How well do you see?
- Christine Stanko
- Sep 4, 2022
- 2 min read
How well do you see yourself, the world around you and your life? Did you know that our brain has roughly 86 billion neurons?! That is a lot! And that many neurons means that for as smart as our brain is, it has to have a way to expedite information processing. (Our brain is constantly taking in information from our external and internal worlds and has to process it for us to function).
Enter COGNITIVE HEURISTICS.
This is an amazing trait of our human brain! It really is. Imagine having a brain that didn't have any type of way to speed up decision making, judgement and functioning! It would be like old school dial up internet!
Let's maybe go a little deeper, and talk about COGNITIVE DISTORTIONS. These are thinking patterns that we can very easily get stuck thinking. Cognitive distortion literally means your cognitions (thoughts) are not accurate. Thoughts can become skewed, contorted, and generally fall into a rut of being negative, catastrophic and false all together.
Let me share an example! Let's say you are walking down a hall at work and pass a coworker who doesn't make eye contact and doesn't smile. What is your immediate thought? What story does your mind automatically fill in to make sense of this interaction?
"Geeez, why are they so mad at me?"
"What did I do wrong today? They are always so grumpy and take it out on me".
"I don't like them either! I am glad they didn't look my way, I don't feel social today and would't have smiled back anyway".
You get the gist.
Cognitive distortions are short ways our mind 'fills in the blank' for our experiences. And many times, our mind fills in the blanks inaccurately.
So? How well do you 'see' in life?
Imagine this - your experiences are one solid and uniform beam of light. Exploring and reflecting on your cognitive distortions is like putting a prism in front of that solid beam.
It breaks that beam up and expands it into infinite possibilities.
Being self reflective is often a super helpful tool in life. When you are feeling stuck, rigid, anxious and maybe even angry - take a look at your thinking patterns?
A quick guide to reflecting on your thinking patterns:
1) How do you FEEL in your body when you think this thought? Do you feel relieved? Relaxed? Or does it increase stress and tension in your body?
2) What is the theme of the thought? Black and white? Catastrophic? Or based on actual facts and truths?
3) Is the thought actually your own or is it a thought you just absorbed from someone or somewhere else?
4) How does this thought normally impact you? Are you reactive or can you be responsive?
(*Hint, one is the unconscious reenactment of a learned behaviour while the other is a conscious decision in the here and now).
Interested in learning a little more about the most common cognitive distortions? Check out this FREE resource I created just for you!
Journey On...
Chrissy
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