6 Sneaky Thought Patterns Inhibiting Your Personal Growth

“I'm so upset,” my client Myra exclaimed the other day. “I've been doing this whole dating app thing for almost five months now. Finally, I met a guy I actually liked: Paul. I mean, he has just about everything I'm looking for! But now it’s been four days since our last date, and I haven’t heard from him. What did I do wrong? How is this possible? He must not like me. Why do none of the guys I like, like me back? I am never going to find my 'one'!"

Those of you on the dating scene can probably relate to this all-too-common thought train. Even if you're not currently dating, there are probably areas of your life where your anxieties run away with you. Is it your ability to get in shape? To find a career you love?

Here's the wacky thing about us humans: We take a simple event, like a potential mate not calling us for four days, and spin it around and around in our minds until it becomes a calamity. We assign meaning to something that, by itself, may not mean anything. The only thing we know for sure is that Myra’s date didn’t call. The rest is pure imagination. And we suffer. Tremendously.

There is a term for this type of imagination proposed by psychiatrist Dr. Aaron Beck and popularized by Dr. David Burns in 1980. The term is cognitive distortion. Understanding how you cognitively distort is key to breaking free of some of your most toxic mental traps.

By seeing these thoughts as distortions rather than reality, you can actually free yourself from them. It’s like how, as a kid, you realized that there really wasn’t a monster in the corner. It was just a shadow thrown by a doll on a pile of books. Once you realized what was causing the specter, you could rest peacefully.

How often do you say things like, “It’s just not fair. I work harder than Joe, and yet he’s being promoted over me!” You feel wronged and angry. Yet there really is no law that suggests the world should be fair—especially by your admittedly self-centered definition of fairness. When you let go of that need for fairness, it gives you a chance to decide how to react to what is, instead of feeling wronged by what isn’t.

Which one of these cognitive distortions are you suffering from right now? Think about something that really burned your cookies in the last week. There was an event, and there was your reaction to the event. Which reaction did you dial up? Share with us!