Overgeneralising: Avoiding the Part/Whole Error
Overgeneralising is the error of drawing global conclusions from one or more events. When you find yourself thinking ‘always’, ‘never’, ‘people are …’ or ‘the world’s …’, you may well be overgeneralising. Take a look at Figure 2-6. Here, our stick man sees one sheep in a flock and instantly assumes the whole flock of sheep is black. However, his overgeneralisation is inaccurate because the rest of the flock are white sheep.
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FIGURE 2-6: Overgeneralising.
You might recognise overgeneralising in the following examples:
You feel down. When you get into your car to go to work, it doesn’t start. You think to yourself, ‘Things like this are always happening to me. Nothing ever goes right’, which makes you feel even more gloomy.
You become angry easily. Travelling to see a friend, you’re delayed by a fellow passenger who cannot find the money to pay her train fare. You think, ‘This is typical! Other people are just so stupid’, and you become tense and angry.
You tend to feel guilty easily. You yell at your child for not understanding his homework and then decide that you’re a thoroughly rotten parent.
Situations are rarely so stark or extreme that they merit terms like ‘always’ and ‘never’. Rather than overgeneralising, consider the following:
Get a little perspective. How true is the thought that nothing ever goes right for you? How many other people in the world may be having car trouble at this precise moment?
Suspend judgement. When you judge all people as stupid, including the poor creature waiting in line for the train, you make yourself more outraged and are less able to deal effectively with a relatively minor hiccup.
Be specific. Would you be a totally rotten parent for losing patience with your child? Can you legitimately conclude that one incident of poor parenting cancels out all the good things you do for your little one? Perhaps your impatience is simply an area you need to target for improvement.
Labelling: Giving Up the Rating Game
Labels, and the process of labelling people and events, are everywhere. For example, people who have low self-esteem may label themselves as ‘worthless’, ‘inferior’ or ‘inadequate’ (see Figure 2-7).
If you label other people as ‘no good’ or ‘useless’, you’re likely to become angry with them. Or perhaps you label the world as ‘unsafe’ or ‘totally unfair’? The error here is that you’re globally rating things that are too complex for a definitive label. The following are examples of labelling:
You read a distressing article in the newspaper about a rise in crime in your city. The article activates your belief that you live in a thoroughly dangerous place, which contributes to you feeling anxious about going out.
You receive a poor mark for an essay. You start to feel low and label yourself as a failure.
You become angry when someone cuts in front of you in a traffic queue. You label the other driver as a total loser for his bad driving.
© John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
FIGURE 2-7: Labelling.
Strive to avoid labelling yourself, other people and the world around you. Accept that they’re complex and ever-changing (see Chapter 14 for more on this). Recognise evidence that doesn’t fit your labels, in order to help you weaken your conviction in your global rating. For example,
Allow for varying degrees. Think about it: The world isn’t a dangerous place but rather a place that has many different aspects with varying degrees of safety and risk.
Celebrate complexities. All human beings – you included – are unique, multifaceted and ever-changing. To label yourself as a failure on the strength of one failing is an extreme form of overgeneralising. Likewise, other people are just as complex and unique as you. One bad action doesn’t equal a bad person.
Making Demands: Thinking Flexibly
Albert Ellis, founder of rational emotive behaviour therapy, one of the first cognitive-behavioural therapies, places demands at the very heart of emotional problems. Thoughts and beliefs that contain words like ‘must’, ‘should’, ‘need’, ‘ought’, ‘got to’ and ‘have to’ are often problematic because they’re extreme and rigid (see Figure 2-8).
© John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
FIGURE 2-8: Demands.
The inflexibility of the demands you place on yourself, the world around you and other people often means you don’t adapt to reality as well as you could. Consider these possible examples:
You believe that you must have the approval of your friends and colleagues. This leads you to feel anxious in many social situations and drives you to try to win everyone’s approval – possibly at great personal cost.
You think that because you try very hard to be kind and considerate to others, they really ought to be just as kind and considerate in return. Because your demand is not realistic – sadly, other people are governed by their own priorities – you often feel hurt about your friends (or even strangers) not acting the way you do yourself.
You believe that you absolutely should never let people down. Therefore, you rarely put your own welfare first. At work, you do more than your fair share because you don’t assert yourself, and so you often end up feeling stressed and depressed.
Holding flexible preferences about yourself, other people and the world in general is the healthy alternative to inflexible rules and demands. Rather than making demands on yourself, the world and others, try the following techniques:
Pay attention to language. Replace words like ‘must’, ‘need’ and ‘should’ with ‘prefer’, ‘wish’ and ‘want’.
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