How workplace stress affects our thinking
When stressed, our brains produce stress hormones, cortisol, adrenaline and noradrenalin, that trigger a fight-or-flight response. We become hypervigilant to any threats or attacks like an antelope alert to lions rustling in the bushes. Our attention becomes fixated on the source of the threat, which can distort our thinking patterns.
Our thoughts generate our feelings, so if stress distorts how we think, it also distorts how we feel.
There are commonly recognized negative thing patterns, see if you recognize any of the below.
Black and white thinking – you categorize occurrences as either successes or failures. There is no middle ground.
Setting unrealistic expectations – You strive for perfection and anything below it is inadequate. You get upset that things should have turned out differently. Should and must statements are unproductive and harmful. Aim to reduce your use of these words.
Selective thinking – Choosing to focus on negative things that have happened to you may cause you to dismiss the positives. Try to counter a negative thought with two positives.
Discounting the positive – You do not give yourself enough credit for your successes. Maybe someone else helped you with the task or it was a coincidence, so it doesn’t count.
Overgeneralizing – When things have gone wrong in the past, you expect that they will continue to do so. You can generalize that once a rude person, always a rude person, or once a failure, always a failure. Try catch yourself in the trap of thinking that your past will determine your future.
Labelling – When things don’t go as planned, we attribute failures or mistakes to ourselves instead of our actions. We label ourselves as a “loser” or “not good enough”. This is irrational because you are not the same as what you do. Labelling can lead to more stress, anxiety, frustration and low self-esteem.
Making mountains out of molehills – You get caught up in your problems and exaggerate their importance. At the same time, you ignore or diminish the importance of your good qualities.
Catastrophizing – This is extreme exaggeration where you turn your problems into life-and-death issues e.g. thinking your partner had a serious accident because they are running late. This causes unnecessary stress and anxiety. Try to list the more likely alternatives in your head.
Personalizing and blame – When something goes wrong, you blame yourself despite that the situation was not entirely under your control. Some tend to blame others instead for the problems that were under their control, which is equally as bad.
Mistaking feelings for facts – This distortion confuses emotions with reality. You may believe that because you feel hopeless, you are hopeless or that you feel incompetent, so you are incompetent.
Jumping to conclusions – You try to ‘read’ other people’s minds and make assumptions e.g. they did that because they hate me, or try to predict the future e.g. I shouldn’t try because I’ll screw up and embarrass myself. You look for evidence to support these assumptions and ignore evidence that contests them.
When stressed, we are more likely to have these thought distortions that are not rooted in reality, which increase unnecessary emotional distress. We can all be guilty of some irrational thinking from time to time, but identifying that they are in fact irrational is the key to pulling yourself out of a spiral of negative thinking.
High-quality thoughts will produce high-quality emotions and behaviour.
If you recognize these patterns to break your thinking cycle, ask yourself these questions:
What thinking patterns am I using?
What is the optimal behaviour to get to my goal?
To behave that way, what would I need to think?
