Do you know about your mind? Here are some mind traps…

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Negative automatic thoughts are realizations or thoughts that jump in to one’s head automatically. When we are suffering a bad experience these negative automatic thoughts tend to be extremely unhelpful. They are often skewed and they present a vision of something that is not entirely true. But they are natural in our consciousness and very hard to detect. But its very important to know about them because they control your reactions and cause depression. Negative automatic thoughts can lead to thought or mind traps because they are often distorted and don’t take all facts in to consideration.

Lets take a look at most common thought traps and understand them in order to control our mind.

1. Catastrophization  

This is when you are immediately expecting the worst imaginable scenario from a relatively trivial incident. Possibilities and capabilities of handling the situation are fully underestimated.

2. Extreme thinking

This is when you see every thing as good or bad. This is called “black and white thinking” and there is no space for gray areas.

3. Demanding 

Making demands is a thought trap when you expect yourself and others to follow your rules and you are emotionally bothered when things don’t go in that way. A person should be less demanding and the language style should be handled in a way of less demanding.

4. Predictive thinking

This is when you make predictions about the future and believe that these are true, which in turn prevents you from taking actions.

5. Mind reading 

This is when you assume people are thinking negative and judgmental things about you. But they are not true things but created by the mind itself.

6. Emotive interpretation

This is when just because you feel a certain way, you believe that this feeling must be true.

7. Labeling

This is when you permanently label yourself and others when things don’t go in your way.

eg: ” i am worthless”

8. Selective abstractions 

This means you only process information that supports the view of yourself and others.

9. Negativism

This is when you turn something positive in to negative.

eg: “may be i passed randomly”

10. Personalization

This is when you blame yourself for everything bad that has happened around you, even in situations you are not responsible for and taking everything personally.

Even though traps aren’t always problematic, it is a good idea to pay attention to them and gradually learn how to deal with them.