Improving Mental Health - Mental Filter

This post is part of a series about cognitive distortions I've dealt with and how changing them helps improve my mental health. Of the sixteen most common cognitive distortions (read: Cognitive Distortions: When Your Brain Lies to You to see all sixteen), I'll be writing on the handful of distortions that have been most helpful for me to tackle.

One distortion that I've often succumbed to is Mental Filter. In this distortion, positive experiences are discounted and emphasis is placed on the negative. When I fall victim to this distortion, rather than seeing positive aspects of situations, instead I look only at the negative, then base my judgment on negative aspects of the situations. The PositivePsychologyProgram website defines the Mental Filter distortion as:

[focusing] on a single negative and exclud[ing] all the positive. An example of this distortion is one partner in a romantic relationship dwelling on a single negative comment made by the other partner and viewing the relationship as hopelessly lost, while ignoring the years of positive comments and experiences. The mental filter can foster a negative view of everything around you by focusing only on the negative.

This cognitive distortion particularly effects me when thinking about my pasts jobs. In those past jobs, I had periods where I was not doing a great job, mainly due to depression. I didn't get as much done and didn't do as well as I could have. As a result I sometimes see myself as a failure in those jobs.

It is helpful to combat this cognitive distortion by taking a more balanced view of situations. I can look at some of my past jobs and think, I didn't do a great job at all times, but there were certain times and certain aspects of my job that I did well. Instead of looking at a past job as a complete failure, instead I can look at it as a learning experience by which I can build on the things I did well and improve in areas I did not do well.

Combating a Mental Filter can be especially helpful in coping with and preventing negative emotions. Rather than looking at things where the positive is filtered out by the negative, one can gain a more balanced and positive perspective by taking a more nuanced view.

Thanks for reading.