#274 Beware of gremlins #5 Catastrophizing

This is "What if..." thinking in negative form, "making a mountain out of a molehill". A person with chronic pain might say to herself, "I can't go out with my friends because if my pain acts up, everything will be ruined." As a result, she stops going out.

(Warning: This entry is part of Negativity Week!)

#273 Beware of gremlins #4 Overgeneralizing

A person with this thought pattern might say to himself, "My pain ruined my last social event, so all social activities will be miserable for me." By learning how to look at such events more rationally, he would see that while there are times when his pain limits him, there are other times when it doesn't. He could also learn to recognize when his pain would spoil a particular activity and when it actually wouldn't.

(Warning: This entry is part of Negativity Week!)

#272 Beware of gremlins #3 Polarized thinking

With this thought pattern people see the world in absolutes: everything is either all good or all bad, positive or negative. For example, a person with leg pain that prevents her from walking very much might say to herself, "Well, I can't walk my normal amount, so I won't walk at all." This way her health deteriorates further. Taking a more moderate or balanced view of her life would allow her to set intermediate goals and work towards gradually improving her situation.

(Warning: This entry is part of Negativity Week!)

#271 Beware of Gremlins #2 Filtering

With this thinking pattern, people tend to focus only on the negative aspects of their lives while filtering out positive aspects. A person with chronic low back pain may say to himself, in effect, "When my back hurts, there's nothing in my life that's positive" That's filtering because obviously there are some aspects of his life that are positive. He has a loving family, he can still do some of his favorite activities, but he is actually choosing to not recognize those positive aspects.

(Warning: This entry is part of Negativity Week!)

Newsflash!

Samuel and I have been through an intense week with apartment hunting, and all of a sudden things started happening fast. We found a really nice place, got a great deal and signed the contract for our new home yesterday. Today we drove home to Arvika for the fun stuff: signing our mortgage agreement with the bank :D And all this has happened right in the middle of Negativity Week and blown my blog schedule off track!

Sorry folks, that means Negativity Week is extended... watch out for more Gremlins on this blog!