Introduction to Thinking Traps
Thinking Traps are common and unhelpful patterns of thinking that everyone falls into from time to time. If we fall into these thinking traps too often, they can cause us emotional distress, anxiety, or low mood. It is important to identify our thinking traps so that we can have an opportunity to tackle them.
As part of Dyl and Friends’ five episode Teach Me Pls podcast series, Tackle Your Feelings ambassador and host Dylan Buckley was joined by program psychologist Dr Emma Richardson to work through strategies to address the Thinking Trap of Jumping to Conclusions.
What is ‘Jumping to Conclusions’?
There are two types of Jumping to Conclusions: fortune telling and mind reading.
Fortune telling involves making predictions about future events, often predicting that these events will have negative or unfavourable outcomes.
When we engage in mind reading, we jump to conclusions by assuming that we know what someone else is thinking.
Signs of Jumping to Conclusions
Jumping to Conclusions often happens quickly and subtly, and is often similar to catastrophising in that it involves us assuming that something bad has or will happen. However, in catastrophising this is typically assuming the worst-case scenario, whereas in fortune telling our predictions can be a bit more moderate. Therefore, fortune telling is where we predict that something might not go well which leads to associated feelings of anxiety or uneasiness.
As humans, we often tend to be egocentric, frequently relating events back to ourselves. This can make us really prone to engaging in mind reading because, for example, if a person seems a little off or is a bit snippy with us, we may think, “That must be about me, what have I done?”, which can change how we then interact with that person.
Dr Emma Richardson’s tips for tackling Jumping to Conclusions
1. We need to recognise that we Jumping to Conclusions in the first place. One good way to know when to look at what you’re thinking is if you’re feeling some sort of emotion that feels a bit yuck (e.g., anxiety, sadness).” So if you’re feeling anxious, if you’re feeling sad, if you’re just feeling a bit off I always think, “OK, this is a good time to think about my thinking. What is going on in my mind in response to this situation”?
2. We want to look at how realistic this thought is. We are trying to analyse the likelihood of this thought actually being true. When doing this it can be helpful to look at alternative explanations for what has or might happen, and then out of those alternative explanations choose what is the more realistic explanation for what’s happened. We, as a society, are not the best at sitting with difficult emotions, but it’s actually really important that we allow ourselves to do that and know that these emotions are going to shift, they’re going to change and move and I’m going to feel better again.
3. It’ s important to also recognise that if we didn’t have the crappy stuff and the difficult feelings, we wouldn’t get to experience the highs as well. So just practicing and getting more used to sitting with discomfort can be really beneficial.
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