Hey guys, welcome to the podcast! This is episode number two out of five in our series on thought distortions or cognitive errors or cognitive distortions or thought errors. However you want to say it. Pick your own adventure. We're trying to illustrate them so that we can recognize them when we're doing them. So here we go.
Yeah. And just a reminder, if you don't know what we're talking about, check out the previous podcasts. But it's specifically like once you identify podcasts, I think number three is where we teach you how to identify your thoughts. And if you figure out that those thoughts are not serving you, then these are ways to start challenging yourself. But what's hilarious to me is as we're going down this list, I have all of these thought errors on the regular. No wonder. I had a lot of work to do. Okay. I am a champion. I'm good at something guys. I'm a champion at thought errors. So I'm starting out with this one. Oh, and this is also from www.mindmypeelings.com. We are not allowing punny jokes this time. Oh come on man. It was a good one. So that's who's credited with all this and we will tag his article. It's just really well done and nice pictures and handouts and all of that sort of stuff.
All right first one up for this episode is jumping to conclusions. I am a ninja at this.
There's two parts: mind reading and fortune telling.
The mind reading part is where you think, you know what others are thinking, assumptions of their intentions occur with no evidence. So I'm just going to call myself out. We have a group text, obviously with all three of us and sometimes Kendra, like a sociopath, will just say “okay”. With no emoji, no thumbs up. No nothing, just “okay”. And you know what I think when that happens? I'm like, “Oh my God, she is so angry. What did I do?” Like, why is she just furious right now? Or like, has she just checked out? And so actually last week or the week before. I said, “You know, you're not putting any emoji there.” “No, I would tell you if I was upset, like it's just literally okay.” I'm like, okay then. Well, there we go. I've actually had to have my husband start putting emojis too, because this has happened multiple times. Like early on when we were married, before cell phones even existed, I think. But then when you started being able to text people, he would come home and I was livid because of a text with no emoji. He's kind of a sarcastic guy anyway. I mean, I'd be furious and there's like, “Oh my God, it's totally a joke, how did you not know that was a joke?” “Because there's no emoji. That's why!” So the mind reading, I have this, I have a big time problem, especially with texting.
Okay. The second part of jumping to conclusions is fortune telling, which is making or make conclusions and predictions with no evidence and can have negative outcomes. So this would be me driving to work just full of work dread. Like I'm absolutely certain that this is going to be the most awful shift. And guess what, when you're thinking that way, like I would be pretty much be searching for and finding all the evidence of how, you know, it was awful. But yeah, even just making my drive in that miserable, like who knows, I mean, who knew if it was going to be a terrible shift or not, but I certainly made myself miserable just on the drive. So that was fortune telling. Another example would be like, if you are going to an event or something and you find out a person that's not your favorite is going to be there. And you're just like, oh my God, this is going to be awful. That is fortune telling. That is a thought error. You don't even know what it's going to be like, and you're certainly not making it likely that it's going to be a good experience when you're going in with that sort of attitude. I need an attitude adjustment frequently. So this is my work.
Okay, so our next thought error is catastrophizing and yes, it's broken up into two different types of catastrophizing, one magnification and one minimization. And he's got a little volcano next to it. I like that. So catastrophizing is when we over-exaggerate and start worrying about things and escalating them to the worst possible scenario. Now I will say sometimes thinking about the worst possible worst case scenario can be helpful if you are doing it with the idea that you're going to process it and not be afraid of it, but if you're doing it just so you can spiral into a fetal position and not be able to do anything except eat candy and watch Netflix, then it's not helpful.
So an example would be if you had a minor complication on a procedure or a surgery or you had a negative comment on a Press Ganey and you're just obsessed thinking that you're going to lose your job. You're going to lose your license. I used to have this where we had, we had fewer nurses then we had open slots in the schedule. Very factual. I like your circumstance there. You must have been working on this. I have been. And it was busy and it was uncomfortable to me how, how many patients we had and I made it mean that I was going just by working in the emergency department. I was putting my whole family at risk. I was going to get sued. We're going to lose our house. This is catastrophizing. Yes.
I have a personal one. So you know, you end up getting the kids that you're supposed to have, you know, but our firstborn, I mean, we're both doctors. We both were like school ninjas. Right. And we have this like super chill first born. Who's just like, I don't, I don't really see the point in trying to like impress anyone, you know? So he does, he does well in school, but he doesn't try his hardest. Does that make sense? Yes, he's athletic, but he does not over exert himself. And so I found myself one time as he was just kind of like not running very fast to first base. Just thinking like, oh my God, like, he's never going to try his hardest. Like, I don't understand he's gonna wind up on drugs in a ditch. That's from watching him not run as fast as he can to first.
You're good at this, Amanda. I am, I am. I thought error ninja. I don't know if I get a medal or what, but yes, that is a thought error. Maybe what I've come through coaching is like, he's exactly like you know what I would wish for a younger version of myself that I didn't freak out over everything and that I didn't like try to… he's exactly what I want him to be. It was just my mind was going bananas. Wow. We're working on it, mom.
So another cognitive thought distortion is personalization and this type of distortion is willingly taking just about anything and everything personally. So either a direct or indirect reaction by either somebody saying something or not saying something, or maybe totally unrelated to the situation you have blamed yourself, or you are thinking you're the intentional target and it may have absolutely nothing to do with, not only the situation, but not you either. So there's plenty of examples I can think of. But typically if I had a negative reaction with a consultant on the phone, in my line of work, I felt like, wow, they don't think I'm very smart. Do they? They don't think I have this patient under control. They don't think I took care of this patient very well. They obviously are questioning every single medical decision making that I made, and they're not taking this patient as an admission because of the way that I cared for this patient. Which probably has nothing to do with anything close to the patient care. But they may have just gotten five admissions. Two in the ICU, had to answer 10 phone calls prior to my phone call and et cetera, et cetera. But of course, because they were so unruly or short or rude on the phone, I absolutely thought it was my presentation and my patient and everything like that.
One of the confirmations that I had to go into ER was because I would eat my own when I was on call. I was in such a foul mood I did not want anything to do with the person calling me. It was just this…there's nothing anybody could have said that would've made me like in less of a foul humor. You know what I mean? Like that I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall because I can't imagine you being that way. Ohhh, on neurosurgery one of us called me for some consults and I came down. Anyway, it was…I'll tell you offline. I wasn't very nice. It wasn't the consultant. It was just that I hadn't slept in 48 hours. We were on call, you know, Q2, Q3, and it was awful. We were before the work hour restrictions and it was…I almost. Yeah, I barely made it through that month.
Well, I thought, you know, the personalization one, I think is one that we see a lot at home. At least I do. Where if somebody hasn't done a chore or something we ask them to do we make it that they don't care about us or that they are, that they are, you know, they are just blowing us off or that, you know, somehow it's something about us when it's not it's they're busy, they're tired, they have ADHD and they forgot or who knows what else, but yeah, but the whole thing is like, we don't even know but we somehow think it has to do with us.
Yeah. Okay. Well, those are the three for the second of five of these thought errors.
Just a reminder: jumping to conclusions, which included mind reading and fortune telling;
catastrophizing;
and then personalization.
And if you guys haven't looked at his website, mindmypeelings.com, is that right? Peeling like an orange peel. Yeah. It's such a, it's really well done. Check it out. It is. It is. I am finding this delightful. Yeah. This has been such a great conversation and such an amazing time of just awareness. I think as we unpack all of these cognitive distortions and thought process disorders that we can definitely come away with even just becoming more aware that we do these things and then being able to finally target the situation and turn it around to a more positive and growing experience. So, we are excited you joined us today. We know that you're so amazing and so brilliant. And you have so much to offer this world, your career, your family, we love you. We cherish your beautiful soul. And so until next time…you are whole, you are a gift to medicine and the work you do matters. See you next time.
