(In my front yard, meditating on a cloud.)
Whatever is true,
whatever is noble,
whatever is right,
whatever is pure,
whatever is lovely,
whatever is admirable
—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy
—think about such things.
Loving God with your mind involves thinking about things that are true. In opposition to truth, here are seventeen types of incoherent thinking.
1. Mind reading: You assume that you know what
people think without having sufficient evidence of their thoughts. "He
thinks I'm a loser."
2. Fortunetelling: You predict the future
negatively: Things will get worse, or there is danger ahead. "I'll fail
that exam," or "I won't get the job."
3. Catastrophizing: You believe that what has
happened or will happen will be so awful and unbearable that you won't be able
to stand it. "It would be terrible if I failed."
4. Labeling: You assign global negative traits to
yourself and others. "I'm undesirable," or "He's a rotten
person."
5. Discounting positives: You claim that the
positive things you or others do are trivial. "That's what wives are
supposed to do-so it doesn't count when she's nice to me," or "Those
successes were easy, so they don't matter."
6. Negative filtering: You focus almost exclusively
on the negatives and seldom notice the positives. "Look at all of the
people who don't like me."
7. Overgeneralizing: You perceive a global pattern
of negatives on the basis of a single incident. "This generally happens to
me. I seem to fail at a lot of things." In logic, thjis is referred to as "hasty generalization."
8. Dichotomous thinking: You view events or people
in all-or-nothing terms. "I get rejected by everyone," or "It
was a complete waste of time."
9. Shoulds: You interpret events in terms of how
things should be, rather than simply focusing on what is. "I should do
well. If I don't, then I'm a failure."
10. Personalizing: You attribute a disproportionate
amount of the blame to yourself for negative events, and you fail to see that
certain events are also caused by others. "The marriage ended because I
failed."
11. Blaming: You focus on the other person as the
source of your negative feelings, and you refuse to take responsibility for
changing yourself. "She's to blame for the way I feel now," or
"My parents caused all my problems."
12. Unfair comparisons: You interpret events in
terms of standards that are unrealistic. For example, you focus primarily on
others who do better than you and find yourself inferior in the comparison.
"She's more successful than I am," or "Others did better than I
did on the test."
13. Regret orientation: You focus on the idea that
you could have done better in the past, rather than on what you can do better
now. "I could have had a better job if I had tried," or "I shouldn't
have said that."
14. What if?: You keep asking a series of questions
about "what if" something happens, and you fail to be satisfied with
any of the answers. "Yeah, but what if I get anxious?" or "What
if I can't catch my breath?"
15. Emotional reasoning: You let your feelings
guide your interpretation of reality. "I feel depressed; therefore, my
marriage is not working out."
16. Inability to disconfirm: You reject any
evidence or arguments that might contradict your negative thoughts. For
example, when you have the thought "I'm unlovable," you reject as
irrelevant any evidence that people like you. Consequently, your thought cannot
be refuted. "That's not the real issue. There are deeper problems. There
are other factors."
17. Judgment focus: You view yourself, others, and
events in terms of evaluations as good-bad or superior-inferior, rather than
simply describing, accepting, or understanding. You are continually measuring
yourself and others according to arbitrary standards, and finding that you and
others fall short. You are focused on the judgments of others as well as your
own judgments of yourself. "I didn't perform well in college," or
"If I take up tennis, I won't do well," or "Look how successful
she is. I'm not successful."
(Adaptyed from Treatment Plans and Interventions forDepression and Anxiety Disorders, by Robert L. Leahy and Stephen J.
Holland.)
J. P. Moreland provides a list of distorted thinking traps in his excellent book Finding Quiet: My Story of Overcoming Anxiety and the Practices That Brought Peace.
They are...
1. All-or-nothing thinking. (If you’re not
perfect or if you get anything wrong, you’re a total failure.)
2.
Overgeneralizing. (“I always do that.”)
3.
Mental filter. (You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it.)
4.
Discounting the positive. (If you did a good job, you tell yourself that anyone
could have done it.)
5.
Jumping to conclusions or mind reading. (You interpret others’ actions, tone of
voice, or body language in a negative way or, like fortune-telling, you assume
and predict that others don’t like you and that things will turn out badly.)
6.
Magnification or catastrophizing. (You exaggerate your weaknesses or the
harmful aspects of events that have happened or may happen, thus minimizing
your strengths or the odds that the event will never happen and, even if it
did, the results won’t be that bad.)
7.
Emotional reasoning. (You actually believe that reality is the way you feel.)
8.
Inappropriate “should” statements. (“I should avoid being around people because
they will see what a loser I am.”)
9.
Self-labeling. (“I made a mistake, so I am a loser.”)
10.
Self-blame. (You blame yourself for events outside your control.)
(pp. 74-75)
For more on loving God with all your mind, see:
William Lane Craig and J. P. Moreland, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview
Dallas Willard, "Jesus the Logician"
