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Narrative Therapy: Definition, Techniques, Efficacy
Key Takeaways
- Narrative therapy helps people become experts in their own lives by understanding and changing their personal stories.
- This type of therapy uses techniques like externalization to help people see their problems from a distance and feel more in control.
Narrative therapy is a style of therapy that helps people become—and embrace being—an expert in their own lives. In narrative therapy, there is an emphasis on the stories that you develop and carry with you through your life.
As you experience events and interactions, you give meaning to those experiences and they, in turn, influence how you see yourself and the world. You can carry multiple stories at once, such as those related to your self-esteem, abilities, relationships, and work.
Developed in the 1980s by New Zealand-based therapists Michael White and David Epston, narrative therapy seeks to have an empowering effect and offer counseling that is non-blaming and non-pathological in nature. (This means that your narrative therapist won’t just see you as a walking diagnosis but as a complicated and nuanced human being with a story to tell.)
Techniques
There are a variety of techniques and exercises used in narrative therapy to help people heal and move past a problematic story. Some of the most commonly used techniques include the following.
Putting Together Your Narrative
Narrative therapists help their clients put together their narrative. This process allows the individual to find their voice and explore events in their lives and the meanings they have placed on these experiences. As their story is put together, the person becomes an observer to their story and looks at it with the therapist, working to identify the dominant and problematic story.
Externalization
Putting together the story of their lives allows people to observe themselves as though outside of their own story. This helps create distance between the individual and their problems, which is called externalization. This distance allows people to better focus on changing unwanted behaviors. For example, a client might name anxiety “the Goblin” and explain to their therapist how they feel when “the Goblin” is around and how they cope with it.
As people practice externalization, they get a chance to see that they are capable and empowered to change.
Deconstruction
Deconstruction is used to help people gain clarity in their stories. When a problematic story feels like it has been around for a long time, people might use generalized statements and become confused in their own stories. A narrative therapist would work with the individual to break down their story into smaller parts, clarifying the problem and making it more approachable.
Unique Outcomes
When a story feels concrete, as if it could never change, any idea of alternative stories goes out the window. People can become very stuck in their story and allow it to influence several areas of their lives, impacting decision-making, behaviors, experiences, and relationships.
“Unique outcomes” in narrative therapy are aspects of the person’s story that contradict or don’t align with the negative or problematic story the person is telling. A narrative therapist will recognize these contradictions and help the person understand that there have been moments in their life that do challenge their overarching narrative.
A narrative therapist works to help people not only challenge their problems but widen their view by considering alternative stories.
What Can Narrative Therapy Help With
While narrative therapy is a relatively new treatment approach, there is some evidence that it may be helpful for a variety of conditions. Mental health conditions it might help include:
This approach can also be useful for anyone who feels like they are overwhelmed by negative experiences, thoughts, or emotions. This type of therapy stresses the importance of people not labeling themselves or seeing themselves as “broken” or “the problem,” or for them to feel powerless in their circumstances and behavior patterns.
What Is the Goal of Narrative Therapy?
Narrative therapy allows people to not only find their voice but to use their voice for good, helping them to become experts in their own lives and to live in a way that reflects their goals and values. It can be beneficial for individuals, couples, and families.
Benefits of Narrative Therapy
Narrative therapy holds a number of key principles, including:
- Respect: People participating in narrative therapy are treated with respect and supported for the bravery it takes to come forward and work through personal challenges.
- Non-blaming: There is no blame placed on the client as they work through their stories, and they are also encouraged to not place blame on others. Focus is instead placed on recognizing and changing unwanted and unhelpful stories about themselves and others.
- Client as the expert: Narrative therapists are not viewed as an advice-giving authority but rather a collaborative partner in helping clients grow and heal. Narrative therapy holds that clients know themselves well and exploring this information will allow for a change in their narratives.
Narrative therapy challenges dominant problematic stories that prevent people from living their best lives. Through narrative therapy, people can identify alternative stories, widen people’s views of self, challenge old and unhealthy beliefs, and open their minds to new ways of living that reflect a more accurate and healthy story.
Narrative therapy does not aim to change a person but to allow them to become an expert in their own life.
Effectiveness
Narrative therapy appears to offer benefits in the treatment of a number of different conditions and in a variety of settings. Some evidence supporting the effectiveness of this approach:
- One 2020 study found that adults with depression and anxiety who were treated with narrative therapy experienced improvements in self-reported quality of life and decreased symptoms of anxiety and depression.
- A 2016 study found that narrative therapy was effective at helping children improve empathy, decision-making, and social skills.
- Other research from 2020 has found that married women experienced increased levels of marital satisfaction after being treated with narrative therapy.
Further research is needed to determine what mental health conditions narrative therapy might treat most effectively.
Things to Consider
Narrative therapy may present some challenges that you should consider before you begin treatment. Some things to be aware of before you begin:
- This type of therapy can be very in-depth. It explores a wide range of factors that can influence the development of a person’s story. This includes factors such as age, socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual identity.
- It involves talking about your problems as well as your strengths. A therapist will help you explore your dominant story in-depth, discover ways it might be contributing to emotional pain, and uncover strengths that can help you approach problems in different ways.
- You’ll reevaluate your judgments about yourself. Sometimes people carry stories about themselves that have been placed on them by others. Narrative therapy encourages you to reassess these thoughts and replace them with more realistic, positive ones.
- It challenges you to separate yourself from your problems. While this can be difficult, the process helps you learn to give yourself credit for making good decisions or behaving in positive ways.
This process can take time, but can eventually help people find their own voice and develop a healthier narrative.
How to Get Started
Narrative therapy is a unique, specialized approach to counseling. There are training opportunities for therapists to learn more about narrative therapy and how to use this approach with clients.
Trained narrative therapists are located throughout the world and can be found through online resources and therapist directories. You might also consider asking your doctor to refer you to a professional in your area with training and experience in narrative therapy.
During your first session, your therapist may ask you to begin sharing your story and ask questions about the reasons you are seeking treatment. Your therapist may also want to know about how your problems are affecting your life and what your goals for the future are. You will also likely discuss aspects of treatment such as how often you will meet and how your treatment may change from one session to the next.
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Why Does My Mom Hate Me? What to Do If You Feel
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Key Takeaways
- If you feel like your mom hates you, understand that your feelings are valid, and it might be due to complex reasons.
- Talking to a therapist can help you understand your feelings and improve your mental health.
- Communicate directly with your mom about how her behavior affects you, but set boundaries if it’s not safe.
Worrying that your mom hates you is a complicated and deeply hurtful experience. Since our mothers are our introduction to the world, it makes sense that we tend to feel a strong connection to that half of our parental unit.
Your relationship with your mom might feel simple—you love and respect them and they love and respect you. However, our mothers can also have more complex roles in our lives, and sometimes our relationship with them hurts.
In this article, we’ll go over what to do if you think your mom hates you, the possible reasons for your feelings, as well as how you can cope with feeling unloved by your mother.
In this article, we’ll be breaking down some of the scenarios that can cause you as an adult to question your mother’s love, the possible reasons behind these feelings, as well as the different ways to cope with feeling unloved.
Why Does My Mom Hate Me?
If you’re worried that your mom hates you, the hurt, confusion, and vulnerability will probably feel pretty big. It’s hard in those moments, but try to step out of your feelings for a moment so you can look at the situation more objectively.
According to psychotherapist Valentina Dragomir, “there could be many reasons why a child may think their mother hates them. Perhaps the child is feeling neglected or unsupported, and has interpreted this as hatred.”
Dragomir says that sometimes, a child comes to think their mom hates them because they “witnessed their mother behaving angrily towards others, and has mistakenly assumed that this anger is directed at them.”
And then there’s the “it’s not you, it’s me” experience of growing up. Dragomir says that a kid thinking their mom hates them “could also be that the child is simply going through a phase of rebelliousness, during which they naturally assume that their parents must be against them.”
If you’re a little overwhelmed trying to piece together how you came to feel the way you do about your relationship with your mother, don’t worry. We’ll walk you through it. Here are a few reasons you might think your mom hates you, and how you can work through your feelings.
Your Mother Always Finds Fault With You
Criticism is not always a bad thing. Listening to others give honest feedback about qualities like our work ethic, communication skills, or relationships can be chances for us to grow.
However, being on the receiving end of harsh reviews can feel hurtful, especially when the person giving those hard-to-hear critiques is your mother.
If your mom often criticizes various aspects of your life and behavior, you might start to feel like she hates everything you do—and maybe that she even hates you. While it can definitely be hard to hear, your mother might have your best interest at heart when she shares her observations with you.
If it’s coming out harshly, consider that she may not feel negatively toward you—she might actually be struggling to say what she wants to say in the way she’d like to say it.
Constant criticism, however, is not necessarily going to be more helpful. If your mom always finds something “wrong” with you and has something negative to say about every part of your life, this dynamic is not going to be a supportive one.
For example, if your mother comments on everything from the clothes you wear and your job to your life partner, the critiques might not be coming from a place of love and wanting to support you.
Your Mother Won’t Spend Time With You
We’ve all had periods in our lives when it seems like we just do not have enough time in the day to balance work, family, and relationships.
If you can’t think of the last time that you hung out with your mom and she hasn’t reached out to ask to visit or chat, you might feel hurt and like she doesn’t care about you.
Take a step back and try to think about what’s going on in both of your lives. Is she really busy with her work or hobbies? Has she been dealing with health concerns? Have you been taking on a lot at work or at home, and maybe giving her the sense that you’re really busy and need time to handle all the things you have to do?
In this case, it might be as simple as giving your mom a quick call or text to check in and find a time to get together. She might have been avoiding asking (even if she wanted to) because she didn’t want to add something else to your to-do list. Or, if she’s been busy, she might not know that you feel deprived.
However, if your mother always seems hesitant to commit to plans, cancels on you with weak and even overly elaborate reasons, or is always impatient to leave when you do get together, these actions could make you question whether she actually wants to spend time with you. It might even make you question the closeness and connectedness of your relationship.
Dragomir says that “there could be many reasons for a strained relationship between mother and child. Perhaps the child is going through a rebellious phase, and the mother is struggling to deal with their behavior. It could be that the mother is working long hours and feels too tired to engage with her child. Or, if the mother is dealing with her own personal issues, this makes it difficult for her to be emotionally available for her child.”
Your Mother Is Mean to You
Some people describe their moms as warm, attentive, and kind—but not everyone. When you think of your mother, the words “cold,” “abusive,” or just plain “cruel” might be the first ones that jump to mind.
If your sentiment toward your mom is deeply negative, you may or may not be able to pinpoint where your feelings are coming from.
For example, if your mother always showed a preference for your siblings, you may not feel very secure about her love for you.
If your mom constantly yells at, belittles, or fights with you, that’s also a stressful indicator that your relationship is not a supportive, loving one. Maybe your mom ignores you and your feelings, which makes you feel unseen and unloved.
Can Moms Be Jealous of Their Kids?
If it seems like your mother dissects and critiques every aspect of your life, you might start to feel like she’s trying to bring you down. You might not even want to share your accomplishments with her because you feel like she’s just going to rain on your parade.
It’s possible that your mom is envious—or even jealous—of the life you’ve made for yourself. She might wish she had a job like yours or the kinds of relationships with others that you have—be it with your partner, friends, and even your own kids.
You may also feel like your mom makes fun of or mocks you.
Maybe your mother is known for her “dry” humor and is always the first one to make a sarcastic crack. While her jokes may have gone over your head when you were a kid, understanding them as an adult means you’ll probably be able to figure out when you’re the butt of them.
It might seem backward to sit your mom down to talk about how words can hurt since this is something that we usually learn from our parents, but it’s important.
It’s possible that she doesn’t realize her teasing is hurtful. If it is mean-spirited, she might use humor to cover up some of her own not-so-fun feelings, like insecurity.
You’re Afraid of Your Mother
In an ideal world, our moms would be our “safe place” from day one and continue to be a place we can return to for comfort and reassurance. But that’s not always the case, and for some people, moms are where worries and fears start.
Some mothers don’t know how to give reassurance and gentle love to their children. Even if it wasn’t on purpose, you may have felt that she was not there for you as a child and still can’t be there for you now that you’re an adult.
However, if your relationship with your mother seems to be defined by unkind words, dismissed feelings, poor communication, or cruel treatment, you might have learned early on that your mother is not a safe place to land. Not only did your mother not help you face your fears, she might have become something to fear.
Why Do Mothers Hate Their Children?
It’s possible for some people to have relationships with their mothers that are supportive and respectful of boundaries throughout their lives. However, that’s not the reality for everyone.
It’s also possible for moms to hold and show obvious disdain for their kids, and the reasons for this are complex and not always something a child (or even an adult child) can easily understand.
For example, mothers who are dealing with diagnosed or undiagnosed mental health conditions and/or substance use disorders can struggle to connect with their children and may consistently fail to care for them.
Mothers dealing with parental burnout and other stressful emotional situations without adequate support can be distant and cold towards their kids, as well as other people in their lives.
What to Do If Your Mom Seems to Hate You
Feeling like your mom hates you isn’t just a terrible way to feel in the moment—over time, these feelings can lead to depression and anxiety.
Making your mental health and well-being a priority is the first and most important thing you can do. It’s only when you’re feeling like you’re in a safe and supported space that you can start looking at your relationship with your mother and thinking about what might be behind her behavior.
Focus on Your Needs
It’s hard to get over the feeling that you are the reason for your mother’s behavior. The most important thing you can do is work on freeing yourself of blame or beliefs that you’re unworthy of love. You can start this process by making your own well-being your priority, then look at the possible reasons for your mother’s behavior from a mentally strong and supported place.
As a kid, you would not necessarily have known about all the “adult stuff” your parents had to face every day. To you, your mother’s disinterest or “snappiness” when you would try to engage with her just felt like hurtful rejection. You may have believed that it must be your fault and that there was something wrong with you that made your mother hate you.
Dragomir says that “the mother’s point of view may be quite different to the child’s belief. The mother may be completely unaware that her child feels this way, and is actually deeply hurt by the thought that her child could think she hates them. The mother may be struggling with her own issues and unintentionally taking them out on her child, leading the child to believe that she hates them. In any case, it is likely that the mother does not actually hate her child, but rather is struggling to cope with her own issues and may not be providing the support that the child needs.”
Work With a Therapist
One way you can address the confusion and pain of feeling unloved or even hated by your mom is by going to therapy.
A qualified mental health professional can guide you through unpacking the complexities of your relationship with your mother, and how her treatment of you has made you feel. It’s also a safe place to work on the irrational guilt you may have about your mother’s behavior.
Therapy can also help you learn skills to take care of yourself and change your interactions with your mother to be more supportive of your mental well-being.
Tell Your Mother How You Feel
When every conversation you have with your mother is focused on the problems that she has with you or the negative comments she makes about your life, trying to interrupt her long enough to tell her how this dialogue makes you feel might seem impossible—or pointless.
But there can be power in communicating your feelings. In clear language, tell your mom how her behavior has affected you and the relationship you have with her.
You might be surprised by her reaction—it’s possible that your directness will be a “wake-up call” that helps her see that the way she’s been interacting with you has been hurtful to you, even if that wasn’t her intent. For example, maybe she’s letting her stress get “dumped” onto you unfairly and just hasn’t been aware of it.
If your mother responds by getting defensive or just doubles down on her hateful comments, that’s also info for you to have when you’re trying to think through your relationship with her.
In this situation, you might be the one who gets the “wake-up call” that your relationship with your mother is not emotionally safe and supportive. If she’s not willing or able to help repair it, know that you are not responsible for doing all the fixing yourself.
Distance Yourself From Your Mom and Enforce Boundaries
If you opened up to your mother about your pain and it only made things worse, it’s time to think about setting boundaries.
Distancing yourself from your mom can be physical and emotional. For example, if you’ve been living at home, it might be time to move out if you’re able to. If you’ve been taking your mom’s calls every day, it might be time to let them go to voicemail.
If You Can’t Safely Leave
If you’re in an unsafe situation and can’t distance yourself from your mom or if trying to do so would threaten your safety, there are resources that can help you.
If you or a loved one are a victim of domestic violence, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 for confidential assistance from trained advocates.
For more mental health resources, see our National Helpline Database.
Turn to Others For Support
If you’ve had to distance yourself from your mother and you’re trying to cope with feelings that she hates you, it’s important to reach out to other people in your life for support.
You can build a loving family with people who are there for you and offer unconditional love—be it your siblings, partner, or friends.
Professionals like your doctor and a therapist are also key parts of your support network. Having trusting, supportive relationships with others can help you “reparent” the child in you who feels rejected and unloved by your mother. Eventually, you’ll learn how to be the parent to that little part of yourself.
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What to Do If You’re Tired of Begging for Attention From Your Partner
Key Takeaways
- Stop begging for your partner’s attention because it can hurt your self-worth and doesn’t solve the problem.
- Focus on activities that interest you to bring more fulfillment to your life and improve yourself.
- Communicate clearly and courageously with your partner about your feelings and needs.
Are you tired of begging for attention from your partner and often feel like your need for affection is not being met? Being in this position can leave you feeling hurt, rejected, frustrated, and angry. Yet, in a relationship, it’s important for each partner to feel seen, loved, and cared for as this leads to greater relationship satisfaction.
Learn more about why you might feel tired of begging for attention from your partner and how this dynamic can affect your relationship and mental health. We also share some steps you can take to begin to improve your relationship, starting today.
Why You Might Feel This Way
There are different reasons why you might feel tired of begging for attention from your partner.
Your Partner Takes the Relationship for Granted
Over time, many couples who have been together for years develop a difference in expectations surrounding intimacy and attachment, says Sabrina Romanoff, PsyD, a clinical psychologist and professor at Yeshiva University. This often leaves one partner taking the other for granted.
This is a common dynamic, particularly if there is little perceived threat to the relationship. One partner may neglect the other because they take the relationship for granted, operating under the illusion that their partner will always be a constant in their life, regardless of how they treat them.
The longer a couple is together, the more common it is for one partner to take the other for granted. Because they do not fear losing the other, they may withdraw effort and attention toward their partner.
Your Partner Has Different Expectations
For some people, living under the same roof meets their threshold for attention devoted toward their partners. This causes strain in relationships where the other partner requires more affection.
In these relationships, it is important for the individual to understand the value of their full attention and how they can enhance moments of intimacy with their partner. This can be accomplished through their body language, engagement, eye contact, and time spent together.
The Impact of This Relationship Dynamic
Reaching the point where you’re tired of begging for attention from your partner can have various effects, according to Dr. Romanoff, both on your mental health and your relationship.
Impact on Your Mental Health
You might begin to personalize your partner’s behavior and assume there is something wrong with you. This can cause you to start searching for problems within yourself, which gives the illusion that if you solve that problem, you can gain your partner’s attention and have more control over the situation.
You might also think you need to take action to become more attractive or change something about yourself to be worthy of your partner’s attention or love. This only further erodes your sense of confidence and self-esteem.
It’s important to feel seen and validated because your partner is an incredibly influential figure in your life, whose level of responsiveness has the potential to make you feel valued and important. When you don’t receive attention and emotional validation, it prompts feelings of being judged, not being good enough, and being rejected.
Impact on Your Relationship
When you are constantly begging for attention, the repeated rejection begins to have a cumulative effect. While each incident might seem insignificant, the overall pattern of pleading and having your needs ignored adds up and becomes devastating to the relationship.
When you don’t feel seen, you likely will feel more frustrated with your partner, get into more arguments, and feel further disconnected and lonely.
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SABRINA ROMANOFF, PSYD, CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST
You may make yourself less vulnerable to your partner and behave with more aggression toward them as your resentment seeps into your interactions. Your relationship might begin to feel more like a distant roommate situation as you and your partner check out from each other’s worlds.
Eventually, you may give up begging for attention from your partner, moving to a place of resignation where you know that begging is not effective and only makes you feel further rejected and despondent. You might even reach a point where you give up on your relationship completely.
How to Improve Your Relationship
Dr. Romanoff suggests several steps you can take if you’re tired of begging for attention from your partner, to improve your relationship dynamic:
- Stop begging for your partner’s attention. While it is important to be vulnerable, you should not resort to begging for attention. Not only is this approach ineffective, it harms your self-worth. If you beg for attention and don’t receive it, you will feel rejected. Even if your partner does respond, it is only a temporary solution because the attention wasn’t freely provided.
- Focus on yourself instead. Do things that interest you. Start going to the gym, join a new book club, or take a class. This will bring more fulfillment to your life and help you become a better version of yourself. Take caution to ensure that you’re not closing yourself off to your partner while focusing on yourself as this can be harmful to your relationship. Becoming strategically less available or “playing hard to get” is not an effective, honest, or sustainable solution.
- Stop trying to control your partner. Realize that you cannot change your partner’s behavior. So, stop trying to control them and focus on what you can control—your own behavior and responses.
- Examine your behavior. Consider the ways in which your frustration with not receiving enough attention has made you more critical of your partner. There might be a self-fulfilling prophecy in play, where you are creating the conditions that set the stage for your partner to be distant.
- Ask what your partner needs. Instead of asking your partner for what you need from them, ask them what they want from you. They may have their own reasons for pulling away, including unmet needs of their own. This is a way of channeling more effective communication through a solution-oriented approach.
- Provide positive reinforcement. Encourage your partner’s efforts to provide attention and affection with positive reinforcement. Make it a point to highlight and validate the behaviors they do well instead of focusing on what they don’t do.
- Communicate. Do your best to clearly, honestly, and courageously express your feelings, experience, and requests.
- Consider therapy. If the situation isn’t improving, consider seeking professional help through therapy. Sometimes it takes the perspective and presence of a neutral, clinically-trained third party to identify negative cycles and help partners communicate better. You and your partner can undertake individual and joint couples therapy sessions to resolve your issues.
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Personality Development: How Does Personality Form?
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Key Takeaways
- Personality development involves both inborn traits and the development of cognitive and behavioral patterns influenced by genetics and the environment.
- Self-awareness and reflection on your traits, strengths, and weaknesses can help you grow your personality.
- Committing to small, daily actions can gradually evolve your personality and lead to personal growth.
Personality development refers to the process of developing, enhancing, and changing one’s personality over time. Such development occurs naturally over the course of life, but it can also be modified through intentional efforts.
When we meet new people, it is often their personality that grabs our attention. According to the American Psychological Association, personality refers to the enduring behaviors, traits, emotional patterns, and abilities that make up a person’s response to the events of their life.
“Personality is a blend of behavioral and thought patterns that are relatively stable over time, characterizing an individual’s traits and attitudes,” says Ludovica Colella, a CBT therapist and author of “The Feel Good Journal.”
Understanding how personality develops can provide insight into who someone is and their background while also increasing our understanding of what’s behind our personality traits and characteristics.
What Is Personality Development?
Personality development refers to the process by which the organized thought and behavior patterns that make up a person’s unique personality emerge over time. Many factors influence personality, including genetics and environment, how we were parented, and societal variables.
While personality is relatively stable, Colella notes that it isn’t entirely fixed. “People can undergo changes in their attitudes, behaviors, and thought patterns in response to new experiences or personal growth,” she explains.
Perhaps most importantly, the ongoing interaction of all these influences continues to shape personality. Personality involves both inborn traits and the development of cognitive and behavioral patterns that influence how we think and act.
Temperament is a key part of personality that is determined by inherited traits. Character is an aspect of personality influenced by experience and social learning that continues to grow and change throughout life.
Personality development has been a major topic of interest for some of the most prominent thinkers in psychology. Since the inception of psychology as a separate science, researchers have proposed a variety of ideas to explain how and why personality develops.
Theories of Personality Development
Our personalities make us unique, but how does personality develop? What factors play the most important role in the formation of personality? Can personality change?
To answer these questions, many prominent thinkers have developed theories to describe the various steps and stages that occur during the development of personality. The following theories focus on several aspects of personality formation—including those that involve cognitive, social, and moral development.
Freud’s Stages of Psychosexual Development
In his well-known stage theory of psychosexual development, Sigmund Freud suggested that personality develops in stages that are related to specific erogenous zones. These stages are:
- Stage 1: Oral stage (birth to 1 year)
- Stage 2: Anal stage (1 to 3 years)
- Stage 3: Phallic stage (3 to 6 years)
- Stage 4: Latent period (age 6 to puberty)
- Stage 5: Genital stage (puberty to death)
Freud also believed that failure to complete these stages would lead to personality problems in adulthood.
In addition to being one of the best-known thinkers in personality development, Sigmund Freud remains one of the most controversial. While he made significant contributions to the field of psychology, some of his more disputed and unproven theories, such as his theory of psychosexual development, have been rejected by modern scientists.
Freud’s Structural Model of Personality
Freud not only theorized about how personality developed over the course of childhood, but he also developed a framework for how overall personality is structured.
According to Freud, the basic driving force of personality and behavior is known as the libido. This libidinal energy fuels the three components that make up personality: the id, the ego, and the superego.
- The id is the aspect of personality present at birth. It is the most primal part of the personality and drives people to fulfill their most basic needs and urges.
- The ego is the aspect of personality charged with controlling the urges of the id and forcing it to behave in realistic ways.
- The superego is the final aspect of personality to develop and contains all of the ideals, morals, and values imbued by our parents and culture.
According to Freud, these three elements of personality work together to create complex human behaviors. The superego attempts to make the ego behave according to these ideals. The ego must then moderate between the primal needs of the id, the idealistic standards of the superego, and reality.
Freud’s concept of the id, ego, and superego has gained prominence in popular culture, despite a lack of support and considerable skepticism from many researchers.
While Freudian theory is less relevant today than it once was, it can be helpful to learn more about these theories in order to better understand the history of research on personality development.
Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development
Erik Erikson’s eight-stage theory of human development is another well-known theory in psychology. While it builds on Freud’s stages of psychosexual development, Erikson chose to focus on how social relationships impact personality development.
The theory also extends beyond childhood to look at development across the entire lifespan.
Erikson’s eight stages are:
At each stage, people face a crisis in which a task must be mastered. Those who successfully complete that stage emerge with a sense of mastery and well-being.
However, Erikson believed that those who do not resolve the crisis at a particular stage may struggle with those skills for the remainder of their lives.
Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development
Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development remains one of the most frequently cited in psychology.
While many aspects of Piaget’s theory have not stood the test of time, the central idea remains important today: Children think differently than adults.
According to Piaget, children progress through a series of four stages that are marked by distinctive changes in how they think. And how children think about themselves, others, and the world around them plays an essential role in personality development.
Piaget’s four stages are:
Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development
Lawrence Kohlberg developed a theory of personality development that focused on the growth of moral thought. Building on a two-stage process proposed by Piaget, Kohlberg expanded the theory to include six different stages:
- Stage 1: Obedience and punishment
- Stage 2: Individualism and exchange
- Stage 3: Developing good interpersonal relationships
- Stage 4: Maintaining social order
- Stage 5: Social contract and individual rights
- Stage 6: Universal principles
These stages are separated by levels. Level one is the pre-conventional level, it includes stages one and two, and takes place from birth to 9 years. Level two is the conventional level, it includes stages three and four, and takes place from age 10 to adolescence. Level three is the post-conventional level, it includes stages five and six, and takes place in adulthood.
Although this theory includes six stages, Kohlberg felt that it was rare for people to progress beyond stage four, stressing that these moral development stages are not correlated with the maturation process.
Kohlberg’s theory of moral development has been criticized for several different reasons. One primary criticism is that it does not accommodate different genders and cultures equally. Yet, the theory remains important in our understanding of how personality develops.
Why Personality Theories Matter
While these theories suggest different numbers and types of stages, and different ages for progressing from one stage to the next, they have all influenced what we know today about personality development.
5 Basic Personality Traits
The goal of personality development theories is to explain how we each develop our own unique characteristics and traits. While the list of options could be almost endless, most of these personality traits fall into five basic categories:
- Openness: Level of creativeness and responsiveness to change
- Conscientiousness: Level of organization and attention to detail
- Extraversion: Level of socialness and emotional expressiveness
- Agreeableness: Level of interest in others and cooperativeness
- Neuroticism: Level of emotional stability and moodiness
The “Big 5” is one of the most recognized models of personality and also the most widely used, though some suggest that it isn’t comprehensive enough to cover the huge variety of personality traits that one can grow and develop.
Personality Development Tips
Theorists such as Freud believed that personality was largely set in stone fairly early in life. However, we now recognize that personality can change over time.
Research suggests that a person’s broad traits are quite stable, but changes do happen, particularly as people age.
On a global level, people spend a lot of money on personal development, with this market bringing in more than $38 billion annually (and expected to grow). If you’re interested in making positive changes to your personality, these tips can help:
Identify Your Current Traits
Colella notes that self-awareness and reflection are an essential part of personal growth. She suggests that you can start by learning more about your traits, strengths, and weaknesses.
Reflect on your behaviors and how they impact your life and relationships. This self-awareness lays the foundation for personal growth.
—
LUDOVICA COLELLA, CBT THERAPIST
You won’t know where to place your efforts if you don’t identify the personality traits you need to work on. A personality test can provide an assessment of your current traits. Pick one or two traits to work on that you feel would help you grow as a person and focus on them. You can try our fast and free personality test as a good starting point:
This personality test was reviewed Rachel Goldman, PhD, FTOS
Identify Your Values
Colella also suggests that it is important to identify your core values. You can do this by thinking about the values that are the most important to you. After you do this, you can prioritize your goals and better reflect on how your behaviors and actions align with your goals and values.
Set a Daily Personal Development Goal
Commit to doing at least one thing every day to help develop your personality. This doesn’t have to be a big action either. Even baby steps will move you in the right direction.
Keep a Positive Mindset
It is also important to work on forging a growth mindset, Colella explains. This allows you to recognize that personality is not set it stone and can instead evolve over time. “Embrace challenges, learn from failures, and see setbacks as opportunities for growth,” Colella says.
Changing yourself can be difficult, especially if you’re working on a part of your personality you’ve had for a long time. Staying positive along the way helps you pay more attention to the pros versus the cons. It also makes the journey more enjoyable for you and everyone around you.
Be Confident
When you have something about yourself that you’d like to change, it can be easy to let your perceived imperfection reduce your confidence. Yet, you can be confident and continue to develop your personality in meaningful ways at the same time, giving you the best of both worlds while pursuing personality development.
Stepping outside your comfort zone can be challenging, Colella notes, but slowly expanding your horizons can lead to gradual growth. “Expanding your comfort zone involves taking small, manageable steps, gradually pushing your limits at a pace that feels comfortable for you,” she explains.
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Inattentional Blindness in Psychology
Key Takeaways
- Inattentional blindness happens when you don’t notice something because you are focused on something else.
- The famous “invisible gorilla test” shows how people often miss unexpected things when concentrating on a task.
- People with ADHD might notice unusual things more easily because of their different attention styles.
Inattentional blindness involves failing to perceive something because your attention is focused on something else, such as a task, object, or person. For example, intentional blindness can often contribute to traffic accidents when a driver’s attention is elsewhere, causing them to miss important information.
Understanding Inattentional Blindness
The term “inattentional blindness” was first coined by psychologists Arien Mack, PhD, and Irvin Rock, PhD. They observed the phenomenon during their perception and attention experiments.
They described it as a type of ‘sighted blindness’ leading to an inability to perceive relevant environmental stimuli.
Attention plays a significant role in visual perception. When something else draws your attention, it increases the likelihood that you’ll fail to notice even the most conspicuous things in your environment.
Inattentional blindness is one type of visual awareness failure that might cause you to miss seemingly obvious things around you, like a deer darting into the road or continuity errors in movies.
When you focus hard on one thing, you miss other important details that are right in front of you. For example, when you are focused on the actions of the main character in a film, you might not notice unexpected things entering your visual field.
The Invisible Gorilla Experiment
One of the best-known experiments demonstrating inattentional blindness is the “invisible gorilla test” carried out by Christopher Chabris, PhD, and Daniel Simons, PhD. In this experiment, researchers asked participants to watch a video of people tossing a basketball. Observers were told to count the number of passes or to keep track of the number of throws versus bounce passes.
Afterward, the participants were asked if they had noticed anything unusual while watching the video. Across all the tests, approximately 50% of the participants reported seeing nothing out of the ordinary.
But in reality, something odd had happened. Sometimes, a woman dressed in a gorilla suit strolled through the scene, turned to the camera, thumped her chest, and walked away.
While it may seem impossible that the participants missed such a sight since their attention was focused elsewhere and on a demanding task, intentional blindness essentially made the gorilla invisible.
Inattentional Blindness vs. Change Blindness
Change blindness is a similar phenomenon that is closely related to inattentional blindness. While inattentional blindness involves failing to notice something in a visual scene, change blindness happens when people fail to see a change in a visual scene.
What Causes Inattentional Blindness
The exact reasons why inattentional blindness happens are still not fully understood, but psychologists believe that a few different factors appear to play a role.
Limited Attentional Resources
The fact is that our attentional and processing capabilities are limited. Because of this, we have to find ways of filtering out distractions in order to focus on what’s most relevant to us at any given moment.
Rather than focusing on every tiny detail in the world around us, we tend to concentrate on things that are most important, relying on our existing schemas to “fill in the blanks.” This approach is highly economical.
As our attentional, cognitive, and processing resources are limited, relying on schemas allows us to dedicate these resources to what matters most while still allowing us to have complete, seamless experiences.
Salience of the Stimuli
One of the reasons why people so often “miss the gorilla,” so to speak, is simply because the stimulus does not fit into their idea of what a basketball game is supposed to look like. A gorilla showing up in the middle of a basketball game is unlikely to happen in a real-world setting, so we are less likely to notice it.
When something isn’t relevant to the situation and won’t help you to better understand or carry out the task at hand, you tend just to ignore it.
That said, while we do sometimes fail to miss things in the world around us, we are generally pretty good at noticing information that is relevant to us, such as a car speeding toward us or a deer jumping out of the trees into the road. Of course, this is not always the case.
Limitations of Memory
Some researchers suggest that memory limitations might contribute to inattentional blindness. Some experiments suggest that people do perceive this information; they just don’t recall seeing it when asked because it was not encoded in short-term memory.
Such findings suggest that this might not be intentional blindness as much as it is intentional amnesia.
Factors That Influence Inattentional Blindness
There are certain factors that can affect inattentional blindness.
Similarity to Attended Stimuli
In the original invisible gorilla experiment, the participants had to count the number of passes made by either the team in black or the team in white.
Out of the participants who counted passes made by the white team, only 42% saw the gorilla, but for the participants who counted passes made by the black team, 83% saw the gorilla—who was also dressed in black.
The similarity between the unexpected stimulus (gorilla) and task-relevant stimuli (members of the black team) can influence whether or not intentional blindness happens.
Conditions That Affect Attention
Researchers have found that adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a condition characterized by difficulty maintaining attention and being easily distracted, are actually less likely to be affected by inattentional blindness.
According to the researchers, this may happen because people with ADHD have a different cognitive style that, while making it more difficult to attend to repeated stimuli, gives them an edge when it comes to noticing novel or dynamic stimuli in their visual environment.
Age
Evidence also seems to suggest that intentional blindness tends to become worse as people grow older. In one study, 89% of older adults experienced inattentional blindness on a detection task, whereas only 5% of younger adults did.
Examples of Inattentional Blindness
We all experience inattentional blindness from time to time, such as in these potential situations:
- Even though you think you are paying attention to the road, you fail to notice a car swerving into your lane of traffic, resulting in a traffic accident.
- You are watching a historical film set in ancient Greece. You don’t notice a significant blooper in which an airplane appears in the background of a pivotal scene.
- You decide to make a phone call while driving through busy traffic. You fail to notice that the traffic light has turned red, so you run the stop light and get a traffic ticket.
- While playing a video game, you are so intently focused on spotting a specific type of “bad guy” that you miss another threat to your character and lose the game.
Inattentional blindness can also have critical real-world effects. For example, not noticing something in your visual environment might lead to accidents while driving or at work.
It has been implicated in traffic accidents. Research suggests that both younger and older drivers tend to be more prone to the effects of inattentional blindness, which may be linked to the increased rates of traffic accidents in both age groups.
In the workplace, intentional blindness can also contribute to accidents that affect safety and well-being. While it has been suggested that expertise and experience might mitigate such effects, research has found that expertise appears to have no influence on whether or not people experience intentional blindness.
What This Means For You
Though it is not possible to avoid all instances of inattentional blindness, it’s important to remember this very natural occurrence—particularly when you are in a disagreement with someone about the full scope of a situation.
Your brain is sophisticated enough to help you register and interpret visual cues that it thinks will provide you with the most value. But, in its efforts, visual information—both important and not—can sometimes get overlooked.
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Types of Learning Theories In Psychology
Key Takeaways
- Behavioral learning theory focuses on how our environment influences learning through actions like rewards and punishments.
- Cognitive learning theory examines how mental processes like memory and attention affect learning.
- Constructivist learning theory highlights that people learn best by actively participating and building on what they already know.
Learning can be a complex process. If you’ve ever tried to learn a new language or play an instrument, you probably know that learning outcomes can often vary. It’s why you might struggle with the basics of French despite your 456-day Duolingo learning streak or stumble over reading sheet music despite regular practice.
That’s why researchers, educators, and psychologists are so interested in understanding how this process works. Knowing how people learn allows us to create instructional materials that make the process easier and more effective.
How Psychologists Define Learning
While definitions may vary, learning is often thought of as a relatively permanent change in behavior due to experience. It is influenced by various biological, cultural, social, and emotional variables.
Several different theories have emerged to explain how people learn. Some of the main theories of learning include:
- Behavioral learning theory
- Cognitive learning theory
- Constructivist learning theory
- Social learning theory
- Experiential learning theory
Keep reading to take a closer look at thise learning theories, including how each one explains the learning process.
Basic Principles of Social Learning Theory
Behavioral Learning Theories
During the early part of the twentieth century, many psychologists became increasingly interested in turning psychology into a more scientific endeavor. These psychologists, known as behaviorists, argued that psychology needed to study only things that could be measured and quantified to be more scientific.
A few different behavioral theories emerged to explain how and why people behave the way they do.
Behavioral theories are centered on the environmental influences on the learning process. Environmental influences include associations, reinforcements, and punishments.
According to behaviors, we don’t need to consider the internal cognitive processes to understand how learning works. Instead, we must examine how someone interacts with the environment to see how information is acquired. Important types of learning in behavioral theory include classical conditioning (which involves learning by association) and operant conditioning (which involves learning through reinforcement and punishment).
Learning Through Association
Classical conditioning suggests that learning occurs when an association is formed between a previously neutral stimulus and a naturally occurring stimulus.
In experiments conducted by Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov, a natural stimulus (food) was paired with the sound of a bell. The dogs would naturally salivate in response to food, but after multiple associations, the dogs would salivate to the sound of the bell alone.
In classical conditioning:
- Learning occurs by forming associations between naturally occurring stimuli and a previously neutral stimulus
- The neutral stimulus must occur immediately before the naturally occurring one
- Focuses on automatic, naturally occurring behaviors
Learning Through Reinforcement
Operant conditioning is a type of associative learning that involves strengthening or weakening a behavior by using reinforcement or punishment.
Operant conditioning was first described by the behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner. It is sometimes also referred to as Skinnerian conditioning and instrumental conditioning. Skinner believed that classical conditioning simply could not account for all types of learning and was more interested in learning how the consequences of actions influence behaviors.
Like classical conditioning, operant conditioning relies on forming associations. In operant conditioning, however, associations are made between a behavior and the consequences of that behavior.
In operant conditioning:
- Learning occurs when behaviors are followed by either reinforcement or punishment
- The consequences must quickly follow the behavior
- Focuses on voluntary behaviors
When a behavior leads to a desirable consequence, it becomes more likely that the behavior will be repeated in the future. The behavior becomes less likely if the actions lead to a negative outcome.
Cognitive Learning Theories
The cognitive approach to learning focuses on how attention, memory, and information processing contribute to knowledge acquisition. Cognitive learning theory explores how the thinking process itself can affect learning. That means it also explores different factors influencing our thinking, such as internal and external factors.
Internal factors influencing thinking and learning include concentration, distraction, and emotions. External factors that can impact how we think include our physical surroundings and our society’s value of the information itself.
One of the best-known cognitive learning theories is Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. Piaget described four stages of intellectual development that occur in childhood.
These four stages explain how a child learns about the world and processes information.
- Sensorimotor stage: During this period of cognitive development, children learn about the world primarily through their senses.
- Preoperational stage: This stage is marked by the emergence of language and learning through pretend play.
- Concrete operations stage: During this period, kids begin to utilize logic but still think about the world very concretely.
- Formal operations stage: At this point, kids begin to use deductive reasoning and can understand abstract, hypothetical ideas.
Constructivist Learning Theories
The constructivist approach to learning characterizes learners as active participants in the process who play a role in constructing their knowledge. Constructivist theories of learning were influenced by the work of psychologist Lev Vygotsky.
Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory stressed the importance of collaboration and social interaction in the learning process.
Two important concepts of constructivist learning theories are the more knowledgeable other and the zone of proximal development:
- More knowledgeable other: Vygotsky described the more knowledgeable other as anyone with an understanding or ability level higher than the learner. This can often be a teacher or adult, but it can also refer to peers with more knowledge about a specific concept, task, or process.
- Zone of proximal development: Vygotsky described the zone of proximal development as the range of knowledge or ability that a person can display with the help of the more knowledgeable other, but that they are not yet capable of performing independently. Gradually expanding this zone is how people can learn and improve their skills over time.
Social Learning Theories
Psychologist Albert Bandura suggested that much of learning takes place through observation. Children observe the actions of those around them, particularly caregivers and siblings, and then imitate these behaviors.
In social learning:
- Learning occurs through observation
- Observations can take place at any time
- Focuses on the give-and-take interaction between social, cognitive, and environmental influences
In his well-known Bobo doll experiment, Bandura revealed just how easily children could be led to imitate even negative actions. Children who watched a video of an adult beating up a large inflatable doll were likelier to copy those actions when given a chance.
Bandura noted that learning something does not necessarily result in a behavior change. Children frequently learn new things through observation but might not engage in such behaviors until they need or are motivated to utilize the information.
Experiential Learning Theories
This learning theory focuses on learning via hands-on experience. The theory was formally introduced by psychologist David Kolb but was influenced by the work of other theorists, including Jean Piaget and John Dewey.
According to Kolb, there are four stages in experiential learning. The first two, abstract conceptualization and concrete experience, relate to how people grasp experiences. The final two, active experimentation and reflective observation, refer to how people transform experiences.
Modern Views of Learning Theories
Such theories are typically not used in isolation. Instead, modern educators and psychologists draw on information from a variety of theories to develop effective educational strategies and psychological interventions that help people acquire new skills and knowledge.
For example, while behavioral approaches are no longer as dominant as they once were, they still play an important role in educational and therapeutic settings. For example, teachers continue to use behavioral strategies such as positive reinforcement and token economies to help shape the learning process.
The goal of learning more about these learning theories is to help adapt educational and therapeutic interventions to best suit an individual’s needs.
All learners are different, so drawing on various approaches, such as incorporating behavioral, constructivist, and experiential strategies can help maximize learning opportunities and improve educational outcomes.
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How to Stop Negative Thoughts
Key Takeaways
- Use mindfulness to observe your thoughts and learn to let them go without judgment.
- Replace negative thoughts with realistic and helpful ones instead of overly positive or unrealistic thoughts.
- Avoid thought-stopping techniques, which can make negative thoughts come back stronger.
Negative thoughts can contribute to problems such as social anxiety, depression, stress, and low self-esteem. The key to changing your negative thoughts is to understand how you think now (and the problems that result), then use strategies to change these thoughts or make them have less of an effect.
“Our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors are all linked, so our thoughts impact how we feel and act. So, although we all have unhelpful thoughts from time to time, it’s important to know what to do when they appear so we don’t let them change the course of our day,” explains Rachel Goldman, PhD, a psychologist and clinical assistant professor at the NYU School of Medicine.
Therapy can often be helpful for changing negative thoughts, but you can also learn how to change your thought patterns on your own. This article discusses some of the steps you can take to change your negative thoughts.
Some of the ways that you can get rid of negative thoughts include:
- Using mindfulness to build self-awareness
- Identifying negative thoughts
- Replacing negative thoughts with more realistic, positive ones
- Practicing acceptance rather than trying to avoid or deny negative thoughts
- Learning to cope with feedback and criticism
- Using a diary to track your thoughts
Combat Negative Thoughts With Mindfulness
Mindfulness has its roots in meditation. It is the practice of detaching yourself from your thoughts and emotions and viewing them as an outside observer. Practicing mindfulness can help you become more conscious of your thoughts and build greater self-awareness.
Mindfulness sets out to change your relationship with your thoughts. Try viewing your thoughts and feelings as objects floating past you that you can stop and observe or let pass you by. They don’t control you.
Rachel Goldman, PhD
Become aware of how your thoughts are impacting your emotions and behaviors. Observe your thoughts. Ask yourself if this thought is helpful? What purpose is the thought serving you? How does the thought make you feel?
— Rachel Goldman, PhD
The objective of mindfulness is to gain control of your emotional reactions to situations by allowing the thinking part of your brain to take over. It’s been theorized that the practice of mindfulness may facilitate the ability to use thoughts more adaptively.
One study found that people who engaged in a mindfulness practice experienced fewer negative thoughts after exposure to negative imagery, suggesting that mindfulness may lessen the frequency and impact of negative thinking.
Identify Your Negative Thoughts
As you observe your thoughts, work on identifying and labeling cognitive distortions and negativity.
For example, if you tend to view yourself as a complete success or failure in every situation, then you are engaging in “black-and-white” thinking. Other negative thinking patterns include:
- Jumping to conclusions: This distortion involves making assumptions about what others are thinking or making negative assumptions about how events will turn out as if you had a “crystal ball.”
- Catastrophizing: This pattern of negative thinking is characterized by always assuming that the worst possible outcome will happen without considering more likely and realistic possibilities.
- Overgeneralization: This pattern is marked by a tendency to apply what happened in one experience to all future experiences. This can make negative experiences seem unavoidable and contribute to feelings of anxiety.
- Labeling: When people label themselves in a negative way, it affects how they feel about themselves in different contexts. Someone who labels themselves as “bad at math,” for example, will often feel negative about activities that involve that skill.
- “Should” statements: Thinking marked by “should” statements contribute to a negative perspective by only thinking in terms of what you “ought” to be doing. Such statements are often unrealistic and cause people to feel defeated and pessimistic about their ability to succeed.
- Emotional reasoning: This involves assuming that something is true based on your emotional response to it. For example, if you are feeling nervous, emotional reasoning would lead you to conclude that you must be in danger. This can escalate negative feelings and increase anxiety.
- Personalization and blame: This thought pattern involves taking things personally, even when they are not personal. It often leads people to blame themselves for things they have no control over.
Unhelpful thinking patterns differ in subtle ways. But they all involve distortions of reality and irrational ways of looking at situations and people.
Goldman suggests that this step is all about identifying and labeling negative thoughts.
Now that you have observed the thought, you can identify it as an unhelpful thought (perhaps we’ve even identified it as an all-or-nothing thought, or another type of cognitive distortion). Just observe it and label it.
She also suggests pausing to accept the thought for what it is. Remind yourself that it’s just a thought and not a fact.
Recap
There are many different types of cognitive distortions that contribute to negative thinking. Learning more about these distortions and remembering that thoughts are not facts may help lessen the power of these negative thinking patterns.
Are You a Pessimist? Take the Quiz
Try our fast and free test to find out if you are more of an optimist, pessimist, or somewhere in between.
Replace Negative Thoughts
One of the basic parts of a treatment plan involving cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is cognitive restructuring. This process helps you to identify and change negative thoughts into more helpful and adaptive responses.
Whether done in therapy or on your own, cognitive restructuring involves a step-by-step process whereby negative thoughts are identified, evaluated for accuracy, and then replaced.
Goldman suggests examining the evidence that either supports or contradicts the thought. Doing this can help you challenge negative thinking and explore alternatives that are more helpful and realistic.
Although it is difficult to think with this new style at first, over time and with practice, positive and rational thoughts will come more naturally. Cognitive restructuring can help you challenge your thoughts by taking you through steps including:
- Ask yourself if the thought is realistic.
- Think of what happened in the past in similar situations and evaluate if your thoughts are on course with what took place.
- Actively challenge the thought and look for alternative explanations.
- Think of what you’d gain versus what you’d lose by continuing to believe the thought.
- Recognize if your thought is actually a result of a cognitive distortion, such as catastrophizing.
- Consider what you’d tell a friend having the same thought.
Johns Hopkins Medicine suggests trying to focus on the positive to help combat the negative thought patterns associated with depression. Sometimes we are overly focused on negative things in life and overlooking the abundance of blessings that we have.
You can also look for the silver lining so to speak. Ask yourself, will anything good come out of my current situation? However, Goldman recommends not replacing negative thoughts with overly positive ones. If the replacement thoughts are not realistic, they won’t be helpful.
Rachel Goldman, PhD
You don’t want to set yourself up for failure by replacing the thought with something that may not be realistic. A helpful technique could be to ask yourself what would you say to a friend in this situation.
— Rachel Goldman, PhD
Goldman suggests that if you find yourself thinking thoughts like “I am going to fail,” you shouldn’t replace it with something like “I know I am going to succeed.”
“You instead would want to replace it with something more neutral, which is also showing some self-compassion, like ‘I don’t know if I am going to be able to do it, but I am going to try my best,'” she suggests.
One study found that a single cognitive restructuring intervention helped people reduce negative thoughts and biases that play a role in contributing to anxiety.
Get Advice From The Verywell Mind Podcast
Hosted by therapist Amy Morin, LCSW, this episode of The Verywell Mind Podcast shares an effective way to help you curb negative thinking.
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Avoid Thought-Stopping Techniques
Thought-stopping is the opposite of mindfulness. It is the act of being on the lookout for negative thoughts and insisting that they be eliminated.
The problem with thought-stopping is that the more you try to stop your negative thoughts, the more they will surface. This is known as thought rebounding. Experts believe that the thought rebounding that takes place after trying to stop negative thoughts is much more damaging.
Similar to changing lifestyle habits, when you want to stop doing something, you may find yourself wanting to do it even more.
Instead, psychologists generally recommend finding ways to deal with negative thoughts more directly. Mindfulness is preferable because you are not fighting your thoughts. Instead, you give less weight and value to your thoughts and this reduces the impact they have on you.
Thought stopping might seem to help in the short term, but over time, it leads to more anxiety.
Practice Coping With Criticism
In addition to cognitive restructuring, another aspect of CBT that is sometimes helpful for those with social anxiety involves something known as the “assertive defense of the self.”
Since it is possible that some of the time, people will actually be critical and judgmental toward you, it is important that you are able to cope with rejection and criticism.
This process is usually conducted in therapy with a pretend conversation between you and your therapist to build your assertiveness skills and develop healthy responses to criticism. These skills are then transferred to the real world through homework assignments.
For example, if faced with criticism in real life, having a set of assertive responses prepared will help you deal with these potentially anxiety-provoking situations. What’s more, real-life encounters are welcome as a chance to put into practice this exercise, according to this method.
Some research suggests that facing potential “social mishaps” that contribute to anxiety and negative thinking can also be helpful.
The goal of improving your ability to handle criticism and rejection is to help increase your tolerance of the distress these things may cause, which may combat your automatic negative thoughts.
Use a Diary to Track Negative Thoughts
Thought diaries, also called thought records, can be used as part of any process to change negative thinking. Thought diaries help you identify negative thinking styles and gain a better understanding of how your thoughts (and not the situations you are in) cause your emotional reactions.
Most CBT treatment plans will involve the use of a thought diary as part of regular homework assignments.
For example, a thought diary entry might break down the thought process of a person on a date, and the emotional and physical reactions that result from negative thinking patterns. By the end of the thought analysis, you can replace irrational thoughts about rejection with more helpful and positive ways of thinking.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are negative thoughts?
Everyone has negative thoughts sometimes. and include cynical or pessimistic beliefs you might have about yourself, other people, situations, or the world. They can affect your mood and behavior, and can be present in certain mental health conditions.
Examples of negative thoughts include:
- “I’ll never be good enough”
- “They must think I’m stupid for saying that”
- “That situation is destined to turn out badly”
- “I will never find a good partner”
What are negative thoughts called by psychologists?
Negative thoughts are sometimes referred to as cognitive distortions. These are faulty thinking patterns that can lead to negativity and play a role in causing problems such as poor self-esteem, anxiety, and depression.
Why do I have negative thoughts?
Negative thoughts are quite common, and everyone does it from time to time. However, there can be many underlying variables that make it worse.
- Temperament: You may have been born with what is known as a “difficult temperament.” This means you are more sensitive, feel things more strongly, and are prone to negative mood states.
- Survival Skill: It’s also possible that evolutionarily speaking, negative thinking was more conducive to the survival of our species. Being extra cautious, skeptical, and analytical may help you manage threats in your environment.
- Learning from others: According to social learning theory, we learn behaviors from the people around us. If you were raised by a parent who had a negative thinking style, you may have learned to think that way too.
- Cognitive distortions: Negative thoughts could occur as a result of distorted and unrealistic thinking patterns. For example: You may have more negative thoughts because you are more strongly influenced by negative experiences than the positive ones, or have a negativity bias.
- Mental health issues: They can also be symptoms of mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety.
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