Judy Ho

These are common triggers for your self-sabotaging behaviors.
Overgeneralizing/Catastrophizing
“Shoulds”
Black-and-White Thinking
Mind Reading
Discounting the Positive
Personalization

By trying to protect yourself from possible failure, emotional pain, or disappointment, you may have hindered your development and prevented yourself from becoming the person you truly want to be.

.
What’s the evidence that this thought is true? (List objective facts that support the thought.)
What’s the evidence that this thought is not true or not completely true? (Again, list objective facts.)
Is the thought complete (does it provide a comprehensive and balanced view of the event/situation)? If not, what important elements are missing?
If the thought is partially or sometimes true, are there situations that are exceptions?
Is there any experience from your past that might lead you to a different thought?
Is the thought representative of one of the six self-sabotage triggers (if so, which one or ones)?

The next time you have a negative thought, try talking to yourself as you would if you were speaking to your best friend, who was in the same situation. How would you talk to him or her? How might you try to reassure or comfort them? How would you recommend that they act going forward? E

write a worrying or negative thought that has been upsetting you and rate its believability on a scale of one to ten. Then, below it, write its exact opposite. Once you have these two competing thoughts written down, set your timer for five minutes and, until the timer goes off, list reasons that support your new opposite thought. The idea here is to focus on facts and concrete evidence.

Using Yes, but when creating an alternate thought helps you to recognize the part of the situation that is stressful (“Yes, I ate an extra cupcake”) but also recognizes that you can do something to change it or that you’ve done something helpful worth acknowledging

Avoidance can be rewarding, because it temporarily allows you to escape unhappy or uncomfortable sensations or memories.

Fear may lead you to overestimate potential risks or dangers, which can stop you in your tracks and limit forward momentum toward your goals.

living a life “. . . where you keep compromising your values, is like a small flame that will eventually burst into a fire, and you’ll be the first one to get burned.”