Common Negative thoughts & Examples
Negative thinking can influence the way you emote, behave, how you view yourself, beliefs and values you live by, and shape understanding of your capacity to cope with difficult experiences. Without challenging negative thoughts, you encourage a distorted way of thinking that is reinforced and heightens negative stress responses.Personalization: distorted thoughts where you take things personally and blame yourself for things that rationally you would not necessarily be to blame.
Example: “My baby cries all the time, if I were a good mom, he wouldn't cry as much”
Labeling and Mislabeling: distorted thoughts where you assign judgements of worth or value because of a situation that may have not gone as expected or desirable.
Example: “I can't get my baby to take the breast, I'm useless”
Should Statements/ Definitive language: distorted thoughts where absolute statements like "should", "must", "never", "always", "ought to" are used. Using this language sets the expectation that if the situation doesn't happen this way then there's this incredible failure that has happened. When this faulty way of thinking exists, and situations don't go as expected, feelings of guilt, shame, anger, and other negative emotions are the outcome. It's irrational to not allow for grace of other alternatives, including realistic expectations that include unfavorable outcomes.
Example: “I shouldn’t still be struggling with my loss it’s been a year now. My husband's done grieving, why am I not”
Emotional Reasoning: distorted thoughts where you accept your emotion as being true and assign it to your identity
Example: “I wanted so badly to have a vaginal birth but I failed to progress which led to a c-section, I’m such a failure”
Catastrophizing: distorted thinking involving thinking of the most exerggerated worst case scenario and accepting that as the likely and only scenario
Example: “If my birthplan doesn't go exactly as I've laid it out, something will go wrong and either I'll be injured and it not be a memorable experience or worse - baby will be admitted to the nicu ”
Jumping to Conclusions or Fortune Telling: distorted thoughts involving predictions or assumptions about future events with little to no evidence of knowing for a fact what will actually happen
Example: “This same [bad] thing happened with my first baby, I just know it’s going to happen with this one also”
Mind Reading: distorted thoughts that assume someone else's beliefs, views, feelings or thoughts about a situation or self are negative even with little to no evidence of knowing for a fact that this is what the other person is feeling or thinking
Example: “I know my friends think I’m not a good mom because my newborn caught the flu"
Disqualifying the Positive: distorted thinking where the positive aspects of a situation are known but rejected in order to boost the negative
Example: “The doctor is telling me that baby is doing well and I see the lab results look good but they must’ve missed something, what if they’re missing something”
Mental Filter: distorted thoughts that focus on a solitary negative aspect and highlights that which overshadows possibly being able to see the positives
Example: Focusing on the doctors report of baby having lost weight after birth but not acknowledging that babies typically lose and then regain their birth weight back
Overgeneralization: distorted thinking that involves taking a negative or unpleasant experience and assigning it to all future situations
Example: "this is hard, everything is going to be so hard"
All-or-Nothing Thinking / Polarized Thinking: distorted thinking that doesn't leave room for grace or flexibility with alternatives to situations
Example: “everything has to be perfect and go exactly according to the expectations I have of motherhood”
Interested in challenging these negative thoughts and exploring other issues in motherhood? Head to the shop and pickup Practically Unpacking: guided journal for mamas