Thinking about Stinkin’ Thinking
Imagine 2 students who both received a bad grade on a math test. The first student is upset with herself at first and then decides to spend more time studying and makes arrangements to get some extra help at school. The second student gets the same bad mark, is also upset with herself but this student doesn’t bounce back. Instead she calls herself dumb and a failure. She retreats to her bedroom and throws her math notebook into the trash and tells herself that she’ll never be good at math. What is it that makes one student able to bounce back after facing adversity and the other student shut down? Scientists believe that a large part of this has to do with thinking.
It’s been estimated that approximately 69,000 thoughts go through our brains each day. Since it would be impossible to pay attention to every one of those thoughts, our amazing brains need to take shortcuts and these shortcuts can lead to cognitive distortions Cognitive distortions are thoughts that are not necessarily accurate and if left unchecked, they can cause negative thinking patterns…. what we here at Comfy Couch call stinkin’ thinking.
At Comfy Couch Psychology, we teach clients how to recognize their cognitive distortions, stickin’ thinking and other tricks of the mind.