You don’t need to play the self-blame game: personalising everything and blaming yourself for anything that goes wrong, even when it’s not your fault or responsibility. Instead, find all the causes. What else could explain it? Is it really all about you?
You may find that you hone in on the negative aspects of a situation as the first thing you do, ignoring or dismissing all the positive aspects. Instead, consider the whole picture. Find a more balanced way to look at this situation.
Making unfair comparisons between certain individuals and yourself is a common thinking error, and can leave you feeling inadequate. When you do this, you compare yourself with people who you know have a specific advantage over you in some area.
Problems are a normal part of life, and we usually feel better when we do something to resolve them rather than just dwell on them. If you can’t solve the problem, change the way you think about it. You can practice acceptance and move on with life in a positive way.
One way to deal with situations you can’t change is to practice acceptance. This means accepting the way things are without insisting that they should be different, and deciding to get on with life in spite of the situation.
If you find yourself thinking in black-and-white, instead look for the shades of grey in between. Is it really so bad? Are you taking an extreme view? Just because something isn’t completely perfect doesn’t mean that it’s a total disaster.
When you’re thinking in black-and-white, you see everything in terms of being either good or bad with nothing in between. Either you’re great, or you’re a loser; if you don’t look like a model, you must be ugly; if you do something wrong, then you are completely useless.
Thinking errors are irrational patterns of thinking that can cause you to feel bad and sometimes act in self-defeating ways. If you feel more upset the more you think about a situation, you can learn to think in a different way.
You can’t change your height, your age, most of your physical features, or what has happened in the past. But, you can change the way you deal with how you see yourself, and situations, in the future.
by Integrative Psychotherapeutic Counsellor, Deborah Spratling.
I wonder what was the first thing you thought after asking yourself that question? Labels today come in many forms. In society, labels on clothing and footwear can say a lot about you. They can tell someone the type of music you like, the type of activities you like doing or the places you have been and are a way to start a conversation about shared interests. Or these labels may mean you are judged by another person in a negative way and they could take a dislike to you because you do not fit in with their group of friends or ‘tribe’.