So for today's audio, I want to talk about something we call in CBT unhelpful thinking styles. Now, we've talked quite a bit in various other recordings about unhelpful thinking, and different cognitive and metacognitive processes, which can cause us distress. But in CBT, we also understand that there are certain unhelpful thinking habits or styles, which can influence our feelings, and subsequently, our physiological sensations and behaviours.

We can tend to fall into these unhelpful thinking styles and what we tend to notice is, that the more we do it, the more we tend to repeat that, and it becomes something quite entrenched. Identifying what these unhelpful thinking styles are, can be helpful in trying to break down that pattern a little bit, just being aware of them, just noticing it, and try and distance yourself to step away a little bit and be a bit more objective. It might help us in challenging our thoughts and feelings subsequently. We're much more likely to engage in unhelpful thinking styles and habits when we've been triggered in a distressing situation or, you know, something's gone wrong, we feel bad about something.

So I'm going to talk about a few of the most common ones. It's quite common for people to resonate with most of these in some way. So one of the most common ones is mind reading. And that's when we assume we know what other people are thinking about us or crystal ball thinking is another way of describing that. Also predicting the future, that might be another thinking style thinking trap that we might fall into. Yeah, trying to predict what's going to happen. And as we've talked about before, we're much more likely to do that if we've got a really strong intolerance of uncertainty, which is really common.

Another thinking trap is emotional reasoning. You know, sort of noticing the emotion that one feels in a situation and assuming that that then means that the situation equates to the level of emotion. So for example, I feel anxious, so, therefore, this must be a dangerous situation, or I feel bad, so it must be bad. I hope that makes sense. So just notice if you're mind-reading or predicting the future, or just doing what we call emotional reasoning. Other very, very common ones are catastrophizing, are you catastrophizing, are you imagining the worst thing that will happen? So labeling the unhelpful thinking as a catastrophic thinking style can be helpful in stepping away from it and objectifying it a bit.

Another really common one is something we call compare and despair. So, only seeing the good positive aspects in certain things, situations, and other people and comparing ourselves negatively against that, or perhaps on the occasion where you've compared yourself positively against somebody, you might then end up feeling guilty about doing that. So, compare and despair never tends to work out well for us. Black and white thinking is exceptionally common.

Some people are more rigid than others, but if you're a black and white thinker, it's really important to notice that you're likely to do that. Ask the question: am I black and white thinking? Am I being dichotomous in my thinking, because that means that you're missing out on all the shades of grey, which usually will lead us to some more helpful objective thinking. Be wary around shoulds and musts. Shoulds, musts and ought to's, they put pressure on us they imply an obligation. Okay, just being softer with the language in which we speak to ourselves.

And the last one is perhaps negative filtering. So when you hear a positive compliment, somebody's saying something kind and caring, do you reject the positive aspects of it and pick through it until you find something negative and then accept that. It's incredibly common and it's heavily linked to something called cognitive dissonance, which I might talk a bit more about in another recording.

So those are the main ones. I just want you to start noticing whether you do that and it's really helpful, just practice labeling it, ah that's my black and white thinking. That's my catastrophic thinking. Really, really helpful just in taking that objective view, and trying to be a bit more balanced in the way we think.