Automatic Negative Thoughts

These are from a list Allison received in one of her counseling classes. They are common negative thoughts that all of us experience at different times that keep us from accomplishing what we are truly capable of. This list ultimately comes from Dr. David Burns, M.D. in his book "Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy." Apparently this book is considered kind of a pop-psychology book in the field, but also has some good points such as the ones he makes below.

1) All-Or-Nothing Thinking: You see things in black-and-white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.

2) Overgeneralization: You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.

3) Mental Filter: You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like a drop of ink that discolors the entire beaker of water.

4) Disqualifying the Positive: You reject positive experiences by insisting that they "don't count" for some reason or another. In this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences.

5) Jumping to Conclusions: You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion.

6) Magnification (catastrophizing) or Minimization: You exaggerate the importance of things (such as you goof-up or someone else's achievement), or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other person's imperfections). This is also called the "binocular trick."

7) Emotional Reasoning: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: "I feel it, therefore it must be true."

8) Should Statements: You try to motivate yourself with shoulds and shouldn'ts, as if you had to be punished before you could be expected to do anything. "Musts" and "oughts" are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct should statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment.

9) Labeling and Mislabeling: This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself: I'm a loser." When someone else's behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him or her: "He's a louse." Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded.

10) Personalization: You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event which in fact you were not primarily responsible for.

Any of these sound familiar? I know they do for me. Hope these can offer some insight into thinking about your thinking and how your thinking might be keeping you from doing what you really want to be doing with your life. Take care, Jeff

Why Republicans are Insecure Children and Liberals Need to Be Stronger Leaders (and Canadians are laughing at our arrogance)

Since the political season is in full swing I'm sure my nonstop checking of polls and AP updates will do nothing for my grades in school or my blood pressure/ anxiety level but should certainly give me endless fodder for commentary on my blog. The ridiculous stereotypical emails of what a liberal believes and what a conservative believes have already started (although I only seem to get them from conservatives. Be forewarned that I like to "reply all" with my personal beliefs on your political emails, so if you don't want your aunt Sally to know that your friend Jeff is a gay loving, pro-choice, environmentalist, latte drinking academic living in Bellingham, WA, I'd suggest you leave me off the list). I'm hoping (but not counting on by any stretch of the imagination) that since John McCain is a fairly reasonable Republican and, with any luck, Barack Obama is running on a message of uniting the country that maybe some of the incredibly lame stereotypes (such as the one I frequently fall under above) can cease and we can remember that all these "beliefs" are supposedly based in something. After all, I don't know anyone who isn't proud of their relative who went on to be a PhD or a professional in one field or another, but somehow when election time rolls around these individuals cease to represent hard work, dreaming big and disciplined follow-through and become the lazy liberal cynics who want to ruin America with their hifalutin college talk and their godless four-dollar mochas. On the flip side of the coin, your good ol' uncle Ralph who's worked a soybean farm his entire life in Nebraska and spends his weekends hunting quail stops being the lovable old work horse who wears flannel to Christmas dinner and becomes the gun-toting, Bible-thumping war-monger from the heartland that hasn't read a book since nineteen fifty-four.

Here's my point. People are people, not political caricatures. Here's a bigger point; politics misses the big picture of life by an f-ing landslide. I personally didn't just wake up one day and turn on the news and say, "You know, I really don't like conservative views. I think I'll be a liberal." There has actually been a fair amount of psychological data (see Psychology Today article: http://psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20061222-000001.xml) on how our psychological profiles tend to push us toward a more liberal or more conservative perspective. Here's the unfortunate thing; people who tend to be easily threatened or feel vulnerable in their views lean more to the right. These are the people who want to demonize academia as being useless and pretentious, and think that a country of people working at corporate chain stores and restaurants is a great way to go.

Here's the thing. I personally believe that conservatives generally become conservative for one of a few reasons; either A) They haven't explored any aspect whatsoever of what it means to be human--have never studied psychology or humanities, don't read, don't interact with people different from themselves, never been through any form of counseling, never been pushed so hard that they had to learn something significant about the human condition, will never sit still long enough to consider, for instance, what's going on in Jakarta today (unless they have an investment there), that is to say, not worldly-minded, B) They were raised to be very religious and never had the courage or educational leadership to question the assertions made by their religious leaders, C) They f-ed up somewhere along the line and got themselves in so deep that the idea of hope and love and progressiveness seems ridiculously idealistic, D) They've made so much money that the drive to save what they make out-weighs their concern for society at large, or, more respectably, they don't think government organizations are getting the job done and would rather donate to charities of their choice, and E) They are threatened by people smarter than they are (which usually just means, went to more school than they did, and since most of our academic failures come from lack of patience in figuring out how we learn best this isn't really an excuse for anyone who doesn't have some type of serious brain trauma) and rather than humbly coming to these people for mentoring they make a culture of people who would rather believe in mystical things that are based in nothing and fight the people who actually know what's going on. This may sound harsh, but I don't know any other reasons for being conservative. I guess some people think conservative politicians have some kind of say over religious ways of life, which they don't, or can pass laws based on Biblical teachings, which they can't. I suppose some are so scared of other human beings that they feel they need a gun around in case someone randomly pegs them as a person they'd like to kill (not that random crimes don't happen, but generally people who live simply and sanely don't often attract the attention of poor scavenger-types looking for some easy loot. So, don't live like a materialistic asshole and you won't have to worry about people stealing your stuff and you won't need to carry a gun).

I honestly don't know what makes conservatives hate liberals the way they do (insecurity maybe?). On the flip side, I know I tend to dislike people who constantly scowl at me for giving a shit while they sit around getting richer and fatter and lazier and praying that someone else figures out how to solve all the problems in their life. As far as I can tell liberalism is based in wanting to engage in mindful, conscientious and compassionate living, the arts, academics and healthy lifestyles that respect living things as living things. It's about finding creative, intelligent and innovative ways of making money and running businesses that don't cross ethical boundaries or prevent other people from living healthy, productive lives. I suppose if taken too far it could mean acting aggressively towards businesses or development, but honestly if businesses and developers are respecting living things as living things and considering how to do business and develop conscientiously, there wouldn't be a problem. It's when they engage in selfish, money-minded consumption that liberals tend to get a little peeved. After all it's the nature of cancer to grow just for the sake of growth. To me liberal values seem to look for what is causing problems and working to alleviate these problems so society can function smoothly. Conservatives tend to want to believe in abstract ideas like good and evil and that mystical forces are making bad people come after our land and hate our freedom (a freedom that is completely hypothetical by and by. Go try to do whatever you really want to be doing sometime and tell me how that works out for you). They also have this annoying thing about being really comfortable with violence and really uncomfortable with sex--what the hell is that all about?

Anyway, I roll these thoughts around all day trying to figure out why people wouldn't want to work as smartly and as little as possible to pay for what they need in life, learn as much as possible, travel as far and as often as possible and live a reasonable lifestyle to make this a possibility. All I can come up with is that ignorant greed, conservative BS based in absolutely nothing and paranoid fear that the whole world wants to hijack us and take our shit seems more rational and rewarding than a life of learning and travel and pleasantly interacting with people of other cultures. All of which I blame on Republicans. So as far as I'm concerned, until we can get the right to look more like the Clintons and the left to look more like Ralph Nader and Dennis Kucinich we're not making any progress. Living an hour from Canada has certainly opened my eyes to the good life--free healthcare for life, free education all the way through to professional degrees, great government benefits and plenty of calm, intelligent people. If John McCain wins we may just pack our car and take a little road trip north...

Obama--"Yes We Can!"