Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:06 Welcome to phis Church Mental Health. Today we're gonna be talking about the cognitive distortions of overgeneralization and mental filtering. And I know what you're thinking right now because I suffer from the cognitive distortion of mind rating. You are so excited to talk about these topics. But what I hope you'll see in our time today is that these cognitive distortions can absolutely eat away at the way that we live our lives. So let's jump in to Overgeneralization Overgeneralization. Another name for that is called linking. And it's in the selective focus category of cognitive distortions. And here's what goes on. I failed this exam. I am such a failure. I don't think I'm smart enough to pass this class and I'm probably gonna fail it all. What people do in this cognitive distortion is that they begin to over generalize one instance and put it over all the rest of the instances that are to come in the future.
Speaker 1 00:01:13 It's also called linking, right? Because they begin to make inappropriate, inaccurate links between one event or person to another event or person. And they begin to link all of these together. So in their mind, these things that should be standalone instances actually become a conglomerate of lies and things that are inaccurate. It can be specified to people, it can be specified basically to all the things. So whether it's a moment in a situation, a message about yourself, other people, different demographics, all evangelicals are, and all therapists, they're and oh, all women. They always right over generalization. Linking one thought and one piece of information now informs all of your thoughts on that subject forevermore. And this thought goes over them, right? And distorts all of them in a general direction of that negative thought. So it's a constant negative pattern based on one event or piece of information.
Speaker 1 00:02:18 It assumes an ongoing rule off of an experience for now and ever more. And it honestly is such a disheartening failure to read the room and to see people in situations and even moments for what they are as standalone gifts from God. And here's how it lives. Like it lives like snowballing because it takes one thought and takes all of its friends in its thinking world with it and begins to compile them until it becomes this massive, overwhelming, hurdling down fast the hill towards destruction, thought pattern. And if you can imagine, that increases the mental weight of what it is to carry that thought. It's exhausting. I believe with my whole heart. It's also lazy because instead of empathizing and investigating how things are related, you put an overarching grouping in place so that you're safe from having to do the hard work of understanding, empathizing, entering into someone's story or honestly differentiating even in your own story. It truly is curing too much in your brain at one time. And it can lead to an inflated view of yourself because you are in charge of putting over, whether it's circumstances or people, these general things, it leads to pushing your brain in a negative direction, heightening its experience of emotions and brain chemicals, right? Spreading them out over everything and holding this big massive snowball of the weight that you yourself have created by linking and overgeneralizing.
Speaker 1 00:04:09 It leads to missing out and knowing and honoring so many stories of people and where they're at. It keeps yourself in a bubble of even greater deception because you are the controller and you tie your thoughts up with a boat thinking you're all done from having to continue to know or understand a situation. I believe we see in John chapter four and Luke chapter 19, two instances where Jesus has a crowd who is overgeneralizing and linking events. Let's look at how it is that he steps into this situation. In John chapter four, he has a woman at the well. The crowd is overgeneralizing her, putting the her in, rightfully so because she made these choices and she did these actions. But what they are doing is that they are taking the law and they are shoving it into her story. They are not looking at her, they are not looking at what she could be.
Speaker 1 00:05:08 They are not looking at the opportunity for repentance. And Jesus steps into the law in that instance. And he says, Looks at her. He says, Where's your husband? And as the story continues, he enters into her story and he individuates her. He looks at her story and he does the hard work to understand, to empathize, and to dig into what is going on in her story. Similar in Luke 19, is Jesus encounter, Zacchaeus. And here we have Zacchaeus and there's this whole crowd. And what do they view him as? They view him as the scum of the earth tax collector. Andy's really short, but Jesus steps into that story and he looks at zachias and he's like, I'm gonna come to your house today. I'm gonna see you. I'm gonna do the hard work of knowing you, of allowing your individual story to come to the surface, that that could be what I know and what I respond to, and honestly what I minister to you out of that.
Speaker 1 00:06:10 And so I believe that the gospel opportunity in overgeneralization is that we individuate, we allow this thought, this one thought, we can feel it, we can be disappointed in it. We can we, we can even see it as real, but we do not allow it to speak to all of our other thoughts and drag them down with it. We begin to separate and we unlink breaking the links that are inappropriate, inaccurate, and honestly destructive to the way that we are thinking. We give each moment space. We give each person space to be able to individuate and to speak their story into what it is. And we humble ourselves that we are not over all of these situations linking them together, but that we are able to reframe the situation. So it looks something like this.
Speaker 1 00:07:07 I didn't pass the exam and that's frustrating, embarrassing, and honestly, very disappointing. But I can find a different way forward. I will work harder and I will get help. Because what we see in that reframing example is that I believe that I can create different outcomes in the future. I believe God can intervene and he can work from our mistakes. I believe God can change the direction of a story and that specific stories are never sent in a trajectory to end up in ugliness. I believe I can learn from negative experiences and I can feel one feeling and I can give it even all the feelings that that disappointment, embarrassment, or frustration can deserve. But I can keep it in one place in my story and not allow it to link inappropriately and inaccurately to other things that are to come or in other things that are in other people's lives.
Speaker 1 00:08:08 So that is a cognitive distortion of overgeneralization or linking. And again, our gospel opportunity in that is individuation, that we're able to see one thing for what it is, hold it as we might need to, but move on from there with great expectation. The next cognitive distortion we're gonna be talking about is mental filtering. And this isn't the selective focus group of cognitive distortions. Mental filtering can either be in the category of negative filtering or disqualifying the positive. Let's talk about what that is and what that looks like. Negative category. Let me tell you about a story. When I first opened up the flower shop, our first mother's day, I had two complaints out of about 350 customers, but all I could see and feel was Gloria's negative comments that her son had chosen her blue flowers and she hates blue. And she had just emailed me every day and called me and been so vicious.
Speaker 1 00:09:09 And so I began to forget that I had done 99.8% of work with no complaints and pleasing Gloria actually became the only thing I could see and feel from that experience. And so in the negative, in the midst of a situation in mental filtering, we filter out everything that is positive, we filter out all the good, and we begin to obsess over the remnant of this negative aspect to an event or to a feeling. We don't allow ourself to feel the whole connected situation that is mental filtering negative. The other thing that we can do sometimes is mental filtering with the positive. We disqualify the positive and here's what this looks like. I know they said I did a good job, but I bet they are just saying that to make me feel better. And so we discount anything that was positive and stayed in that situation.
Speaker 1 00:10:01 We filter out the positive and we toss it aside. It's kind of like a game of hot potato. The positive comes to you and you're so fast as you can discount it and get it away so you don't have to feel it. And this is what that lives like. Your processing is skewed. Imagine in your system that no matter what you ate in your digestive system, that your body filtered out everything that was positive and only sought to use the things that were negative. Whatever you ate, it filtered out all the nutrition, the positive calories, and left you with the trans fats, the sugar, preservatives, and God knows all those other negative things your body would suffer because it needs the whole picture that even if we're going to be eating some of those things that aren't good from us, it's still gaining nutrition and energy and the things that it needs from the vitamins and the minerals that are in our food.
Speaker 1 00:10:53 And so it's kind of like the same thing that we do to our brains when we filter out everything that is positive and we don't allow ourselves to feel and enjoy the whole situation. We are constantly giving our brains a diet of the things that are only negative, throwing out the positive. So this leads to a skewed and unbalanced negative weight and processing that when we process experiences, everything that is good, everything that is pleasing, everything that honestly is gift from the Lord gets thrown to the side and we're left holding this negative weight. It doesn't have the balance needed to process something rightfully, sometimes disqualifying the positive. I have seen people try to treat that as a holy response. Oh no, I didn't. Oh, it was just fine. Oh, you're exaggerating, right? And so I think sometimes even this cognitive distortion gets a little mixed up sometimes in our Christian culture that this is a holy response somehow to disqualify the PO positive rather than to receive it.
Speaker 1 00:11:54 And as a side note, and I wanna talk about this, many of these cognitive distortions, you will begin to see they run in families not because they're necessarily genetic, possibly they are or because they're contagious, but I actually think they actually are contagious because they are taught by observation and they are mirrored from one generation to the next. It's also why I think oftentimes we see cognitive distortions are common even among friend groups because they're mirrored in the processing one to another. And this can be very much more challenging because the disor distorted deceptive nature of these cognitive distortions is handed down from one generation to the next. And when you think something is normal, it is much more challenging to unwrap it because it's been generationally handed down from one group to the next. And it seems so normal and true. Ru on the contrary, it is essential that we find people in our lives who do the opposite of our weaknesses and we watch them for how they can model truth in their thinking, how in this case they can worship and enjoy the whole picture, not filter out all the pods, but bask in them people who are gracious and accepting of whatever that whole picture brings.
Speaker 1 00:13:19 Because you see cognitive distortions, when we accept them, when we count them as normal and we just live and I would call the world word wallow in them, they really are a form of self torture because we are submitting to the power of lies we are submitting to live under the power of deception. This is an enslaving process and it is the exact opposite of the principle of the gospel, which is to bring us freedom, security, and joy. It is essentially the missing of the mark and how God created us to process something. So our thoughts were created for a purpose, as we talked about before, and they're created for this created order, which is connected, truth, freedom, forward movement and groundedness. Romans six, one says, What shall we say then? Are we continued? Are we to continue to sin that Grace May abound? By no means, How can we who died to sin still live in it?
Speaker 1 00:14:27 So if you are listening today and you are in the middle of processing, what are these cognitive distortions that have become so much a part of my story? Maybe they've even been there from the beginning, maybe they've even handed down from one generation to the next generation. And people tell me sometimes that they think I have a problem with that, but I don't actually even understand what they're talking about, right? I pray over all of us now that these words in Romans six, one would light a fire underneath us to do the hard work of discovering what is truth and to weigh that so that by no means we will continue in these sinful thought patterns. Because once we begin to grow in this awareness of our distorted thinking patterns, we no longer will turn to sin and destruction. And that breeds so much beauty in our mental health.
Speaker 1 00:15:18 So let's talk about the gospel opportunity and the scripture that really seeks to inform mental filtering. I believe it comes from Isaiah 43 19. We're in this chapter, he's talking to Israel and he is recounting all of the ways that he has led them out of the wilderness and all of the ways that he has shown up to be their God. All of the good things that he has done. And here in verse 19, he says, Behold, I am doing a new thing. Now it's springs forth. Do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert because you see, I believe diagnosing the problem with mental filtering largely comes down to the way that people have been taught to see situations. As much as it is a mental health problem is also a problem with the way that our eyes communicate to our brain and perceive eyes are trained in mental filtering.
Speaker 1 00:16:18 To see the brokenness and hold onto it, to exaggerate and to only feel what this brokenness gives to them. Their perception is trained to wallow in the negativity and to throw it on ourselves over and over again, holding onto something when what really should have been discarded was that negativity. They discard the positive and it is so awkward for them to hold onto anything positive cuz it might speak truth, it might speak to the wall that they've put up. And scripture speaks to this gospel opportunity in retraining our eyes, retraining the way that our eyes speak to our brain. And this is what it starts with. He says, Behold, look and see. Look and see in awe what is going on? Behold, I am doing a new thing, such a work that has never been done before. You better watch for it because it's going to spring up.
Speaker 1 00:17:22 Because in this once was a wilderness, and let's think about the people of Israel and what they experienced. But then let's equate that to how our minds feel. Sometimes even as a consequence of this mental filtering, so many people's minds, they end up feeling like a wilderness. It's chaos, it's unpredictable, it's vast, it's disorienting, it's confusing. And you do not know what is true, what is up, what is down. He's creating a way in the wilderness for this and in this wilderness, when our minds feel like we have left them in a place that has delivered this wilderness to us, this self torture, he's creating a way and in this place of the desert that feels hot and desolate and lonely. The only response that makes sense for feeling like you're in the wilderness in a desert is anxiety, fear, and depression. If we are to use the tools that we are already really good at using.
Speaker 1 00:18:23 But the gospel answer to mental filtering is to behold, is to see something from a new way that we are no longer relying on that filter to help us perceive and process a situation. Because the reason of a filter is that it be was a wall. That wall came from something in your childhood and as erected originally as a guard because it must filter out everything positive and throw it out because maybe you weren't taught that you're worth having positive things said to you. And holding those as part of your identity, it's to protect us from feelings that we don't know how to feel. Often it is to protect some information that might challenge our sense of self and identity or a worldview on things, even if it was a challenge that towards the positive. And it's to keep out hurt because at our core, something is broken in our identity and it would be very hard work for us to take this information and assign, assimilate it into what we have always perceived as truth.
Speaker 1 00:19:22 So behold sees something new, he's making a new way that is gonna connect us through the wilderness. He is making a new river that is going to give us life and refreshment through the desert. That is our mind. Please note, neither of these promises change the circumstance that we find ourselves in, but they remind us that God is with us and that he is doing something in the landscape that is present in our minds and in our hearts, and that he's equipping us to be able to handle this in a different way. Eventually, the more ways that he creates in the wilderness and the more rivers that spring up in this desert landscape, the more feelings are going to be able to be seen as true and we'll be able to hold both the negative and the positive experiences not filtering out. So I believe the gospel opportunity for mental filtering is beholding not to dwell on a single negative, but to focus on all the positives that have happened and add them into the feelings along with the negatives, to see situations as a connected whole in its entirety to value and accept positive aspects equal to the negative things that happen.
Speaker 1 00:20:43 And to rejoice in positive aspects, giving the Lord the spotlight and the glory for what he is doing to embrace the compliments and allow them to sink into the core of our identity. To cultivate an attitude of gratitude. And this is a little bit about what reframing those initial thoughts would look like. I already kind of hint at this, but in my situation with Gloria and her complaint, what my husband was able to help me do is he was able to look me in the face and say, Listen, Gloria is one complaint, 99.89% of your customers were happy. And if that was a test, that would be a great great. He brought my mind out of this obsessive negative focus and gave it a schema to be able to see everything in one whole picture. And instead of disqualifying the positive, when someone gives us a compliment, we're able to look at them and say, Thank you. I accept that a compliment, and I appreciate your kind words to me. So I hope this has helped you to understand a little bit both about the topics of overgeneralization and mental filtering, that you are able to look at these tendencies that you have, that maybe the people in your life have, and to be able to see what is a gospel opportunity. Because a gospel opportunity is that we individuate circumstances and that we behold what the Lord is doing because he is doing a new thing.
Speaker 1 00:22:07 So until next time, press on.
