Selective abstraction is a distortion of thought that leads to feeling that everything negative is more relevant and more present in situations than positive, it is not intentional, it simply becomes an automatic way of dealing with reality. It is very likely that the person adopted this way of thinking through “educational inheritance” and never stopped questioning it.
When a person lives in environments where each person’s negative things or situations stand out all the time, it is customary to think that this type of analysis is correct; In addition, this perspective gradually adheres to the brain and therefore cannot detect the cracks that actually exist in your thinking.
- You may even have incorporated some justifications for thinking this way.
- You may think that staying negative will be less risking getting frustrated by not achieving a goal or discovering the mistakes or emptiness of others.
- It can also happen that seeing the negative side is a more analytical and critical attitude.
- Because there is no need to touch the good things.
People who have this distortion of thought are often upset, it is common for them to have a catalogue of what they cannot tolerate or things that provoke outrage, do not endure a lack of punctuality, tolerate anything but lying, are very upset that people are conformists and things like that, in turn they feel outraged and even attacked by the mistakes of others , can also be a way of thinking that makes them proud.
Selective abstraction not only has to do with the outside world, it also ends up applying itself, it leads to those people for who we say ‘they are watching another movie’, that is, they are the ones who generally imagine the outcome of all situations as something terrible or, in any case, negative for them.
This may be an example: the groom takes a while to reach out to his girlfriend, she begins to despair and imagines that this may be a way for him to make it clear that he is not as interested in the relationship as before.
She ends up thinking that he is a reckless, selfish man who also does not like him, as in his mind was repeatedly said. When he arrives, what he does is make all these accusations, without considering that his delay was due to a traffic accident, which completely escapes the will of the groom.
Another example, applied to the work, is when someone has carefully prepared a presentation and this leads to success, however, one of the participants criticized a detail of the presentation, so the presenter eliminates the sense of triumph and in his memory only this criticism. is stored, which will be resurrected again and again in the coming days.
It is thought that perhaps other people also had criticisms, but that the only one who expressed them aloud was the one who made the reviews, he comes to think that perhaps all his efforts were in vain, because the presentation did not meet his expectations. who were constantly conditioned on the realization of the expectations of others.
Keeping your mind on the disk of selective abstraction invariably leads to states of frustration and anger, it is not something that enriches life in any way, not even a kind of thought that needs to be cultivated, on the contrary, it is advisable to eradicate it. mechanism of the mind to have a fuller life, but how do we do it?
Like any mechanical behavior, the first thing you have to do is realize you’re stuck in it. It’s good to ask yourself: how much weight should I give to the negative aspects of people or situations, do I somehow think the negative deserves more?attention that the positive?
Once the existence of this selective abstraction is recognized in thought, the next step is to perform a process of self-preservation to detect whether this happens to everyone and everything or if it only appears in certain circumstances, this vigilant attitude will allow us to understand what triggers distortion. Chances are we’ll find that the mechanism happens in circumstances that cause insecurity.
When that moment comes when it will be possible to say to yourself: “Listen, do you only see the bad side?”, Then we will be ready to take the next step. Why not try to see the good, the positive?
Try to make it a permanent exercise, almost as one more mechanism: with every negative assessment you make of something or someone, you must immediately counteract it with a positive assessment. “I found this flaw, now the task is to find a virtue. “Thus you will be on your way to overcome the terrible weight of a thought with selective abstraction.