The Ville
May 6, 2020
One of the most important breakthroughs I made in my hopeful (or is that hoped for?) metamorphosis is learning about thinking traps - how to recognize them in my thinking and how to get out of them. It's not easy when you've spent decades slipping into these distorted ways of thinking. But well worth the effort to challenge them.
Every article on thinking traps presents them in a slightly different way - using different words, more or less categories, etc. Here's another take on thinking traps that I have found helpful. The left-hand column presents the "trap"-- the thought, the belief -- and the right-hand column presents a way to challenge that thought/belief.
For myself, I have all but eliminated "should" from my vocabulary. It is a word that I associate with guilt, with being judged to be lacking by others -- "I should have done ...." Shoulda, coulda, woulda no more!
