We all overthink about certain things that we are either worried or confused about but when overthinking starts to cause distress or interfere with your daily life then it may be time to seek some help.

There are a number of different thinking styles that can negatively impact our thoughts and these are known as cognitive distortions. Cognitive distortions happens automatically and unless we start to notice our thinking styles and challenge them we run the risk of cognitive distortions causing us anxiety, low mood and affecting how we view and interact with others.

Below are some of the cognitive distortions that may be affecting you:

All or nothing thinking (black and white thinking) – Thinking in extremes, something is 100% good or bad.

Catastrophising – Jumping to the worst possible conclusion

Over generalising – Seeing a pattern based upon a single event so assuming it will always happen if it only happened once.

Mental filter – Only paying attention to certain types of evidence

Disqualifying the positive – Ignoring positive information or changing positive information into negative to fit with your thought.

Jumping to conclusions – mind reading or predicting the future

Emotional reasoning – assuming because we feel a certain way then it must be true

Labelling – Giving ourselves labels – Speaking negatively to ourselves based on past experiences, I’m rubbish, I will never be any good etc

Counselling can help you to challenge these negative thoughts and work with you to break the habit of overthinking.