The cognitive distortion I’m covering for today is “Shoulds”! 

Shoulds are things we expect ourselves or others to do. Like a list of rules 📝 we have about our behavior or the behavior of others. 

When people break our rules (or when we break our own rules) it might make us feel angry, 😡disappointed, hurt, shameful, guilty, resentful, or even disgusted. 

You might believe that you are motivating yourself with shoulds and shouldn’ts, but you’re leaving yourself with a big emotional consequence of guilt and shame.

A toxic “should” I hear all the time is “I should diet”, “I ate Taco Bell today so I should go for a run”, “I shouldn’t eat that”, “I should lose weight”. I’m totally guilty of this too. These ideas are symptoms of DIET CULTURE- a huge land mine of shoulds that prescribes expectations, rules, and behaviors for create perfect bodies (but not perfect minds, I might add). Diet Culture is a symptom of PATRIARCHY- and we all know how we feel about that, right? 😉

What “shoulds” do you tell yourself!?