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Module 5
Unhelpful Thinking Styles

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Unhelpful Thinking Styles

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Unhelpful Thinking Styles: More Details

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Module Summary

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About the Modules

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Module 5: Unhelpful Thinking Styles

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When a person experiences an unhelpful emotion (eg, depression or anxiety), it is usually preceded by a numberof unhelpful self-statements and thoughts. Often there is a pattern to such thoughts and we call these, "unhelpful
thinking styles". One of the things we have noticed is that people use unhelpful thinking styles as an automatic
habit. It is something that happens out of our awareness. However, when a person consistently and constantly
uses some of these styles of thinking, they can often cause themselves a great deal of emotional distress.
We are now going to describe a range of unhelpful thinking styles. A summary of all the styles are provided on
this page, with further details on each style provided on subsequent pages. It might be a little too much to readeverything at once, so perhaps you might want to read through this page and then choose one or two to read in
detail. Can you identify any thinking patterns and styles that you often use?
Mental Filter
This thinking styles involves a "filtering in" and "filteringout" process – a sort of "tunnel vision, "focusing on
only one part of a situation and ignoring the rest.
Usually this means looking at the negative parts of asituation and forgetting the positive parts, and thewhole picture is coloured by what may be a single
negative detail.
Jumping to Conclusions
We jump to conclusions when we assume that weknow what someone else is thinking (mind reading)
and when we make predictions about what is going tohappen in the future (predictive thinking).
Personalisation
This involves blaming yourself for everything that goes
wrong or could go wrong, even when you may only bepartly responsible or not responsible at all. You might
be taking 100% responsibility for the occurrence of
external events.
Catastrophising
Catastrophising occurs when we “blow things out of
proportion“., and we view the situation as terrible,
awful, dreadful, and horrible, even though the reality isthat the problem itself is quite small.
Black & White Thinking
This thinking style involves seeing only one extreme or
the other. You are either wrong or right, good or badand so on. There are no in-betweens or shades ofgray.

Shoulding and Musting
Sometimes by saying “I should…” or “I must…” you
can put unreasonable demands or pressure on yourself
and others. Although these statements are not always
unhelpful (eg “I should not get drunk and drivehome”), they can sometimes create unrealistic
expectations.
Overgeneralisation
When we overgeneralise, we take one instance in thepast or present, and impose it on all current or future
situations. If we say “You always…” or “Everyone…”,or “I never…” then we are probably overgeneralising.
Labelling
We label ourselves and others when we make global
statements based on behaviour in specific situations.
We might use this label even though there are many
more examples that aren’t consistent with that label.
Emotional Reasoning
This thinking style involves basing your view ofsituations or yourself on the way you are feeling. For
example, the only evidence that something bad isgoing to happen is that you feel like something bad isgoing to happen.
Magnification and Minimisation
In this thinking style, you magnify the positive
attributes of other people and minimise your own
positive attributes. It’s as though you’re explaining
away your own positive characteristics orachievements as though they’re not important.

Note: Some of these styles might sound similar to one another. They are not meant to be distinct categories but
to help you see if there is a kind of pattern to your thoughts. Just choose a few that might be most relevant to
you.

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Details
1. Mental Filter (Selective Abstraction)
This is a "filtering in" and "filtering out" process. You can think of a mental filter as a sort of "tunnel vision" focusing on only one part of a situation and ignoring the rest. Usually this means looking at the negative parts of asituation and forgetting the positive parts.
Here is an example:
Maybe you are out with your partner having a romantic dinner, and at the end of dinner you have a disagreement
about whether to leave a tip or not. Perhaps you stew on this disagreement in the car all the way home. Whatdo you think the effect of this thinking style will have on the way you feel?
Notice that in this example you are dwelling on a single detail out of the many details that occurred during theentire night. Notice that the detail you are dwelling on happens to be negative. You have excluded other details of
the whole picture, which means that you are not remembering all the other positive experiences of the night. If
you focus on this negative bit, then it is likely that you'll keep experiencing the negative feelings that go along withit.
This process also happens with the way we remember things. All the memories of our life experiences are storedin our brains. Have you ever thought of what would happen if we remembered everything all at once? We’d bepretty overwhelmed! It is natural that mental filtering occurs when we try to remember things. However,research has shown that when a person is depressed, they often remember events that are associated withnegative unhelpful feelings. If they keep dwelling on these memories, how do you think they would feel?

Can you think of a situation where
you used this thinking style?

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What were the thoughts that went
through your mind?

What feelings did you experience
consequent to your thinking?

Module 5: Unhelpful Thinking Styles

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2. Jumping to Conclusions
Most of us would have heard the phrase “You’re jumping to conclusions!” meaning that a conclusion is being madewithout really knowing if there is any evidence to support it. Although we might like to think that if we “have ahunch” about something it is usually right, there are times when we are not right. There are times that we keep
jumping to the wrong conclusion, or the conclusions are usually negative. When we do this consistently then wecan cause ourselves quite a bit of distress. There are two ways in which we often jump to conclusions – mind
reading and predictive thinking.
Mind Reading
As the name suggests, this is where we jump to conclusions because we assume that we know what someone elseis thinking, or we know the rationale behind someone else's behaviours. This happens to be a very common styleof thinking.
Have you ever had this experience? You are talking to someone, and during the conversation they look at theirwatch? Perhaps you’ve thought, “They must think I’m a really boring person”, or "they don't want to be here withme." If you jumped to these conclusions without looking closely at all the evidence, such as the fact that theperson is expecting an important phone call soon, do you think you’d end up feeling happy or distressed? Let's try
another example: Your boss asks to see you. You instantly assume you know why she wants the meeting, "She'sgoing to tell me that I'm not good enough for this job" or , "she's upset with the way I am doing things." If you
believed your interpretation, which has been based on your mind reading, would you be happy or anxious?
Often these conclusions are a reflection of how we think about ourselves, eg, "I think I'm boring", "I think I'm notgood enough", "I always do things wrong". Often we jump to the conclusion that because we think poorly ofourselves, then others must too.
Predictive Thinking
We can also jump to conclusions when we start making predictions about what is going to happen on some futureoccasion. This is a very common way to increase anxiety and stress. These are often predictions where you
overestimate the negative emotions or experiences you are going to encounter. Think through this example withus. Someone has asked you to give a talk to a group of people, you might think “I’m going to get in there andforget what I’m supposed to say, stumble over my words, and completely stuff up the presentation, and this will beterrible”. You believe this despite the fact that you have delivered many successful presentations in the past.
How might you feel if you believe this?
Can you think of a situation where
you used this thinking style?

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What were the thoughts that went
through your mind?

What feelings did you experience
consequent to your thinking?

Module 5: Unhelpful Thinking Styles

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3. Personalisation
Can you think of some occasions when something hasn’t gone quite as you wanted, or the way you expected, andyou’ve blamed yourself totally for what’s happened? The toast burns at breakfast, and you blame yourself not thetoaster, your child plays a wrong note at a concert, and you blame yourself for not making him practice harder.
Without realising it, you relate external negative events to something you have or have not done.
When you personalise something, you take total responsibility for external events occurring, and ignoring otherimportant factors. As a consequence you end up blaming yourself for everything that goes wrong or that could gowrong - even when you may only be partly responsible, or not responsible at all. If you were to consistently say to
yourself, “This is my fault”, “I’m to blame” – how do you think you’d start to feel? Carrying 100% of the
responsibility is a rather large burden to bear, and one that’s likely to leave you feeling discouraged or
overwhelmed.

Can you think of a situation where
you used this thinking style?

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entre forlinicalnterventions•Psychotherapy•Research•Training

What were the thoughts that went
through your mind?

What feelings did you experience
consequent to your thinking?

Module 5: Unhelpful Thinking Styles

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4. Catastrophising
When someone says “you’re blowing things out of proportion”, or “you’re making a mountain out of a molehill”,
chances are the person is catastrophising. This style of automatic thinking often begins with the following phrases;"What if !!!" or "Oh no …"
Let's try some examples.
"Oh my God I have a chest pain …… I might be having a heart attack""What if I disagree with my partner on this ….. I will lose an important relationship"“I felt depressed this morning, "What if I stay depressed?"
All of these examples get at the essence of this unhelpful thinking style – that the person views the situation as
terrible, awful, dreadful and horrible. Notice the appearance of other unhelpful thinking styles – a bit of predictive
thinking and a bit of jumping to conclusions.
Let's look at this final example. Have you ever submitted a project, perhaps at work, and then realised that you’dmade a small error? You might think “I can’t believe I made that mistake. This is going to be a poor submission, I’m
going to lose the account and probably lose my job. I’ll probably never find work in this city again!” What do you
think it would be like for someone with this style of thinking? Even though the reality is that the problem itself isquite small, when we catastrophise, things can get very big very quickly, and we can work ourselves up to a point
where it all seems beyond our control.

Can you think of a situation where
you used this thinking style?

CCI

entre forlinicalnterventions•Psychotherapy•Research•Training

What were the thoughts that went
through your mind?

What feelings did you experience
consequent to your thinking?

Module 5: Unhelpful Thinking Styles

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5. Black & White Thinking
When it comes to sports, you might have heard some people say “There are no second places, there is only one
winner and the rest are losers” as if being the second best in the world is nothing to be proud of. Or think of thestudent who doesn’t get straight A’s, and thinks that they are a failure. Perhaps you’ve said something similar to
yourself, “If my partner and I don’t always agree, then we have a bad relationship”, or “If I’m not the best at what I
do, then I’m worthless”.
We call this all-or-nothing thinking, or black-and-white thinking because you tend to see only one extreme or theother. With this thinking, you are right or wrong, you are good or bad - there are no in-betweens, no shades ofgrey, and no middle ground.

Can you think of a situation where
you used this thinking style?

CCI

entre forlinicalnterventions•Psychotherapy•Research•Training

What were the thoughts that went
through your mind?

What feelings did you experience
consequent to your thinking?

Module 5: Unhelpful Thinking Styles

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6. 'Shoulding' and 'Musting'
It is quite common in everyday language to hear people use “I should”, and “I must” statements. It is notnecessarily unhelpful to think, "I should get my work in on time", it only becomes unhelpful when you use "should"
and "must" statements to put unreasonable demands or pressure on yourself.
We might say “I should always get things right”, or “I must never get upset with my partner”, or "I should always
cook exquisite meals." How do you think someone would feel after making these kinds of statements over andover again? Chances are, they’ll feel guilty or disappointed in themselves.
We may also use these types of statements when we are talking about other people “She should know better thanthat”, “People should always keep their promises”, “People shouldn’t get angry at others”. You might haveguessed that these kinds of statements leave us feeling frustrated or angry and disappointed in others.

Can you think of a situation where
you used this thinking style?

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entre forlinicalnterventions•Psychotherapy•Research•Training

What were the thoughts that went
through your mind?

What feelings did you experience
consequent to your thinking?

Module 5: Unhelpful Thinking Styles

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7. Overgeneralisation
The key element in this unhelpful thinking style is to take one instance in the past or present, and to impose thison all current or future situations.
Perhaps you’ve said to yourself in the past “This is just so typical!” telling yourself that this is “how things always
are”, or “everyone’s like that”, or "things never turn out well for me", when, in fact, there are only a few examples
to go by. Making broad, generalised and global conclusions on the basis of only a little evidence can leave us
thinking that things are really uncontrollable, inevitable and out of our hands. A sense of helplessness often
accompanies such overgeneralisations. If you think about personal relationships, you might notice a few
overgeneralisations. Have you ever said, or heard, something like, “You never do anything romantic for me”, or “I
always have to take out the garbage”, or “Everyone keeps having a go at me”, or “Every night I come home, thosekids have always left a mess!”
Notice that these unhelpful thinking styles often include words like, "all", "never", "always" and "every", when, in
most cases, the “always” and “never” are not as solid as we might think they are. How do you think people would
feel if they used this thinking style? They may feel frustrated, discouraged, depressed, or annoyed, amongst otherthings.

Can you think of a situation where
you used this thinking style?

CCI

entre forlinicalnterventions•Psychotherapy•Research•Training

What were the thoughts that went
through your mind?

What feelings did you experience
consequent to your thinking?

Module 5: Unhelpful Thinking Styles

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8. Labelling
You can probably think of times when you’ve bumped something off the table, or dropped a glass while washingthe dishes and perhaps thought to yourself, “I’m such an idiot!” Or perhaps a friend doesn’t call you to say they
can’t make it to your birthday party and you think, “They are so inconsiderate”. It’s a little like overgeneralising
about people. When we make global statements about ourselves or other people, which are based on behaviourin specific situations, then we are labelling. The problem is, that by defining a person by one specific behaviour and - usually one that we consider negative, we ignore the other positive characteristics and actions. When you
step back from the situation and take a closer look, you might realise that breaking a glass doesn’t mean thatyou’re an “idiot”, and the fact that you are competent in your job, or can communicate effectively with yourfamily, might suggest otherwise. Similarly, your friend may have acted kind and considerate at other times, butsomething may have prevented them from calling.

Can you think of a situation where
you used this thinking style?

CCI

entre forlinicalnterventions•Psychotherapy•Research•Training

What were the thoughts that went
through your mind?

What feelings did you experience
consequent to your thinking?

Module 5: Unhelpful Thinking Styles

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9. Emotional Reasoning
This is a style of unhelpful thinking where you base your view of situations, yourself, or others on the way you arefeeling. Have you ever felt anxious about something and thought to yourself, "I know this isn't going to work out
well" and everything turned out just fine? If you have, it’s likely that you were using emotional reasoning. In thiscase, we tend to take our emotions as being evidence for the truth. For example, you might be walking down thestreet and think “I feel anxious, I know something dangerous is going to happen”, or “I feel so depressed, this must
be the worst place to work in”. It’s like we’re saying to ourselves “I feel, therefore it is” - rather than looking at
what real evidence there may be. There might be no other evidence to suggest that something dangerous might
happen, or that it is the worst place to work in. The only evidence you have is how you feel.

Can you think of a situation where
you used this thinking style?

CCI

entre forlinicalnterventions•Psychotherapy•Research•Training

What were the thoughts that went
through your mind?

What feelings did you experience
consequent to your thinking?

Module 5: Unhelpful Thinking Styles

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10. Magnification and Minimisation
This is the binocular effect on thinking. Often it means that you enlarge (magnify) the positive attributes of otherpeople and shrink (minimise) your own attributes, just like looking at the world through either end of the same
pair of binoculars. Disqualifying your own attributes for achievement has negative effects. Think of the times inyour own life where you might have said, or heard others say, “Oh, that doesn’t count, I was just lucky”, or “They
don’t really mean it, they were just being polite”. In this way you might water down positive experiences, andeven transform them into negative ones. It’s as though you’re being so humble you’re putting yourself down.

Can you think of a situation where
you used this thinking style?

CCI

entre forlinicalnterventions•Psychotherapy•Research•Training

What were the thoughts that went
through your mind?

What feelings did you experience
consequent to your thinking?

Module 5: Unhelpful Thinking Styles

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Back from theModule Summary•••

Often, there is a trend or a pattern to negative and unhelpful thoughts and this can beconsidered as unhelpful thinking styles
These thinking styles are unhelpful because they often focus on the negative or
inaccurate part of reality
The following are summary descriptions of the 10 Unhelpful Thinking Styles
contained in this module:
1. Mental Filter: A "filtering in" and "filtering out" process. A sort of "tunnel
vision," focusing on only one part of a situation and ignoring the rest. Usually thismeans looking at the negative parts of a situation and forgetting the positive parts– not seeing the whole picture.
2. Jumping to Conclusions: Assuming that we know what someone else isthinking (mind reading) and making predictions about what is going to happen in
the future (predictive thinking).
3. Personalisation: Blaming yourself; taking 100% responsibility for the occurrenceof external events.
4. Catastrophising: Blowing things out of proportion.
5. Black & White Thinking: Seeing only one extreme or the other – no inbetweens or shades of gray.
6. Shoulding and Musting: Making unreasonable demands or pressure on self orothers.
7. Overgeneralisation: Taking one instance in the past or present, and imposing it
on all current or future situations.
8. Labelling: Making global statements about ourselves or others based on
behaviour in specific situations.
9. Emotional Reasoning: Basing your view of situations or yourself on the way
you are feeling.
10. Magnification and Minimisation: Magnifying the positive attributes of otherpeople and minimising your own attributes.

Stay Tuned...
In the next module, we will discuss how
to change our unhelpful thoughts andbeliefs so that we can feel better andless distressed.

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About The Modules
BACKGROUNDThis module was created in the early 2000s by Clinical Psychologists at the Centre for ClinicalInterventions, under the supervision of the Centre’s Founding Director, Paula Nathan.
The concepts and strategies in these modules have been developed from evidence based psychologicalpractice, primarily Cognitive-Behaviour Therapy (CBT). CBT for depression and anxiety is based on theapproach that depression and anxiety are the result of problematic cognitions (thoughts) and behaviours.

REFERENCES
These are some of the professional references used to create the modules in this information package.
Beck, A. T., Rush, A. J. , Shaw, B. F., Emery, G. (1979). Cognitive Therapy of Depression. New York: The
Guildford Press.
Beck, J.S. (1995) Cognitive therapy: Basics and beyond. New York: The Guilford Press
Barlow, D.H. (2001). Clinical handbook of psychological disorders: A step-by-step treatment manual (3rded.) New York: The Guilford Press
Clark, M.D. & Fairburn, C.C. (1997) Science and practice of cognitive behaviour therapy. Oxford:
Oxford University Press
Dobson, K.S., & Craig, K.A. (1998) Empirically supported therapies: Best practice in professional
psychology. Thousand Oaks: Sage
Hawton, K., Salkovskis, P.M., Kirk, J., & Clark, D.M. (1989) Cognitive behaviour therapy for psychiatricproblems: A practical guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Nathan, P.E. & Gorman, J.M. (2002) (Eds.) A guide to treatments that work (2nd ed.) New York: Oxford
University Press.

“BACK FROM THE BLUEZ”
This module forms part of:Nathan, P., Rees, C., Lim, L., & Correia, H. (2003). Back from the Bluez. Perth, Western Australia: Centre
for Clinical Interventions

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