Fallacy of Change - Video Transcript

Hey everyone, I'm Kristen, the anxiety therapist and today I'm going to be talking about another cognitive distortion, which is the fallacy of change if you haven't seen my other videos. A cognitive distortion is basically a thinking error or a thinking trap. Um it's sort of this automatic thought process that leads to feelings of anxiety, disappointment or any other unpleasant emotion and this occurs outside of our conscious awareness.

So what we want to do is to draw attention to these cognitive distortions when they're occurring so that we can just pay more attention and then hopefully take a step back and be able to kind of think about things a little bit differently when we find that we are engaging in this sort of thinking error. So um the fallacy of changes this idea that other people need to change because our emotional state depends on it and we might even sort of pressure other people to change so that it can benefit us in some way.

And this is really um it's a really tricky cognitive distortion because it can easily kind of lead into this victim mentality where we feel like everything is happening to us right? We need everybody else to change in order for us to be okay. And that leaves very little room for us to feel like we have any control over our circumstances or how we feel or our situations.

And um once we're in that victim mentality changes extremely tough. So we want to just kind of take note of when we are engaging in the fallacy of change this, this automatic thought process and really take a step back and kind of look inward into exploring how we can either respond or cope with or adapt to what this other person is doing and why, why it's affecting us so much.

And ultimately we don't have control over other people, other people are not going to change inherently who they are. We can communicate and let's say we're in a relationship and we're having a problem with our partner, we can communicate and talk about how each of us can get our needs met.

But that is a completely different scenario than needing somebody to change who they are as a person or change what they're doing because we ultimately don't have control over that. And if someone else's emotional state or what they're doing, if that is impacting us so profoundly, then we're actually looking at possible codependency there.

Um and that's a that's a topic for another video another day. But in a lot of my clients, I i find that there can be some codependency where their emotions are so closely connected to either their parents or their partners or whomever, and that can be a really, really sticky situation.

So ultimately what I want you to take away from this video is that any time you are kind of saying to yourself, oh if only they would blank, you know, um that is you really wanting somebody else to change so that you can feel better in some way. And what I want you to do is kind of turn that around and ask yourself why is that behavior impacting me in this way or why is it making me feel this way? And what can I do to kind of help?

Um help not be quite as affected by whatever it is that person is doing, doesn't mean that I need to set a boundary with them and um you know, limit my contact with them or say no to something or um kind of accept that they might have their own anxieties that are driving their behavior. You know, they're I know I'm getting a little complex here, but these are all of the things that we really kind of explore in more detail in therapy.

And um so it's good for you to start doing this on your own, but if you feel like you do need more help with this, um you know, please feel free to um to reach out, leave a comment, ask a question. You can visit my website at www dot cathartic space counseling dot com or follow me on social media.

My facebook and instagram handle is at cathartic space counseling and I put out new content each week. So, so hopefully you guys find these videos helpful is just like little little tips or tidbits of information. This is not sort of a substitute for therapy, but I think it can at least get the wheels turning and get you all thinking about how your how your thought processes work. So I hope you have a great weekend.

I will see you next week.