Look Out for Mental Mistakes!

Are you a procrastinator? A perfectionist? Prone to depressed thinking? Just a little “OCD”? Prone to panic, worry, or any other type of anxiety? Your problem may be that you are making some mental mistakes!

Dr. Aldo Pucci, the developer of Rational-Living Therapy, has identified 26 Common Mental Mistakes that most people make.  These mental mistakes are easily identified, and once they are understood, they are easily rectified.  Throughout the next few months I will be describing these Mental Mistakes, giving examples, and showing you what to do about them.

1. All or None Thinking:  All or none thinking is defined as “seeing no middle ground.”  This is often referred to as “Black or White thinking.”  People who think in terms of All or None often have difficulty with:

Procrastination -  “If I can’t get it all done in one sitting, I won’t do any of it.”

Perfectionism - “It’s not worth doing if I can’t do it perfectly.” “It’s not worth turning in if it’s not perfect.” “I’d rather take an F than turn in imperfect work.” “You either do the work completely or you don’t do it at all.”

Trying new things or staying with something they enjoy - “There is no use of me playing soccer if I can’t be on the USA’s World Cup soccer team.”

Marriage Issues - “You either love me or you don’t.” “The way I fold towels is the only way to do it correctly.”

Idealizing others - “He/she is perfect.”

Devaluing others - “He/she is absolutely terrible.”

Depression - “This situation is absolutely hopeless. There is no solution.” “Life is not worth living without _____.”

Dieting or Sobriety - “I indulged one time so I blew it.”


What to do:
1. REFUSE to think this way any longer.

2. Ask yourself if your statement is absolutely true all the time, or if there is some sort of gray area or continuum. Dr. Pucci states that most things in life are on a dimmer switch rather than a light switch.  What he is saying is that there are degrees in most things.

3. Replace your old thought with a new, rational thought.

4. Practice your new rational thought until it becomes your new habit.

For example:

Instead of thinking:	Think this:
“If I can’t get it all done in one sitting, I won’t do any of it.”	“If I can’t get all this done in one sitting, that’s okay. I will have less to do when I return to this project later.”
“It’s not worth doing if I can’t do it perfectly”	“There is value in learning from my mistakes. If I can’t do it perfectly, there is still value in doing it.”
“It’s not worth turning in if it’s not perfect. I’d rather take an F than turn in imperfect work.”	“I am a fallible human being. I can’t expect everything I do to be perfect. I would rather turn in imperfect work and pass this class than have to take this class over again because I failed to turn in an assignment”
“There is no use of me playing soccer if I can’t be on the USA’s World Cup soccer team.”	“Even if I don’t have the skills or talent for the USA national team, I can still learn a lot and enjoy myself by playing in my recreational league. If I enjoy soccer, I can play as long as possible.”
“You either love me or you don’t.”	“Some days your love for me will be stronger than other days.”
“The way I fold towels is the only way to do it correctly.”	“There are several ways to do many chores, and even if it’s not my way, it still gets done.”
“He/she is perfect.”	“He/she is a fallible human being with positive, negative, neutral qualities.”
“He/she is absolutely terrible.”	“He/she is a fallible human being with positive, negative, neutral qualities.”
“This situation is absolutely hopeless. There is no solution.”	“Just because I don’t see a solution doesn’t mean one does not exist.”
“Life is not worth living without _____.”	“My happiness does not depend on ____. I can have happy days and a satisfying life without ___.”
“I indulged one time so I blew it. I quit.”	“I indulged one time. I can learn from this so that I don’t do it again, and I can finish out the rest of today working on my goal of developing new and healthy habits.”

Removing All or None thinking can help to alleviate many problems.  How have you exhibited All or None thinking? What did you do about it?

Is it True That God Will Not Allow Me to Face Something Beyond What I Can Bear?

1 Cor 10:13: No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.

Every now and then a client will come in to my office and tell me that the Bible says that God will not allow them to face a trial that he or she cannot bear. This is absolutely not what the Bible says! The actual verse that they are referring to, 1 Corinthians 10:13, states that God will not allow us to be TEMPTED beyond what we can bear. Those are two different things entirely.

The way many people interpret this verse implies that people do not need God other than for Him to be their personal gatekeeper and judge of what they can bear. In reality, God often has us face insurmountable circumstances in order to draw us into a deeper dependence on Him, to glorify Him, to allow Him to teach us something, to allow us to be able to have a deeper compassion for others, or for myriad other reasons. The point is that He DOES allow us to face circumstances beyond what we can bear alone, but there is no circumstance that is bigger than what He can bear. If we depend on Him and allow Him to work in our lives, we can overcome anything!

If we take a look at Job, we can get pretty clear idea that this is true. Job was a man of God. He routinely made sacrifices to the Lord both for himself and for his own children. God and Satan had a talk, and because Job had such faith, God recommended that Satan take a look at him. Satan attacked. Job lost all his cattle (his means of making money), his camels (his means of transportation and also making money), and all his children (his heart). All that was left was his wife, a few friends, his relationship with God, and his health. Satan attacked again and took his health. Now, if ever there was a hopeless situation, Job faced it! Is this situation beyond what Job could have borne? I believe it was. He was left with nothing, and after a long struggle in his faith, he grew tremendously, learned great lessons from the Lord, and everything he lost was restored two-fold. In this example from the old testament, we see that God really does allow us to face trials that are beyond what we can bear!

This verse, however, is actually speaking of temptation. God is in control, and although He does not tempt us (that would be against His holy and righteous nature), He provides alternative ways out of temptations other than simply caving in to the temptation.

One way to look at temptation is through the lens of Patrick Carnes’ Addiction Cycle. Carnes states that our addictions come from family wounds, which lead us to feel shame. In order to rid ourselves of that feeling of shame, we fantasize about what we could do to remove that shame. We dwell on getting rid of the pain of shame and our minds become preoccupied with the notion that whatever substance we choose will rid us of our shame. The phase in the cycle is ritual. This is where we obtain our substance of choice and get ourselves ready to indulge. We might buy from the same person, go to the same website, set up our room in a certain way, travel to the place where we normally indulge, all to get ready to fully indulge ourselves in our temptation. The next step is acting out, which is using the substance or going through with the behavior. Our shame is usually satisfied, FOR A LITTLE WHILE. Then the final step occurs. It is the step of despair. This stage involves feeling the shame again, knowing that our indulgence didn’t work out the way we wanted it to, and an overall bad feeling. The cycle begins again when we begin fantasizing again about what we can do to get rid of the feeling of despair. Carnes’ Cycle of Addiction looks like this:

Why would I bring up the cycle of addiction when I speak about temptation? Every one of us is addicted to sin, and Satan tempts us with sin all the time. Knowing that we face this cycle every time we are faced with temptation can help us to overcome our temptation.

God can intervene at any point in the cycle of addiction. He can help you to forgive your family wounds and get rid of them. He can remove your shame. He can refocus your mind to keep you from fantasizing that your temptation will solve all your problems. He can intervene and prevent you from obtaining whatever it is that tempts you. He can remove your opportunities to use, indulge, or give in to your temptation. He can move you from despair to hope. He can do all of this, but we have to allow Him to. If we expect God to help us overcome our temptations, it’s time to figure out where we are in the cycle of sin and ask Him to intervene there. Then we can ask Him to intervene and free us from the family wounds and shame that led us to be tempted in the first place!

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