Reframe Overgeneralizations to Help Manage Your Anxiety

When a person is suffering from depression or other anxiety and stress-related disorders, the tendency is to apply one experience to all future experiences, due to an overly negative outlook. This is known as overgeneralization and can worsen one's mental condition.

Example: If a person fumbles during a public speech, he or she can think that they will never speak in public now without fumbling again, and create a self-impression that they are not good at public speaking.

• Reframe Your Negative Thoughts: Try to identify your negative thoughts and replace them with empowering positive thoughts. Changing your view will decrease the negative symptoms.
• Journaling: Identification of negative thoughts can be done by being mindful or by writing down how you feel so that you start to notice patterns.
• Review Your Thoughts: Challenge your negative thought patterns and focus on the moments that you have excelled and achieved great success.
• Replace Your Thoughts: Once your negative thought is identified, reviewed, and challenged, replace it with a positive thought, using self-talk and auto-suggestion.