Filtering & Anxiety - Video Transcript

Hey guys, I'm Kristen, the anxiety therapist and today I'm going to be talking about another cognitive distortion. Um, I know I've gone over several of these in previous videos. So if you haven't seen those, um, a cognitive distortion is basically a a thinking trap or a thinking air.

Um, it's a thought process or belief that tends to be negative in nature somehow and can therefore contribute to symptoms of anxiety or depression or feelings of disappointment or other sort of uncomfortable emotions. So it's important to be aware of these cognitive distortions when they occur because a lot of them are just so automatic in nature.

Right? They've, these types of thinking processes have been reinforced over time that they've literally created these pathways in our brain. And so that's where our mind automatically goes. And so we really need to be cognizant of when we're engaging in these thinking errors so that we can kind of stop ourselves and catch ourselves in the moment and counter them with something that's maybe a little bit more logical or rational in terms of a thought process.

So the one I want to talk about today is called filtering. Um, I may have mentioned this in passing in some other videos, but I think it's a really important one. Um, so I wanted to make a video dedicated to that alone. And so when we're filtering it means we are taking all of the negative aspects of a situation and pulling those out and fixating on those and sort of dismissing or disregarding all of the positive aspects, this comes up a lot when we're being evaluated in some way.

So um let's say you got a report card when you were growing up and you had all a's and one b. Chances are that you really focused on that b. And felt some sort of disappointment or or regret about getting that b but didn't really take into account that you had five days. So you know, you're pulling out sort of that that negative piece of information.

Um this happens a lot too with work evaluation. So someone could get a raving review from their boss, but there might be one piece of constructive feedback or an area of improvement, so to speak. And so they're going to ruminate about that and disregard the fact that their boss said all of these other wonderful things about them.

Um and this can happen in other areas of life too, not just when we're being evaluated. You know, I had a client who had recently gotten back from vacation and I asked her how her trip was and she recounted everything that went wrong on the trip as opposed to telling me anything enjoyable that was happening.

And um this was likely due to her anxiety and those cognitive distortions that come with that. But it's really important to take note of when this happens and if you do find yourself fixating on the negative to really try to counter that by identifying something positive about the situation because um really it's rare for a situation to be 100% positive or 100% negative and so there's always going to be something that we can pick out to sort of balance out our perception of a situation and that's where the idea of mindfulness also comes into play, where we might be feeling anxious about going into a particular situation, let's say somebody has social anxiety and so they're feeling anxious about attending a party this weekend.

You know, they are sort of anticipating the whole experience is being negative, but it's important that we take each moment separately and you might have some negative moments, but you also might have some positive moments. And so we don't want to generalize or make anything, so sort of um black and white in opposite in our thinking, we want to take each moment for what it is. And just to remember that not everything is all positive or all negative in life, right?

There's there's usually somewhat of a combination there. So again, um try to catch yourself when you're engaging in filtering and see just take note of what kind of feelings it elicits for you and see if you can kind of counteract that with identifying some of the positive things about an experience.

Um so again, I'm Kristen the anxiety therapist, I have weekly vlog videos that I put out on Fridays, so be sure to follow me on facebook or instagram at cathartic space counseling. Um so you have access to those, or you can subscribe to my youtube channel, um, called the anxiety therapist.

I also post them on their, um, and check out my website. If you want to learn more about me, www. Dot cathartic space counseling dot com. Have a nice holiday weekend and I'll see you guys next week.