5 Unhelpful Beliefs That May Lead to Anxiety

How to counteract these thinking patterns.

Our beliefs and perceptions have an influence on the way we feel and our behaviours. If you accidentally bump into the back of a car whilst driving and you overgeneralise and think you’re a terrible driver, you’ll most likely feel upset, annoyed and anxious about driving again. In contrast, if you miss crashing into a car with a quick swerve, you may think that you’ve got brilliant reactions and you’re likely to feel happy or confident.

Psychiatrist Dr Aaron Beck, the father of cognitive behavioural therapy, identified common unhelpful beliefs, which he called, ‘cognitive distortions’ that we can all engage in, which have an instrumental impact on how anxious we feel and our mood. The beliefs that we generate have an unconscious impact on us because:

• We generate these beliefs instantly without realising their impact.
• We don’t address these beliefs and are often left wondering why we’re feeling so low and anxious.

Luckily, if we learn about these cognitive distortions and identify when they occur, we can make small changes to address them, which may ultimately improve the way we feel. Today, I want to share with you, five unhelpful beliefs that our mind creates that impact anxiety and how to change them.

1. Magnification and Minimisation

Negative events will always occur and unfortunately, this will make us feel like crap. Due to a mind trick known as negativity bias, these negative events will always affect us more than positive events and we can get trapped into exaggerating or ‘magnifying’ them, which may lead to anxiety. On the other hand, we can minimise or ‘play-down’ the positive events that occur.

For example, if you make a mistake when you’re giving a presentation at work but you manage to complete the presentation and get good feedback, this unhelpful belief might naturally occur. You might start exaggerating the impact of your mistake by thinking that your presentation was terrible. And, you might minimise any positives such as the good feedback you obtained and instead focus on the negatives.

This can create anxiety within us because we may shy away from presentations as we become afraid of making a mistake again and then think we are going to be perceived as incompetent. Research has found that magnification and minimisation are associated with anxiety, depression and emotional instability, which shows the profound effect this belief can have on us.

Fortunately, with a bit of conscious thinking, we can change this unhelpful belief.

How to change:

1. Write down the evidence — drawing attention to the times when you magnify and minimise will help tackle this belief. Write down these examples as if you’re physically removing it from your mind.
2. List the positives in each example — because we are tuned to focus on the negatives, we need to actively draw ourselves away from this to stop magnification of negative events and to stop our anxious response. Do this by writing down positives that occurred.
3. Generate an alternative, rational view — the final part is to look back at the scenario and develop a more realistic view. For the presentation example, you might say, “Yes I did make a mistake but I still completed the whole presentation and received great feedback. Overall it went well!”

We can reduce the magnification of negative events and therefore our anxiety quite simply by dissecting our thoughts, focussing on the positives and then developing a realistic view of the situation. This technique also helps you magnify positive events too, to give you more confidence.

2. Drawing Conclusions Without Any Evidence

Probably one of the most common things that we all do. We make up a conclusion without there being any actual proof for it. We assume too much. You might think “people will think I’m ugly if I wear this jumper,” even if nobody has ever said it to you.

A study published in the British Journal of Medical Psychology found arbitrary inferences, which refers to jumping to conclusions without any evidence, was one of the most common unhelpful beliefs found in individuals with depression and anxiety.

With the example above, of course, it will create anxiety. You’ll feel anxious about wearing that jumper out and it can have carry-over effects, which means that you could feel this way about other items of clothing or how you behave in front of others. Susan Krauss Whitbourne, a Professor Emerita of Psychological and Brain Sciences says by jumping to conclusions, you “automatically conclude that the situation will come out badly for you.” And, thinking of a bad situation, naturally raises anxiety. It’s clear to see that this unhelpful belief that our mind plays on us has a significant impact on how we feel.

“Making assumptions simply means believing things are a certain way with little or no evidence that shows you are correct, and you can see at once how this can lead to terrible trouble.” — Lemony Snicket

How to change:

One of the best forms of medicine for changing this unhelpful belief is challenging it, which we can do in the form of questions. Organisational Psychologist, Matthew Buckley says, “Ask yourself, how do I know this? What proof do I have?”

Also, Psychiatrist Dr Neel Burton recommends, “Why do I say that? Why would that be the case? Can I think of anything that goes against this statement?”

By asking these key questions, you’re demanding proof for this belief, rather than letting it occur. More often than not, once we take a step back and question ourself, we realise that there is no proof for the statement we’ve just made. And, when we draw ourself to the fact that we have just made an irrational conclusion, our anxious response can slowly diminish.

3. Personalisation

Have you ever had a situation where something didn't go quite right or went completely wrong and you blame yourself entirely? This is personalisation. You relate negative external events to yourself, even though there is no basis for you making this connection.

And, it’s no surprise to know that studies have found personalisation to be associated with higher levels of anxiety and depression. It’s a bit like the blame game. Something bad happens and you attribute it all to you when in fact, there are several reasons this negative event happened.

Imagine you’re partner finishes work and is feeling a bit low. It’s so easy to start personalising and think that they’re feeling this way because of something you said or because you haven’t done something you were supposed to do. In reality, they could just be extremely tired from work or someone at work has made them feel upset. You might guess that this can create a great deal of anxiety and stress because you’re taking on this whole responsibility for something. You’re putting the pressure all on you when this might not be the case.

How to change:

1. Label your emotions — Clinical Psychologist, Dr Alice Boyes says “Emotions drive thoughts as much as thoughts drive emotions.” It’s a viscious cycle. Think about what emotions trigger personalisation for you. Do you do it more when you’re angry or sad? “If you can label your emotional reactions accurately, you can then focus on doing some appropriate self-care to deal with that emotion. Once the emotion subsides, so will the personalising,” says Dr Boyes.
2. Use a behavioural experiment — “put yourself in situations in which rejection is likely,” says Dr Boyes. This will help you learn that negative events such as rejection are not personal. “Doing things like making requests when you expect you might be told “no” will help,” says Dr Boyes. These experiments with ourselves are one of the best ways to change our thoughts and behaviours.

4. Overgeneralisation

Another extremely common unhelpful belief our mind automatically generates is drawing a general conclusion about ourselves based on one single incident. We generalise the outcome of one event to other experiences. For example, you might get a low grade on one assignment and immediately start to think you’re worthless.

It could easily be that this low grade is just a one-off or that other factors made it hard for you for this particular assignment. Instead, your mind wants to tell you you’re worthless just because you received one low grade. You can see that this may lead to us feeling more anxious because when similar situations arise in the future, your mind tells you that you’re no good because last time, your grade wasn’t the best.

Research indicates that negative overgeneralisation is linked to anxiety symptoms. Unfortunately, it’s a lot easier for our mind to develop a general self-defeating conclusion, rather than look at the wider picture.

How to change:

1. Think of counter-arguments for your general conclusion — “reflect on times where a single negative experience did not have the same long-lasting outcome,” says Donna White, a licensed professional counsellor. You’re telling your mind that the general conclusion it’s creating is false as in the past this has not happened. This can immediately reduce your anxiety because your bringing positive memories back into your conscious mind, making you feel more happy and relaxed.
2. Create positive thoughts instead — Donna White says, “Instead of stating ‘I wasn’t able to pass the test, I’ll never pass any’, say and believe ‘I didn’t pass that one, but I will work hard and pass the next”. This is a brilliant way to filter out your generalised negative thought out of your mind because you’re replacing it with a more realistic, positive thought instead.

“Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you’ll start having positive results.” — Willie Nelson

5. Absolutistic Thinking

Simply put, this is when your mind puts experiences or opinions into two opposite categories. Beck gives the examples of “flawless or defective, immaculate or filthy, saint or sinner.” There is no in-between. Things are either very good or extremely bad. But, this can have damaging consequences.

For example, one study found that teachers who were classified as ‘absolutists’ found their job less pleasant, saw themselves as not being able to manage emotions and saw themselves as having poorer psychological and physical health than teachers who were identified as ‘non-absolutist’.

As the research suggests, this unhelpful belief can have a real impact on us, holistically. Again, our anxiety levels will naturally rise when our mind creates this type of belief because it becomes easier for us to view ourselves as a failure or worthless. For example, if you’re on a diet and you have a chocolate bar, it’s easy for your mind to start absolutistic thinking and say “I’m a failure.” In reality, it’s just a minor setback.

How to change:

1. Use the word ‘And’ instead of ‘Or’ — instead of thinking something or someone is good OR bad, changing the word to AND is an easy trick to get you out of absolutistic thinking. Licensed marriage and family therapist Ashley Thorn says, “Instead of “I had a great week or a terrible week,” consider, “I had some wonderful things happen this week and some things that were difficult.” It helps to notice the shades of grey and calm our mind.
2. Examine all your options — “when you’re using all-or-nothing thinking, you might be making decisions without all the information,” says Thorn. Try and think of all the options available to you before making an absolutist statement. For example, if you do have a minor blip in your diet when you’re trying to be healthy, it could just be that you’re ready for a cheat meal.

Final Comments

A lot of the time, our mind will develop an unhelpful style of thinking, which can make us feel anxious and dejected. The power our mind has over us is crazy! But, the more we are aware of these unhelpful beliefs, the more likely it is we can tackle them, which will improve the way we feel.

Don’t forget these five common unhelpful beliefs, as if you raise awareness to them, you can counteract the effect they have on you and ultimately improve the way you feel and reduce your anxiety.

Our mind will magnify negative events and minimise positive events.

Our mind will create negative conclusions without any evidence.

Our mind will personalise things.

Our mind will overgeneralise one negative event to other events.

Our mind will engage in absolutistic thinking.

As Norman Vincent Peale said:

“Change your thoughts and you change your world.”