Method from cognitive psychotherapy
In "The Feeling Good Handbook," American psychologist David D. Burns describes how the mind can negatively influence feelings. According to Burns, every irrational and depressing thought falls into one of the following ten categories:
- All-or-nothing thinking: You see things too black and white. If you don't perform perfectly, you see yourself as a complete failure.
- Overgeneralization: You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of failures.
- Mental filter: You focus so much on a single negative detail that your entire view of reality turns black, like a drop of ink darkening a glass of water.
- Disqualification of the positive: You dismiss positive experiences by arguing that for some reason they “don’t count.”.
- Premature conclusions: You interpret certain things negatively when there are no facts to support your conclusion, by: a) Mind reading: You conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you without checking whether that is their intention. b) Fortune telling: You predict that certain things will go badly, and you are convinced that your prediction is an irrefutable fact.
- Exaggerating or downplaying: You exaggerate the importance of things, such as your mistakes or someone else's successes. Or you overplay things, such as your own strengths or someone else's weaknesses.
- Emotional reasoning: You assume your negative emotions reflect reality. "I feel it, so it must be true.".
- ‘"Should" statements: You try to motivate yourself by thinking in terms of "have tos." As if you can only do something if you're beaten and punished first. The direct consequence of "have tos" is guilt. If you direct your "should" statements at others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment.
- Pigeonholing: This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your possible mistake, you pigeonhole yourself: "I'm a loser." And if someone else's behavior displeases you, you pigeonhole them: "He's a goddamn jerk." These kinds of statements are invariably accompanied by highly colored and emotionally charged language.
- Personalization: You see yourself as the cause of a negative event for which you were not actually responsible.
From "Pill," a book by Mike Boddé: "The overview gives me a temporary sense of relief when I see how all my irrational thoughts are mapped out. It gives me a momentary sense of control over the situation. (…) The idea behind the list of thinking errors is that you can intervene in thought patterns yourself. You can do this by learning which mistakes you make and by seeing how you can counter them with 'realistic' thoughts. (…) Did that work for me too? The answer is a clear and unequivocal 'no.' Now that I'm 'healthy' again, it does help me.".
In his book "Pill," Miké Boddé describes the progression of depression and his quest to overcome it. Perhaps the ineffectiveness of cognitive therapy is partly due to the lack of an accessible emotional life. This access is essential for motivation. By not being able to experience this deficit, the motivation to change also disappears, and Boddé is trapped in unfelt solutions, a list.