Transforming Self-Reflection: Overcoming Cognitive Distortions and Nurturing Growth Through Storytelling
By Kavita BalsaraFrom ancient mythology to television public service announcements, stories have used characters to teach social behaviors. When you write a story to educate others, you must evaluate your own perspective on the world and yourself. This is especially apparent in biographies and memoirs where you use your story to not only reflect but to motivate others.
Buoyed by imposter syndrome and a self-preservational instinct to have an overall positive self-image, how you view yourself is incredibly biased and almost constantly in flux. The process of telling your story can highlight unhelpful thoughts that are incongruent with reality and give you the chance to better yourself by working on them.
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Defining Unhelpful Thoughts
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) focused therapists refer to the gap between reality and your perception as cognitive distortions. One central tenant that concerns CBT is the idea that emotions are directly correlated to the meanings we associate with events. Essentially, feelings of anxiety or worthlessness can be directly correlated to some event that your brain interprets as proof of this feeling. It is important to note that the issues that arise from negative feelings are not imaginary; they cause interpretations of bad events that exacerbate unhelpfully critical thoughts and beliefs that make them harder to manage.
It is therefore important to learn how to talk about one's experiences and how to interpret the ups and downs that are fundamental to any career.
Cognitive Distortions to Recognize in Yourself
In order to achieve desired outcomes, it is important to first define the parameters of what you are looking for. Cognitive distortion is an umbrella term that can be applied to thoughts concerning anything from a fear of being a bad friend to the self-justifications used by murderers. How do you catch yourself when the net is cast so widely?
Here are some common cognitive distortions associated with anxiety that might be helpful to keep in mind:
Human beings have a negative bias. Our bias makes it easier to see and remember things that we perceive to be unpleasant. This can be a very helpful survival tool however in the context of work, it can make your failures particularly haunting memories. It is no surprise then that many people fall into the trap of overvaluing their failures while diminishing their successes. Even your worst failures can highlight your strengths in terms of resilience and problem-solving. Only acknowledging failure neglects a large part of the story and a crucial aspect of who you are.
Another problematic frame of thinking can be found in ‘should’ statements. This is the idea that something ‘should’ happen, which can lead to unnecessary self-reproaching. For example, in the face of a failure you might be tempted to say “I should have worked harder, '' ignoring any critical context that affected your outcomes. ‘Should’ statements can lead to all or nothing thinking by accenting those statements with absolute adverbs. Saying something like “I should always be helpful” even when others are not worth helping can unfairly settle the blame of a fallout on your shoulders. There is nothing wrong with having standards for your work and comportment. It is however important to distinguish between high standards and impossible standards. Impossible standards will erode your self-image as you consistently fail to meet targets.
Focusing the Reflection
While ideally, these thoughts would be avoidable, the solution is not to shame yourself for having them. You can find both short-term and long-term practices that help you handle these distortions.
Immediately before attempting something difficult and anxiety-provoking, these kinds of cognitive distortions can become more prevalent. In these cases, it can be helpful to take notes from professional athletes. The current research has found that athletes perform significantly better on their events after having spoken to themselves positively. Generally, self-talk improves an athlete’s attention. You can also improve the efficacy of this effect by matching the kind of activity to the type of self-talk. Studies by psychologists Theodarakis and Hardy found that tasks that required attention to detail and precise timing benefited more from instructional self-talk while endurance tasks were more successful with motivational self-talk. A mindful attempt to encourage yourself can also leave less room for cognitive distortions allowing more space for a positive interpretation of the events that follow.
We are often much more cruel to ourselves than we ever are to other people. It can be easier to forgive other people’s faults and small mistakes while magnifying your own. Some psychologists suggest that seeing yourself as you see any other person can be a part of setting healthier and more realistic standards for yourself. One way of doing this is by congratulating yourself in the third person. By using your own name, you trick your mind into treating yourself the way you would treat a friend and this often results in a more satisfying feeling of accomplishment. You can then celebrate success without feeling as though you have to be humble in your own mind or that you have attached caveats to it.
Lastly, in both positive and negative situations, it can be helpful to practice gratitude. This can feel a bit silly. Why would anyone be grateful for a bad situation? Though this can be more harmful than helpful in extreme cases, it can help you not catastrophize and see the situation in a realistic light. It also can leave you better poised to find appropriate solutions. Anxiety and sadness can be paralyzing and evaluating the situation in a more positive light can draw your mind to possible avenues to success.
Although a bit short, this excerpt attempts to help the listener visualize the story's setting by using details to create a familiar scene of a sunset.
Reframing Thoughts
Larger-scale techniques are a bit more difficult to implement as they require a change in mindset. One common mistake that people can make is overvaluing their own thoughts. The repetition of certain thoughts can give them a validity that they may not necessarily deserve. To get an accurate picture of yourself it is important to not only define which thoughts may be cognitive distortions but also to evaluate their importance and accuracy. Improving this evaluation not only helps your self-image but has been proven to improve performance at work.
Overall, the goal is to take the power away from phrases that are unconstructively self-critical. Unfortunately for Descartes, in this case just because you think, does not mean you are, so getting to a place where you can let go of thoughts is important.
Certain words can surface in your thoughts repetitively and can define your self-image without being true to who you are. With specific words like this it can be helpful to utilize a technique called the ‘Milk Exercise’. This is a tactic wherein you think of all the words you associate with the word milk. Any quality that is associated with the word milk in your mind works regardless of whether it is positively or negatively coded. Once you have exhausted the words ‘milk’ calls to mind, say the word aloud for 45 seconds. After having done this many people find that milk is less a word to them and more a string of connected phonetic sounds. This tactic can also be applied to repeated critical self-referential thoughts.
Here’s how to do it:
Think of a negative quality that recurs in your thoughts (e.g lazy, fraud, ugly, stupid)
Say aloud all associations this word brings to mind - any referential quality
Repeat the word aloud for 45 seconds straight
The idea behind this strategy is that you start to hear the word in a different context from usual and in doing so take away its power. It can help you to hear the word as it is without the emotional discomfort that it can bring about.
While this can help with emotional discomfort associated with negative thoughts, it is less effective in reducing your belief that this negative quality is yours. For that, it may be helpful to use a different approach. This would involve putting your thoughts on trial.
If you have the thought: ‘I am lazy’, it is important to evaluate the validity of that statement to determine your working style and how you choose to motivate yourself. Taking the pain away from the word “lazy” will sadly not help you evaluate the statement’s validity. Just like in a court of law, try to assume that you are innocent until proven guilty. Put an equal amount of effort into disproving yourself as you do into proving your thoughts right. It is also important to be open to the idea that while there may be a grain of truth to the statement, there is usually a way to helpfully rephrase it. ‘I am lazy’ could mean ‘I find that time spent with loved ones or on hobbies is more rewarding than time spent at work’. This reframing gives you a way to reward productivity that feels meaningful to you and motivates more productivity. It also helps you to evaluate whether future plans and opportunities fit with who you are as a person.
How Can Stories Help?
The techniques mentioned in this article and many mindfulness techniques can help by enhancing cognitive flexibility which has many positive spillover effects. One study found that these techniques improved subjects' performance on vigilance tasks. A total of 65% of employees in the study found themselves earning figures above sales and earning targets, which was a 63% improvement from before the interventions.
Stories help by being the stage before any of these tactics are employed. This can be the first setting where problematic tendencies come up. Seeing and hearing your words outside of your head can give them a level of clarity. It can also be helpful to share these thoughts with someone else. An outsider can offer a more measured approach that you can mimic in subsequent similar situations.
Understanding where you stand is crucial to writing the next chapter in a way that honors who you are.
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