Anonymous wrote:There are a number of ways that anxiety distorts your thought patterns, with the effect of increasing anxiety and making it harder for you to make decisions, enjoy things you'd normally enjoy, and just generally function. Here are a few:
Catastrophizing is when someone assumes that the worst will happen. Often, it involves believing that you’re in a worse situation than you really are or exaggerating the difficulties you face.
Jumping to conclusions can involve both believing that you know what others are thinking (mind reading) and predicting the future (fortune-telling or predictive thinking).
Overgeneralization means believing that the results of one situation predict the results of all future situations. If your thoughts often involve the words "all," "never," "always," and "every" you might be overgeneralizing.
Mental filtering means only seeing the negative parts of situations, and filtering out positive or neutral information.
Black and white thinking means seeing everything in extremes; there is no room for the middle ground and you see everything as all or none. Whatever the issue, there are no shades of gray when you are thinking this way. People are right or wrong and situations are good or bad.
If you recognize your thinking in any of this, especially around Covid, I would highly recommend talking to a medical professional about anxiety. I would also recommend maybe getting a workbook on CBT for anxiety, which will help you recognize when your thinking is being distorted by your anxiety and learn how to make adjustments so that instead of feeding anxiety, you can evaluate situations and make productive choices. Here is one:
https://www.amazon.com/Cognitive-Behavioral-Workbook-Anxiety-Step/dp/1626250154