04/26/2019

VERY EXTREME-You see things in black and white terms.  If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.  Or you may see yourself as” fabulous” when you do a good thing, thereby setting yourself up for disappointment.

VERY BROAD-You generalize beyond the specific facts of a situation such as “always, never, everybody, nobody, anything, and nothing.”  Or you label yourself or someone else in a very broadly negative way that goes beyond the poor behavior you started off thinking about (like “bad, stupid, ugly, lazy, incompetent, inadequate, worthless”)

VERY CATASTROPHIC-You greatly exaggerate bad events until, in your thinking, they are full-blown catastrophes.  You use the words like “awful, horrible, terrible, tragic, the end of the world” You ignore your coping resources.

VERY NEGATIVE-You notice only half empty glasses and ignore the positive features in your life.  You make unrealistically, gloomy predictions about the future as well, using words like “empty, hopeless, and doomed.”

VERY SKEWED-You “find” things that were hardly there-a hint or clue becomes important evidence for you.  You wear “feelers” for detecting what you expected to find. And if you can’t really find it, then you “manufacture” it from whatever is at hand.

VERY UNSCIENTIFIC-You ignore evidence, while asserting your own “facts.”  You use your feelings as “proof” of something, read the future, guess about someone’s motives (without checking it out), and act on the basis of superstition and hearsay.  You misjudge what is likely to happen.

VERY POLLYANNA-ISH-You convince yourself that problems don’t exist, or that certain things are not important to you (when they are).  You may also deny having feelings of strong or negative sort, putting a “good face” on things.

VERY SUPER IDEALISTIC-You hold romanticized pictures of reality.  You have beautiful but unrealistic expectations for yourself, for your parents, for marriage, and children, love, a profession, your workplace.  Naturally, nothing is the real world measures up to this kind of thinking.

VERY DEMANDING-You insist that things be the way you want them to be-your own qualities and behavior, others’ behavior, the way your life goes.  You use words like “should, must, ought to, has to be.” You cause tremendous distress by keeping such rigid rules.

VERY JUDGEMENTAL-You condemn yourself and/or other people for their failings.  You find fault in many, many things, and you’re thinking becomes more and more like a series of critical reviews.

VERY COMFORT ORIENTED-Your thinking is continually geared to how you can avoid pain and get what you want immediately.  Your thinking expresses concepts such as “too hard, I need it right now, I can’t stand this.”

VERY OBSESSED–You’re thinking follows a single track even when it’s not productive. You go over and over an issue in your mind, until it seems to be the only important thing in the world.  It could be an obsession about another person, about something you have done (or not done), about approval, love, achievement, cleanliness, or almost anything.

VERY CONFUSED-The “pictures in your head” don’t match the real world, or you sense things are present or happening when they’re not.  When your thoughts get out of touch with reality, you cannot depend on your perceptions or conclusions at that time.