January 2, 2023

Now that you have the skills to set boundaries, let\’s work on self awareness, as that can also affect your relationships. 

Improvement begins with first becoming aware of cognitive distortion.

Negative self-talk, or what Beck called cognitive distortion, is one of the best examples of self-sabotage that can lead to social isolation and depression. As a psychologist specializing in the treatment of eating disorders, I see a lot of this sort of cognitive distortion. I have had adult patients weighing under 100 pounds insist that they were “too fat” and could therefore not even consider going to their best friend’s wedding (despite being in the wedding). 

When our self-worth is tied up in how much we weigh, how smart we are, how rich we are, or how glamorous our job is, it makes it hard to keep it real in a relationship. Being more mindful of these errors in thinking, which is the focus of dialectical behavioral therapy DBT, frees us up to be ourselves in relationships.

Catastrophizing 

Those who catastrophize give more weight to a perceived failure, weakness, or threat, but less weight to a perceived success, strength, or opportunity. It is usually different from the weight assigned by others for such things, such that the person is often accused of “making a mountain out of a molehill.”

When people engage in catastrophizing as a part of the way they see the world, they expect disaster to strike at the drop of a hat. This is also referred to as “magnifying or minimization.” The problem is that they begin to live their lives as if a disaster is about to strike. So, if the person working to a deadline realizes that he is not going to be done on time, he may magnify the problem and the potential negative outcomes and minimize the value he adds. 

At this point, he may engage in all-or-nothing thinking (another distortion) and become defensive with his boss, believing that his boss is going to fire him anyway, so it doesn’t really matter. This behavior can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, especially if the boss interprets the behavior to be hostile for no apparent reason and actually does fire him. 

Another way that catastrophizing ends up as a self-fulling prophecy is that you give up without trying:

“I don’t have what it takes to be a good father/boyfriend/wife/student, so I am not even going to try.”

“I have tried to get control of my weight and have always failed, so what’s the use in trying again?”

We all catastrophize from time to time: Christmas is “ruined” because someone brought the wrong cranberry sauce or the turkey took a bit longer than expected or the band for the New Year Eve party showed up late. But if we let it ruin the event for us, we have lost sight of what the event was all about, i.e. family, celebration, being a part of a group. 

Some of this is normal. Problems result when it is happening all the time and/or if we base our behaviors on the assumptions that we are making and the assumptions are wrong. A good clue that your catastrophizing is wearing thin for family and friends is if you find yourself in a bad mood a lot and you notice that people aren’t rushing to empathize with you. 

So how do you get off the hamster wheel of anxiety when you sense disaster looming?

 

Ask yourself the following questions:

  • Is it really as bad as I am making it seem?

  • Has it been this bad before and NOT ended in disaster?

  • Am I blowing this out of proportion? (This is key.)

My Pet Peeve:

Another example of how people in the US today have lost confidence in expressing what they are thinking is to express everything as a feeling. “I just feel like we can make our point better if we…”. How to make your point better is what you think and it may have nothing to do with how you feel. Another way to reduce the risk of being wrong is to put “just” in front of your thoughts. “I just think it would be better…”. Or double whammy “I just feel like we should…”.

Seriously. Think before you speak, but say what you think for heaven’s sake! What is the worst thing that could happen? Someone will disagree? You’ll live, LOL. 

“I think it is ok to say what you actually think.”

(Me stating my opinion without softening it… but also without being rude)

Stay tuned for next week’s conclusion on how errors in thinking destroy relationships. If you would like help with figuring out what your boundaries are and how to set them, feel free to reach out to me today at (513) 205-6543.