So, like I said, a lot of providers, clients, and other people engage in Fucked-Up Thinking (FUT).  That sure as shit includes me, although I do less of it than I used to.

FUT happens when you have the same thoughts, usually out of habit, that you always have in particular situations.  The thoughts or beliefs, usually assumptions about yourself or the person you are interacting with, just seem to come into your head automatically.  You don't question whether the thought is accurate or not, you don't look at the real evidence for or against it, you just accept it at face value as accurate.

But FUT can really get in the way of your getting what you want out of life, because it screws up your relationships with other people, and holds you back in life.

Whether you are a provider or a client or someone else, I think the first step in stopping FUT from screwing up your life is to recognize it when you see it.  You might still feel at that point that the belief is correct, because you haven't yet done the work of examining the real evidence for and against it, but at least you can tell it is FUT, and that it is not helping you.

Here are some examples of FUT in action, just waiting to screw you up:

Overgeneralizing:  You see a wide-reaching pattern of negatives on the basis of a single incident.  For example: "This always happens to me, I always fuck things up".

Black or white thinking:  You view events or people in all-or-nothing terms.  For example:  "I get rejected by everyone sooner or later" or "It was a waste of time".

Bullied by "shoulds":  You are always seeing things in terms of what "should" be.  For example: "I've got to get him/her off.  If I don't, I'm a failure".

Personalizing:  You assign a disproportionate amount of the blame for bad outcomes to yourself and fail to see that events are often also caused by others too.  For example:  "My marriage ended because I failed".

Blaming:  You focus on the other person as the source of your negative feelings and you refuse to take responsibility for changing yourself.  For example:  "He's to blame for the way I feel now" or "My parents caused all my problems".

Remember, it's the thinking that's fucked-up, not the person doing the thinking.

Here's to getting what you want out of life, and fucking not FUTing.







-- Modified on 5/22/2010 7:25:52 PM

-- Modified on 5/22/2010 7:27:49 PM