Distortion No. 4: Personalization

Hi everyone! I hope you are well. Thank you for participating in our cognitive distortion series. You can check out all the previous posts in this series here. 

Today we will be talking about a very important cognitive distortion. I believe reframing this type of thinking can greatly improve the quality of your life. It is ‘personalization’. Personalization is one of the cognitive distortions where you believe that things are connected to you even though you have nothing to do with them. Another way people fall prey to personalization is when they believe they are responsible for things outside of their control. 

Examples of personalization and in the brackets are what usually is the reality: 

• My friend did not pair with me for this project, he does not value me. (In reality the teacher asked the friend to pair up with X person to ensure X person is well supported)
• I was 15 minutes late to class. My professor must think I am so tardy (so is half the class, the professor realized the traffic must be bad.)
• My partner broke up with me because I am not a good enough person to stay in a long distance relationship with  (Your partner broke up because she was moving away and did not wish to do long distance, which had nothing to do with your worth)
• If I had only reminded my sister to carry her sweater to her practice, she would not have caught this cold (There is no guarantee the lack of a sweater caused the cold, nor are you responsible for preventing it)
• My boss has been so reserved and quiet all day. It must be that I could not submit my report on time (Your boss is sick and does not have the energy to communicate more than needed, your boss does not even remember the report delay)

The key thing in this cognitive distortion is taking things personally. It's important to understand that a sense of responsibility/accountability in life is important. It helps you lead a fulfilling life. However, to be able to take responsibility and be accountable for what is truly your responsibility, you need to learn what is related to you and what is not. Here are some areas/examples where it is reasonable to feel accountable/responsible:

• How you process your emotions/feelings (Getting angry is not up to you but how you process your anger is up to you)
• To arrive on time for a meeting (even if the other person is late, you are only responsible for your time management)
• To leave with a reasonable time gap for something important (Even if you meet unexpected traffic and end up getting late, so what? Happens to all of us)

You taking responsibility for your actions does not save you from unexpected detours in your ideal plan. Take them as an expected and consistent part of life and these should not deter you from doing the right thing!

The reason why this post has also explained what responsibility/accountability can look like is so people don’t confuse a lack of accountability as correcting personalization. So we need to separate what is not our problem (in simple terms) so that we can have the energy to deal with the very many problems that are our responsibility. 

We will use the same technique for practice as before. The reason for the same technique is so we can get very used to thinking this way when we are faced with unhelpful thoughts. 

📢Points of Action:

1. Find out your personal hit rate (how accurate your negative assumptions are), don’t just assume, look into your past and get an accurate percentage. (You can skip this if you recall this from our last post)
2. Counter your stressful thoughts with positive thoughts based on logic/facts/experience. 

⭐After practicing this with at least one thought. Tell us about your experience with this exercise.

⭐ How often do you engage in personalization and how does it impact your life? 

Further Reading/Resources

Video explanation of the distortion
Responsibility Pie worksheet (Highly recommended)