Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:06 Welcome to Village Church Mental Health. Today we're continuing and we're actually gonna wrap up our conversation on the 10 most common cognitive distortions that we find at play in our stories and the stories of the people around us. We're gonna address the final three today, and we're gonna start with the cognitive distortion of spotlighting. So spotlighting can also sometimes be called blaming or denying, and it falls underneath this category of criticism. But let me tell you a little bit about more about what this looks like. I like to call it spotlighting. I think I'm that up, who knows? Because whatever it is is whether you're blaming or you're denying taking ownership, it's almost like you have this spotlight and you are intent on making sure that it stays on everyone else in your story except for you that girl's breathing is so loud that it's making me lose my concentration.
Speaker 1 00:01:07 And when we're spotlighting, this can come in so many different ways, but the common thread is that we see basically the genesis of our problems starts with everyone else outside of us and that we are a victim to their choices, to their actions, to their breathing, and we have no control over what's going on, and we wanna maintain that spotlight on other people externally so that we don't have to do the hard work of changing things internally. And you see this mind trap consists of blaming others for their problems. For our own problems, we're denying our part in a situation and we're treating the spotlight away from ourselves and onto other people. We don't see problematic situations as an involvement of probably both parties, but instead it's the other person's problem. They do not look, we do not look at our own part. We play the victim role and we hold other people responsible for the pain that we find ourselves in Any way that we go about doing this.
Speaker 1 00:02:19 I can tell you the common theme is that our portion of the responsibility in the situation is skewed to be less than, if not completely not there in any GI given conflict or problem. And this is how it lives. Like you see it lives like that. We are easily annoyed, we're easily angered. We have a victim mentality. We're constantly pointing the finger. We're self protective. And this is actually really a coping mechanism for control in the world around us, whether it's to not be seen or to not have to deal with what is actually broken in our own stories.
Speaker 1 00:03:00 We don't know how to deal with these things. So we try to keep them hidden even from ourselves by placing the blame externally. We keep understanding to not be exposed to something that is so big that if we were to see this problem inside of ourselves, we might have to do something about it. And I actually don't know what to do about what I don't know what to do about. So I'm gonna spotlight other people. I'm gonna put the blame external because as long as this is your problem, I'm the victim, which is hard, but it's also easier than taking the time and commitment to figure out my own stuff. Here's what this leads to. Loneliness. Isolation. Because you know what? Everyone else, they're the problem and the ratio of ownership is completely unfounded. I'm not actually willing to listen to anyone else's perspective on what my part might be.
Speaker 1 00:04:05 I know, I know they're wrong. And it creates relational rifts because as hard as it is to be a victim, it's also really hard to be in relationship with someone who does not take feedback and fights against it. And so I believe the scripture that really speaks so much to this cognitive distortion is Proverbs 23 7. And it says, For as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. Because you see on the heels of being a demanding person that we talked about last time, here we are in a different cognitive distortion where not only have I created a framework of you should, and you would and you could, ugh, but now I'm gonna spotlight the behavior back out to you that you are the problem. And so if I think in my heart about myself and I live in this world, the deception, I'm going to become that person.
Speaker 1 00:05:04 But Psalm 1912 says, Who can discern his own errors? Cleanse me from my hidden faults. Jeremiah 17, nine says, The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who? Who can understand it? And so we've talked before about the Jha window and how that can build for us systems of feedback so we can look at other people, other circumstances and relationships in our life and ask for other people to speak to us. What are my shortcomings? What am I spotlighting? What am I not able to own or see in myself? And part of that jahari window, the way that we spun it, is that we know that it is a relationship with the Holy Spirit and by the spirits that he is able to reveal to us and put the spotlight back on us and show us our hidden faults so that we can be cleansed from them to understand that my own heart is also deceptive.
Speaker 1 00:06:04 It is pray for deception and it is desperately sick. And that it takes so much work to understand it. And so I believe that the gospel opportunity for the cognitive distortion of spotlighting is acceptance of that spotlight on our own hearts, even though it might burn for a little bit to be in that intensity and to be able to look and see maybe for the first time all of the things that are going on and all the nooks and crannies inside of us, we must start with the spotlight on ourselves before we allow it to go to another person.
Speaker 1 00:06:38 We can take responsibility for ourselves and for the consequences of our actions of playing the victim. I believe that many people think that this is an overwhelming step to take. But the truth is when I can understand that I play a part in the equation, when that my beliefs and the things I think about things actually affect the consequences, it's not just that activating event directly leading to the consequences. That means I have an opportunity to change what has been going on and this responsibility brings freedom. And so it looks like this. When we reframe this moment, I can be mindful of the sounds around me and some of them are bothersome, but I can choose my reactions to them or to leave the situation if it is too much for me to get my reaction under control. And so I hope that you see that in this gospel perspective, this gospel opportunity of what it is to spotlight other people is in this cognitive distortion that works for us so well in so many ways that we would choose acceptance to cleanse our own hearts and to look on the inside of our hearts for the honest to God truth of what is going on inside and to keep the spotlight there to identify the freedom that can come from having a choice to interact in the process.
Speaker 1 00:08:11 And so our next cognitive distortion that we're gonna look at is gonna be the one of labeling or boxing labeling and boxing falls under the category of criticism. And it's kind of its own little category of cognitive distortions. And I love that word criticism cuz I feel like so many cognitive distortions that is how they play out in life is criticism. And if you've ever lived or been in a relationship with someone who is constantly critical, it's an exhausting process and this is what it looks like. I can't do that. I don't cook. I'm not good in the kitchen after someone loses twice, you began to sign a label to them of, Oh well they're a loser. If someone doesn't show up on time a couple of times, then you begin to label them and assign them the box of unreliable. So you see this cognitive distortion can both be about the way we perceive ourselves and communicate ourselves to other people and the way we perceive other people and communicate at least to ourselves about them, if not also then to other people.
Speaker 1 00:09:18 Because it's so much easier to live in a world where we can go around labeling people and addressing them and assessing them according to these little bits of information that we've seen in their stories. You label yourself and other negative things and you do not allow them to grow out of the label. We also call this boxing because it's almost like once you begin to identify this charact characteristic in someone, you begin to build a box around them and they have to stay put in there. You're like, All right, well that's you. I got you figured out, right? Several times in several of these cognitive distortions, I've kind of mentioned that it gets us to a place where we can kind of tie up a situation with a boat and then we don't have to do anything else with it. You don't get to grow out of your box.
Speaker 1 00:10:01 I don't have to do the hard work of continually understanding your story. I can just step in one time, make a quick judgment, put a little label on that, put a box on it and leave you there. Honestly, leave myself there. You don't know how many times I encounter people and they're like, Oh, I don't clean, I don't cook, I don't drive on highways. I could probably sit here for about the next 15 minutes and say back to you, these over encompassing labeling statements that I hear on a consistent basis from so many people. And as you can probably see in the labels I just shared with you, they oftentimes come out of fear. They do not value a growth mindset and they love to just understand how things worked at one space and place in time and make a whole judgment call for the future.
Speaker 1 00:10:53 We use our weaknesses and oftentimes other people's weaknesses as an area, right? And this lack of skill as we have an inability to learn, an inability to grow, and I can no longer become capable in this area, we basically shortchange our capabilities and we compare ourselves a lot to other people, which is how these labels oftentimes got started in the first place, right? There was a fear. I was comparing myself to other people and then I decided, oh, this will just be much easier if I go ahead and label and box this up. I don't do that.
Speaker 1 00:11:29 If you feel that you are less than you stop trying or growing and you just solve the situation, instead of labeling something as a one time incident, you make a judgment and you measure the whole person by it. And this lives like you're sharp, you're judgmental, you have everything figured out, you're higher them. You have a whole boxed situation for the way that that people are or will become or will ever do. And if you can imagine <laugh>, what it would be like to walk around in a community of people just in these boxes like awkwardly bumping up against each other and encountering each other and trying to figure each other out, that's exactly what this leads to. It leads to your whole little world being people in boxes with labels who are figured out, who are unable to grow, unable to be known as something deeper and more progressive. Unable to see that the Holy Spirit is working in someone's heart, unable to worship him for the work that he is doing. A sanctification in the process of God, making people more like Jesus by the power of the Spirit.
Speaker 1 00:12:41 So this leads to our scripture, which is First Thessalonians 5 21, Test all things and hold fast. What is good because you see our labels and the boxes that we put people in sometimes it's a very natural cognitive distortion that I think all of us could say at one time or another, walking into a new situation, learning new things. We've all been preyed to relying on this cognitive distortion to make this process a little bit easier and less awkward. But we are to test all things and we are to only hold fast. What is good? And so I believe that the gospel opportunity in this cognitive distortion of labeling and boxing is sanctification. And again, I would define that, that sanctification is the process of God making us more like Jesus by and through the power of the Holy Spirit. Because if this is true, if it is true that someone we just gets to be labeled once and boxed in and forgotten and left over there in your story, well then that belittles the entire concept and power of the gospel.
Speaker 1 00:13:56 Where is the evidence that this is true in all situations, right? We label food because it is true in all situations. When I get this box of Oreos, I know what is in this box of Oreos because this is true in all situations. We only label things that are true in all situations. People will never be true in all situations. Nothing when it comes to our humanity is going to be true all the time. We're living and breathing and Lord willing, we are changing and we are growing to be more like Jesus when we are in a personal relationship with him, when the Holy Spirit is filling us, convicting us, and drawing us near each other, the heart of God. So this is what that can look like. We could reframe this to be able to think, All right, well cooking is not something that I've learned how to do yet, but I'm learning and I'm new learning new things all the time, right? That person they have lost twice, right? But look how hard they're trying. They're not a loser. They are capable. That person came late a couple times, but instead of identifying them unreliable, I wanna step inside their story and understand that their children's shoes literally flew away when it was time to leave and get in the car.
Speaker 1 00:15:16 So I feel like when we come to labeling and boxing people, this opportunity of seeing people in a process of seeing them as growing, of having a growth mindset for both ourselves and for other people is one of the most beautiful opportunities that we can take with people. Amy Carmichael has another poem in her book called If, and it goes like this, If I find myself half carelessly taking lapses for granted, Oh, that's what they always do. Oh, of course she talks like that and he acts like that, then I know nothing of Calvary love. And she so beautifully displays our expectation of the power of the gospel in people's lives, that they would be changing, that they would be growing, and that they would be becoming more like Jesus. And so our last cognitive distortion that we're gonna talk about for this series is that of emotional reasoning.
Speaker 1 00:16:15 And this cognitive distortion falls in the category of intuition. And this is a very common cognitive distortion. And I've saved it for last because I think that many of us would be able to see yes, at one time or another, this has played a part in my story and it looks like this. I feel like I'm a bad friend, therefore I must be a bad friend. Or I feel like you are a bad friend, therefore you must be a bad friend. And so this can be internal or it can be external, it can be placed on me or it can be placed on you. And more than likely, when we are in this cognitive distortion, it looks like both of those interchanges, you're making assumptions about other people based upon how you feel. Because emotional reasoning really comes down to the fact that your emotions are fact to you.
Speaker 1 00:17:08 You think your feelings are reality, your emotions reflect the way things truly are. There is no other option. You do not consider that your emotions might possibly be a misrepresentation of the facts. You do not possibly see that your emotions could have a voice that is tainted and affected by sin as something that is brought into your life to destroy you. And yes, emotions are to be listened to, validated and expressed appropriately. But here in this cognitive distortion, we also see that it is equally important that we are to judge and monitor and uphold our emotions with other people's feedback and wisdom and with the wisdom of scripture to be able to see is this true? Because in this cognitive distortion it, they're a little investigations into the facts. They don't really matter cuz this is what it feels like and this is what this cognitive distortion lives like. I know you just don't understand. No, you wouldn't understand.
Speaker 1 00:18:22 And then oftentimes after that, there's a shutdown and there's a disconnection that this person creates because they're fighting for their voice to be right. And for other people to look at what they're feeling and say, Oh, you're so right. When more than often the people in their life are looking at the situation and they are confused because what they are seeing happen does not match the heightened response and digging in of the person and the emotional reasoning position. So when other people are telling you that you are disconnected from the reality of the situation, you dismiss them and you disconnect from them cuz you are going to fight for your emotions and you are going to foremost listen to their voice as truth. So this leads to oftentimes going from one place, one friend, one mentor to the next. I have to find a place, I have to find a friend, I have to find a mentor who is going to actually understand me. This also leads to anxiety, panic attacks, and depression. Because you are taking this information and you're actually creating an entire alternative reality that does not match what is going on. But you are the captain of your own reality. You're the captain of this ship and your emotions and you are riding it out wherever it is taking you. Two, because this has to be true.
Speaker 1 00:19:51 I think I said this before, but oftentimes your emotions are heightened and they do not match the perception and the wisdom that is collectively coming to you from other places. Information is not necessarily feeding your your emotions. There might be a little something that started some of these emotions, but information is no longer your guide. Critical thinking, cognitive, um, processes are no longer your guide for how you are feeling. So therefore, just like you're the captain on this own ship, you are being tossed to and from by the waves of your emotions. Whenever in my opinion, the forces of evil send a wave to destroy you. You feel it. It spins and disorients your whole world. But I believe that the scripture even has so much to say about this that we can talk about it for days, but we're gonna land on one verse and that's Proverbs 1215. The way of fools seem right to them, but the whys listen to advice. And so this is not to say that everyone who has so many emotions is foolish because we know that people are created differently and that emotions in so many people are some of the most beautiful ways of connecting and bringing life and bringing beauty to this world.
Speaker 1 00:21:09 But this becomes foolish right when you are digging in to the deception and holding onto it because it seems right to you when there's this whole group of people over here that are trying to speak to your life and you won't listen. It says, But the ways a fool seems right to them. But the whys listen to advice they have these people who will speak into their stories, speak truth with gentleness and grace and call them out from their emotional reasoning place. They will speak the opportunity to change. They will ex speak the opportunity to be grounded, to not be tossed to and fro that there is truth that is outside of yourself that is needed to be able to be reconciled with the truth that you are feeling inside of yourself. And that this truth comes not from anything that is ebbs and flows, but that this truth comes from the scripture and the person of Jesus Christ and that it is grounded and it is never changing. So I believe that the gospel opportunity is truth and that we listen because when we are loving truth, even if it speaks against the very core of what we believe is going on,
Speaker 1 00:22:27 It always has an opportunity to bring redemption into that situation. And if we choose to listen to the voices of wise counsel that are outside of ourselves, which is really so much of what this cognitive distortion needs, then we're able to reframe this structure to be able to say, I feel like a bad friend and I made a mistake, but that doesn't mean that I am one. And we're able to see that our emotions do not speak truth to us. They do not have the final say. They do not have the facts. They are one-sided and they are trying oftentimes in this cognitive distortive place to bring us to a place that is not going to be redemptive for us or for the people around us. So I hope that you have, um, gained insight and at least understanding as we started this conversation that the best time to look at these cognitive distortions and understand these frameworks is when you're not in this hot and spicy place, but when you're able to take this information in to be able to prepare yourself. So when you get to this moment of slipping into these places, you're able to recognize it quicker and to get out of it faster.
Speaker 1 00:23:39 In our next part of the conversation we are going to pursue, what does it look like now that we've broken apart these 10 different frameworks? What does it look like to pursue freedom from my cognitive distortions? Yes, we've talked so far about the gospel opportunity that is present that is kind of like the opposite in each one of these distortions that creates the distortion and lays it out smooth so that it creates a path and creates a way that it gets us where we want to go. But our next part of the conversation is gonna be how do we actually do the work of reframing even more? So if you found yourself still stuck knowing that it's happening and still stuck to be able to move forward. So I'm excited for you to join us next time. Un until then, my prayer is that you'll press on.
