Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:07 Welcome to Village Church Mental Health. Today we're gonna be continuing again our conversation on cognitive distortions. And by this time you might be thinking how, How long are we gonna talk about cognitive distortions? Well buckle up. We're about halfway through because there's about 10 major ones that we are trying to address. Sometimes people believe there's up to 13 to 22. But today we're just really trying to summarize and get to the bottom of what are these primary 10 that seem to affect our own stories and the stories of the people most common around us. So today we're gonna be talking about personalization or over personalizing. This cognitive distortion also falls in the category of intuition, and this is what it looks like. Let's say a person stubs a toe and they're making a bad face. You walk into the room, Why are you looking at me like that?
Speaker 1 00:01:03 Why are you so frustrated with me? They take things personally and it's often all the time they can be negative things that they are thinking or honestly they can be positive things. Oh, that person, they're looking at me, they're thinking about me. You believe other people's opinions about you are facts that they have formed. You believe your external observation of people are facts. People with this cognitive distortion find a direct and a personal reaction to everything that others do or say, even if it is completely unrelated to them. They often feel and assume that they have been intentionally excluded or specifically targeted. They often assume and hold onto the things other people do and believe in their heart of hearts it is to hurt them. They are the center and what other people do or say is all in reaction to them. And so this is a cognitive distortion that honestly, probably most of you if you have a junior hire living in your house, are thinking, Yep, that's about right.
Speaker 1 00:02:13 Because this is the way the brain works at this mid-adolescence point. It actually begins to be kind of centric around them. They begin to see and perceive what's going on the world as part of them. It's actually a very healthy building block in being able now to launch then and understanding, No, I am part of this story, but I am not the center of this story. And this lives like though for most adults who still struggle with this distortion, they have a very high view of themselves and a consuming view of themselves. It makes 'em very easily distractable from what is truly happening in a situation. It puts 'em on edge as they anticipate who is thinking of what about them next or who is against them next or who now is excluding them. By and large, this cognitive distortion has a very hard time perceiving reality and is often inaccurate in the way they see things.
Speaker 1 00:03:13 You'll see that also has a lot in common with that jumping to conclusions, mind reading aspect of things. But what this cognitive distortion of personalization leads to is that it leads to greater oftentimes encompassing paranoia and insecurity. Those are the two greatest other further mental health conditions that I continue to see this lead to along with anxiety and depression. But it cheats people from ministering to others because they're thinking so much about themselves. Even if it's through the filter that people are thinking negatively about them, they are still the center of their thoughts. So instead of caring for the person who just stubbed their toe and being in tune with what is going on in that person's story, their assumption and personalization cheats them on the act action, right? Of caring for that person. It leads to creating narratives that are incorrect and assumptive and living in those narratives. That internal dialogue of a narrative of what someone is thinking about you when you haven't checked in with them is so destructive for our souls. And like I said before, in stubborn, our toe, it leads to missing the other people that we're in relationship with and what they need and empathizing with them.
Speaker 1 00:04:32 I believe this scripture has so much to say when it comes to this cognitive distortion. But I wanted to for today, for us at camp in Romans 12, three, and it says this, for by the grace given me, I say to every one of you, Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. So when we look at the gospel opportunity for personalization or over personalizing things, I believe that the gospel opportunity is twofold. It is both in humility, choosing to think less of yourself and in sober judgment as this scripture says, when we can re-look at the evidence to support this feeling, we can check in with people and ask them what they're actually feeling before we come to a conclusion that we are the center of their thoughts, that we are being excluded, that people are against us.
Speaker 1 00:05:34 And when we don't know we can give grace. Because when it still seems real, we can choose grace. It leads to freedom both in our internal dialogue and in our relationships. And that we can cast aside that our intentions, that we, our suspicions, the things that continue to drive these wedges and hurt and destruction in our soul and in our relationships, we cast them aside cuz they do not lead to freedom. We can see that we are not responsible for others' external events or behaviors. What we see in them, they are not putting on us and we can live in grace. We don't reframe to think positively. We actually take ourselves out of the equation much like the catastrophizing opportunity for the gospel in that fact that it is not actually hope and continue anything about the future, but it is actually grounding and being present.
Speaker 1 00:06:30 This is not that we try to think, Oh they must be thinking positive things about me. I'm sure they just like my nice shirt. No, we actually take ourselves out of the equation. We humble ourselves and we think less of ourselves. And when we do that, we do it with sober judgment, taking ourselves out and actually turning our attention to care for them. So the reframe in the situation would look something like, Oh my goodness, what's that look on your face from? Are you okay? And we attend to the other person instead of intending to earn tar, our internal dialogue. I shared with you before how much I love the words of Amy Carmichael in her poetry. And she has another poem in her book if that kind of relates to this so much. This poem oftentimes sticks in my mind and goes through again and again when it comes to these situations.
Speaker 1 00:07:21 And she says, If the praise of others elates me or their blame depresses me. If I cannot rest under misunderstanding without defending myself, if I love to be loved more than to love to serve more than to serve, then I know nothing of calvary love and I believe so much of the gospel opportunity to this cognitive distortion is just right there. I don't have to defend myself, I don't even need to think about myself cuz I need to be focusing on loving more and serving more. And I believe that is that gospel opportunity of humility and sober judgment. So let's look next at the cognitive distortion of demands. And so I will tell you that I've kind of combined a couple of these to be able to talk about double standards and what we often refer to as shoulds. And this cognitive distortion falls under the category of extreme thinking.
Speaker 1 00:08:28 And this is what it looks like. I should be going to the gym every day. Come on, I should be able to do this. They should know better than that you hold yourself to and others both. It can be that you have this cognitive distortion where you hold others to a higher standard or that you hold yourself to a higher standard or maybe everyone gets held to a higher standard depending on the double standard and what's going on at that moment. But it creates demands, which is why we call this the cognitive distortion of demands. Cuz you're holding others to a higher standard than yourself. Either way, this double standard is constantly in play. And if it's constantly switching, whether it's yourself or other people, that's actually even harder for the people around you to be able to understand what is a sturdy ground for them to stand on. This double standard is often enforced through the use of the words should, could must, if only, well, you shouldn't have. Why did you?
Speaker 1 00:09:32 The statements are enforced in themselves and others and these statements create rules and they create a lot of pressure imposing a set of expectations that is oftentimes only built from their, in their own mind, from their own childhood, from their own understanding of the world around them, imposing a set of expectations that are not likely mean necessarily, but they're ways of operation that they feel like they can mitigate control and mitigate, hurt and mitigate things in their life. And it lives like this. It oftentimes make you feel like you failed. And oftentimes it makes the people around you feel like they are failing and cannot come up with a solution of how to please you. It creates lots of extreme feelings including shame, resentment, anger, frustration. It often creates disconnection in the relationship. It creates a condemning spirit, right? Because it well, you should have, ah, well you could have right it if only you would've.
Speaker 1 00:10:37 And that breeds resentment in that relational context. But so, so these things happen relationally and like so many of the cognitive distortions we've seen, they also happen in our internal dialogue. And so some people who struggle from this cognitive distortion in their personality and the makeup of the way they work might not ever say these things out loud. They might actually only be turned towards themselves in a perfectionist mindset, yet they are still here breeding all of these things. And so this leads to feelings of guilt, self pity, frustration, and anger building right towards resentment that occurs from the constant disappointment that people are not meeting up to the standard that they are setting the demands that they are expecting. Essentially pressure has to come out somehow and it's often released in ways that are explosive. We miss being able to attend to interpersonal situations because it didn't meet our expectations and fit our scripts.
Speaker 1 00:11:41 It also leads to that guilt and resentment for not doing something correctly can actually keep you from trying and doing something again because it wasn't the way that it's supposed to be. And it freezes you and the people around you from trying again cuz there's no winning. And I believe the scripture has so much to speak to this in James chapter four, there is this precious verse here and he says, What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? I remember so clearly the first time I read that page, I was like, Oh, I dunno tell you this is gonna be a great answer. Here we go. Right? What causes corals and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you, you desire and you do not have. So you murder, you covet and you cannot obtain.
Speaker 1 00:12:39 So you fight and quarrel, but he gives more grace. Therefore it says God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you, draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, use sinners and purify your hearts. You double minded. There's that double standard. Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you. And so I believe with my whole heart that the gospel opportunity here in this demanding cognitive distortion is grace and single mindedness, but he gives more grace and he gives it to the humble. And so we get to start in this scripture right in James four, understanding what are the passions that are at war within me? What are my expectations? What are these shoulds? Where are these coulds? Where are these you musts? Where do these come from? Where did I even get these from in the first place? Right? How did I create this whole system and network and framework of what needed to be done? Why do I put that on myself and other people? And then we need to be able to accept that the framework that we are building is not holy. It is not righteous, and we need to give grace. So we need to accept the grace that he says here he will give and then we need to give it out.
Speaker 1 00:14:13 Part of the solution here I think is beautiful. He says that we have to submit ourselves to God. We have to resist this cognitive distortion. We have to resist the devil because, because this is the force of evil working in our hearts. Our job is to draw near to God and he will draw near to us back. Our job is doing the hard work of repenting, of stopping. Every time we see us going in, of learning and tuning our ears to hear our language of should and could and musts ifs and why and all of those things, we tune our ears to be able to hear those things that are coming out of our mouth and we stop them right when we're seeing them and we say, I'm so sorry, I'm going back to my cognitive distortion of demands. We get feedback from others on what it feels like to be in relationship with us, how they see this coming across, what some of these expectations are that we put on them, and we give ourselves constructive consideration to how we got in this spot in the first place. We begin to reorient ourselves and we humble ourselves and we begin to look at how in the world we become of a single mind, that we are full of grace, that our expectations are the same for us as they are for the others, and that are expectations for ourselves and for others are the expectations that the Lord has for us, not ones that we created and added on top of it in kinda that phsyical nature.
Speaker 1 00:15:43 We return and we say, and we reframe these things to be able to say, I will try my best to go to the gym every day. Here's how I'm gonna do it. We reframe it to be able to say, Okay, I'm gonna keep trying at this and I'm gonna see if someone can help me. And you reframe this to be able to say, I think I know what they understand what they're doing, but I'm gonna give them grace and see how I can be involved in their story to help them live in a way that is single minded.
Speaker 1 00:16:22 So in this opportunity of the cognitive distortions we look looked at today, my prayer for you is that you continue to run these through your thoughts, that you continue to give opportunity for the Holy Spirit to be able to speak into what is going on, to be able to convict you and to be able to take next steps as to what it looks like for you to bring these gospel opportunities into your thinking patterns, that your thinking would be free, that would be grounded in why our thoughts were created. And that would be reflecting the glory and the nature of the Lord in the gospel. So until next time, press on.
