
video game
thinking this way usually makes you feel
hopeless depressed and justified in
giving up
okay number two over generalizing
if you over generalize you take one bad
thing and you assume that
everything will be awful after that so
for example
you may think things like i'm never
gonna get a good job or
people will always take advantage of me
or i'm gonna mess up
every relationship or you may say i have
the worst luck
in the entire world now with james
he got rejected by a girl he went out
with once and he says
why does this always happen to me there
aren't any girls who could love me i'm
always going to be alone over
generalizing uses words like always and
never
and it exaggerates one bad situation and
makes it feel worse
all right number three black and white
thinking so
are you thinking in extremes do you only
see the negative in a situation or in
yourself
with black and white thinking you may
say something like i'm a complete
failure
or my parents are such idiots or you
never listen to me or i'm the only one
around here whoever gets things
done right you can catch yourself doing
this when you use extreme wording like
always never completely terrible
etc if you're using words like that you
are speaking in black and white
now james works at a fast food
restaurant right james thinks my boss is
the biggest jerk ever she is so mean to
me she doesn't even know how to make the
food
i hate her and i hate my job it's the
worst job
ever in the whole country and this makes
him feel
angry mistreated discouraged and
victimized
okay number four is mind reading mind
reading is
assuming that people don't like you or
assuming that you know how they feel
about you
you might say things like nobody likes
me everyone is judging me
my boss must think i'm incompetent in
session james would sometimes say to me
you must think i'm a terrible person
mind reading makes you feel insecure
anxious fearful
and sometimes angry vindictive or upset
but it's not really based on reason
okay number five is catastrophizing
catastrophizing is all about assuming
that your fears and your worries must be
true
you believe the worst case scenario in
your head is the most likely outcome
it's what if thinking it's imagining
catastrophes
it sounds like like this is never going
to work
i'm going to fail and make a complete
fool of myself it sounds like oh she's
late it's raining she must have crashed
her car and she's upside down in a ditch
and with catastrophizing you assume that
your prediction is
fact james would say things like i'm
never going to be successful i'm going
to be stuck working
fast food for the rest of my life now
just to be clear
these are his words not mine there is
nothing wrong with honest
labor i worked four years in a fast food
company i worked in a treadmill factory
i've worked manual labor for
a good 10 years there's nothing wrong
with it and also remember
james he's in his early 20s and in a
matter of a couple of years he could get
a new
job training a new career and he could
change his entire future
but catastrophizing made him feel like
everything was hopeless
catastrophizing makes you feel fearful
anxious hopeless and it prevents
real helpful action okay number six is
emotional reasoning it's thinking that
your feelings accurately reflect reality
so for example if you're feeling
stressed out about school you might
think
the teacher must be giving us too much
homework or if you feel hurt
you think the other person must be a
jerk
when you're on your period you think oh
i feel terrible
so i must be a terrible person or here's
a really common one if you feel anxious
in social situations
you might think i must be an awkward
person
there's a difference between feeling
anxious and actually acting
awkward another thing people might say
is like i must be stupid i
am stupid when they just feel stupid
they feel dumb
right james felt discouraged and worried
about his future ability to succeed
he felt hopeless so he decided to
believe that it was hopeless that he
would never
be able to do much emotional reasoning
basically takes any emotion
and it makes it bigger okay number seven
is
labeling labeling is taking a behavior
and turning it into an identity
this is putting a name or label on
something so
instead of thinking you know he made a
mistake you might label your neighbor as
a complete idiot or you might think that
because you've made mistakes
that i'm a complete loser i'm broken i'm
a failure
or you might label others right he's a
complete jerk
she's a monster etc or if a kid makes a
bad choice you might say oh they're a
bad
kid etc when james wasn't able to find a
new job right away
he started to say things like this he'd
say oh i'm such a loser
i'll never be successful remember james
was in his mid-20s he had his entire
life
to learn the skills he needed to be
successful but he's already labeled
himself as broken and as a failure
labeling is all about creating
hopelessness
if something is our identity then
there's nothing we can do about it we're
stuck
right but the truth is we aren't what we
feel
or do we all have an immense capacity to
learn and to grow and to change and to
improve
and this is why cognitive distortions
are so harmful
they create a reality where change isn't
possible
they make you feel trapped and hopeless
when the reality is that with the right
help or with the right skills or support
or effort
you can change your life you can live a
good life
okay number eight is mental filtering
mental filtering is only seeing one side
of a situation
usually the negative you tend to filter
out the positive
so for example you ignore the good
things your boss does and you feel
constantly annoyed at him
or you minimize all the good things that
you do and you only dwell on your
mistakes
so you can see this um a lot with how
women often take compliments right often
they immediately downplay it by saying
oh you're so kind but if someone gives
them criticism
they take it to heart and they dwell on
it and they worry about it for days
james would often dwell on his failures
especially with women and he would
remember his mistakes over and over
especially with one girl who he really
liked and he would just keep
thinking about what he did wrong and
this led him to feeling like he was
a really bad person when in actuality he
was
quite kind and he tried to make the
people around him happy
and that was just one relationship that
didn't work out
mental filtering can make you feel like
a bad person or it can make you more
depressed or see the world more
negatively
on the other hand with some people
mental filtering leads to defensiveness
right highlighting their own virtues
and putting other people down either way
mental filtering distorts reality and
harms us
okay number nine is personalization it's
thinking that everything others do
is about you so you think that if
anything bad happens it's your fault or
if someone's upset
it's because of you right you blame
yourself for circumstances that are
beyond your control
um this is taking things personally
right you you
incorrectly might assume that you've
been intentionally excluded or targeted
so for example mom might think oh if my
son misbehaves it must be because i'm a
bad mother
or when you take things personally you
think oh if my if my boss yells at me it
must be because i'm messing up
or if the cashier is rude to me they
must not be respecting me
when in reality your boss might be
yelling because they have
poor management skills or maybe the
cashier's dog died that day
right we don't really know why people
are acting the way they do
but it's false to assume that everything
they do is about
us this is a true story about one of my
clients who i based this mishmash to
james off of so one of my clients said
this
when he worked at the register taking
orders when people came in and said i
need three cheeseburgers three fries
three drinks you know
anytime they started off with the words
i need
he felt like they were being rude he
would think in his head you don't
need cheeseburgers you want
cheeseburgers
and so this made him mad every time they
did it which was like of course dozens
of times a day right
or if a customer came in and treated him
badly he would take it personally he
would think you know what did i ever do
to you
sometimes it made him mad sometimes it
made him discouraged but
he had a hard time seeing that sometimes
you know
customers are usually just dealing with
their own stuff their own stress
and it wasn't about him taking things
personally makes you feel guilty
overwhelmed out of control burdened
helpless and it can lead to depression
and anxiety number 10
unreal ideal this is the plague of
social media
we look at others and we compare
ourselves unfairly so comparisons to
others will
always let you down the unreal ideal
sounds like susan seems to handle this
job just fine how come i'm struggling
or bob seems to have it all put together
he's got a perfect job
perfect wife you know i'm such a loser
james would compare himself to all his
old high school friends especially the
ones that he saw on social media
he would tell me things like they were
all married
he would say they all graduated college
they all served missions for their
church they all had great jobs
in his distorted thinking their lives
were perfect and
his life was the only mess comparing
ourselves to others usually leaves us
feeling
like we're never good enough like we're
an imposter
we may feel shame or discouragement we
may feel broken or
like we have to constantly compete to be
good enough
so there you go those are 10 common
cognitive distortions
did you recognize any of them in your
own life in the next
section we're going to learn how to
challenge cognitive distortions
but the first step is learning to notice
when you do it
when you learn to notice how you think
then you can change it
and it can be really hard to notice your
own cognitive distortions
so i encourage you to get another's
perspective use the chart in my course
to ask a close friend family member or
therapist
to tell you which of these cognitive
distortions
you commonly use when you feel upset
check yourself for distortions catch
yourself when you say words like
always or never or when you're making
assumptions
identify it and say to yourself that's
black and white thinking
or that's mind reading in the next
episode we're going to work on the next
steps which are
you know explore challenge the thought
and then
choose which thoughts going to be most
helpful for you
when it comes to challenging distorted
thinking basically it comes down to this
don't believe everything you think
challenge your thoughts
look for exceptions or evidence to the
contrary now this is going to require
you to be a little vulnerable
but it will also open you up to joy when
you learn to change the way you think
you can change how you feel you can
fight depression and anxiety
and you can live a happier life this
video is one skill from my 30 skill
course how to process your emotions
where i teach 30 of the most essential
skills for resolving depression
anxiety and improving mental health
emotion processing is an essential skill
for working through intense emotions
but most people have never been taught
how to do it i'm putting every single
main video lesson on youtube
for the world to access for free you
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you