Habits that Lead to Cognitive Distortion

 Taking care of your mental health entails recognizing patterns within patterns. Some attitudes and mental habits you may be bringing into your daily life can contribute to negative thought cycles. You may help yourself by learning to recognize them and stop them before they lead to a poor outcome.

1. Excessive thought:

It's necessary to be thorough when making major decisions, but if you can't decide where to eat lunch because you're plagued by insecurity and uncertainty, you're indulging in a detrimental thought habit. Overthinking entails considering your part in every decision from every possible viewpoint and attempting to mentally model every possible consequence. This can be stressful at best, and devastating if your carefully thought predictions prove to be incorrect. Limit your thinking to avoid overthinking. Set deadlines for making decisions and stick to them. You can also try yoga, working out, or breathing techniques to get some of that extra thought out of your head in a healthy way.

2. Reflection:

Self-reflection and self-awareness are great things, but they can be terrible if your mental process is skewed by negativity and depression. Do you tend to focus on defects and mistakes rather than solutions to improve things? Negative rumination is a cyclical behavior in which you project your shortcomings onto your future vision, leading you to assume that your life will only grow worse.When you feel yourself fixating on negative thoughts, break the pattern by doing something else. Don't leave yourself alone with your thoughts. Read a book, watch a movie, work on a hobby, or visit a friend (but don't use them as a convenient outlet for your own bad thoughts). Avoid using food and alcohol as distractions. Overeating and drinking might make matters worse.

3. Cynical Disdain:

Cynical hostility is a form of thought pattern in which one directs wrath, suspicion, judgment, or disdain toward others. These emotions could be the result of insecurity, projection, or prior baggage. Because you perceive individuals as fundamentally harmful, bad, or untrustworthy, it is difficult to build a support system.This angry disposition has been linked to heart disease and high blood pressure in studies. Empathy can be used to counteract cynical anger. Instead of defaulting to distrust, attempt to look at a problem from every angle imaginable. Look for methods to reframe circumstances such that they are cooperative rather than competitive.

Outreach. (2021, November 19). Negative Thought Patterns and Depression. Sage Neuroscience Center. https://sageclinic.org/blog/negative-thoughts-depression/

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