Subscriber numbers generate contributions that support scholarships for workshops.
The distinction between social anxiety disorder and social anxiety is a matter of severity; reference to one includes the other. The recovery tools and techniques provided are applicable to most emotional malfunctions including depression, substance abuse, ADHD, PTSD, generalized anxiety, and issues of self-esteem and motivation. These malfunctions originate homogeneously, their trajectories differentiated by environment, experience, and the diversity of human thought and behavior.
“Dr. Mullen is doing impressive work helping the world. He is the pioneer of proactive neuroplasticity utilizing DRNI – deliberate, repetitive, neural information.” – WeVoice (Madrid, Málaga)
Cognitive Distortion #12
Labeling
When we label an individual or group, we reduce them to a single, usually negative, characteristic or descriptor often based on a single event or behavior. As a result, we view them (or ourselves) through the label and filter out information that contradicts the stereotype. Labeling others leads to false assumptions, prejudice, and ostracizing. “Because he talked about his neighbor, he is a gossip.”
Our SAD symptoms compel us to label others to support our preconceived notions about how others perceive us. Our conversational inadequacy might make us label the group as rude and dismissive. If we expect rejection, they are cold and untrustworthy. Because we feel like we are the center of attention, our social failure could lead us to label the entire room as mean or arrogant.
Labeling is common to SAD persons because we resent our symptomatic fears and anxieties, causing us to project our frustrations on those close to us. Labeling a friend or significant other can destroy relationships, especially when the label is for unintentional behavior. If we feel unsupported at a social event, we might label our companion cold or indifferent. In a similar vein, if a parent criticizes us at the dinner table, identifying them as cruel or hateful would not be inconceivable. Polarized Thinking, Filtering, Emotional Reasoning, Jumping to Conclusions, and Overgeneralization lend themselves to Labeling.
We know how distressing it can be when someone labels us. When we-self label, we sustain our negative self-beliefs. “I didn’t meet anyone at the party; I am unlikeable.” Negatively labeling ourselves invariably results in thoughts that support our self-image. “I gave the wrong answer in class; I am stupid.” Self-labeling like inadequate and incompetent supports our sense of hopelessness and undesirability, and we often find our subsequent behaviors support those labels.
Labels are irrational and myopic because they emerge from a single characteristic, behavior, or event and ignore the whole person or situation. Arbitrarily evaluating someone based on one isolated incident or behavior is almost always inaccurate. One negative behavior or incident does not define someone’s entire character. Rather than focusing on the specific element that generated the label, it is important to value the positive contributions of the person or group. We can observe ourselves and others with compassionate insight, recognizing the diversity of human thought and experience.
WHY IS YOUR SUPPORT SO IMPORTANT? ReChanneling develops and implements programs to (1) moderate symptoms of emotional malfunction and (2) pursue personal goals and objectives – harnessing our intrinsic aptitude for extraordinary living. Our paradigmatic approach targets the personality through empathy, collaboration, and program integration utilizing scientific and clinically practical methods including proactive neuroplasticity, cognitive-behavioral modification, positive psychology, and techniques designed to regenerate self-esteem. All donations support scholarships for groups, workshops, and practicums.
Subscriber numbers generate contributions that support scholarships for workshops.
The distinction between social anxiety disorder and social anxiety is a matter of severity; reference to one includes the other. The recovery tools and techniques provided are applicable to most emotional malfunctions including depression, substance abuse, ADHD, PTSD, generalized anxiety, and issues of self-esteem and motivation. These malfunctions originate homogeneously, their trajectories differentiated by environment, experience, and the diversity of human thought and behavior.
“Dr. Mullen is doing impressive work helping the world. He is the pioneer of proactive neuroplasticity utilizing DRNI—deliberate, repetitive, neural information.” — WeVoice (Madrid, Málaga)
Defense Mechanisms
“Unable to cope with fear and uncertainty, a person resorts to denial, repression, compromise, and hides behind the mask of a false self.” ― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
Defense mechanisms are temporary safeguards against situations challenging our conscious minds. They are mostly unconscious psychological responses designed to protect us from our fears/anxieties.
Notwithstanding their label, many defense mechanisms support recovery when utilized appropriately. Some, like avoidance, humor, and isolation, need no explanation. Others such as compensation anddissociation have positive values in recovery.
Without coping mechanisms, defensive or otherwise, we can experiencedecompensation – the inability or unwillingness to generate effective psychological coping mechanisms in response to stress – resulting in personality disturbance or disintegration.
Compensation
Compensation is a way to hide or avoid something we cannot do well, by doing something else. In other words, we overachieve in one area of our life to make up for failures or deficits in another. Example: A teenager compensates for learning difficulties by excelling in sports. In recovery, compensating for our negative thoughts and behaviors by replacing them with healthy and productive ones is appropriate compensation. Additionally, we compensate for our low self-esteem by recognizing and emphasizing our character strengths, virtues, and achievements.
Like any approach, moderation is the key. It is easy, especially for those living with SAD, to overcompensate by setting unreasonable expectations or undercompensate by minimizing or dismissing our character flaws. Overcompensation can lead to perfectionism, with symptoms closely aligned with social anxiety.
Denial protects us from thoughts and behaviors we cannot emotionally manage. Our inability or unwillingness to recognize trauma or symptoms of social anxiety is detrimental to recovery. Individuals experiencing drug or alcohol addiction often deny their habit, while victims of traumatic events may deny that the event ever occurred. SAD persons are disproportionately resistant to recovery because they deny its destructive capabilities as if, by ignoring them, they don’t exist or will somehow disappear. Our core sense of hopelessness and worthlessness does not encourage a willingness to accept our condition, which is a primary criterion for recovery. Denial allows us to lie to ourselves; it does not eliminate the situation.
Displacement
Venting our fears and anxieties on people or objects that are less threatening is displacement. An example would be the worker, reprimanded by his superiors, who goes home and kicks the dog. This defense mechanism is prevalent in SAD persons when we take out our situational frustrations and self-loathing on persons or things that pose a limited threat – a roommate, sibling, or significant other.
Dissociation
Dissociation is a disconnect from reality to shield us from distress and traumatic experiences. Theoretically, our mind unconsciously shuts down or compartmentalizes distressful thoughts, memories, or experiences. Daydreaming or streaming television to avoid conflict is a harmless form of dissociation. On the other hand, morphing into multiple personalities is a psychosis called DID (dissociative identity disorder).
In recovery, we deliberately dissociate ourselves from SAD as a mental exercise that helps us regenerate our self-esteem. We redefine ourselves by our character assets rather than our social anxiety. When we break our leg, we do not become the injured limb. We are someone experiencing a broken leg.
Projection
Projection is subconsciously denying our character defects but recognizing them in someone else. We project our negative behaviors onto someone else. For example, we might project our fears of negative evaluation by ridiculing someone else’s inept attempt at socializing. Often. when we instinctively dislike or avoid someone, we have projected our idiosyncrasies and inadequacies onto them.
Rationalization
Rationalizing justifiesour irrational thoughts and behaviors by inventing various explanations for them. Rationalizing defends against anything that threatens our emotional well-being. For example, we might rationalize not getting a raise to our manager’s personal feelings rather than our ineptitude.
Repression
We often conflate regression with repression. Regression is reverting to an earlier or less mature stage of psychological development where we feel safe from emotional conflict. Repression is a psychological attempt to unconsciously forget or block distressing memories, thoughts, or desires. In recovery, our objective is to expose and deal with them as part of the self-discovery process.
Ritual And Undoing
Ritual and undoing attempts to undo negative predilections by performing practices or actions designed to offset them, e.g., confession and penitence to offset bad acts. Many turn to the ritual of substance abuse to atone for self-destructive thoughts and behaviors rather than resolve them.
Undoing compensates for harmful activity by performing a behavior contrary to it. An example is donating to a homeless shelter to compensate for evicting tenants to build a condominium. Ritual and Undoing for positive gain can be a valuable coping mechanism. DRNI (deliberate, repetitive neural input), for example, is a ritual to facilitate neural restructuring by undoing (replacing) our negative thoughts and behaviors with positive ones.
COGNITIVE DISTORTIONS
Cognitive distortions are exaggerated or irrational thought patterns that perpetuate our anxiety and depression. We twist reality to reinforce or justify our toxic behaviors and validate our irrational attitudes, rules, and assumptions. Our attitudes refer to our emotions, convictions, and behaviors. Rules are the principles or regulations that influence our behaviors, and our assumptions are what we believe to be accurate or authentic. Social anxiety and other emotional malfunctions paint an inaccurate picture of the self in the world with others.
Understanding how we use cognitive distortions as subconscious strategies to avoid facing certain truths is crucial to recovery. SAD drives our illogical thought patterns. Countering them requires mindfulness of our motives and rational responses. Our compulsion to twist the truth to validate our negative self-appraisal is formidable; it is vital to understand how these distortions sustain our social anxiety.
We are highly susceptible to cognitive distortions when under stress. They are emotional IEDs, capable of destroying our confidence and composure. Cognitive distortions are rarely cut and dried but tend to overlap and share traits and characteristics. That’s what makes them difficult to distinguish clearly. Because of their similarities, distinguishing one from the others is challenging, but as long as we remain mindful of their self-destructive nature, we can learn to recognize and even anticipate them to devise rational responses. After time and with practice, our reactions become automatic and spontaneous.
The number of cognitive distortions listed by experts ranges substantially. The following thirteen are particularly germane to social anxiety.
Always Being Right
To someone who engages in this cognitive distortion, being ‘right’ is more important than the truth or the feelings of others. The core beliefs of a person with social anxiety are rigid; we dismiss new ideas and concepts. If the facts don’t comport with our beliefs, we dispute or disregard them, ignoring evidence that contradicts them – even if we doubt the veracity of our claims. Our insecurity is so severe our maladjusted attitudes, rules, and assumptions run roughshod over the truth and the feelings of others.
Blaming
Blaming is a negative thinking pattern where we wrongly assign responsibility for a negative outcome. Trapped within social anxiety’s cycle of negative self-appraisal, we see ourselves as victims. A victim needs someone or something to blame including others and self. The logical approach to our automatic negative thoughts is to examine and analyze our motivations and devise rational responses. SAD, however, subsists on irrationality. Until we master recovery, it is reasonable to search for avenues to unburden ourselves of responsibility – even for situations for which we are not accountable.
Catastrophizing
Chicken Little was plucking worms in the henyard when an acorn dropped from a tree onto her head. She had no idea what hit her and assumed the worst. The sky is falling, the sky is falling, she clucked hysterically. Catastrophizing is a cognitive distortion that compels us to conclude the worst-case scenario when things happen to us rather than consider plausible explanations. It is the irrational assumption that something is or will be far worse than reasonably probable. We prophesize the worst and twist reality to support our projection. If our significant other complains of a headache, we assume the relationship is doomed. When this happens again, our belief is confirmed. Moreover, not only did we project the outcome, but it is likely we were a party to it.
Control Fallacies
A fallacy is a questionable assumption. It is a belief based on unreliable evidence and unsound arguments. A Control Fallacy is the conviction that (1) something or someone has power and control over things that happen to us (external control), or (2) we hold that type of power over others (internal control). We believe life events are beyond our control, or we assume responsibility for everything.
Emotional Reasoning
Emotional reasoning is making judgments and decisions based only on feelings – relying on our emotions over objective evidence. The colloquialism “my gut tells me,” defines this irrational thinking. Emotional reasoning dictates how we comprehend reality and relate to the world. At the root of this cognitive distortion is the belief that what we feel must be true. If we feel like a loser, then we must be a loser. If we feel incompetent, then we must be incapable. If we make a mistake, we must be stupid. All the negative things we feel about ourselves, others, and the world must be valid because they feel genuine.
Fallacy Of Fairness
The fallacy of fairness is the unrealistic assumption that life should be fair. It is human nature to equate fairness with how well our personal preferences are met. Wanting things to work in our favor is normal; expecting them to do so is irrational. When real life goes against our perceptions of fairness, it often generates negative emotions. Fairness is subjective, however, based on personal beliefs and experiences. Two people seldom agree on what is fair.
Filtering
When we engage in filtering, we selectively choose our perspective. Our tunnel vision gravitates toward the negative aspects of a situation and excludes the positive. This myopia applies to our memories as well. We dwell on the unfortunate aspects of what happened rather than the whole picture. We filter out the positive aspects of our lives, fixating on situations and memories supporting our negative self-image. This focus creates an emotional imbalance due to excluding healthy thoughts and behaviors.
Heaven’s Reward Fallacy
With heaven’s reward fallacy, we put other people’s needs ahead of our own with an expectation of reciprocation. Contrary to most who share this cognitive distortion, SAD persons are not seeking heavenly reward but acknowledgment in this one. We continually say yes to others while denying ourselves, We tell ourselves our motives are selfless, but we accommodate out of neediness and loneliness. Consummate enablers, we ingratiate ourselves and allow others to take advantage to compensate for our feelings of undesirability and worthlessness.
Jumping To Conclusions
When we jump to conclusions, we make assumptions about something or someone without factual substantiation. There are two forms of this cognitive distortion: Mind-reading is when we assume to know what another person is feeling or why they act the way they do. Fortune-telling is predicting an outcome without considering the evidence or reasonable alternatives.
Those of us experiencing social anxiety jump to conclusions with our automatic negative thoughts (ANTs) because the evidence we rely on is our fears/anxieties. ANTs are the unpleasant, self-defeating things we tell ourselves that perceptually define who we are, who we think we are, and who we think others think we are. Due to our SAD-induced negative self-appraisal, we can be reasonably sure our assumptions are self-defeating and predict adverse outcomes.
Labeling
When we label an individual or group, we reduce them to a single, usually negative, characteristic or descriptor based on a single incident or behavior. As a result, we view them as their label and filter out information that contradicts our stereotypes. Labeling others leads to false assumptions, prejudice, and ostracizing. “Because he slurred his words, he’s an alcoholic.” “Because she watches Fox News, she’s a conspiracist.”
Self-labeling is even more emotionally destructive. It sustains our negative self-appraisal. “I didn’t meet anyone at the party; I am undesirable.” “I gave the wrong answer in class; I am stupid.” Our distorted thinking and behaviors generate negative self-labeling.
Overgeneralization
When we overgeneralize, we draw broad conclusions or make statements about something or someone unsupported by evidence – arbitrary claims that can’t be proven or disproven. We can also overgeneralize if we base our determination on one or two pieces of evidence but ignore evidence to the contrary. We often base our conclusions on past events that are irrelevant to present situations. Overgeneralization is especially prevalent in persons experiencing depression or anxiety. Similar to filtering, where we ignore the positive and dwell on the negative, and polarized thinking, where we see things in black or white, overgeneralization is based on our tendency to assume the worst in a situation.
Personalization
When someone says to us, “Don’t take it personally,” we are likely engaging in personalization. When we engage in this thinking, we link unrelated situations and random remarks to our behaviors, and random remarks are personally relevant. For those experiencing social anxiety, personalization is a consequence of our fears of criticism and ridicule or our false assumption we are the glaring center of attention. Personalization leads to negative self-criticism and low self-esteem. “Things would have worked out better if it hadn’t been for me.”
Polarized Thinking
In polarized thinking, we see things as absolute – black or white. There is no middle ground, no compromise. We are either brilliant or abject failures. Our friends are for us or against us. We do not allow room for balanced perspectives or outcomes. We refuse to give people the benefit of the doubt. Worse than our anxiety about criticism and ridicule is our negative self-judgment. If we are not flawless and masterful, we must be broken and useless. There is no room in our self-evaluation for mistakes or mediocrity.
WHY IS YOUR SUPPORT SO IMPORTANT? ReChanneling develops and implements programs to (1) moderate symptoms of emotional malfunction and (2) pursue personal goals and objectives – harnessing our intrinsic aptitude for extraordinary living. Our paradigmatic approach targets the personality through empathy, collaboration, and program integration utilizing scientific and clinically practical methods including proactive neuroplasticity, cognitive-behavioral modification, positive psychology, and techniques designed to regenerate self-esteem. All donations support scholarships for groups, workshops, and practicums.
Subscriber numbers generate contributions that support scholarships for workshops.
The distinction between social anxiety disorder and social anxiety is a matter of severity; reference to one includes the other. The recovery tools and techniques provided apply to most emotional malfunctions, including depression, substance abuse, ADHD, PTSD, generalized anxiety, and self-esteem and motivation issues. These malfunctions originate homogeneously, their trajectories differentiated by environment, experience, and the diversity of human thought and behavior.
“Dr. Mullen is doing impressive work helping the world. He is the pioneer of proactive neuroplasticity utilizing DRNI – deliberate, repetitive, neural information.” – WeVoice (Madrid, Málaga)
Cognitive Distortion #9
Always Being Right
Our need to be right protects the fragile self-image sustained by our fears of criticism, ridicule, and rejection. To someone who engages in this cognitive distortion, being ‘right’ is more important than the truth or the feelings of others. Thoughts or opinions that contradict are harmful to our emotional structure.
The core and intermediate beliefs of a person with social anxiety are rigid; we dismiss new ideas and concepts. Even when our belief system is inaccurate, it defines how we see ourselves in the world. If the facts don’t comport with our beliefs, we dispute or disregard them. When we decline to question our beliefs, we act upon them as though they are accurate and reasonable, ignoring evidence that contradicts – even if we doubt the veracity of our claims. Our insecurity is so severe, our maladjusted attitudes, rules, and assumptions run roughshod over the truth and the feelings of others.
We store information that supports these beliefs, which generates a cognitive bias – a subconscious error in thinking that leads us to misinterpret information, impacting the accuracy of our perspectives and decisions. Our low implicit and explicit self-esteem keeps us on the defensive and compels the need to compensate for our perceptual lack of positive self-qualities. We ignore or contest anything that poses a threat, especially information inconsistent with what we assert to be true. The need to always be right can also reflect the narcissism evident in the irrational belief that we are the center of attention in any situation.
Because of our compulsion to always be right, we tend to ignore what others are saying. We avoid recognizing anything that might lead us to conclude we are mistaken. Even when we know we are wrong, we find it hard to admit it because it exacerbates our fears of ridicule and criticism.
In our formative years, many of us felt undervalued – subject to the circumstances of our childhood disturbance. Our parents may have been controlling or dismissive, our siblings overbearing. Some of us rarely experienced positive feedback or appreciation. As adults, we are driven to disregard thoughts and viewpoints that conflict with our own.
In situations where we are ill-advised to dispute our superiors or other authority figures, we subvert our need to be right. We bow to pressure and imply that we accept their truth, covertly convinced we are right, and they are not. This subservience forces us to give away our power, generating anger and resentment. We smile and agree with those who hold sway over us. but secretly envy their power, becoming irritated and bitter.
Always Being Right does not bode well for healthy relationships because we do not reciprocate shared issues or experiences. Counterfeit, ignoring, selective, and hostile listening devalue the concerns and opinions of others and inhibits the prospect of healthy connectivity. Being right is more important than establishing and maintaining friendships and intimacy.
Recovery promotes considered and attentive listening skills – active communication where we value what is being said by the other. In empathic listening, we seek first to understand and then to be understood.
WHY IS YOUR SUPPORT SO IMPORTANT? ReChanneling develops and implements programs to (1) moderate symptoms of emotional malfunction and (2) pursue personal goals and objectives – harnessing our intrinsic aptitude for extraordinary living. Our paradigmatic approach targets the personality through empathy, collaboration, and program integration utilizing scientific and clinically practical methods including proactive neuroplasticity, cognitive-behavioral modification, positive psychology, and techniques designed to regenerate self-esteem. All donations support scholarships for groups, workshops, and practicums.
Subscriber numbers generate contributions that support scholarships for workshops.
The distinction between social anxiety disorder and social anxiety is a matter of severity; reference to one includes the other. The recovery tools and techniques provided are applicable to most emotional malfunctions including depression, substance abuse, ADHD, PTSD, generalized anxiety, and issues of self-esteem and motivation. These malfunctions originate homogeneously, their trajectories differentiated by environment, experience, and the diversity of human thought and behavior.
“Dr. Mullen is doing impressive work helping the world. He is the pioneer of proactive neuroplasticity utilizing DRNI – deliberate, repetitive, neural information.” – WeVoice (Madrid, Málaga)
Affirmative Visualization
You are more productive by doing fifteen minutes of visualization than from sixteen hours of hard labor.” — Abraham Hicks
Affirmative Visualization is a form of graded exposure — systematic desensitization that reduces our anxiety in structured, less threatening environments. We label the process Affirmative to counteract our natural negative bias and predisposition to set negative outcome scenarios due to our consistent negative self-beliefs and images.
Affirmative Visualization is scientifically supported through studies and the neuroscientific understanding of our neural network. Positive Personal Affirmations (PPAs) are concise, predetermined, positive statements. Affirmative Visualizations are positive outcome scenarios that we mentally recreate by imagining or visualizing them. Both are underscored by the Laws of Learning, which explain what conditions must be present for learning (or unlearning) to occur.
Through Affirmative Visualization, we envision behaving in a certain way and, through deliberate repetition, attain an authentic shift in our behavior and perspective. It is a form of proactive neuroplasticity, and all the neural benefits of that science are accrued by visualization.
Our brain is in a constant mode of learning; it never stops realigning to information. With each input, connections strengthen and weaken, neurons atrophy and others are born, energy dissipates and expands, and beneficial hormones are neurally transmitted.
Proactively stimulating our brain with deliberate, repetitive neural information utilizing Affirmative Visualization accelerates and consolidates learning (and unlearning), producing a correlated change in thought, behavior, and perspective. These changes become habitual and spontaneous over time.
Our brain provides the same neural restructuring when we visualize doing something or when we physically do it; the same regions of our brain are stimulated. Visualizing raising our left hand is, to our brain, the same thing as physically raising our left hand.
The thalamus is the small structure within our brain located just above the stem between the cerebral cortex and the midbrain. It has extensive nerve connections to both. All information passes through the thalamus. By visualizing something, we increase activity in the thalamus and our brain responds as though the activity is really happening.
Our thalamus makes no distinction between inner and outer realities. It does not distinguish whether we are imagining something or experiencing it.Thus, any idea, if contemplated long enough, will take on a semblance of reality. If we visualize a solution to a problem, the problem begins to resolve itself because visualizing activates the cognitive circuits involved with our working memory.
Research shows that visualizing an event in advance improves our mental and physical performance. When we visualize what we want to achieve, we consciously source information that will improve our performance outcomes, dramatically improving the likelihood of success in the real situation.
Like our positive personal affirmations, Affirmative Visualization is a mental exercise that consolidates with repetition. Example: Our feared situation is making a presentation to our classmates. We devise our Feared Situations Plan to make that happen. We then recreate the scenario in our mind, just as we have outlined it. We close our eyes and use our imagination to experience the entirety of the situation.
We visualize the event and its successful outcome, imagining each detail, our attitude, and the reactions of others. We imagine the influx of cortisol and adrenaline dissipating every time we take a deep breath, slow talk, or utilize another coping mechanism. We set reasonable expectations that can be achieved because we are well-rehearsed, and have a plan that covers most contingencies.
We visualize mitigating our anxiety and performing better, or we envision being a more empathetic or competent individual. Our neural repatterning will help us achieve those goals. The more we visualize with a clear intentthe more focused we become and the higher the probability of achieving our objectives. Affirmative Visualization activates our dopaminergic-reward system, decreasing the neurotransmissions of anxiety and fear-provoking hormones, and accelerating and consolidating the beneficial ones. When we visualize, our brain generates alpha waves which, neuroscientists have discovered, can dramatically reduce the symptoms of anxiety and depression.
WHY IS YOUR SUPPORT SO IMPORTANT? ReChanneling develops and implements programs to (1) moderate symptoms of emotional malfunction and (2) pursue personal goals and objectives – harnessing our intrinsic aptitude for extraordinary living. Our paradigmatic approach targets the personality through empathy, collaboration, and program integration utilizing scientific and clinically practical methods including proactive neuroplasticity, cognitive-behavioral modification, positive psychology, and techniques designed to regenerate self-esteem. All donations support scholarships for groups, workshops, and practicums.
Subscriber numbers generate contributions that support scholarships for workshops.
The distinction between social anxiety disorder and social anxiety is a matter of severity; reference to one includes the other. The recovery tools and techniques provided are applicable to most emotional malfunctions including depression, substance abuse, ADHD, PTSD, generalized anxiety, and issues of self-esteem and motivation. These malfunctions originate homogeneously, their trajectories differentiated by environment, experience, and the diversity of human thought and behavior.
“Dr. Mullen is doing impressive work helping the world. He is the pioneer of proactive neuroplasticity utilizing DRNI—deliberate, repetitive, neural information.” — WeVoice (Madrid, Málaga)
Cognitive Distortion #7
Jumping to Conclusions
Jumping to conclusions is making assumptions about something or someone without factual substantiation. There are basically two forms of this cognitive distortion: Mind-reading is when we assume to know what another person is feeling or why they act the way they do. Fortune-telling is predicting an outcome without considering the evidence or reasonable alternatives.
Automatic Negative Thoughts
Those of us experiencing social anxiety often jump to conclusions with our automatic negative thoughts (ANTs) because the evidence we rely on is our fears/anxieties. ANTs are the unpleasant, self-defeating things we tell ourselves that perceptually define who we are, who we think we are, and who we think others think we are. Due to our SAD-induced negative self-appraisal, we can be reasonably sure our assumptions are self-defeating and predict adverse outcomes.
We often base our presumptions on prior experience, however, those experiences may be perceptual rather than factual, and assuming they will reoccur in a similar situation, while possible, is an unreasonable expectation.
Many of our other cognitive distortions are formed by jumping to conclusions. When we overgeneralize, we draw a broad conclusion or make a statement about something or someone that is not backed up by the bulk of evidence. When we label someone based of a single characteristic or prejudice, we jump to conclusions. Likewise, when we personalize or take responsibility for something that has nothing to do with us.
SAD persons fear situations in which we believe we will be negatively appraised. We worry we will embarrass or humiliate ourselves. We anticipate criticism, ridicule, and rejection. This fatalist thinking causes us to react defensively or to avoid the situation entirely. It supports our SAD-induced feelings of hopelessness and undesirability. Often, we predict a bad outcome to a situation to protect ourselves if it happens. It helps us avoid disappointment. Expecting a negative experience is jumping to conclusions.
If our significant other is in a bad mood, we assume we did something wrong. If our manager slams the door to the office, we imagine it’s because we were talking on the phone. If a stranger passes us on the sidewalk, it is because we are unappealing.
When we jump to conclusions, we create self-fulfilling prophecies. We avoid interacting with others because we have already predicted a negative outcome. We avoid intimacy and relationships because we predict rejection and failure. We suspect recovery because we know it will come to naught. We expect the worst possible consequences of a situation because we jump to the conclusion things will not end well. These preconceived conclusions are emotionally stunting and exclude us from new possibilities.
Rational Response
There are simple and obvious steps we can take to ways to challenge this distortion. Initially, we become mindful when we engage in this form of thinking. We check the facts to be sure there is evidence to support our conclusions. We analyze why we jump to conclusions rather than consider other possibilities. Cognitive distortions are exaggerated or irrational thought patterns that reinforce or justify our toxic thoughts and behaviors. What are rational explanations for our jumping to conclusions? We take steps to reframe our negative perspective.
WHY IS YOUR SUPPORT SO IMPORTANT? ReChanneling develops and implements programs to (1) moderate symptoms of emotional malfunction and (2) pursue personal goals and objectives – harnessing our intrinsic aptitude for extraordinary living. Our paradigmatic approach targets the personality through empathy, collaboration, and program integration utilizing scientific and clinically practical methods including proactive neuroplasticity, cognitive-behavioral modification, positive psychology, and techniques designed to regenerate self-esteem. All donations support scholarships for groups, workshops, and practicums.
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Social Anxiety Disorder, Anxiety and Depression, and Comorbidities