Cognitive Distortions, untrue thoughts, unhelpful thinking patterns, these are all essentially the same thing just a different title. Now I know if you are reading this you are most likely a parent trying to help your child identify these thought patterns, but before you jump into trying to fix your child I want you to stop and do a little self-reflection. Many of the cognitive distortions I see in my students, I also hear when I speak with their parents.
Yes, we are all a little distorted, so being able to identify your own unhealthy thought patterns will help when you talk with your child. Being vulnerable with our kids can be a powerful tool in modeling and, let’s be honest, kids learn more from what is caught than what is taught. The old saying of “Do as I say not as I do” doesn’t really work when it comes to teaching.
So for the sake of vulnerability, let me lead the way! My husband will tell you that I get an A+ in Catastrophizing. Here is an example from when I was in college (and yes, shamefully, this is a true story). Being the broke college student that I was, I was very conscientious on where I spent my money. I’m talking frugal to the extreme — like I would wash ziplock bags to reuse them instead of buying (and this was before it was trendy to save the earth and reuse plastic items). My roommates thought I was crazy! I also had a very busy schedule most days; I would leave the house at 6am and often not return until 10pm. This meant I brought everything with me for the day because I lived about 10 minutes walking distance from campus, which really isn’t far, but time was precious. On this one particular morning I was studying in the student center and finished my coffee, but I was in desperate need for more. Now the coffee shop that was 10 steps away from me offered refills for $1 (what a steal)! Instead of immediately getting up for another cup of joe and moving on with my day, I spent the next 30 minutes running a mental debate over whether or not I should walk the 20 minutes roundtrip back home to make a pot of coffee…. Because in my mind, if I bought a coffee everyday, that would be $365 dollars that I was spending in the year. As a broke college student that seemed like a lot of money. Clearly if I bought the coffee I was going to end up being homeless on the side of the street because I couldn’t afford my rent… very logical, right??
You’ll be happy to know that after 30 minutes of weighing all the pros and cons I bought the $1 coffee! But that whole time I didn’t get any work done and I felt pretty anxious. If I would have been able to recognize that I was catastrophizing I would have been able to replace my untrue thoughts with true thoughts much quicker and not have wasted so much time. See, we are all a little distorted!
I hope you can see how irrational I was being, but the reality is, whether it’s our thoughts or our child’s thoughts, it doesn’t seem that silly in the moment. It seems completely rational! Let me show you how this played out a little more subtly when I was working with a student the other week. This student was in my office feeling anxious about an upcoming social studies test and wanted to know some strategies to help. I started by asking her what she had done to prepare (because there should be a legitimate fear around doing well if you don’t prepare). When she began to describe her preparation I was blown away with what she had already done to prepare!
So that’s when I started to do a little more digging about what was making her feel the way she was feeling about this test. It turned out that there was one particular concept that she had a hard time grasping and she just didn’t feel confident about it. This was her internal dialogue that was unbeknownst to her: if I get tested on this concept I will get it wrong and if I get it wrong I won’t get an A and I already got a B on a previous test so I have to get As for the rest of the semester to get an A in the class. If I don’t get an A in the class then I won’t get into the college I want and if I don’t get into that college than I won’t get the career I want and I won’t be successful.
It’s super easy to see how irrational and UNTRUE it is to think you won’t be successful in life if you don’t know this one concept and get an A on this one test. But this is the EXACT pattern of thinking that so many students and parents employ that creates an incredible amount of anxiety in everyone’s life. Now parents, I’m going to come at you for a hot second; you might be the problem in making your child have these thoughts. Can we all just take a big ole breath and acknowledge the fact that college is not the key to success and happiness? Sure, there might be positive things that come from the experience, but I would challenge anybody that thinks the only way to be happy is to get into a specific college.
I’m going to reel myself in and end the rant because that’s a whole other article worth of thoughts. But please parents, for the sake of your children, do some soul searching and reflecting to get in touch with your inner thoughts that might be spilling out onto your children whether you intend them to or not.
So what do you do once you identify the cognitive distortion? Now you can put that thought on trial and put on a more true thought. This article will teach you about the cycle of anxiety and how to put your thoughts on trial. Everyone will have distorted thoughts, that’s part of being human, the goal is to recognize them quickly and reframe them to no longer be distorted.