Women Personality and Mental Health

Stress comes when we are having difficulties in dealing with certain problems, such as finding a way to pay the taxes, facing a very difficult test, or receiving bad news related to family members. But sometimes, stress and its excess (i.e. depression) are often the result of habitual negative thoughts.

Aaron Beck, a psychiatrist who developed cognitive therapy in 1960, stated that if we think something often enough, we begin to believe it is true and our feelings match what we are thinking about ourselves. The goal of this therapy is eliminating cognitive distortions, or faulty thought patterns, that send us into depression. Take a look at these cognitive distortions, and see if you recognize yourself in any of these.

1. All-of-nothing thinking
This thinking is characterized by absolute terms like always, never, and forever, based on the lack of accurate description of a situation. For example, you were hoping to be promoted, but your boss promoted other employee with more experience than you, and that made you feel that you are a total failure and would never be promoted for anything.

2. Overgeneralization
When someone is overgeneralizing, he or she takes one sample case and assumes that all similar cases are the same, and there is no acknowledgement of individual’s differences. For example, you were in love with a man, but he dumped you unceremoniously. Therefore, you assume that all men are callous and mean.

3. Labeling and mislabeling
When we label ourselves, we set ourselves up to become whatever that label entails. This can just as easily work to our advantage. For example, you were on a diet, but then you cheated your diet. Instead of going back to your effort, you think “I’m such a big, fat, lazy pig” all the time.

4. Mental filter
People who fall victims into mental filter tend to outline the bad events happened to them, and fail to see the good ones. For example, when you were driving, some drivers cut you off or honked you without reason. You were so angry that you failed to think about one nice driver who waved you to go ahead him.

5. Disqualifying the positive
Some people are good in taking the positive situation and turning it into something negative, which partly comes from low self-esteem. For example, when you got your picture taken and turned out to be a very beautiful picture, you concluded that the photographer must have tampered your picture, and you would never look that good in your whole life.

6. Jumping to conclusions
Too much insecurity can lead us to doubt and, finally, over-preparation for a disappointment that actually never comes. For example, you had waited for your date at the restaurant for about 30 minutes, and you started to think that you must have done something wrong, while in fact your date was merely trapped in the traffic.

7. Emotional reasoning
Many people often assess the situation by seeing how the situation makes them feel, not how it really is, and it creates the illusion of double burden. For example, when you looked around your untidy house, you felt overwhelmed by the prospect of cleaning. In the end, you felt that it was hopeless to even try to clean.