Welcome back to our podcast. We are your hosts. I'm Amanda. I'm Laura and I'm Kendra.
Today, we are on the fourth of our series of five thought errors, also known as cognitive distortions. Just a brief reminder. We are talking about the cognitive thought models. So something happens outside of you. There's an event, a circumstance, or a situation that happens. It is your thought about it that gives you your feelings. So once you identify what that thought is, we want to start looking at it. Is it true? Is it helpful? Is there any other perspective that we can take and so, on www.mindmypeelings.com (P like peeling from an orange), has outlined the 15 most common cognitive thought errors. And so we're going through those one by one so that we can become aware of if we're doing that ourselves. And the answer for me is pretty much all of them.
Okay. So we're now on number 10, which is “should statements”. And we're going to talk about how to stop “shoulding” all over yourself. Shoulding like S H O U L D. Not something else. Right. I wouldn't say that. Okay. So the guy who started this website, mindmypeelings.com, did it in a way to kind of manage his own social anxiety and other issues. And he did a fantastic job writing all of these out. I'm going to read to you what he says and we'll break it down. He says statements like I should be exercising more create expectations that are not likely to be met. The pressure created from the “should statements” makes it difficult to meet those expectations. And when the failure occurs there is guilt and frustration, which makes you less likely to make another attempt. I kinda think about “should'' statements as we say “I should”... but usually it's followed by, “But I'm not going to”. Because by saying I should, I have created a feeling in myself of dread, guilt, sadness, even maybe apathy. It's not an energizing feeling. So that word “should” is just not a helpful thing to help us make change. What we can do is get curious about why? Why do we want to exercise? Or why is it that we don't? Or think about how we feel after we exercise. That everybody agrees that we feel amazing. You have an endorphin high, you feel relaxed and happy thinking about that feeling gives us more energy and more motivation to actually go do the exercise rather than guilting and shaming ourselves for not doing it.
I've heard the word “should” described as “could” with shame all over it. Should. If you find yourself saying, “should” that is an excellent time to start really analyzing that you “should” do this, you “should” do this…except for there's only 24 hours in a day. So maybe that's why you're not actually getting around to it. Maybe you don't actually care about this, whatever you should be doing. Maybe you don't even actually care about it that much, but you're still shaming yourself over it so anytime…you should, they should, he should, she should. Almost always it's going to be a thought that you need to look at because something's going on there.
Yeah, that word, it's one that we use a lot, but we really probably should….uh-oh, uh-oh
It’s like so natural. It's so natural. Yes. It's optional. You're imperfect because you use the word should, you know, usually we're shaming ourselves. We are. It’s not the best motivation. It almost always backfires.
So number 11, Number 10 was “should statements”. Number 11 is emotional reasoning and that is any feeling must be true in their mind. The emotion is accepted as fact because all logical reasoning is blocked out and it incorrectly assumes the negative feeling is the only truth. So maybe you're feeling defensive and because you're feeling defensive, everyone's attacking you. Right. You're not paying attention. Is that really true? Okay. Let's look at that. Maybe you are feeling lonely. And so you jumped to the conclusion that no one cares about me. I don't have any friends. That's not true. So it's when you're having a strong feeling and you make that mean something then that's when you want to look at it, is that emotional reasoning or not?
This is present a lot in teenagers. All the feelings and they must be true because they are so strong. Yes. Well even in our primary relationships. I've said this. I hate that I'm sounding so dramatic. “I feel like we're growing apart”. And my husband's like, “what?” I’m just having a little drama moment. Like, at least now I like to bring it up instead of like stewing for a whole weekend or something. But it's so freeing to be able to step outside of our feelings and look at what it's generating. Yes. So good.
The next thought disorder or cognitive distortion is control fallacies. The control fallacy cognitive distortion can be divided into two different subtypes. You have an external control fallacy and an internal control fallacy. So the external control fallacy is the belief that a person's life is completely controlled by external factors and fate has already been decided. This distortion creates the feeling that we have no control over our situation. So, I love this because just like we were talking about teenagers and the fact that they definitely believe their feelings are fact. I have a teenage daughter and I feel like sometimes because her Chromebook wasn't working or because the teacher turned on the timer and then did the countdown. Two minutes left for the test. One minute left for the test. She says she did not score what she thought she should because she had no control over the computer not working. And the countdown that the teacher insisted on speaking out into existence. So it was definitely an external control factor as to why I got a 92 instead of a 95. So thank you anyways.
I think this is a perfect example of when people kind of give their emotions, the emotional responsibility to others. Like my husband should do this in order for me to feel good about myself. The kids should, in order for me to feel like a good mom, then my kids have to do this, this, and this, get straight A's and all of that sort of stuff. It's my life, my happiness. Have you ever heard the phrase you're only as happy as your least happy child?
Yeah. I've heard that multiple times.
Baloney.
That is giving your happiness away to probably a teenager. Is that really what you want to do? People believe it, people believe you can't, you cannot be happy unless your least happy child is happy. That's giving your emotional health over to a teenager, or whoever it is.
Not a good idea. Not a good idea. Here's another one. I have someone very near and dear to me who says how very, very hard it is to feel at peace if there's a mess anywhere. Yeah. I even have given, say, wine power. Well, I can't talk to people unless I have a little social lubricant or it's interesting that I've given a glass of grape juice such power over…I can. It's in me. It's in me.
Yep. All right. So just an interesting, interesting thing. Yeah, you have to decide. I think it is kind of an interesting and exciting idea that really you can generate any feeling that you want. Yeah. In any situation and it's kind of …kind of mind blowing. But when we accept responsibility for our feelings we will be able to do so much more. It's just powerful. It's powerful that you don't need certain events to happen in order to feel a certain way. I felt that that was so liberating that, “no, I was not at the affect. Life was not happening to me anymore.” It was very empowering. Yeah. It's awesome. So exciting.
So the other type of control fallacy is an internal control fallacy. And this is the belief that a person has complete control, not only of themselves, but also their surroundings. So, you can assume that you are responsible for not only the pain of yourself and others, but also their happiness. If someone isn't happy, then it's assumed that I had control of that, or it was my fault. So, this is extremely common, I feel like, in our line of work, especially in the emergency department. But it is anything from, you know, taking a shift from a partner that ends up being a terrible shift. And you feel like you had some sort of control over that going in. But I always used to think as soon as I would take a partner’s shift, if you needed a trade or if he, you know, he or she needed off. And then I went into the shift and it was horrible, then I felt like, “oh, see, I took that shift. And so therefore I got the worst shift ever.”
No good deed goes unpunished, you mean? Yes, that's a frequent, I think ER people say that all the time. Like, “See, I knew. It's because I took the shift that things are going so badly.” Yeah, that's fine. It’s because I said things were quiet that the…”oh God, don't, I'm getting high hives”. That's a perfect example that somehow you're in control. I use this against myself and it was a huge source of my previous dissatisfaction. If something went wrong with the patient, I felt like somehow it was because I didn't double check. I didn't triple check. I didn't think of that. I didn't. I somehow made it that I was omnipotent. And so it was a failure on my part that the patient had a bad outcome and I would torture myself with that for a long time. And it was not healthy. But that is, there's no evidence that even if I had thought of the thing or done the test or whatever, there's no evidence that anything would have been different. How do I know that? I'm just assuming in my head, but that's not based in reality. So just knowing that I don't have to choose that thought, it's not helpful and it's probably not even true, was huge for me.
Yeah. You know I think we shame ourselves so much in those situations. And if we just flip it and recognize that we are out there to just help as many people as we can, it's just so much more helpful and makes our shifts so much better, life so much easier.
And you were never supposed to be perfect. That's impossible. You were just supposed to do your job. Your part in the unfolding of the universe. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Unfortunately, when we go through training, we are taught all the ways to cure and heal people. And that you do this and you do this and you give the patient this and they get better. Or if you don't do this or don't give the patient that, they do worse. Or if you give this with this, they'll get worse. So we are taught such concrete examples. Even through our specialty training, it's driven into our brains that, oh, well, if we do this and this, we expect this outcome. Like we have control over that. Like even if I've seen this multiple times in my career, I did what the book says or what I learned in residency. A plus B equals C, right? Every time. Well, no, everybody knows that, number one, patients don't read textbooks. They don't present that way. And just like I took, I tried to anyway, because that's what I learned. The learned behavior was taking credit for a good outcome because I was reinforced that if I did A plus B it equals C and when it did, I would take credit for that good outcome. But I would also take just as much credit for the bad outcome, despite doing A plus B and it not equaling C. Like I had some kind of control over that outcome. That would be way too much credit. And also was that “should'' statement, the one you remember Laura, that we talked about at the beginning of the show. that should say I should have, I should have, but even if that were to be true, that bad outcome was probably something that was going to happen and something I had no control of. And not to give my power away just because during training, you're taught, do this, do this, do this, and this outcome will happen.
Well even worse. Some people won't take any credit for the good, but take all the credit for the bad. How happy is that? That's awful.
So we've had a great day today. Just reviewing these three. Or adding these three new thought distortions, all of which I can relate to, but anyways, we want you to hear that you're enough though. We want you to hear that in your shoes today, going to whatever you're going to today, a shift, or maybe you have the day off, you are enough. And the best gift you can give yourself is unconditional love. So we see you, what you do matters and the work you do matters. So, we love you. See you next time.
