Do you ever use your resentment (or your doubt, or your fear) to write the history of your relationship?
Today, we’re exploring 5 cognitive distortions that feed your Kitchen Sink Voice all the resentment it needs to thrive.
- I’ll offer you a definition of cognitive distortions and help you see how they’re poisoning your relationship
- We’ll explore where and why these cognitive distortions arise, so you can head them off at the pass
- And I’ll help you see how to access curiosity and compassion to turn your relationship around
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Complaint > Criticism > Curiosity > Compassion > Connection
This is the path from alienation to happily ever after.
The trick is: don’t believe everything your Kitchen Sink Voice tells you. We’ve all made up stories in our head about our partners.
He forgets the ice cream at the grocery store, and you tell yourself the lie, it’s because he thinks I’m fat.
It’s not that your brain is broken.
Far from it. We all want to fill in any incomplete information with certainty. Psychologists call these patterns cognitive distortions.
In this week’s episode, I walk you through five of the ones I see most often in relationships:
- Mindreading: I know exactly what you’re thinking.
- Catastrophizing: You create the worst-case-scenario.
- All-or-nothing thinking: You always… You never…
- Personalizing: It’s all my fault
- Disqualifying the positive: Nevermind all the clean counters. Look at the one crumb you left behind.
That voice in your head sounds so true!
Today I help you identify 5 gremlins that fool your brain into distorting reality.
The goal isn’t to catch yourself so you can beat yourself up. That would be just another version of The Kitchen Sink Voice.
Instead, the next time you feel a complaint turning into a criticism of your sweetheart, follow the algorithm above with the gentleness of curiosity.
When you notice yourself absolutely certain about your partner’s motives, ask: “Is that true? Really true?”
Or, you could try this phrase, “The story I’m telling myself is…”
Because the moment when you can say this is the story I’m telling myself, you have won the love-game. You create a little space between what happened and what you made it mean.
That little bit of space is enough for curiosity to replace criticism.
Criticism → curiosity → compassion → connection.
That’s the habit we’re building this week.
Try this:
This week’s habit for your happily ever after is not to catch yourself having a cognitive distortion and then beat yourself up.
That’s just another version of the Kitchen Sink Voice.
Instead, the goal is to become curious.
- Am I mindreading and certain I know what my partner is thinking?
- When am I most likely to catastrophize?
- Am I turning “sometimes” into “always” or “never?”
- When am I likely to take responsibility for things that aren’t mine?
- Do I overlook the positive to see what’s still wrong?
When you get curious about your Kitchen Sink Voice, you take away its omniscient and omnipotent power. You expose the wizard behind the curtain.
This is just another tool to turn criticism > curiosity > compassion > connection.
It doesn’t work to kill off your Kitchen Sink Voice. The goal is simply to sew a little bit of doubt into that Kitchen Sink Certainty.
This week’s habit then is to identify which of these five cognitive distortions are most likely to fuel the certainty of your Kitchen Sink Voice?
Once you find the culprit, what helps you peek behind to curtain to see the wizard pulling levers and sew that seed of doubt?
Date Night Discussion
This week I invite you to find a moment to say to your partner, “The story I’m telling myself is…” This is a great way to introduce your Kitchen Sink Voice to your partner.
I love that phrase because it’s disarming. Especially if you get very animated as you tell the story.
Here’s an example:
“The story I’m telling myself is that when you forget ice cream at the store, you are sending me a secret coded message to go on a diet.”
“I have a hunch the real story is more about your desire to eat cake and your lack of obsession with ice cream. I’ll never understand how it is that you don’t love ice cream.”
Relationship communication doesn’t need to be heavy. It doesn’t need to be intense. In fact, the more laughter and light you can infuse into your communication the more buoyant your love life will be.
Let me know how it goes. You can reach me at 970-210-4480.
Want more?
- Discover another cognitive distortion: compare and despair
- Why does fear perpetuate cognitive distortions? Overcome Fear
Links I Mention
- Explore The Work of Byron Katie
- How to stay in your own business in your relationship
Want to stop arguing and start connecting with your spouse? This FREE e-course will offer you habits to improve your marriage communication so you can smile more and fight less. Sign up to improve marriage communication.
