catastrophizing and personalization

Two more cognitive fallacies for your Thursday! 📚

-Catastrophizing- you might inflate the meaning of certain events and create a catastrophe or crisis that doesn’t exist. For example, you’re worried you will fail an exam. ✏️ You jump to the conclusion that failing an exam would be the worst thing to happen, that failing the exam, would mean you would never get the job you want, the life you want, etc. The reality is that many people who have failed an exam before get the jobs they want, succeed in life... myself included. 😅

-Personalization- This is where you believe that everything others do or say is some kind of direct, personal reaction to you. A person engaging in personalization may see themselves as the cause of some external event that they were not responsible for. For example, if a friend gets a ticket for speeding on the way to see you 🚔, you might feel as though your friend getting the ticket was your fault- although it was your friend’s choice to speed.

Anyone experience these two? I can think of lots of examples from my own life- I think I am especially guilty of catastrophizing!!