Before we begin the discussion of overgeneralizing, I wanted to say:

A Word of Thanks:

I don’t know about you, but I sure have learned a lot from this thinking error series.  Not only have I learned a lot from writing about the errors, but I have learned so much from you, my readers and commenters as you have helped to shed a different light on some of the errors.

As I was writing the last post, the more I wrote the more I realized that I engaged in the polarized thinking more than I thought I did.  Coming up with examples was really helpful to me.  And your comments caused me to think even further.

Thanks to Lance and Evelyn for their excellent discussion of filtering in their driving, to Tom about polarized thinking and decision making (that was an excellent point), to Jarrod for reminding us that good and bad are labels that hinder us from seeing things as they are (another excellent point), and to Cath for giving us the example of how the commenters on a post filtered out all the positive points on that post to point out the negative.  A special thanks also goes out to all the other commenters in their encouraging words for this series and to all my readers who have written to me personally about the impact of my writing in their lives, and to those who choose to simply learn and apply these principles to their lives.  I owe so much to each and every one of you.  It is you, my readers, that give me inspiration to continue writing.  Thank you all so much!

If you haven’t realized by now, often one thinking error is very closely connected to another one or leads to another one. You will likely notice that in your own thinking and in the thinking of others as you become a master of spotting the errors and a master of accurate thinking.

So let’s continue with some more thinking errors:

5.  Overgeneralization:  viewing events in terms of always or never.

Overgeneralization can either be directed toward yourself or someone else.  You conclude that because something happened once it has or will always happen.  Or because something didn’t happen once it has never happened and never will happen. In extreme overgeneralization, you conclude that because one bad thing happened to you that only bad things will ever happen to you.

Examples:

* One example used in the last post is also an example of overgeneralization:  “I’ve never succeeded at anything.” As we pointed out last week this is simply not true.  To prevent repeating myself click here to read that explanation there.  This is also a good example of how thinking errors can be connected to each other.

* “You never help with the kids. ”

* “You’re always watching TV.”

* “You never help clean around here.”

* “I never can do anything right.” or “Can’t you ever do anything right?”

In his book, Feeling Good, Dr. David Burns says this about overgeneralization:

“The pain of rejection is generated almost entirely from overgeneralization. In its absense, a personal affront is temporarily disappointing, but cannot be seriously disturbing.

A shy young man mustered up his courage to ask a girl for a date.  When she politely declined because of a previous engagement, he said to himself.  ‘I’m never going to get a date.  No girl would ever want a date with me.  I’ll be lonely and miserable all my life.’ In his distorted cognitions, he concluded that because she turned him down once, she will always do so, and that since all women have 100 percent identical tastes, he would be endlessly and repeatedly rejected by any eligible woman on the face of the earth.”

Well, I planned on writing about another thinking error, but it looks like the length of this post is already about to the limit where I would like to keep it.  I’ll save the other one for next time.

I’ll admit, I have at times participated in the whole rejection thing, and the never succeeded at anything error.  I’ve told my husband he “never” does this or he “always” does that.  It’s funny, nothing good ever came from any of it.

I would like to hear from you:

How has this thinking error effected your life?  How have you seen it effect others’ lives.   If you have changed from overgeneralization to accurate thinking, I would love to hear about your success stories as well.  The floor is open for discussion…..

Is this blog helpful to you?  Stretch yourself further by purchasing from the P4P Bookstore and subscribing to this blog.  Don’t forget to tell a friend about us too.

Photo by: Gutter