"Between every environmental trigger and every emotion, there's a middleperson: your thoughts. Your interpretation of what happened, what it means, and what's going to happen next. These distortions are thinking traps. I call them emotional amplifiers: the thought patterns that take reasonable concern and crank it up to paralyzing dread. The good news? Once you learn to spot them, you can question them, and your emotions naturally recalibrate."
"Your emotions don't come from events; they come from your thoughts about events, which are often distorted. Seven predictable "emotional amplifiers" turn manageable concern into overwhelming anxiety. Replacing distorted thoughts with accurate ones naturally recalibrates your emotions. All-or-nothing thinking. You see situations in black and white with no middle ground. "If I don't get everything I want, this is a complete failure." This makes partial success impossible and sets you up to feel defeated even when you've made real progress."
Emotions arise from interpretations of events rather than events themselves. Thoughts act as middlepeople, shaping emotional responses by assigning meaning and predicting outcomes. Distorted thought patterns, labeled emotional amplifiers, exaggerate or generalize situations and produce disproportionate anxiety. Seven common amplifiers include all-or-nothing thinking, overgeneralization, magnification (catastrophizing), and jumping to conclusions, each converting manageable concern into overwhelming dread. Identifying these thinking traps enables targeted questioning and replacement with accurate perceptions. Correcting inaccurate thoughts reduces emotional intensity naturally, turns catastrophic expectations into realistic appraisals, and restores balanced reactions to everyday challenges.
Read at Psychology Today
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