I want to introduce you to five
characters
Chloe is recovering from depression she
lost her job about a year ago applied
for another job and got the job and they
wanted to get promoted and didn’t get
promoted and things got pretty bad for
her but she’s recovering
Susan is a student and she is the first
in her family to go to university her
grades are good but a little bit
variable and her critters think she’s
great and huge potential and she’s
thinking of dropping out thinking of
leaving University and abandoning her
objective of becoming a bio chemist
Rachel and Raymond are married moved to
a new city about a year ago Rachel and
Raymond both got new jobs that’s why
they moved to the same city and it
hasn’t gone well they don’t think things
are right and they’re thinking of
leaving bob owns a large trading company
there’s a lot of work with charities and
social enterprises and he is not
sleeping at night because he doesn’t
know whether to get involved in a
takeover or not they’re all true stories
but fictional characters based on real
experiences things I’ve seen over the
years all of these situations individual
mental health running companies around
charities students at university
marriages are also like things in the
media we hear nowadays distress and
challenge and things not going well but
individuals and couples and
organizations dealing with those
challenges improving thriving and
recovering but it’s not easy when we
look at it it looks very different in
those different contexts
my proposition is their understanding
the way in which individuals recover
from depression and from anxiety helps
us understand other forms of unhappiness
and other forms of distress and how to
improve the life situation of other
individuals and of couples and yes of
organizations and society in general as
well let’s look at depression the
clinical evidence is very clear that
although each individual person is
different and each individual’s
experience of depression is different
and although there are multiple complex
immediate and long-term causes of the
press of episodes that the best way of
healthy a person who is depressed is to
work out with them what is maintaining
their depression it would be good to
know what kind of caused it but we all
react in different ways to negative life
events but when that reaction becomes
extremely intensive and recurs and
maintains itself then clearly there’s
something we can do we can focus not on
the cause but on the activities which
are maintaining that type of depression
depression is a vicious circle amongst
much else when we are feeling low when
our mood is bad because of what’s called
mood congruence effects when we are
feeling sad we are more likely to
remember sad information from the past
when we think about the future we’re
more likely to think about negative
possibilities there and that makes us
stop doing things
it makes us much less active because we
don’t want to see what is out there we
expect it to be bad
Chloe was like this when Chloe was
interviewed for a job and didn’t get
promotion two or three of her what
colleagues also didn’t get promoted and
for a week I saw they all felt pretty
fed up it was a really golden
opportunity
kostik chance to get promoted enough a
growing company close to friends felt
fine after a month and shook it off
because some people do that in different
ways but Chloe didn’t ploy thought about
the fact that this probably meant that
company felt amid a mistake when it
hired her
Chloe felt that everyone in her area
would know that she was feeling rejected
Chloe felt that in the future if she
applied for any more promotions she
would also get turned down these are
aspects of unhelpful thinking this is
not about right and wrong this is not
about saying to someone you’re thinking
the wrong things it’s about helping
individuals understand how they can look
at their environment and used it their
best intellectual ability their best
knowledge to make the decisions are
right for them but when you’re not at
your best the bias is kick in when we
are not feeling well we see things in a
more negative way seem with anxiety when
we’re feeling anxious we start to
cognitively look for more threats
evolution recurrent means that in the
past that was a strong defensive
mechanism because if there was a
possibility of being attacked then you
wanted to make sure that you were not
attacked there were no gray areas people
suffering from anxiety tend to
significantly overestimate the
probability of pending negative events
they also significantly overestimate the
consequences of those events they also
significantly underestimate their
ability to cope with those negative
effects if there were to materialize
they also interestingly significantly
underestimate the ability of other
people to cope with their own negative
events the way we feel about things
particularly the way we feel about
ourselves impact and how we think about
things and that’s what creates the
vicious circle
the low mood or anxiety generates
certain types of thoughts and not others
those thoughts effectively validate our
feelings about the feelings that we have
so it’s not a system of feelings that is
perpetuating the negative experience
it’s thinking about the situation and
how that drives further feelings to many
people around the world and in this
country suffer from depression and
anxiety and most of them aren’t getting
the support that they require one aspect
of tackling this is around cognitive
therapy it seeks to alleviate
psychological stresses by correcting
faulty conceptions and self signals so
faulty conceptions about the world and
self signals taking from your own body
you feel your hands shaking so you think
this must be a threatening situation by
correcting your own ease beliefs we can
Lourdes excess of reactions I like to
put it like this though everyone in the
room thinks I’m dumb right now sort
everyone in the world ever we all have
that experience from time to time at
some point in our lives we just think we
are the dumbest person in room because
we’ve said one thing that wasn’t quite
right and yet the chances are that no
inherited or didn’t see it’s been the
wrong thing and if it did think it was
imperfect it’s not going to make them
think of you as being the dumbest person
that just won’t take it we all do it but
if you’re depressed or anxious you’re
more likely to do than any other time in
your life but understanding those
processes I think can be applied more
generally to make sure that we can
connect with those systems which
perpetuate a bad situation be it in
terms of mental health education working
with a charity or in a relationship I
want to go through some of the specifics
of aspects of unhelpful thinking styles
these are all if you will mental errors
that
that we do all of us very regularly
which mean that we are not making a full
understanding of the world around us and
our future in a way that’s going to be
helpful to us and I want to emphasize we
all do this very regularly in different
parts of our lives
but when an individual or a marriage or
a company or a national conversation is
in a bad place with bad feelings bad
attitudes bad and by which we negative
and restrictive ideas it generates ways
of thinking which perpetuates the bad
atmosphere that triggered it in the
first place
all or nothing thinking this is when we
walk around thinking that either things
are fantastic or awful
some people have it just more entirely
others have almost all the lives I am
either perfect or I’m a failure and I
want to find out which I am by going to
university now that kind of binary
opposition is very dangerous of course
and it’s also false but at any number of
shades of grey between those two
possibilities susan has that susan was
told by people around her in her
community and in her school in our
school that she probably isn’t the right
sub-material to go to university there
was a risk that you she would fail
others said knowledge you’ve got
tremendous potential it will be hard but
you will be a success you will achieve
all sorts of things now for all kinds of
reasons
susan incorporates this is what who’s
right am i a failure you shouldn’t be at
university or are my broom
if you live your life under
all-or-nothing thinking every waking
moment is like walking along the edge of
a flesh
walking along the edge of a cliff and
every feeling you have about the future
is a feeling about what it feels like
after you have fallen he would want to
live their lives along a cliff edge it’s
true for people who suffer from
depression it’s often true of students
in education it’s true of marriages it’s
true of companies overgeneralization
this is where we extrapolate
inappropriately from one instance to a
much bigger set of ideas about the world
around us in evolutionary terms if you
eat some berries and they made you sick
you wouldn’t just avoid that particular
location you probably would avoid the
whole hillside because you couldn’t
afford to take risks but nowadays you
meet the new person in your workplace at
your new job and they seem unfriendly
and you think this must be an unfriendly
company the first shooter you meet seems
to be really quite demanding and
challenging you think they’re all going
to be like that for better or worse you
might look outside your window it’s a
bit like this you look outside your
window you see a yellow umbrella you
think oh my goodness all the other
umbrellas are going to be yellow too it
must be where your yellow umbrella was
tried day what am I going to do I don’t
have a yellow umbrella but of course
it’s not like that but when we are not
our best we are blinkered we filter out
all the things which are going to give
them more balanced point of view
labeling Susan’s label herself she
labeled herself as a failing student
despite evidence to the contrary so
she’s not depressed and she’s unlikely
to become sore though too many students
experience depression and anxiety across
the period of their education and
subsequently but she’s just becoming
pessimistic and if you’ll allow now one
of the biggest challenges you’ve got
isn’t managing time because you’ll get
the hang of that and it’s not about
navigating the complexity of the
syllabus because it’s written to help
you and you’ll get good tuition
the biggest danger if you learner is
pessimism because it will drive your
perceptions of other things and you will
start to filter right the things that
make you optimistic it will fuel itself
it is a vicious circle there are many
other things disqualifying the positive
I mentioned earlier this is where Amelia
student gets a good mark but they say
well so one off the question on the exam
paper was actually really quite easy be
mark I got was a reflection of the fact
I happen to be quite interesting that in
that area anyway and I spent all week we
can’t looking at it so it’s not a fair
summary of me I’m a feeling to do
jumping to conclusions catastrophizing
jump into conclusions is when we think
we can read the minds of other people
Susan thinks this she thinks not only
that she is a failing student but
because she jumped into conclusions and
catastrophizing how her thoughts are I’m
a failing student and everybody knows it
everybody knows it and she’s wrong
people don’t think she’s a failing
student
so one of the other ones emotion like
reasoning this is when we have a feeling
and we say well that tells me about the
world people say trust you’ve got
interesting well maybe depends in the
context but trust me a gut feeling
doesn’t have ears or eyes it’s getting
its information from your mind and if
your mind is filtered then you’re going
to get the wrong balance of information
and your gut feeling is not to be relied
upon always ask ourselves what feeling
do I have right now and what thinking
has led to that particular feeling and
the things I’ve been thinking about are
they balanced and fair am i using all
the evidence
am i subjecting myself to discounting
the positives am i subjecting myself to
filtering out all the positive
information am i subjecting myself to
all-or-nothing thinking sure the most
setting high standards and
personalization when we go around all
the times and I must do this and I must
get that and I should do that and I
shouldn’t take that it’s like a voice in
our heads constantly criticizing us so
we start to walk away from all the
things they can get through the
difficult times and personalization
something has gone wrong and it’s my
fault often things haven’t gone wrong
and if they have it’s probably not your
fault not in any simple sense so let’s
think about how this what’s in terms of
education I’ve been in some research
recently in terms of what I’m calling
study thinking errors profile which is
to say each individual learner be there
school college university or doing
advanced professional exams has a
tendency towards engaging in different
aspects of those 10 unhelpful thinking
styles everyone has a little bit and
even if they’re not using it it’s not
changing our the feel about things it’s
there and I think the first step is to
help us understand and to help
individuals understand what their own
profile is because it points out your
Achilles heel when it comes to difficult
circumstances we’re all going to meet
difficult challenges
lives and some things are quite bad and
we respond this with disappointment is
fine it’s being alive it’s being human
we can call but if we have negative
thinking styles there’s a risk a real
risk that we maintain the vicious circle
the first tactic is to find out what our
profile is and the early results don’t
finally do support that aspect a lot of
what still to do in relationships Rachel
and Raymond what are interesting things
about unhelpful thinking spouses most of
the research literature focuses on how
one person may have a certain bias I
said a certain mental tendency for all
of nothing thinking or for
catastrophizing and that’s true and
individuals in a relationship you can
have one person who’s more about
catastrophizing and another person who’s
more about all or nothing thinking and
that’s that’s fine it’s interests me to
come together but what I think isn’t
really been looked at in the clinical
literature or in the research literature
quite so much and I think it’s important
that we do look at this is the fact that
some of those unhelpful thinking styles
have two or more components for example
personalization has two of components
number one that something bad has
happened and number two that it’s my
fault
also emotion LED reasoning I feel
anxious is the first component that
means this must be a threatening
environment
the second component my proposition here
is the in relationships particularly
when maybe they’re not going
straightforwardly like when Raymond and
ritual moved house I can imagine a
situation where Raymond says to his
partner I feel really nervous at what
when we have these meetings first
important emotional reaction rachel says
well it must be a very threatening
environment for you then on the row and
the wind have got to that conclusion but
they contribute in this tangle of
thinking the different components
required so dealing with each individual
to help them understand wouldn’t get
there as a couple too far but I think
understanding that what is the sharing
what it is that the
collaboratively creating is an unhelpful
thinking style in the media we have had
a lot recently about fake news websites
etc to publish news articles which still
damaged even long after Ethiopian short
contained factually incorrect
information but I think we missed the
fact that newspapers and websites used
forms of unhelpful thinking cells to get
us to adopt a certain position for
example all-or-nothing thinking and
let’s say an immigration debate which
has those binary those of us and them
good and bad which side are you on in
business what I’ve done consultancy for
private public and other types of
companies
I do see examples of unhelpful thinking
styles again clearly individual people
like Bob’s company working with
charities very closely individual people
in business at all levels are human
beings and they have different types of
unhelpful thinking styles but companies
also can have a thinking style involves
business two major Directors one was
risk averse the other was risk
enterprising their voices were strong
and they drawing those other voices that
company for a long time felt just like
all-or-nothing thinking that binary
dominated the company and they lost
their way but I don’t think never
realized that what was going on they saw
as two points of view and had to make a
decision so what can we do let’s think
about the fact that we have to look at
ourselves in the mirror
and look at the world around us through
our available lenses let’s think about
education in terms of assessment and
feedback we’ve got to change your
thinking about it we’ve got to innovate
in order to educate I think this ironic
that when students get feedback on
essays or projects we give students just
enough information to trigger their
unhelpful thinking styles but not enough
information to help
deal with it because I think student
support from this point of view is more
than just those important things of
empathizing providing general support
and maybe additional targeted skills
development it becomes really
interesting but becomes asking students
okay you got fifty five how do you feel
about that and they’ll tell you and say
well what thinking got you to that point
and they’ll come out well because I know
that everyone else in the class got more
than fifty five really yeah because the
tutor said that everyone had done really
well that’s not necessarily true
Suzy’s had this problem she labels
herself as a failing student and when
she gets a good grade she thinks well
that doesn’t really count I just
happened to get a good question if you
sit down with Suzy it’s quite
straightforward you can show her that
she been doing really well that she’s on
course for what she wants her life
ambitions become a biochemist she needs
a 2-1 to get to do the masters or the
PhD and she’s well on course for that
she been thinking about the wrong way
the other big thing we can do is look at
ourselves we must be careful not to
collude in the unhelpful thinking styles
of others and this happens all the time
in clinical practice and in education
and in businesses people try to be nice
by only giving a positive feedback or
giving a positive story which has its
place don’t get me wrong they’re far too
much criticism and negativity for its
own sake but the question is this the
question is this how do we help
individuals and couples and companies
and people engage in the national debate
in terms of the news understand what
thinking got them to their position none
of that is easy it’s quite hard but it’s
definitely worthwhile and I hope I
shared that with you today to convince
you of that thank you very much indeed
you
characters
Chloe is recovering from depression she
lost her job about a year ago applied
for another job and got the job and they
wanted to get promoted and didn’t get
promoted and things got pretty bad for
her but she’s recovering
Susan is a student and she is the first
in her family to go to university her
grades are good but a little bit
variable and her critters think she’s
great and huge potential and she’s
thinking of dropping out thinking of
leaving University and abandoning her
objective of becoming a bio chemist
Rachel and Raymond are married moved to
a new city about a year ago Rachel and
Raymond both got new jobs that’s why
they moved to the same city and it
hasn’t gone well they don’t think things
are right and they’re thinking of
leaving bob owns a large trading company
there’s a lot of work with charities and
social enterprises and he is not
sleeping at night because he doesn’t
know whether to get involved in a
takeover or not they’re all true stories
but fictional characters based on real
experiences things I’ve seen over the
years all of these situations individual
mental health running companies around
charities students at university
marriages are also like things in the
media we hear nowadays distress and
challenge and things not going well but
individuals and couples and
organizations dealing with those
challenges improving thriving and
recovering but it’s not easy when we
look at it it looks very different in
those different contexts
my proposition is their understanding
the way in which individuals recover
from depression and from anxiety helps
us understand other forms of unhappiness
and other forms of distress and how to
improve the life situation of other
individuals and of couples and yes of
organizations and society in general as
well let’s look at depression the
clinical evidence is very clear that
although each individual person is
different and each individual’s
experience of depression is different
and although there are multiple complex
immediate and long-term causes of the
press of episodes that the best way of
healthy a person who is depressed is to
work out with them what is maintaining
their depression it would be good to
know what kind of caused it but we all
react in different ways to negative life
events but when that reaction becomes
extremely intensive and recurs and
maintains itself then clearly there’s
something we can do we can focus not on
the cause but on the activities which
are maintaining that type of depression
depression is a vicious circle amongst
much else when we are feeling low when
our mood is bad because of what’s called
mood congruence effects when we are
feeling sad we are more likely to
remember sad information from the past
when we think about the future we’re
more likely to think about negative
possibilities there and that makes us
stop doing things
it makes us much less active because we
don’t want to see what is out there we
expect it to be bad
Chloe was like this when Chloe was
interviewed for a job and didn’t get
promotion two or three of her what
colleagues also didn’t get promoted and
for a week I saw they all felt pretty
fed up it was a really golden
opportunity
kostik chance to get promoted enough a
growing company close to friends felt
fine after a month and shook it off
because some people do that in different
ways but Chloe didn’t ploy thought about
the fact that this probably meant that
company felt amid a mistake when it
hired her
Chloe felt that everyone in her area
would know that she was feeling rejected
Chloe felt that in the future if she
applied for any more promotions she
would also get turned down these are
aspects of unhelpful thinking this is
not about right and wrong this is not
about saying to someone you’re thinking
the wrong things it’s about helping
individuals understand how they can look
at their environment and used it their
best intellectual ability their best
knowledge to make the decisions are
right for them but when you’re not at
your best the bias is kick in when we
are not feeling well we see things in a
more negative way seem with anxiety when
we’re feeling anxious we start to
cognitively look for more threats
evolution recurrent means that in the
past that was a strong defensive
mechanism because if there was a
possibility of being attacked then you
wanted to make sure that you were not
attacked there were no gray areas people
suffering from anxiety tend to
significantly overestimate the
probability of pending negative events
they also significantly overestimate the
consequences of those events they also
significantly underestimate their
ability to cope with those negative
effects if there were to materialize
they also interestingly significantly
underestimate the ability of other
people to cope with their own negative
events the way we feel about things
particularly the way we feel about
ourselves impact and how we think about
things and that’s what creates the
vicious circle
the low mood or anxiety generates
certain types of thoughts and not others
those thoughts effectively validate our
feelings about the feelings that we have
so it’s not a system of feelings that is
perpetuating the negative experience
it’s thinking about the situation and
how that drives further feelings to many
people around the world and in this
country suffer from depression and
anxiety and most of them aren’t getting
the support that they require one aspect
of tackling this is around cognitive
therapy it seeks to alleviate
psychological stresses by correcting
faulty conceptions and self signals so
faulty conceptions about the world and
self signals taking from your own body
you feel your hands shaking so you think
this must be a threatening situation by
correcting your own ease beliefs we can
Lourdes excess of reactions I like to
put it like this though everyone in the
room thinks I’m dumb right now sort
everyone in the world ever we all have
that experience from time to time at
some point in our lives we just think we
are the dumbest person in room because
we’ve said one thing that wasn’t quite
right and yet the chances are that no
inherited or didn’t see it’s been the
wrong thing and if it did think it was
imperfect it’s not going to make them
think of you as being the dumbest person
that just won’t take it we all do it but
if you’re depressed or anxious you’re
more likely to do than any other time in
your life but understanding those
processes I think can be applied more
generally to make sure that we can
connect with those systems which
perpetuate a bad situation be it in
terms of mental health education working
with a charity or in a relationship I
want to go through some of the specifics
of aspects of unhelpful thinking styles
these are all if you will mental errors
that
that we do all of us very regularly
which mean that we are not making a full
understanding of the world around us and
our future in a way that’s going to be
helpful to us and I want to emphasize we
all do this very regularly in different
parts of our lives
but when an individual or a marriage or
a company or a national conversation is
in a bad place with bad feelings bad
attitudes bad and by which we negative
and restrictive ideas it generates ways
of thinking which perpetuates the bad
atmosphere that triggered it in the
first place
all or nothing thinking this is when we
walk around thinking that either things
are fantastic or awful
some people have it just more entirely
others have almost all the lives I am
either perfect or I’m a failure and I
want to find out which I am by going to
university now that kind of binary
opposition is very dangerous of course
and it’s also false but at any number of
shades of grey between those two
possibilities susan has that susan was
told by people around her in her
community and in her school in our
school that she probably isn’t the right
sub-material to go to university there
was a risk that you she would fail
others said knowledge you’ve got
tremendous potential it will be hard but
you will be a success you will achieve
all sorts of things now for all kinds of
reasons
susan incorporates this is what who’s
right am i a failure you shouldn’t be at
university or are my broom
if you live your life under
all-or-nothing thinking every waking
moment is like walking along the edge of
a flesh
walking along the edge of a cliff and
every feeling you have about the future
is a feeling about what it feels like
after you have fallen he would want to
live their lives along a cliff edge it’s
true for people who suffer from
depression it’s often true of students
in education it’s true of marriages it’s
true of companies overgeneralization
this is where we extrapolate
inappropriately from one instance to a
much bigger set of ideas about the world
around us in evolutionary terms if you
eat some berries and they made you sick
you wouldn’t just avoid that particular
location you probably would avoid the
whole hillside because you couldn’t
afford to take risks but nowadays you
meet the new person in your workplace at
your new job and they seem unfriendly
and you think this must be an unfriendly
company the first shooter you meet seems
to be really quite demanding and
challenging you think they’re all going
to be like that for better or worse you
might look outside your window it’s a
bit like this you look outside your
window you see a yellow umbrella you
think oh my goodness all the other
umbrellas are going to be yellow too it
must be where your yellow umbrella was
tried day what am I going to do I don’t
have a yellow umbrella but of course
it’s not like that but when we are not
our best we are blinkered we filter out
all the things which are going to give
them more balanced point of view
labeling Susan’s label herself she
labeled herself as a failing student
despite evidence to the contrary so
she’s not depressed and she’s unlikely
to become sore though too many students
experience depression and anxiety across
the period of their education and
subsequently but she’s just becoming
pessimistic and if you’ll allow now one
of the biggest challenges you’ve got
isn’t managing time because you’ll get
the hang of that and it’s not about
navigating the complexity of the
syllabus because it’s written to help
you and you’ll get good tuition
the biggest danger if you learner is
pessimism because it will drive your
perceptions of other things and you will
start to filter right the things that
make you optimistic it will fuel itself
it is a vicious circle there are many
other things disqualifying the positive
I mentioned earlier this is where Amelia
student gets a good mark but they say
well so one off the question on the exam
paper was actually really quite easy be
mark I got was a reflection of the fact
I happen to be quite interesting that in
that area anyway and I spent all week we
can’t looking at it so it’s not a fair
summary of me I’m a feeling to do
jumping to conclusions catastrophizing
jump into conclusions is when we think
we can read the minds of other people
Susan thinks this she thinks not only
that she is a failing student but
because she jumped into conclusions and
catastrophizing how her thoughts are I’m
a failing student and everybody knows it
everybody knows it and she’s wrong
people don’t think she’s a failing
student
so one of the other ones emotion like
reasoning this is when we have a feeling
and we say well that tells me about the
world people say trust you’ve got
interesting well maybe depends in the
context but trust me a gut feeling
doesn’t have ears or eyes it’s getting
its information from your mind and if
your mind is filtered then you’re going
to get the wrong balance of information
and your gut feeling is not to be relied
upon always ask ourselves what feeling
do I have right now and what thinking
has led to that particular feeling and
the things I’ve been thinking about are
they balanced and fair am i using all
the evidence
am i subjecting myself to discounting
the positives am i subjecting myself to
filtering out all the positive
information am i subjecting myself to
all-or-nothing thinking sure the most
setting high standards and
personalization when we go around all
the times and I must do this and I must
get that and I should do that and I
shouldn’t take that it’s like a voice in
our heads constantly criticizing us so
we start to walk away from all the
things they can get through the
difficult times and personalization
something has gone wrong and it’s my
fault often things haven’t gone wrong
and if they have it’s probably not your
fault not in any simple sense so let’s
think about how this what’s in terms of
education I’ve been in some research
recently in terms of what I’m calling
study thinking errors profile which is
to say each individual learner be there
school college university or doing
advanced professional exams has a
tendency towards engaging in different
aspects of those 10 unhelpful thinking
styles everyone has a little bit and
even if they’re not using it it’s not
changing our the feel about things it’s
there and I think the first step is to
help us understand and to help
individuals understand what their own
profile is because it points out your
Achilles heel when it comes to difficult
circumstances we’re all going to meet
difficult challenges
lives and some things are quite bad and
we respond this with disappointment is
fine it’s being alive it’s being human
we can call but if we have negative
thinking styles there’s a risk a real
risk that we maintain the vicious circle
the first tactic is to find out what our
profile is and the early results don’t
finally do support that aspect a lot of
what still to do in relationships Rachel
and Raymond what are interesting things
about unhelpful thinking spouses most of
the research literature focuses on how
one person may have a certain bias I
said a certain mental tendency for all
of nothing thinking or for
catastrophizing and that’s true and
individuals in a relationship you can
have one person who’s more about
catastrophizing and another person who’s
more about all or nothing thinking and
that’s that’s fine it’s interests me to
come together but what I think isn’t
really been looked at in the clinical
literature or in the research literature
quite so much and I think it’s important
that we do look at this is the fact that
some of those unhelpful thinking styles
have two or more components for example
personalization has two of components
number one that something bad has
happened and number two that it’s my
fault
also emotion LED reasoning I feel
anxious is the first component that
means this must be a threatening
environment
the second component my proposition here
is the in relationships particularly
when maybe they’re not going
straightforwardly like when Raymond and
ritual moved house I can imagine a
situation where Raymond says to his
partner I feel really nervous at what
when we have these meetings first
important emotional reaction rachel says
well it must be a very threatening
environment for you then on the row and
the wind have got to that conclusion but
they contribute in this tangle of
thinking the different components
required so dealing with each individual
to help them understand wouldn’t get
there as a couple too far but I think
understanding that what is the sharing
what it is that the
collaboratively creating is an unhelpful
thinking style in the media we have had
a lot recently about fake news websites
etc to publish news articles which still
damaged even long after Ethiopian short
contained factually incorrect
information but I think we missed the
fact that newspapers and websites used
forms of unhelpful thinking cells to get
us to adopt a certain position for
example all-or-nothing thinking and
let’s say an immigration debate which
has those binary those of us and them
good and bad which side are you on in
business what I’ve done consultancy for
private public and other types of
companies
I do see examples of unhelpful thinking
styles again clearly individual people
like Bob’s company working with
charities very closely individual people
in business at all levels are human
beings and they have different types of
unhelpful thinking styles but companies
also can have a thinking style involves
business two major Directors one was
risk averse the other was risk
enterprising their voices were strong
and they drawing those other voices that
company for a long time felt just like
all-or-nothing thinking that binary
dominated the company and they lost
their way but I don’t think never
realized that what was going on they saw
as two points of view and had to make a
decision so what can we do let’s think
about the fact that we have to look at
ourselves in the mirror
and look at the world around us through
our available lenses let’s think about
education in terms of assessment and
feedback we’ve got to change your
thinking about it we’ve got to innovate
in order to educate I think this ironic
that when students get feedback on
essays or projects we give students just
enough information to trigger their
unhelpful thinking styles but not enough
information to help
deal with it because I think student
support from this point of view is more
than just those important things of
empathizing providing general support
and maybe additional targeted skills
development it becomes really
interesting but becomes asking students
okay you got fifty five how do you feel
about that and they’ll tell you and say
well what thinking got you to that point
and they’ll come out well because I know
that everyone else in the class got more
than fifty five really yeah because the
tutor said that everyone had done really
well that’s not necessarily true
Suzy’s had this problem she labels
herself as a failing student and when
she gets a good grade she thinks well
that doesn’t really count I just
happened to get a good question if you
sit down with Suzy it’s quite
straightforward you can show her that
she been doing really well that she’s on
course for what she wants her life
ambitions become a biochemist she needs
a 2-1 to get to do the masters or the
PhD and she’s well on course for that
she been thinking about the wrong way
the other big thing we can do is look at
ourselves we must be careful not to
collude in the unhelpful thinking styles
of others and this happens all the time
in clinical practice and in education
and in businesses people try to be nice
by only giving a positive feedback or
giving a positive story which has its
place don’t get me wrong they’re far too
much criticism and negativity for its
own sake but the question is this the
question is this how do we help
individuals and couples and companies
and people engage in the national debate
in terms of the news understand what
thinking got them to their position none
of that is easy it’s quite hard but it’s
definitely worthwhile and I hope I
shared that with you today to convince
you of that thank you very much indeed
you
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