Dbsalliance

Hey guys, it’s Aime Lynn with Flipswitch’s Erasing Negative Thoughts segment. On each edition of Erasing Negative Thoughts, we identify one way of "stinkin thinkin" and show how it’s more often than not, either completely untrue or extremely exaggerated. On this edition of Erasing Negative Thoughts, we’ll cover the thinking pattern known as Overgeneralization. This one’s a biggy. It’s not, “I messed up this one time on this project. Oh no. I mess up EVERY on EVERY project.” It’s not, “I’m not going out tonight with my friends.” It’s, “I NEVER go ANYWHERE at all.” You made a bad grade on a test? Is it because you ALWAYS fail no matter what you do? These are just few examples of overgeneralization. Overgeneralization occurs when you take one single event and infer from it a pattern of life that is almost always true, regardless of how much evidence to the contrary there is. You can usually tell when overgeneralization is going on because examples often make use of words like “always” “never” or “every”: