All-or-Nothing Thinking

We engage in all-or-nothing thinking when we accept automatic thoughts which describe events in black-and-white categories, with no shades of gray. It is a more extreme form of magnification and minimization in which we minimize to the point that many positive aspects of life completely disappear from sight. Such automatic thoughts lead to a kind of perfectionism that defines everything short of 100% success as a failure. To a point, such perfectionism can lead us to try harder; but in the long run, inevitably, it tends to discourage us from trying at all. Since we encounter very little black or white in the real world, this kind of thinking squeezes much of the brightness out of our view of the world: all the shades of gray come to look as black as night.

A few years ago I was teaching a class in which several standardized tests were required. One semester, a woman took the class who got the highest total score on the standardized tests that I've ever recorded in that class. Out of a possible 200 points on the four tests, she missed five. But when this woman got her first essay back, she found several criticisms and suggestions for improvement. (The essay was not graded.) She seemed depressed and irritable in class for several days after getting the essay back. Finally, I persuaded her to come in and talk to me about it, and I asked her what she was so concerned about. 

"Well," she said hopelessly, "I guess I'm just going to get an 'F' in this class." From her point of view, her essay wasn't perfect, so it was worthless. Her automatic thoughts on receiving the essay back were probably something like this: "There are flaws in this essay, even after I worked hard on it, so I wasted my time. I produced nothing of value." That's all-or-nothing thinking.

This cognitive distortion can be devastating when you are trying to learn a new skill or improve your performance in an old one. A sculptor who thinks in terms of all-or-nothing will never finish a statue because the first stages of the work will always be rough. A writer who sees her rough draft as either finished or failed will never really finish an essay. You must accept your first draft as potentially good, but unfinished, in order to improve it. Many students fail to produce good essays not because they produce bad ones, but because they never finish the good ones they start.

Link: http://daphne.palomar.edu/jtagg/allor.htm

Overgeneralization

Probably the most common mistake we make in our automatic thinking is overgeneralization. It's easy to see why. Each of us has to think about new experiences in terms of old experiences. We recognize most easily those qualities in a person or thing which we have seen before. The baby just learning to talk may call all men "Da-Da" or all four-legged animals "bow wow." But the baby will quickly learn to see the differences between different men and different animals. Generalization as a stage we go through in learning is not only acceptable; it is necessary. Until you recognize Bessie as a cow, you'll never be able to attend to the special characteristics--the clipped ear, the long tail--that make Bessie different from the other cows. We get into trouble when we stop at the generalization stage. All cows are not the same.

Because our automatic thoughts are based on our memories of past experiences, we might expect that many of those thoughts will tend to be generalizations that distort our perception of what we see. And that is the case. But because our automatic thoughts are automatic, it's very easy for us to stop with the generalizations, to accept them without examining them further. The strength of this cognitive distortion accounts for the prevalence of stereotyping in much of our thinking about other people. If I accept my automatic thoughts as reliable, I will probably conclude that all Blacks, or all Whites, or all Chicanos, or all Scandinavians are alike. And the less I actually know about a certain group of people, the stronger and clearer will be my stereotype.

The kind of overgeneralization that gives us, as students, the most trouble is the kind we make about our own performances and capabilities. If I've done poorly on essay exams in the past, when I find out that I have to take an essay exam my automatic thought may be, "I do poorly on essay exams." I am generalizing from one or two experiences of a certain kind to all experiences of a certain kind. Notice that this makes no sense at all until I have examined the differences, as well as the similarities, between the present task and the past one.

There are several specific forms of overgeneralization that most of us use at one time or another. And we have probably invented some variations that fall between the categories.

• Mental Filter

• Magnification and Minimization

• All-or-Nothing Thinking

• Disqualifying the Positive 

   Link: http://daphne.palomar.edu/jtagg/overgeneralization.htm

Can cognitive behavioural therapy really change our brains? (BBC)

Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is a type of talking therapy that's used to treat a wide range of mental health problems, from depression and eating disorders to phobias and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). It recommends looking at ourselves in a different way that might prove useful for all of us in everyday life. But what happens to our brains when we have CBT?

What is cognitive behavioural therapy?

CBT is based on the idea that problems aren't caused by situations themselves, but by how we interpret them in our thoughts. These can then affect our feelings and actions.

The way we think about a situation can affect how we feel and how we act

For example, if someone you know walks by without saying hello, what's your reaction?

You might think that they ignored you because they don't like you, which might make you feel rejected. So you might be tempted to avoid them the next time you meet. This could breed more bad feeling between you both and more "rejections", until eventually you believe that you must be unlikeable. If this happened with enough people, you could start to withdraw socially.

But how well did you interpret the situation in the first place?

 

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Common errors in thinking style

• Emotional reasoning - e.g. I feel guilty so I must be guilty
• Jumping to conclusions - e.g. if I go into work when I'm feeling low, I'll only feel worse
• All-or-nothing thinking - e.g. if I've not done it perfectly, then it's absolutely useless
• Mental filtering - e.g. noticing my failures more than my successes
• Over generalising - e.g. nothing ever goes well in my life
• Labelling - e.g. I'm a loser

CBT aims to break negative vicious cycles by identifying unhelpful ways of reacting that creep into our thinking. 

"Emotional reasoning is a very common error in people's thinking," explains Dr Jennifer Wild, Consultant Clinical Psychologist from Kings College London. "That's when you think something must be true because of how you feel."

CBT tries to replace these negative thinking styles with more useful or realistic ones.

This can be a challenge for people with mental health disorders, as their thinking styles can be well-established.

How do we break negative thinking styles?

Some psychological theories suggest that we learn these negative thinking patterns through a process called negative reinforcement. 

 

Graded exposure can help people confront their phobias

For example, if you have a fear of spiders, by avoiding them you learn that your anxiety levels can be reduced. So you're rewarded in the short term with less anxiety but this reinforces the fear.

To unlearn these patterns, people with phobias and anxiety disorders often use a CBT technique called graded exposure. By gradually confronting what frightens them and observing that nothing bad actually happens, it's possible to slowly retrain their brains to not fear it.

How does cognitive behavioural therapy work on the brain?

Primitive survival instincts like fear are processed in a part of the brain called the limbic system. This includes the amygdala, a region that processes emotion, and the hippocampus, a region involved in reliving traumatic memories.

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“Start Quote

It seems that CBT really can change your brain and rewire it.”

Dr Paul Blenkiron, Consultant Psychiatrist 

 

Brain scan studies have shown that overactivity in these two regions returns to normal after a course of CBT in people with phobias. 

What's more, studies have found that CBT can also change the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for higher-level thinking.

So it seems that CBT might be able to make real, physical changes to both our "emotional brain" (instincts) and our "logical brain" (thoughts). 

Intriguingly, similar patterns of brain changes have been seen with CBT and with drug treatments, suggesting that psychotherapies and medications might work on the brain in parallel ways.

How effective is cognitive behavioural therapy? 

Of all the talking therapies, CBT has the most clinical evidence to show that it works. 

Studies have shown that it is at least as effective as medication for many types of depression and anxiety disorders. 

But unlike many drugs, there are few side effects with CBT. After a relatively short course, people have often described long-lasting benefits. 

"In the trials we've run with post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD] and social anxiety disorder, we've seen that even when people stop the therapy, they continue improving because they have new tools in place and they've made behavioural and thinking style changes," Dr Wild explains.

Continue reading the main story

Find out more

• Watch David, 25, and Wayne, 24, use CBT to help with their mental health in Inside My Mind on BBC Three, 7 August 2013 at 8pm, and afterwards on iPlayer
• Find out more about mental health in the It's a Mad World season on BBC Three

CBT may not be for everyone, however. 

Since the focus is on tackling the here and now, people with more complicated roots to their mental problems which could stem from their childhood, for example, may need another type of longer-term therapy to explore this. 

CBT also relies on commitment from the individual, including "homework" between therapy sessions. It can also involve confronting fears and anxieties, and this isn't always easy to do. 

Ultimately, as with many types of treatment, some people will benefit from CBT more than others and psychologists and neuroscientists are beginning to unravel the reasons behind this. 

Fuente: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/0/23590545

Finding Right Meditation Technique Key to User Satisfaction

July 6, 2012 — New to meditation and already thinking about quitting? You may have simply chosen the wrong method. A new study published online July 7 in Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing highlights the importance of ensuring that new meditators select methods with which they are most comfortable, rather than those that are most popular. 

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If they do, they are likely to stick with it, says Adam Burke, the author of the study. If not, there is a higher chance they may abandon meditation altogether, losing out on its myriad personal and medical benefits. Burke is a professor of Health Education at SF State and the director of SF State's Institute for Holistic Health Studies.

"Because of the increase in both general and clinical use of meditation, you want to make sure you're finding the right method for each person," he said. Although meditation has become significantly more popular in the U.S., Burke said, there have been very few studies comparing multiple methods head to head to examine individual preference or specific clinical benefits.

To better understand user preference, Burke compared four popular meditation methods -- Mantra, Mindfulness, Zen and Qigong Visualization -- to see if novice meditation practitioners favored one over the others. The study's 247 participants were taught each method and asked to practice at home and, at the end of the study, evaluate which they preferred. The two simpler methods, Mantra and Mindfulness, were preferred by 31 percent of study participants. Zen and Qigong had smaller but still sizable contingents of adherents, with 22 percent and 14.8 percent of participants preferring them, respectively.

The results show the value of providing new practitioners a simpler, more accessible method of meditation. But they also emphasize that no one technique is best for everyone, and even less common methods are preferred by certain people. Older participants, who grew up when Zen was becoming one of the first meditation techniques to gain attention in the U.S., in particular were more likely to prefer that method.

"It was interesting that Mantra and Mindfulness were found to be equally compelling by participants despite the fact that they are fundamentally different techniques," Burke said. Mindfulness is the most recent meditation technique to gain widespread popularity, he added, and is often the only one with which a novice practitioner or health professional is familiar. Not surprisingly, Mindfulness was the method most preferred by the youngest participants.

"If someone is exposed to a particular technique through the media or a healthcare provider, they might assume because it's popular it's the best for everyone," Burke said. "But that's like saying because a pink dress or a blue sport coat is popular this year, it's going to look good on everybody. In truth, different people like different things. One size does not fit all."

If an individual is not comfortable with a specific method for any reason, he said, they may be less likely to continue meditating and would lose out on such benefits as reduced stress, lower blood pressure or even treatment for addiction.

Burke hopes to see more comparative meditation studies, especially to determine if particular methods are better at addressing specific health issues, such as addiction. If that's the case, he said, healthcare professionals would be able to guide patients toward techniques that will be most effective for them. Additional studies are also needed to determine if there is a way to predict which method will be best suited for any particular individual, he said.

Link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120706165500.htm