How Our Minds Can Trap Us

“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell or a hell of heaven.”

– John Milton, Paradise Lost

A mind that produces recurring negative thoughts can taint and distort your perspective to the point where you feel all is lost. A relentlessly pessimistic outlook leads a person to repeat unhelpful behaviours and fall into mental traps, even when they’re aware of the damage caused.

How and why does the mind create traps?

The mind creates thinking traps or “automatic negative thoughts” as a way to navigate and find its place in the world. These patterns develop as a protective measure or to help us anticipate danger and prepare for dire outcomes, whether the threat is real or imagined. A mind trap can make us race to predict rejection before a conversation, expect a failure before trying something new, or assume the worst in situations that have yet to unfold.

These mental shortcuts, though designed to protect us, can lead to a life of avoidance, stress and self-sabotage. For people struggling with mental health issues, mind traps can become deeply ingrained, reinforcing self-doubt and self-destructive behaviours.

6 ways cognitive distortions can manifest

Practices in cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) encourage us to view mind traps as “cognitive distortions,” which are patterns of thinking that fuel negative outcomes. Identifying cognitive distortions can soothe episodes of depression and help you regain control of negative thoughts and emotions. Some of the ways cognitive distortions can manifest include:

“Black and white” thinking

A “black and white” cognitive distortion is also called “all or nothing thinking” thinking in psychology. This cognitive distortion makes us whittle down the uncountable range of human experiences into extremes and opposites.

“I am a success/failure,” “My performance was perfect/terrible,” “I am not 100%, therefore I am zero.” These are the typical thought traps black-and-white thinking creates. These thoughts split all outcomes into positive or negative brackets. This way of thinking couldn’t appreciate the development of a small bird in its nest gathering enough strength to take its first flight. Instead, it would label the hatchling as able/unable to fly, and the joy found in observing its growth is lost.

Overgeneralisation

This manifestation of cognitive distortion will take one example experience and apply it as a pattern to all experiences. In a child’s life, this might happen when they get a bad score for one subject and jump to the conclusion that they are a terrible student. For an adult, they might be taking the first steps of recovery, have one bad day where they relapse and conclude that they’ll never be able to break free. Overgeneralisation creates a shroud of negative reinforcement, where one or two experiences falsely represent the outcomes of all future attempts.

Discounting positives

A cognitive distortion in which you “discount the positives” recognises that there may have been some positive aspects in an experience but choose to discard them anyway. The Cognitive Distortions Questionnaire shows how destructive it can be to invalidate personal victories.

As an example, a person who is suffering from an alcohol addiction might set a goal for 30 of sobriety. They manage to avoid alcohol for 29 days before drinking again. In that case, 29 days of sobriety should be considered a victory in itself, rather than intensely blaming oneself for the falter at the last step.

Jumping to conclusions

Many of the anxieties people feel in cognitive distortions are the result of hyperfocusing on future events. Time spent ruminating about events that have yet to happen will almost certainly force us to prepare for the worst. There are two main ways of jumping to conclusions:

• Mind reading: This is assuming you know that someone will react in a particular way, or that they’re thinking things about you that they aren’t.
• Fortune telling: This is predicting events unfolding in a way you foretell, often so that you avoid carrying out a difficult task.

Both jumps can impair actions we truly wish to take to benefit us and can erode self-confidence and agency.

Magnification (catastrophising) and minimising

When you suffer from a cognitive distortion of magnifying and minimising, you exaggerate the severity of a problem and minimise the positive and desirable attributes that lie within you.

Some psychologists refer to this distortion as the “binocular trick.” You raise the lenses to hyperfocus on problems or actions you’ve taken that hurt you, and you lower the lenses and zoom out when you should celebrate an achievement. If you’re depressed, you might be more inclined to spend time alone, without realising the binocular trick continues to trap and torment your mind.

Emotional reasoning

The cognitive distortion of “emotional reasoning” may be one of the simplest manifestations to recognise but the most challenging to counter and separate yourself from. Nobody can sustainably live in a separate state to their emotions. Yet when you are reasoning with your emotions instead of the facts, you may be treading a treacherous path, discrediting reality and believing “this is true simply because it feels true.”

Our feelings are tied inseparably to our intuition and our intuition often keeps us safe and protected. In this sense, emotional reasoning may be a cognitive distortion that every one of us engages in.

How can I break free from traps in my mind?

Here are some tips to make recognising mind traps easier and to help mitigate the pain they can cause:

Understanding and controlling “metacognition”

Many people may not have even considered that their mind sometimes creates traps for them or that they are currently in one. “Metacognition” refers to your ability to notice automatic patterns of thought.

For many people, it starts by being aware of your internal dialogue. Listen to the way you speak to yourself and look for thoughts with extreme or “catastrophising” phrases, like “always” and “never.” The simple act of noticing mind traps in action can create a stepping stone across shifting waters and take you to where you want to be.

Asking and reframing

In the realm of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), techniques are practiced to reframe automatic thoughts with more accurate and balanced thinking. Negative thinking can easily develop into a habit that harms your chances of becoming happy again. Notice a negative thought arising, take a break and reflect on it, then question the thought’s accuracy.

An example of reframing could be:

Original thought: I can’t handle anything.

Reframed thought: I find some situations challenging, but I’ve been through hard times before, and I can learn to manage this one, too.

Slow things down

Between an event that happens to you and your response, there is a space. Imagine a scenario where someone cuts you off in traffic. Your response is to say something negative. Between these two actions, there is a period, the same period your parents told you to focus on and “count to ten” when you were a child. They did this out of love. In his book The Power of Now, author Eckhart Tolle believes there is an inimitable light that can be extended if you slow down your response. Extending the time between the action and your reaction can develop a sense of control over a mind trap.

Getting support with mental health and addiction

Negative thought patterns can be difficult to break. Traps in our minds left unremedied can lead us to dark places where substance use appears as a way out of misery.

If you’re finding it hard to escape negative thought cycles on your own, we’re here to help.

Here at UKAT, we offer professional support through evidence-based therapies and personalised recovery programmes. We specialise in tailored detox therapies that include CBT and DBT courses to give you the tools you need for lifelong sobriety.

Contact us today to regain control and lead a healthier, fulfilling life.