Post-election intervention: Know your cognitive distortions and fight back.
Post-election, self-inflicted psychological torture isn't going to gear progressives up for the work that must be done. It isn't even going to help anyone get through the next 24 hours.
Time to talk back to the voice of discouragement.
Here's the basic list of cognitive distortions published by David Burns. I've included only the first four due to DU guidelines on published materials, but there are six additional ones (jumping to conclusions-- i.e., mind reading and fortune telling -- magnification/minimization, emotional reasoning, labeling/mislabeling, should statements and personalization) worth knowing and combatting.
[url]http://healthypsych.com/psychology-tools-what-are-cognitive-distortions/[/url]
1.) ALL-OR-NOTHING THINKING: You see things in black-and-white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.
2.) OVERGENERALIZATION: You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.
3.) MENTAL FILTER: You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors the entire beaker of water.
4.) DISQUALIFYING THE POSITIVE: You reject positive experiences by insisting they “don’t count” for some reason or other. In this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences.
There are more tools and tips here:
10 Cognitive Distortions that are Stressing You Out and Sapping Your Productivity
[url]http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/10-cognitive-distortions-that-are-stressing-you-out-and-sapping-your-productivity/[/url]
Psychology Tools: Challenging Cognitive Distortions
[url]http://healthypsych.com/psychology-tools-challenging-cognitive-distortions/[/url]
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