Stress Management: Distortions of Thinking

 

Stress Management: Distortions of Thinking

Hello Friends!

                  I hope all is well and you are having a great week. Today we will understand Distortions of Thinking that gives us relief from Stress. “Stress is the trash of modern life we all generate it but if we do not dispose of it properly, it will pile up and overtake our life”. In our changing life style Stress is increasing day by day. We have shifted from Joint Family System to Nuclear Family and now Nuclear Family to Single Parent Family System. Thus isolation is increasing among people. More is the isolation, more is the Stress. Let’s understand how we can manage Stress with help of Distortions of Thinking.

Stress:

Stress is a feeling of emotional or physical tension. Stress is defined as a “State of psychological and physiological imbalance resulting from a disparity between situational demand and the individual’s ability and motivation to meet those needs”.

Types of Stress:

1. External Stress: Stress from Environment, Psychological and Social situation.

2. Internal Stress: Stress from illness like Headache, Digestive issues and Insomnia.

 Causes of Stress:

1. Emotional Stress like Anxiety, Anger and Depression.

2. Illness like Cardiovascular disease. 

(Also Read: Heart Attack or Cardiac Arrest: What’s the Difference!)

3. Stress at workplace.

4. Migraine.

5. Alienation from Society.

6. Alienation from Self like Sales Girl, Air Hostess.

7. Relationship Problems like Divorce.
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( Also Read : Health Benefits of Lukewarm Water)

Symptoms of Stress:

1. Headache.

2. Fatigue.

3. Insomnia.

4. Upset Stomach.

5. Loss of Sexual desire.

6. Lack of Appetite.

7. Memory and Concentration problem.

Distortions of Thinking:

Distortions of Thinking are used to suppress negative thoughts. Follow these 15 Distortions of Thinking to live an optimistic life and refute negative thoughts. By refuting negative thoughts with passage of time person becomes rational and promotes balanced thinking.

        A famous psychologist Aaron Beck has proposed 15 Distortions of Thinking and David Burns has popularized it.

1. Filtering: Always refute negative thoughts and filter out positive thoughts from the situation. But human mind is more diverted towards negative thinking. For example: If you want to achieve something in life Filter out positive aspects why you want to do something unique and send positive signal to mind. Our mind works in that way which type of signal we are sending to it. Positive attitude helps in managing Stress.

2. Polarized Thinking: 

No one is perfect in this world. Some people think that they are rich enough thus they are perfect. We decide black and white shades in our life. But we forget grey shade in our life. For example: If we fail in a relationship we distinguish either complete failure or abject failure. We forget that grey shade in our relationship. To manage a Stress always follow grey shade in relationship.

3. Overgeneralization: Our mind concludes on basis of single incident. For example: If we have some unpleasant events with our relatives we decide that relatives are not good on basis of that single incident. Do not conclude this on single unpleasant event thus it will help you in managing stress.

4. Jumping to conclusions: 

We are always in hurry to jump on conclusions. For example: If a student fails in competitive exam then our Society and we ourselves jump on conclusion that we are not able to achieve anything in life. Suppose you are getting 771 rank but there are only 770 seats then we cannot jump on this conclusion that we are not able to do something. Always send positive signal to mind like how much we have learnt from this journey, how our perspective about Society has changed. It will help you in managing any difficult situation in the life.

5. Catastrophizing: When a person engages in Catastrophizing, they expect disaster to strike, no matter what. But person should come out from opposite behavior. Person should give less importance to insignificant events like failure and give more importance to significant events like persons own desirable qualities.

6. Personalization: Sometimes we think that other person is saying by direct taunt on us. The person who thinks this kind of behavior always do comparison with others. For example: Some people compare that those relatives are richer than us.

7. Control Fallacies: If we feel externally controlled we see ourselves as helpless a victim of fate. Pain and happiness are part of our life. The fallacy of internal control has us assuming responsibility for pain and happiness of everyone around us.

8. Fallacy of Fairness: Sometimes other people don’t agree with us, although they know what is fair. If people in every situation feel that they are fair then it promotes feeling of anger, hopelessness. Life is not fair. Sometimes things will not work in favor of us and don’t take stress. Learn from parents how beautifully they are playing role in growing us by managing stress.

9. Blaming: Sometimes we think others are responsible for our emotional pain. Instead of blaming others we should control our own emotional reactions and try to sort out the problem with calm and love. For example: Sometimes we have argued with our parents and children start blaming that you are responsible for this pain. But it is not so. We should learn Generation Gap that our parents had grown up in traditional society and we are growing in modern society.

10. Shoulds: When a person breaks the rules it makes us angry. But sometimes that person really trying to motivate us and we take it in other way. For example: If you are overweight and your friend says that you are lazy. Actually he/she motivates us to do exercise to keep us physically and mentally fit.

11. Emotional Reasoning: Emotions are extremely strong in people. Whatever a person is feeling is believed to be true automatically and unconditionally. We should always control our emotions that give us stress like anger, frustration. For example: If sometimes bad happens to us, we start thinking it is only happening with us not with other people. It gives us more frustration. Try to pick some positive part from that situation. Suppose if someone is suffering from depression in family rather than getting frustrated try to handle that situation with best practices.

12. Fallacy of Change: This distortion is often found in thinking around relationship. In fallacy of change, a person expects that people should change according to him. But we should change only minor things in our relationship and understand each other’s nature to handle stress.

13. Global labeling: This is an extreme form of over generalizing. For example: If we fail in exam we choose a label with our personality that is Loser. Mislabeling gives us more stress. Always analyze what we have learnt from that situation. No one is loser. Our former President A.P.J Abdul Kalam has said Fail label means First Attempt in learning. We should develop that type of attitude to manage stress.

14. Always being right: Sometimes we think that we are right and others are wrong. Then we involve in an argument. But we should understand everyone has different opinion regarding situation. For example: Some people have opinion for dowry as tradition in Indian marriages and from sociological point of view dowry is due to illiteracy, social status, lack of willingness to adhere to laws, greed expectations etc.

15. Heaven’s Reward Fallacy: The final cognitive distortion is false belief that a person’s sacrifice and self denial will eventually pay off. The person who works the hardest will get largest reward. A person who sacrifices and works hard but does not experience expected pay off will feel bitter when reward does not come.

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 (Also Read : Health Benefits of Pomegranate)

Hope these 15 Distortions of Thinking will help you to manage stress. Always filter out positive aspect from situation, never do comparison with others, manage the situation with love and calm, understand each others nature in case of relationship. Understand generation gap in case of parents, do not label yourself with negative attitude like loser or failure and do not blame others for your emotional stress. To control stress always do deep breath exercise and learn these 15 Distortions of Thinking to live life in an optimistic manner. 

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