Explore evidence-based articles and expert commentary on the factors influencing mental health. From cultural trends to psychological research, these insights help you understand the complex causes of emotional wellbeing and distress.
Emotional reasoning is what happens when you tend to believe what you feel is an accurate representation of what is actually happening.
Unfortunately our emotions are really poor indicators of reality because our emotions are actually ‘outcomes’ of what we think or perceive about a situation rather than something that determines how we think!
Mind reading is what people do when they think they know what other people are thinking about them.
In psychology we refer to this as a fundamental attribution error as the mind-reader attributes their own thoughts to other people.
Fortune Telling is also known as ‘predicting the future’ and is one of the most common scenarios that we encounter in our practice, certainly on a daily basis.
Clients will frequently report how much they ‘worried’ about an event for weeks before it happened and then tell us that it ‘wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be’!
All or nothing thinking is also known as ‘black or white’ thinking in that a person with these thinking errors tends to see things in these two polar opposite terms – things are either ‘fantastic’ or ‘dire’, people either ‘love me’ or ‘hate me’ and I’m a ‘success’ or a ‘failure’.
Catastrophic thinking (the act of catastrophising) is what we do when we take a relatively minor experience and imagine it as some sort of major disaster with all of the terrible consequences that are associated with it.
Most people won’t spend much time mulling over the pros and cons of the way that they think, but if you do want to change something about yourself that seems to be out of your control, then it might be a good idea!
Safety Behaviours and Avoidance Strategies are the tactics and behaviours we adopt in an attempt to protect ourselves from adverse situations.
In the face of anxiety, stress, and other forms of mental distress, it’s natural for us to seek out ways to cope.
Self-Esteem is the outcome of what you believe about YOURSELF rather than what is true about yourself (beliefs are NOT facts).
It is how much you value yourself and your abilities to cope with the general trials and tribulations of life and is one of the 3 core beliefs that impact our lives.
Many people find this difficult to believe and….
Limiting beliefs are ANY beliefs that you have that ‘limit’ your life in some way, or are in some way disadvantageous to you (be aware that what you believe might be advantageous may in fact be seriously limiting!).
But what does this mean?