Negativity and Unwanted Suffering in Human Thinking

All people suffer more or less from the words of others. Most of the time, it remains unpublished. But never does one’s life stop because of these hardships, but the accumulation of these hardships leads to the onset of various mental illnesses including depression. For this reason, there is a proverb – ‘The wisest man is he who sees his own faults.’ In other words, trying to change one’s own faults is an easy solution to many human problems. In the same way, being easily offended or hurt by the words of others is a kind of thought error, so changing the way of thinking can make daily life much happier and easier.  We will discuss about negativity and unwanted suffering in human thinking.

Negative thoughts, which cause suffering or resentment towards others, have certain regulatory functions behind them, which need to be identified first. Today’s article is about the sources of those negative thoughts.

1) Catastrophizing:

To magnify a small event. Showing the big reason behind a little word. For example, if I do not pass this exam, I will not pass the university. If I do not get out of this problem, I will never be able to move forward in life. That means getting a lot of trouble in a small incident or seeing it in an extra negative way. 

2) Polarized Thinking:

This is called Black and White Thinking or All or Nothing Thinking. In this personality, human thought is like two poles. It’s not that – there’s nothing to say in the middle. For example, a student who has ‘passed’ the exam feels inferior; Because he is always getting good results in exams.

3) Fortune-telling:

Thinking negatively about the future in advance. Having a negative perception of the consequences after doing something, without any evidence or basis behind it. For example: if he quits his current job, he will never get another job.

4) Overgeneralized:

Negative or exceptional is considered general. Negative events or exceptions rarely occur in human life, but people keep them in mind. For example, people may get divorced once in a lifetime, but people don’t want to trust anyone else because of this negative incident. In the same way, don’t go outside your comfort zone by focusing on any offensive incident and feel pressure if you fall into that situation in any way.

5) Labeling:

Labeling is a high level of overgeneralization. Just as over-generalization treats all events as negative events, so does labeling. These people negatively label everything. In any case, he feels guilty without seeing the fault of others. For example, when someone leaves his partner, he does not see his partner’s fault and thinks that what is less inside him for which his partner left him. He always looks down on himself and sees his own faults in everything.

6) Mental filter:

 Filtering means to filter out. Mental filtering means not paying attention to the rest by keeping a certain point of view. Here the person takes the negative aspects by omitting the positive aspects of any event, and he lives by focusing on these negative aspects. In any case, they take the small negative part, leaving out the great success, and move on to the goal. 

7) Magnification or minimization:

giving more or less importance to any subject than necessary. In this case, when a person magnifies a negative thing, it is called magnification. Minimizing the positive side of an event is called depreciation. For example, Someone got second place in the test. He is not the first to see it as big and suffering. And how many people are trying to get his place behind him, he is looking down on him.

8) Personalization:

Take everything personally. Especially taking negative events personally. All the negative things get worse and worse. He may be walking down the street. He seems to have everyone looking at him and making ridiculous remarks about him, where no one may be noticing him. Or take all the blame on yourself. For example, if someone is saying something for someone else, he takes it upon himself and begins to suffer in his own mind.

9) Emotional Reasoning:

Emotional decision-making. The emotion that he feels during any event is embedded in him. And none of that makes sense. So he captures the emotion of that moment and relies on it. For example, maybe you are alone now, with no friends, no relatives. But most of the time, your surroundings are full of people. But based on the feeling of feeling bad for that moment, you decided – that no one loves you.

10) Discounting the Positive:

Not seeing the positive things. If the number of positive things is too much, keep it out of consideration. Maybe the business is improving a lot. Everyone is praising his intelligence and skills. But no one is happy about his progress, and he has made bad comments. In the midst of so many good comments, this one bad comment pulled him back. The rest of the positive comments did not give him courage, but that one comment hurt him. This is how he discounts positivity from life.

11) ‘Shud’ statement:

 Maintaining a standard. There is some perfectionism in them. They want to finish all the work perfectly, which is very rare in reality. And then they suffer. Trying to finish everything in an ideal way, and if it doesn’t end in an ideal way, it hurts him. This hardship causes a lot of stress. 

12) Jump to Conclusion:

To conclude by looking at a small part of an event. Maybe he went for a walk with a friend. Suddenly a friend is busy on his phone with some urgent work. Maybe he didn’t look at you for a while or didn’t answer any of your words. From this, you decide that your friend is not important to you. He dislikes or hates you. But maybe he was by your side in the moment of your extreme crisis. Jumping to a conclusion is the final consideration of any event based on a few negative events.

13) Blaming:

That is to blame. Such a person does not want to take any responsibility. Like to blame everything, they can’t accept their own failure. They feel comfortable putting their own failures on the shoulders of others. For example, if he does badly in the exam for his own reasons, he still blames ‘tough questions,’ ‘strict guards’ etc. 

14) Always Being Right:

He always thinks – his thoughts, mentality, decisions, and actions are always right. He can never be wrong. If something goes wrong, it will only be the fault of others. He suffers when he is not perfect because he always thinks he is right and starts blaming others. 

There is more or less suffering in human life. Happiness and sorrow are all human life. But when life is full of hardships, it becomes miserable. This hardship gradually causes stress. The source of this distress before stress is usually thought defects. The above errors are usually in the thoughts of the people. In addition to this, people can think of various thoughts, which can cause them mental stress.