Cognitive Therapy Course – – – Site Overview
If we focus on the problem rather than the solution a small problem can be magnified by our thinking.
Have you ever had a small problem but because you kept focusing on it, it seemed like it was really big and very important. Then, hearing some bad news about someone you knew, you were able to put it into perspective.
Sometimes we magnify problems and make them much bigger than they need to be.
We do this by repeatedly putting our attention on them and finding reasons to make them bigger.
We also magnify our problems by catastrophizing.
We use and think the words….
‘what if’….
Someone suffering from anxiety may think,
‘What if I always have anxiety’…
‘What if I can’t cope with my job’…
‘What if I lose my job’…
‘What if I can’t pay my bills’…
‘What if I end up homeless’…
We often make our problems even worse by ‘fortune telling’. We turn our ‘what ifs’ into predictions…
‘I’ll always have anxiety’….
‘I’m going to lose my job’…
‘I’ll end up homeless’….
With ‘fortune telling’, we take a worry and turn it into something that we think will happen.
Magnifying our problems really shows us how our distorted thinking can make us feel much, much worse then we need to feel.
Change – Magnification – click here