What Evidence Do You Have that You’re Going to Have a Bad Day?

 In order to get over thinking traps, I was taught to use this strategy:

What evidence do you have that supports your thoughts? And, what evidence do you have that goes against your thoughts?

Example: I’m going to have a really bad day at work

Evidence for this thought:

• My hospital has been short-staffed recently so I’m not going to have the help that I need
• I might have to work with a doctor who is not cooperative
• There’s always something that I don’t know how to do

Evidence against this thought

• Even if I am short-staffed, I have other nurses who can help me out
• My work days are usually not as bad as I imagine it to be
• Nothing terrible has happened in the past

When I look at the evidence for an evidence against my thoughts, my evidence against the thoughts are more factual. The evidence that support my thoughts are more assumptions. So… should I actually be this anxious where my sleep in disrupted?

Photo by Anthony Tran on Unsplash

Another type of thinking trap that I often do besides catastrophizing is mind reading.

Mind reading is when I think I know what others are thinking and it’s usually leads to thinking that others think the worst of me.

I was trapped in mind reading when I had a playdate with my 8 month old with my friend who also has an 8 month old. My baby was fussy/crying the whole time (2 hours). I ended up crying at the end of the hangout because I was so overwhelmed and embarrassed that my baby couldn’t get it together!

Example: My friend and her husband probably thinks my baby is a really fussy baby and I’m a bad parent.

Evidence for this thought:

• My baby was crying so much
• I was so overwhelmed that I also cried and couldn’t seem to calm my baby down

Evidence against this thought

• My friend and her husband told me that it’s really okay and that we all go through this
• They are also new parents so they probably empathize with me more than judge me
• Baby was not literally crying continuously for all of the 2 hours (he did cry a lot though)
• Baby is not generally a fussy baby and we’ve hung out before where he has been calm

After going through the evidence, I did feel better. When I was mind reading, I felt this deep sense of shame, sadness, frustration, and embarrassment. But after I took the time to go through the evidence, I told my therapist I felt a sense of calm. The sadness still didn’t go away completely, but the emotion was not as intense it was.

The negative feelings that are associated with catastrophizing and mind reading does not go away completely.

However, through evidence finding, I was able to learn to decrease the intensity of the negative emotions.

So, there it is. A strategy to give myself a little relief! But then we started talking a more. My therapist asked me, “Where did embarrassment come from? Why were you so embarrassed?”