ALL OR NOTHING THINKING: You see things in black -and -white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.
OVERGENERALIZATION: You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.
MENTAL FILTER: You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors the entire beaker of water.
DISQUALIFYING THE POSITIVE: You reject positive experiences by insisting they "don't count" for some reason or other. In this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences.
JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS: You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusions.
MIND READING: You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you, and you don't bother to check this out.
THE FORTUNE TELLER ERROR: You anticipate that things will turn out badly, and you feel convinced that your predictions are an already established fact.
MAGNIFICATION (CATASTROPHIZING) OR MINIMIZATION: You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your goof-up or someone else's achievement), or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow's imperfections). This is also called the "binocular trick".
EMOTIONAL REASONING: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: "I feel it, therefore it must be true."
SHOULD STATEMENTS: You try to motivate your self with shoulds and shouldn'ts, as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could expect to do anything. Musts and oughts are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct should statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment.
LABELING AND MISLABELING: This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself. "I'm a loser." When someone else's behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him. "He's a god damn louse." Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded.
PERSONALIZATION: You see yourself as the cause of some negative event for which you were not primarily responsible.
Change illusion - other people should change.
Control illusion - either I or they are in control.
Fairness illusion - things should be fair.
Ultimate reward illusion - martyr syndrome.
Self-Defeating Or Dysfunctional Attitude Areas: Approval, Love, Achievement, Perfectionism, Entitlement, Omnipotence, Autonomy.
Don't be right -- be smart.
Getting mad at people when they are rude or ignorant usually makes the situation worse.
So instead of getting mad or frustrated, what should we do instead? It's very simple:
Ask them what they mean. Delve a bit deeper:
"Why do you feel that ...? What's wrong with .... ? Please tell me what's wrong with ..."
Agree with them (but use a softer language):
"Yes, there is truth in that. "
"It's okay to do that, but it's okay to do this."