“Most things are meaningless until we decide to assign meaning to them. Rather than chasing the ball, allow the ball to come to you and address how you want to engage with the ball if it arrives.”-Deltom
As I was creating the write up for this episode, I couldn’t help but reflect back on my adolescence. That was the first experience I had with thought distortions and it impacted my life from then through my early adulthood. I have always been an even-tempered, mild-mannered person. At times this has definitely evoked uneasiness in my peers.
When I was teenager, it was not uncommon for me to hear the phrase, “you’re too nice” from my peers. There were very few things that would cause me to react. I didn’t know this then, but it was actually a sign of emotional intelligence and a characteristic of inhibition. I guess I had so much going on in my home life (things no one else knew about) that someone else’s behavior toward me was of little concern. What really drove me to react was hearing the constant badgering of others telling me how I should react with sentiments that I was receiving “poorer” treatment than other people because of my ability to let things go.
Specifically, I remember once a friend of mine telling me that a mutual friend of ours was saying that I wasn’t even one of the “good cheerleaders” and the only reason I had made the team was because I was Black (I was the only African-American cheerleader at my school for 2 consecutive years). As if there was some kind of affirmative action for cheerleading tryouts, lol. I knew how ridiculous those statements were. My friend asked me if I were going to say anything to our mutual friend. I simply shrugged my shoulders and said, “you know girls talk shit about each other when one is not around.” I was never a shit talker. At least not in my eyes because I either told you my opinions to your face or I copped up to what I said if you asked me. Needless to say, my friend was astonished at my non-reaction, reaction. You can only guess that there was further talk to convince me to react. “That couldn’t have been me,” “You’re just going to let her say that about you.” The question is, how do you let someone say something about you? Don’t we all have free will to speak our minds as we please?
“I put the mirror up to that person and I reflect their negative feelings that they have about themselves back to them. I say, ‘Oh no, those are your feelings. I don't have those feelings.’”-Deltom
Nowadays there are definitely things that I purposefully ignore. There are definitely times that I interact with a snippy friend or co-worker. I usually reflect their behavior back to them with a subtle laugh or smile, “rough day” or “dang you look mad!” This is my way of empathizing with their experience but making it clear that I am not taking on the responsibility for their reaction to their experience.
“If you want to have cognitive distortions under control, you want to reframe the way you think about things, the way you perceive things after identifying the relationship between your thoughts, feelings, and emotions.”-Deltom
Don’t get me wrong. I am far from perfect and I definitely engage in mind reading distortions. In these moments, I remind myself that although I am pretty intuitive, sometimes I miss the mark. To overcome my distortions I first, give the situation space and time. If that doesn’t remedy the situation then, I tell the person how I feel and ask them about the experience from their perspective. From my experience, people (for the most part), are willing to give clarity to a situation when afforded the opportunity.
Our feelings about past situations are strictly our own and should not fluctuate by the way we perceive other’s behavior or reactions towards us.
Mentioned in the Episode:
What Are Cognitive Distortions and How Can You Change These Thinking Patterns?”
https://www.healthline.com/health/cognitive-distortions#types-of-distortions
A relationship between weak attentional control and cognitive distortions, explained by negative affect” by the National Center for Biotechnology Information NCBI- branch of the United States National Library of Medicine
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6472758/
Encyclopedia of Human Behavior 2 Edition:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/attentional-control