Addressing Your Negative Filter: How Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Can Help

Imagine you’re wearing a pair of blue-tinted sunglasses. Everything that comes into your sight is, well, blue. You could be standing in a vast field of vibrant lavenders, or staring at the sunset on the beach. As long as you have those tinted sunglasses on, everything you see is going to match the color of your sunglasses.

How Do We Develop a Negative Filter?

As human beings, we are constantly observing and processing information from the world as we experience it. While we’re able to accurately make sense of the world under normal circumstances, when we experience adverse life events such as loss, failure, or trauma, we instead engage in what is commonly referred to as cognitive distortion. 

What is a Cognitive Distortion?

A cognitive distortion is the way in which we warp information by focusing on one detail (often taking it out of context) and ignoring other aspects of our experiences. A common one you may have heard of is all-or-nothing thinking, which means that the person thinks only in black-and-white, dichotomous terms. For example, if I got fired from a job, I’m automatically a failure. There may be so many other aspects of my life where I’ve been successful, but when I’m engaging in this type of cognitive distortion, I’m going to ignore and disqualify all the positives and focus on this one particular setback.

Another common example of cognitive distortion is catastrophizing. This is when a person overestimates the possibility of a poor outcome. While we all experience setbacks and disappointments in life, a person who tends to catastrophize may think that a setback, such as a breakup, is going to be the end of the world. 

Why on Earth Do We Do This?

Sometimes, we engage in cognitive distortions to protect ourselves unconsciously by expecting the absolute worst. For example, if you experience multiple rejections, you eventually believe that being optimistic and vulnerable leads to suffering. So, by filtering out the positives and hyper-focusing on the negatives, you arm yourself for a possible rejection in the future. 

While you may be shielding yourself from possible pain, you’re also preventing yourself from truly living. Being able to take risks and experience both joy and pain is what makes us human. 

How Can We Get Rid of our Negative Filters?

There are multiple approaches to successfully taking off our cognitive filters, and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (known as CBT), is an evidence-based approach that specifically helps people learn how to identify and tackle their cognitive distortions. One way to do this is by testing the validity of your thought. One way to do this is through recording your thoughts. Whenever you notice a significant change in your mood, focus on what specific thought or image may have triggered this emotional response. Once you have identified your thoughts and emotions, you can then ask yourself, what is the evidence that this thought is true? What is the evidence that it isn’t true? Could there be an alternate explanation? By challenging your thoughts that may be causing you to feel down, you’re able to mentally take off those tinted sunglasses, and look at all the other colors that may have been present all around you. 

What do you do if the thought that you have is true? For example, you may notice yourself feeling depressed and anxious because your manager at work has been so hostile to you since the day you started. Every time you think to yourself that “my manager hates my guts,” you notice your heart drop and you lose your motivation to go into work. You test the validity of your thought, and determine that your manager does in fact dislike you. If a thought that you have is valid, then you can measure the utility of focusing on that thought. You’ve established that focusing on the thought that your manager hates you makes you feel depressed, so it’s not a thought that serves you well. This requires us to consider how to cope with adversity, and you may start to envision alternate ways of thinking…such as accepting that you’re not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. Moving towards acceptance can free you of the emotional burden that can be attached to a thought.

We’re usually not taught to pause and focus on our thoughts and emotions, so it’s only natural that the process of analyzing them may feel foreign to you in the beginning. However, evidence shows that the more you actively engage in this, the more you will be able to automatically notice changes in your mood, spot a thought that doesn’t serve you well, and find a more adaptive way to deal with the thought. The goal of CBT is to strengthen your cognitive and emotional flexibility so that your emotions are no longer dictated by your unhelpful thoughts. The more you practice identifying and challenging your negative thoughts, the more color and joy you allow into your experiences. 

This blog only scratches the surface of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Repose has many therapists trained in CBT who can help you uncover powerful ways in which we can move beyond our automatic thoughts. Check out our directory here if you are interested in getting support. Reach out to learn more about anxiety therapy.