Extreme thinking equals extreme emotions
Let’s take a look at the thought, “I made a mistake, I must be a failure.” If you want sit with this for a second, see how this thought makes you feel.
Now think the thought, “Just because I made a mistake doesn’t mean I am a failure.” Sit with that a notice how it makes you feel. Do you notice a difference?
We all experience emotional pain and suffering, but extreme thinking may be influencing the degree of emotional pain you are experiencing.
When our thoughts are left unchecked, we are at the mercy of them. In my work as a mental health counselor I notice clients who struggle with big extreme emotions, often engage in extreme thinking. These big emotions can lead to ineffective coping such as self har, substance abuse, and even thoughts of suicide.
If you are experiencing strong intense emotions, you may be drawing extreme conclusions. This could happen after actions that you have taken, after interactions with others, if we receive negative responses from others, or even receive no response at all. When you experience extreme emotions you can often find an extreme thought or belief underlying it all.
In these cases, we may label ourselves hurtful things, we may put thoughts into other peoples minds and make assumptions about their actions. We spend very little time considering that we may be wrong in our assumptions.
If you can begin to identify your extreme thinking you can change it, and have a sense of control rather than your thoughts an emotions controlling you.
What is extreme thinking?
Extreme thinking is a pattern of thinking in which you struggle to consider the gray area of things. It is the tendency to default to dichotomous thinking or thinking in absolutes and the habit of dismissing or completely ignoring other possibilities. You draw extreme conclusions like the example above. “If I make a mistake it automatically makes me a failure.” This is a distortion, it is just not true.
Extreme thinking can also be called negative thinking, irrational thinking, thinking errors, unhelpful thinking, distorted thinking, etc. It can mean you are drawing erroneous conclusions about yourself and others.
I like to say extreme thinking because that is what it feels like. Extreme in that if we really look at what is going on and what we are telling ourselves, the pendulum as usually swung all the way to one side. It is a pattern of thinking in which you think in absolutes, jump to conclusions, believe that you can mind read when you can’t, and place impossible expectations on yourself and others.
In Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), our thoughts impact the way we feel. So when you feel bad it is usually related to what you are telling yourself in the form of thought. CBT has been around for a very long time and is evidenced based, that means it has repeatedly resulted in improvements when used with a wide range of clients.
CBT founders, were able to identify what is now called cognitive distortions. This is where extreme thinking fits in.
A quick note here to put things into perspective, everyone has faulty thinking patterns at times, not just some people, everyone. The crazy thing too is that we often never check our thoughts, so we are often at the mercy of them. Because of how obvious it was that a persons faulty thinking had to do with the way they felt they designed an entire therapeutic modality around it, and CBT is still the leading therapeutic modality today.
Let’s go through some of the cognitive distortions described in CBT just so you can have a better idea of what is happening in your thinking.
Cognitive distortions or faulty thinking patterns
Here are a few of my favorite cognitive distortions, just kidding.
All or nothing thinking: This is when you think only in absolutes. Things can only be this or that, good or bad, right or wrong. You try to fit your conclusions about the world and its events neatly into one of two boxes. There is no gray area. An example would be if you do poorly on a test your explanation is, “I must be a failure.” Not someone who is mostly successful who just might need to study a little more. Or If you fuss at your kids then you are a “terrible mother.” Not a good mother who values good behavior and respect and wants what’s best for her children. This kind of thinking shows up in perfectionism.
Jumping to conclusions: This is when you interpret a situation in a negative way but you don’t consider all the facts or other possibilities. Mind reading is a form of jumping to conclusions. Someone may make a face while looking at you and you assume, “Oh that person doesn’t like me” or “That person has a problem with me.” Can you read their mind? Could there be another explanation for the weird face?
Disqualifying the positive: This one is just how it sounds, you dismiss or ignore any positive information that you receive and stay focused on the negative. We can tackle this one a little bit right now. Have you ever only, 100% of the time, received negative attention and feedback? The answer is most likely no. Have you received positive feedback or compliments and dismissed it? The answer, I am sure, is yes. We often spend a lot of time sitting with the negativity, can you recall some positive feedback and sit with that?
Personalization: You see yourself as being responsible for or being the cause of negative events around you. “I’m the problem, it’s me.” as Taylor Swift says. You may take responsibility for other people's moods or feelings even when they have nothing to do with you. The interesting thing about this one is if you are frequently taking responsibility for how other people feel, it's quite likely you are not taking responsibility for how you feel.
Catastrophizing: You make a mistake and catastrophize it. Maybe you trip while walking in public and you become overcome with embarrassment because you think everyone saw you and you want to go hide under a rock. While in reality, maybe one person saw and they didn’t even care because they were preoccupied with their own thoughts. Or you make one mistake at work and you think your career is over. In reality it was a learning moment that helped you to do better at your job.
Should statements: This one is exactly like it sounds. You tell yourself you should do something or you shouldn’t do something. You can also should on other people. Examples of shoulds are, “I should be able to do this,” “I shouldn’t feel this way,” “He should know what I want,” “They shouldn’t be doing that.” A good question to ask yourself here is, says who? There are no written laws called the shoulds. They are made up by you. They are rules you place on yourself and others. If you find yourself feeling guilty about something there is a good chance there is a should statement involved, ex: “I should have known better.” When working with a client who is shoulding, it sometimes makes no sense at all. During these moments it becomes glaringly clear that this person has never been in the situation they are in ever in their life and in the moment they made a decision based on what they knew. If you have never in this life been through something how on earth can you expect to know exactly the right decision in the moment. Most of us are doing the best we can.
(Other distortions are overgeneralization, mental filter, emotional reasoning, and labeling.)
Any of these sound or feel familiar?
I know that when I discovered that some of my thinking patterns were faulty, I wanted to know Why? Why do I think this was? Where did it come from?
When did these patterns start?
I don’t want to over complicate this post but I think childhood development is worth mentioning.
We didn’t just become adults and all of a sudden we are thinking in extremes. It seems we develop certain thinking patterns during childhood and sometimes these patterns get stuck. It could be a personality trait as well.
According to Margaret Mahler, during the separation and individuation phase of development (5 to 36 months of age), we begin to see that we are not the center of the universe and begin to develop a self concept in relation to our parents or caregivers. Thinking patterns begin here.
Something interesting about thinking patterns was the topic of splitting. Melanie Klein was a psychoanalyst and a developer of the object-relation theory. She saw that children think in absolutes, it's all or nothing. And splitting was described as a psychic mechanism in which a child can only see their caregiver as all good or all bad, and cannot hold space for both possibilities. It was a defense against anxiety and ambiguity.
This could be part of why some of us continue to think in absolutes and think in extremes. Those of us who think this way may struggle with ambiguity.
I didn’t scratch the surface of these theories, but just wanted to briefly mention that our thinking patterns begin to develop when we are children and some patterns stay the same unless we become aware of them and take steps to rearrange them.
If we can identify the distortions we can replace or reframe them, leading to more comfortable feelings. You can think of it like settings on a computer, for some things it is set to default, but it doesn’t have to stay that way. We have the ability to rewire or change the settings. Taking steps to reorganize and change our thinking can be a good solution especially if our extreme thinking is impacting us in a negative way.
How does our extreme thinking impact us?
Extreme thinking is often the source of extreme emotional pain, plain and simple. This faulty thinking can be the culprit of all sorts of uncomfortable feelings such as anxiety, depression, anger, rage, unhealthy shame and guilt, relationship issues, feelings of inadequacy, substance abuse, self harm, etc.
Because of old thinking patterns that are never identified and checked we continue to suffer until we learn to see things differently and reframe our thinking.
The good news is you can begin to do something.
What can you do about it?
You have to start with awareness. Begin to be aware of your thoughts, watching the things you say to yourself, especially during intense emotional episodes. You may have to stop and ask yourself “what was I thinking just then?” I will always recommend writing your thoughts down or journaling, it is more difficult to identify thoughts just be thinking in the beginning. As you get better at it you may not need to write as much.
Figure out what you are feeling, identifying the feelings associated with the thought. This might look like, “Ok, I’m feeling guilty right now.” Or maybe you recognize that you feel angry, ashamed, depressed, sad, inadequate, fearful, etc.
Once you are better able to identify your thoughts and recognize your feelings, you can begin to question your thinking. I recognize now that most of my thoughts are untrue, especially those that cause difficult feelings. Taking an example from earlier, if you do poorly on a test does it really mean you are a failure? If you are a mother and you fuss at your kids, does it automatically mean you are a terrible mother? See if you can rephrase or reframe your thoughts to help create a gray area and not go to the extreme. This could look like, “Just because I did poorly on the test, does not make me a failure.” or “Just because I fuss at my kids doesn’t make me a bad mother.” What are other possibilities? Can you find the gray area?
Write down your new thoughts and repeat them when the old thought surfaces again, because it will.
It is worth putting effort into this. You may have old thoughts continue to surface, but over time they will lose there power and it will become easier to reframe them. Being able to be aware of what you tell yourself and identify faulty thinking is something you can continue to use.
And while the steps I just mentioned are things you can try on your own, I will always recommend counseling as another option to reinforce your efforts. It may be helpful to seek out services from a CBT therapist to help challenge your thinking. Sometimes we need another set of eyes to help us see what we can’t on our own.
The possibility of being able to develop different thinking patterns is great news because it means we can get some relief from some of our suffering.
Conclusion
In conclusion, extreme thinking can cause a lot of pain and suffering. It is a faulty way of thinking that prevents you from considering other possibilities. If you find yourself experiencing painful feelings, extreme thinking may be the cause. The good news is that extreme thinking does not have to rule your life, you can begin to take steps to change how you think with a little effort and support from a counselor if needed.
**Psychology today is always a great resource to find therapists in your area. You can refine your search to anything you like including types of therapy.
**Suicide and crisis hotline: 988 Available 24 hours a day
References
Boag, S. (2017). Splitting (Defense Mechanism). In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1427-1
Burns, D. D. (1999). The feeling good handbook (Rev. ed.). Plume/Penguin Books.
