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hi all just a little nudge is all i needed to press on with the second in this series! here's the intro from #1: ---------- when i posted my 'series' on cd last summer based on the 'perceptions' theme i credited david burns and his book 'feeling good' with having been of great help to me i believe that his theories on cognitive therapy and automatic negative thoughts apply to our society in general not just those suffering with clinical depression since learning to recognise negative distortions in my own thinking i find that i can 'see' it in others more and more easily [kind of like when you buy a volkswagen] but this leaves me in a quandary if one of the ten cognitive distortions is 'disqualifying the positive' am i not guilty of emphasising the negative by 'seeing' distortions in others? ouch, my head hurts! nevertheless, i will press on with this long-pondered scheme of mine viz sharing what i have learned about negative thinking with my cyber-family one distortion at a time david burns describes negative thoughts or cognitions as running through my mind automatically without the slightest effort on my part to put them there they are as obvious and as natural to me as the way i hold a fork the first one, "all or nothing thinking", is based on perfectionism, on the mistaken idea that everything can be reduced to innocent / guilty either / or pass / fail black / white whereas, in reality, everything is shades of gray black and white do not exist ---------- the second one, "overgeneralization", [which sounded to me like a double redundancy!] means that i might mistakenly tend to view a single negative event as part of a never-ending pattern of defeat this isn't 'just' negative thinking or dingy-coloured glasses this is an outright twisting of reality: a lie this particular distortion is one of the most insidious; it can make all the others appear to be magnified to an absolutely hopeless degree i may think an automatic negative thought in the mode of all or nothing thinking e.g. "i flunked that exam - i'm a complete failure!" if that first distortion gets exacerbated by the second distortion e.g. "i flunked that exam - i'm a complete failure! and i always have been and i always will be!" my sense of reality is straying much farther off the track and the downward spiral of depression / anxiety gets even more slippery when i start feeling more unhappy and anxious 'venting' or expressing those feelings might be a temporary relief but correcting my misperception of reality is the only way to truly turn things around what is the source of the distortion? those automatic critical thoughts running on in my head how do i deal with them? i learn to recognise them when they appear i learn to talk back, to question their source, to refute them a good example for me was a couple of years ago when i was late for a airplane flight from bermuda to new york [i was going on a five day holiday] i was late for various reasons some to do with my supposed 'procrastination' and some to do with circumstances beyond my control i found myself sitting in the bank waiting to purchase travelers checks 60 minutes before flight time and the airport was 45 minutes away and i was fourth in line and i had no other source of american cash/funds i rapidly became more and more tense i watched the second hand on the clock maybe the line will move up in 30 seconds... i started to sweat with anxiety... my heart started pounding... ...and then i stopped and took a long hard look at what was happening in reality i was beating myself up with automatic distorted thoughts like "why are you always late?" "you will never get to nyc!" "how could you be so dumb?" "this bank always has such lousy service!" "why me?" etc etc etc ad nauseum first i recognised the distortions for what they were = lies if my thoughts had reflected reality, they would have been: "i am not always late" "i have and i would get to nyc somehow sometime" "i am not dumb; sometimes my behaviour can be" "this bank gives mediocre service most of the time, good service sometimes, and lousy service rarely" "why not me? is everything supposed to be perfect just for me?" second, i took stock of reality: a. i had to get travelers checks - no alternative there b. i would probably be in the bank for another 30 minutes c. it was 1:00pm and my flight was scheduled for 2:00pm d. since the airport was 45 minutes away, it was obvious that i was not going to make the flight third, i looked realistically at alternatives: a. i'm going to miss the plane b. but there are at least six flights to nyc every day c. and the one i missed is the first one d. isn't that fortunate? e. i will just have to try to get on another, later flight f. and i will be able to take care of that when i get to the airport and miracle of miracles, the gloom cleared away! my anxiety sweats were replaced by my humming a tune to myself and i sat there waiting patiently cool as a cucumber enjoying self-inflicted relaxation instead of self-inflicted hysteria and of course, later, i enjoyed my 4:00pm flight to nyc! your cyber-sibling in stock-taking janet janet paterson 51/10 - endocarb/selegiline/fluoxetine - [log in to unmask] pwp event calendar: http://newww.com/cgi-bin/do_cal?c:pwpc a new voice: http://www.newcountry.nu/pd/members/janet/index.htm