I currently try cognitive restructuring and thus far I have some success with it. I have less anxiety and I do less self-loathing in an extreme manner. I do this mostly alone my therapist wasn't that helpful tbh.
It started with meeting this quantum scientists who did not consider me particularly smart, self-aware or reflective. He pointed out a lot of congitive biases in my thinking. And this made me think. I did some research with the help of AI to understand what he actually meant.
I think it is clear to the people who read my posts on here that I might be someone with an obsession about intelligence. I want to be smart. I want to be perceived as smart. But often I am not. People compliment me for being reflective and self-aware. I think though as I laid out in a long post. I am overcrtitical of myself. I project me anxieties and fears into others. It is a negativity bias that lets me spiral down into paranoia and panic. And when I realized that I noticed this way of thinking is not smart.
My first intuitive assumption was. I am an imposter. I trick people into perceiving me as smart while I am not actually that. And as a punishment I need to abuse the shit out of me. And punish me without limits. Thinking negative about myself feels like the smart thing to do. I still think I have ugly traits. But I clearly have many cognitive distortions.
I often catastrophize scenarios. I also do that in social interactions. I always assume the people surround me would think the worst about me. It also gave me a drive to be the best intellectual imposter I actually could be. Fake it till you make. And in the environment of the college I also could not let go of this anger towards myself.
In my mind it felt smart to fear the worst. I was prepared for the worst. And in my life many times the worst actually happened. And being prepared helped me to cope. But I think I underestimate how much unnecessary worrying I have to endure. How much life quality I lost for always expecting the worst. Especially, when I am paranoid how other people perceive me. This can make me panic so easily. But recently when the situation is over, I can say better stop to overanalyzing the situation.
I think I am thinking in black white schemes and I overcompensate uncertainty. I struggle when I don't have full information of how I am perceived. My thinking is in absolute terms. "They must hate me", "they must be disgusted by myself", "they must perceive me as weird and as an imposter". But most people don't think like that. Most people don't actually think about you that much at all. Most people don't have a strong opinion on you simply because they don't care. Most people have to deal with their own shit inside their mind. Assuming always the worst in social interactions how I am perceived is not smart. Often I am wrong in my assumptions. I am blind to other options. I don't acknowledge that there are uncertainty and ambivalences inside the mind of the other person. It is extremely difficult to read someone. And my heursticis how to do that are more of an hindrance than a feature to achieve that. They usually bring me down into a negativity spiral.
I think smart people think in scenarios in order to deal with uncertainty. I try to think more in statistical terms from now on. This seems plausibible, maybe even very likely. But what if this is not the truth? What if my intution and gut instinct are lying to me? I overestimate how good my intution is working and that is a mistake. Always prepraring and expecting for the worst brings a lot of issues. Moreover, I have a bias against disconfirmatory evidence. I struggle to correct false theories about other people because my emotional and anxiety inducing interpretation feelsmore true to me. And in evolution false posiitives when it comes to danger were prefered. It is a bug of my mind.
Thus far I did not care muchabout the truth. I tried to use my information to come to conclusions that help me to function. That make it easier to achieve my goals. But my thinking is not doing that. I need congitive restructuring. This thinking is not a feature it is damaging. I am jumping to conclusion based on very few information. And once I am sure about something it is difficult to change my opinion on a topic. I think being more cautious with drawing conclusions is the right way.
I am not sure whether this might make me a mental wreck even more always questioning my cognition. Thus far the opposite is the result and I have a higher life quality. Not always interpreting other's minds in the worst possible way. I think this paralyzed me. At the same time not trusting my intution at all can make me insecure. I think a good balance is important.
I think all of that also can be applied to my takes on topics like politics. I don't read double blind studies. I don't read meta studies. I like to discuss things. But most things I read are nothing more than speculations. In media they evaluate whether something is true when it sounds plausible. But sounding plausible says nothing on whether something actually is true. This is why I think my whole thing to be informed about topics by reading media articles or science articles without methods is worthless.
It started with meeting this quantum scientists who did not consider me particularly smart, self-aware or reflective. He pointed out a lot of congitive biases in my thinking. And this made me think. I did some research with the help of AI to understand what he actually meant.
I think it is clear to the people who read my posts on here that I might be someone with an obsession about intelligence. I want to be smart. I want to be perceived as smart. But often I am not. People compliment me for being reflective and self-aware. I think though as I laid out in a long post. I am overcrtitical of myself. I project me anxieties and fears into others. It is a negativity bias that lets me spiral down into paranoia and panic. And when I realized that I noticed this way of thinking is not smart.
My first intuitive assumption was. I am an imposter. I trick people into perceiving me as smart while I am not actually that. And as a punishment I need to abuse the shit out of me. And punish me without limits. Thinking negative about myself feels like the smart thing to do. I still think I have ugly traits. But I clearly have many cognitive distortions.
I often catastrophize scenarios. I also do that in social interactions. I always assume the people surround me would think the worst about me. It also gave me a drive to be the best intellectual imposter I actually could be. Fake it till you make. And in the environment of the college I also could not let go of this anger towards myself.
In my mind it felt smart to fear the worst. I was prepared for the worst. And in my life many times the worst actually happened. And being prepared helped me to cope. But I think I underestimate how much unnecessary worrying I have to endure. How much life quality I lost for always expecting the worst. Especially, when I am paranoid how other people perceive me. This can make me panic so easily. But recently when the situation is over, I can say better stop to overanalyzing the situation.
I think I am thinking in black white schemes and I overcompensate uncertainty. I struggle when I don't have full information of how I am perceived. My thinking is in absolute terms. "They must hate me", "they must be disgusted by myself", "they must perceive me as weird and as an imposter". But most people don't think like that. Most people don't actually think about you that much at all. Most people don't have a strong opinion on you simply because they don't care. Most people have to deal with their own shit inside their mind. Assuming always the worst in social interactions how I am perceived is not smart. Often I am wrong in my assumptions. I am blind to other options. I don't acknowledge that there are uncertainty and ambivalences inside the mind of the other person. It is extremely difficult to read someone. And my heursticis how to do that are more of an hindrance than a feature to achieve that. They usually bring me down into a negativity spiral.
I think smart people think in scenarios in order to deal with uncertainty. I try to think more in statistical terms from now on. This seems plausibible, maybe even very likely. But what if this is not the truth? What if my intution and gut instinct are lying to me? I overestimate how good my intution is working and that is a mistake. Always prepraring and expecting for the worst brings a lot of issues. Moreover, I have a bias against disconfirmatory evidence. I struggle to correct false theories about other people because my emotional and anxiety inducing interpretation feelsmore true to me. And in evolution false posiitives when it comes to danger were prefered. It is a bug of my mind.
Thus far I did not care muchabout the truth. I tried to use my information to come to conclusions that help me to function. That make it easier to achieve my goals. But my thinking is not doing that. I need congitive restructuring. This thinking is not a feature it is damaging. I am jumping to conclusion based on very few information. And once I am sure about something it is difficult to change my opinion on a topic. I think being more cautious with drawing conclusions is the right way.
I am not sure whether this might make me a mental wreck even more always questioning my cognition. Thus far the opposite is the result and I have a higher life quality. Not always interpreting other's minds in the worst possible way. I think this paralyzed me. At the same time not trusting my intution at all can make me insecure. I think a good balance is important.
I think all of that also can be applied to my takes on topics like politics. I don't read double blind studies. I don't read meta studies. I like to discuss things. But most things I read are nothing more than speculations. In media they evaluate whether something is true when it sounds plausible. But sounding plausible says nothing on whether something actually is true. This is why I think my whole thing to be informed about topics by reading media articles or science articles without methods is worthless.
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