How to Not be Nice To Yourself

Imag­ine this (real­ly imag­ine!)

You’re walk­ing home on a rough day at the office, pass­ing the scenery around you. Except, you don’t notice the beau­ty around you.

Nature’s allure is insuf­fi­cient to stop your busy mind from fran­ti­cal­ly replay­ing the day’s events.

A project you put your heart and soul into was can­celed at the last minute “because of bud­getary con­straints.” Your boss loved the out­put, but your line man­ag­er got all the cred­it.

Almost auto­mat­i­cal­ly, you begin run­ning the sce­nario over in your head, dwelling on only the neg­a­tives.

Your thoughts are not say­ing, “My project is get­ting so much pos­i­tive atten­tion.” (The good thoughts are rest­ing some­where in the deep recess of your mind.)

The thoughts that rise to the top of the pile are “I always mess things up” and “I am a fail­ure.” You tell your­self this, blam­ing your­self for the project get­ting nixed and even label­ing your­self a “fail­ure.”

Our brains are wired to keep us safe from dan­ger and harm. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, some­times our brains dwell too much on the neg­a­tive, which can then affect how we think and behave. Neg­a­tive thought pat­terns like this are called cog­ni­tive dis­tor­tions — a men­ace to good men­tal health. These neg­a­tive thought pat­terns are often inter­twined with peo­ple who expe­ri­ence anx­i­ety.

Like ter­mites on wood, these thoughts can mul­ti­ply quick­ly and grad­u­al­ly eat away your self-esteem and con­fi­dence. If you indulge them long enough, they can make you your worst ene­my, crip­pling your love, work, and every­thing in between.

Let’s explore the com­mon cog­ni­tive dis­tor­tions and how to deal with them.

What Are Some Cognitive Distortions?

Cog­ni­tive dis­tor­tions are ingrained, illog­i­cal think­ing pat­terns that mold real­i­ty into a neg­a­tive form. Often result­ing from faulty beliefs and assump­tions, they keep you in the vicious cir­cle of self-doubt, anx­i­ety, or pes­simism.

Every per­son has some sort of cog­ni­tive dis­tor­tion. Not great but also not the end of the world. But it might be if you let these dis­tor­tions go unchecked to the point that they rewrite real­i­ty. The effects can be severe on one’s men­tal health.

There­fore, it’s essen­tial to iden­ti­fy and chal­lenge these prob­lem­at­ic thoughts to improve your friendship…with your­self.

 

Causes of Cognitive Distortions

Cog­ni­tive dis­tor­tions stem from past expe­ri­ences, trau­ma, beliefs, neg­a­tive feed­back, con­flicts, or high expec­ta­tions.

Stress and anx­i­ety have a tox­ic rela­tion­ship with dis­tort­ed thoughts. They wors­en when merged. In oth­er words, a reg­u­lar life with reg­u­lar expec­ta­tions and reg­u­lar stress is enough for cog­ni­tive dis­tor­tions to work its dark mag­ic. No one’s exempt.

 

How cognitive distortions impact your self-esteem

Some com­mon cog­ni­tive dis­tor­tions and how they can sab­o­tage your self-esteem and rela­tion­ship with your­self.

 

Mental Filtering and Personalization

Men­tal fil­ter­ing focus­es sole­ly on the neg­a­tive aspects of a sit­u­a­tion, ignor­ing the pos­i­tives. Per­son­al­iza­tion is blam­ing your­self for out­comes beyond your con­trol. Togeth­er, these dis­tor­tions lead to undue guilt and low self-worth.

Imag­ine orga­niz­ing a sur­prise birth­day par­ty for your part­ner. You spend weeks mak­ing every­thing per­fect, but on the day of the par­ty, your part­ner arrives from work feel­ing tired and down­cast.

Instead of con­sid­er­ing that they had a rough day, you might fil­ter out all the good things about the par­ty and think, “The party’s a fail­ure.” Then, fol­low up with thoughts like, “I must’ve done some­thing wrong; they’re not hap­py because of me.”

This mix of men­tal fil­ter­ing and per­son­al­iza­tion makes self-blame easy and quick. You only focus on what went wrong rather than cel­e­brat­ing your effort. That leads to feel­ings of inad­e­qua­cy.

 

Blaming and Labeling

Blam­ing is tak­ing on too much respon­si­bil­i­ty for an adverse event or assign­ing fault to oth­ers. Label­ing is even worse because it makes you attach neg­a­tive labels to your­self based on one expe­ri­ence.

After a dis­agree­ment with a friend, you might think, “It’s all my fault,” or label your­self “self­ish.” These thoughts become deeply ingrained and affect how you see your­self.

Accept­ing the label makes it very com­pli­cat­ed to progress in life.

Blam­ing and label­ing can trap you in a cycle of self-crit­i­cism and dam­age your self-worth over time.

Always Being Right and Should State­ments

This is root­ed in the belief that you must always be cor­rect. It pairs rigid “should” or “must” state­ments direct­ed at your­self or oth­ers.

These unre­al­is­tic expec­ta­tions lead to frus­tra­tion and dis­ap­point­ment when things don’t go as you believe they “should.”

For exam­ple, after a slight mis­un­der­stand­ing with a co-work­er, you might think, “They shouldn’t have got­ten upset over that,” or “I should always be able to han­dle things per­fect­ly.”

Such thoughts set you up for fail­ure by cre­at­ing unachiev­able standards—that no one should get upset or that you should always be the big­ger man (the hero who nev­er fails)—for your­self and those around you.

Over time, this can leave you feel­ing unful­filled and dis­ap­point­ed in your­self and oth­ers.

 

How to Overcome Cognitive Distortions

Once you rec­og­nize these dis­tort­ed pat­terns, you can take steps to chal­lenge and change them. Here’s how:

• Start by pay­ing atten­tion to your thought pat­terns. These thoughts may arise in response to an event, feel­ing, or ongo­ing sit­u­a­tion. Notice if they’re over­ly neg­a­tive or self-blam­ing.
• Ques­tion if your thoughts are based on facts. Is your con­clu­sion real­is­tic, or are you focus­ing on a tiny set­back?
• Reframe neg­a­tive thoughts with more bal­anced, objec­tive ones. You’ll see sit­u­a­tions more clear­ly.
• Be kind to your­self. No one is per­fect, and every­one makes mis­takes.
• If the dis­tor­tions con­tin­ue to affect your men­tal health, seek pro­fes­sion­al help. Ther­a­pists are excel­lent at spot­ting these dis­tor­tions even when you don’t see them.

 

CBT Austin

Self-esteem ero­sion and con­fi­dence destruc­tion. That’s what cog­ni­tive dis­tor­tions do —if you let them. To build resilience to these neg­a­tive thoughts, you need to under­stand, acknowl­edge and chal­lenge them.

Next time (and there will be a next time) you’re caught in a whirl­wind of bleak thoughts, take a moment to pause and reflect. Are these thoughts tru­ly accu­rate and help­ful? Or are they sim­ply dis­tor­tions play­ing tricks on your mind?

Most prob­a­bly, you’ll learn that these thoughts paint a pic­ture of the worst pos­si­ble sce­nario, which is rarely ever the case. The real­iza­tion that these thoughts lie is how you can reclaim your self-worth, build stronger rela­tion­ships, and unlock your full poten­tial.

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