today i'm going to be talking about the cognitive distortion
of labeling and how labeling ourselves and others can make depression and anxiety
worse hi everybody in today's video we're going to continue our series on cognitive
distortions and biased ways of thinking that can contribute to feelings of depression
and anxiety and today's video is going to be focusing on the concept of labeling but before
i get into that just a couple of disclaimers to go over i'm a registered psychologist in the province
of british columbia canada and this video is for informational purposes only it is not intended as
a substitute or replacement for advice from your doctor or mental health professional
now with those things out of the way let's start talking about labeling now labeling is a cognitive
distortion that at its core makes a temporary event a permanent trait or characteristic
of a person so what happens is that rather than thinking about the behavior of another person
labeling is used to provide a global description of the whole person so rather than just a singular
event sort of being how i define a person i use that event to define the entire the entirety of
that person so um for example if i fail a test i'm a failure uh i did not do the dishes i didn't
complete all the dishes so i'm a slob uh i made an error at work so i'm an idiot
now the thing is we can also apply labels to other people labeling isn't just about ourselves
it's how it's labels that we apply to others as well so the co-worker who spoke to me currently
that person's a jerk my girlfriend who forgot her anniversary she's self-centered so what ends
up happening when we engage labeling is that we attach the label to the person or ourselves
and then we tend to filter out any information that doesn't fit in with that label and we
tend to focus on any information that does apply to that label so negative events and
behaviors are given more importance or more relevance than positive ones
so when i fail at something at work that failure is noted and converted into the trait of me being
an idiot so i remember all the times that i failed and those are all examples of why i'm an idiot
but my repeated successes at work at the same time they're they're largely ignored now what's
interesting with labeling is that rarely do people label themselves when things go
well so i did well at that project at work so i'm a winner people don't
typically do that they don't tend to think of themselves that way so we typically don't
apply labels to ourselves that are really positive based on singular events
now labeling can cause inaccurate thinking but it can also maintain and fuel painful emotions like
depression or sadness so if i fail a test and take that to mean that i'm an idiot and a total failure
how do you think that's going to make me feel well i'm probably going to feel pretty sad i'm probably
going to have a sense of despair and a sense of hopelessness and if i start to believe the label
then what tends to happen is that i i start to feel that there's nothing i can do to really
change it so at its core what labeling does is it it takes a solvable problem and makes it something
that can't be solved so imagine a scenario where i just started at a new job and i discovered
that i've mis misfiled something and made a simple mistake well what should i do about that
what could i do about that well in a situation like that the solution seems
relatively simple go to whatever it was that i misfiled it and refile it in the proper way
if i just focus on what i did if i just focus on my behavior
it gives me an opportunity to think about ways of correcting that behavior
however imagine that i misfiled something at work and then i think to myself that i'm
a complete idiot i'm a complete [ __ ] what should i do about being an idiot and a [ __ ]
do you see the problem how do i change the fact that i'm an idiot and a
see by engaging in labeling what's happening in this scenario and in others is that i turn a minor
problem like misfiling something at work and now i've made it something that is concrete
and unchangeable i'm an idiot and i'm a the same applies for when we label other people
if someone's behavior rubs us the wrong way and i attach a label to the person that that person
is a jerk what that means is that they'll always be a jerk and that there's nothing they can do
to not be a jerk so it's this type of labeling it can cause a lot of difficulties and problems
in interpersonal relationships where people will hold grudges against others because of singular
events that have occurred because they after those singular events they attach a label to
that other person that kind of fuels that that grudge or the that bad blood that they have
so if you notice yourself engaging in labeling what can you do about it how can you sort of
correct or modify this way of thinking well the first step is to recognize it and to label
that you're engaging in labeling right so to be aware and to recognize earlier on in the process
that i'm actually behaving in this way i'm actually thinking in this way that i'm
labeling something see the thing is cognitive distortions they work really well when we're
not aware that we're doing them but when we are aware of them it really can help short-circuit
that cycle so when you notice that you're engaging in labeling the idea is to put aside the label
and focus on the behavior that you notice so things like i failed
one test the person was late to work my life my sorry my wife left the bathroom light on
by focusing on these events by focusing on the behavior and not the person what you might
find is that you have less intense negative emotions toward yourself or the other person
additionally problems that may have felt like they were unsolvable or people in your life who
who seemed like they were extremely difficult or impossible to deal with all of these things
suddenly become more manageable when you just focus on the behavior as opposed to a label that
becomes an unchangeable characteristic of yourself or the other person so i hope that gives you a
little bit of a better sense of what labeling is how it works and how it can contribute to
depression and anxiety i'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas about this so please leave me
some comments in the comments section down below if you've been enjoying my videos and would like
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when i post a new video so that's all for today's video as always thank you for
making it all the way to the end of this video and i will see you in the next one