Class #7 -  Distorted Thinking, and Practicing Compassion

Taking Responsibility, Practicing Compassion

As we continue our exploration of mindfulness, we learn that how we relate to and respond to the stressors of our lives is up to us. While we can’t control the external factors of life we have more influence over how we relate to our thinking, emotions, and reactions than we realized. And this ability to respond with more wisdom and clarity is itself influenced by many choices.

With greater awareness of how we are, we can also be more sympathetic to the plight of those around us. Mindfulness helps to create the stability of mind, awareness, and the internal tolerance for suffering that are needed for compassion to arise.

Compassion can be seen as a feeling or as a process. It’s the process of compassion that interests us here: can we be aware of suffering, feel it empathetically, and be willing to try to help?

Compassion also flows in three directions. We think first of compassion for others, but this week also consider receiving compassion from others and even feeling compassion for yourself. We offer kindness in the wisest way we can to self and others simply because there is suffering.

This week consider the maxim, “all people want happiness and freedom from suffering.” And yet everyone does experience difficulties and pain. Remembering that compassion is the practice of noticing suffering in ourselves or others and being willing to help, please notice this week if you give or receive compassion to and from others, or even offer it to yourself.

Homework

Practices

RAIN Practice

Styles of Distorted Thinking

From the work of Drs. Aaron Beck & David Burns

1. Filtering: You take the negative details and magnify them while filtering out all positive aspects of a situation.
2. Polarized Thinking: Things are right or wrong, good or bad, all or nothing. You have to be perfect or you’re a failure. There is no middle ground.
3. Overgeneralization: You come to a general conclusion based on a single incident or piece of evidence. If something bad happens once, you expect it to happen over and over again.
4. Mind Reading: You know what other people are feeling and why they act the way they do. In particular, you are able to divine how people are feeling toward you.
5. Catastrophizing: You expect disaster. You notice or hear about a problem and start “what ifs”: What if tragedy strikes? What if it happens to you?
6. Personalization: Thinking that everything people do or say is some kind of reaction to you. You also compare yourself to others, trying to determine who’s smarter, better looking, etc.
7. Control Fallacies: If you feel externally controlled, you see yourself as helpless, a victim of fate. The fallacy of internal control has you responsible for the pain and happiness of everyone around you.
8. Fallacy of Fairness: You feel resentful because you think you know what’s fair but other people won’t agree with you.
9. Blaming: You hold other people responsible for your pain, or take the other tack and blame yourself for every problem or reversal.
10. Should: You have a list of ironclad rules about how you and other people should act. People who break the rules anger you and you feel guilty if you violate the rules.
11. Emotional Reasoning: You believe that what you feel must be true automatically. If you feel stupid and boring, then you must be stupid and boring.
12. Fallacy of Change: You expect that other people will change to suit you if you just pressure or cajole them enough. You need to change people because your hopes for happiness seem to depend entirely on them.
13. Being Right: You are continually on trial to prove that your opinions and actions are correct. Being wrong is unthinkable and you will go to any length to demonstrate your rightness.
14. Heaven’s Reward Fallacy: You expect all your sacrifice and self-denial to pay off, as if there were someone keeping score. You feel bitter when the reward doesn’t come.
15. No Do-Overs: You feel that if you don’t get it right the first time you’ve failed. You only get one shot.

Moments of Compassion Calendar