Avoid the trap of overgeneralisation

Be mindful not to be rigid, and instead develop a sense of lightness and ease.  (istockphoto)
Be mindful not to be rigid, and instead develop a sense of lightness and ease. (istockphoto)

Summary

Often occurring at the beginning of the year, this pattern of thinking can have an impact on mood, anxiety and self-esteem. Avoid it by substituting such thoughts with a rational, more evidence-based approach.

Early into 2025, a 27-year-old female client tells me during a session, “This year has begun on a bad note, my partner and I got into a big fight on 1 January. I got an injury during a workout and one of my flights for a weekend trip has been rescheduled. I feel, how the year starts is always so telling of how the year will go by and I already feel scared. I know it’s not the most rational thought, but I can’t seem to knock it out of my head."

Over the years my experience as a therapist is that how we see January and beginning of the year has a huge impact on our wellbeing. Like my client, I hear a lot of people fall for overgeneralisation, which is a cognitive distortion that impacts how we think, feel and behave. It shows up in our language, our narratives of hope and how we perceive situations. Overgeneralisation as an unhealthy thinking pattern often involves drawing broad conclusions and generalisations based on a single or few events. One of the definitions, attributed to Dr Aaron Beck, who is regarded as the father of cognitive behavioural therapy, defines overgeneralisation as “the pattern of drawing a general rule or conclusion on the basis of one or more isolated incidents and applying the concept across the board to related and unrelated situations".

This pattern or a mental shortcut can have an impact on mood, anxiety and self-esteem. When it’s a negative overgeneralisation, it often shows up in the language people use to describe the event, for example, statements like "nothing seems to be going my way", or "everything this year is going to be hard". The words we use can lead to beliefs that make us feel like a victim or that life is unfair to us more than others. This, in turn, can lead to a downward spiral, making it hard to notice what is going right and turning out well.

Also read: Make room for joy in life

When it shows up in the form of positive overgeneralisations, we may be heading for a slippery slope where our sense of optimism is not realistic or grounded. This can show up as people taking impulsive decisions or not paying attention to all the evidence as they already believe that everything will go their way. So, becoming mindful of this cognitive bias is the first step to take if we find ourselves at the risk of falling for it. My sense is that each one of us, at same stage, has fallen for this bias, so learning to catch ourselves and substitute the thought with a rational, more evidence-based approach is a good step.

We also need to remember that very often, when we examine the year in December, several events which seemed to bother or irritate us no longer do so because much life happens between January and December. This was reinforced at a workshop that I attended recently on mindfully reflecting about the year that was coming to an end. As I was going over each month, I recognised that many events that I was irritated by and frustrated with in the early part of the year no longer evoked the same response or negative emotions in me. It felt as if their intensity had shifted and I had forgotten some of these events. This insight provided an opportunity to pause and even laugh at how we trick ourselves into misery, sometimes imagined misery, too. I have also felt that while January is a good time for making resolutions, we need to remember that sticking to them requires evaluating and recommitting to them every time we seem to be moving away from it. Therefore, recognise that any new habit requires starting all over again several times before it solidifies in to a pattern that we can stick to.

Over the years, I’m slowly making attempts to enter January with a sense of lightness and ease, becoming mindful when I am holding on to something tightly and falling for the trap of overgeneralisation.

Sonali Gupta is a Mumbai-based psychotherapist. She is the author of the book You Will be Alright: A Guide to Navigating Grief and has a YouTube channel, Mental Health with Sonali.

Also read: Getting back to life after festivities

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