# Catastrophizing, mind reading and all-or-nothing thinking

- **Episode:** [10](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/10.md) (2022-11-03)
- **Type:** other
- **Tags:** catastrophizing, mind reading, all-or-nothing
- **Time:** 30:54–33:24 (start 1854s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/10?t=1854](https://truthliesandwork.com/10?t=1854)

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[30:54] Al Elliott: Hmm
[30:54] Leanne Elliott: My other possible conclusion is that I'm gonna be bankrupt by the end of the year. That's an example of catastrophizing
[30:59] Al Elliott: Yeah. I, when I was, I was bankrupt back in 2005, 2007, actually, I think was, was the date I went bankrupt. And so I was thinking, oh my God, I can't pay my bills, etc., etc. And then I picked up a few books. I think Mark Victor Hansen, a couple of others, Jack Canfield, worked through those. And they were really good at kind of like through the pages, teaching me things like I shouldn't say I can't afford it. Because that is automatically put in the back of my head. I haven't got money. There's other things like people, oh, they're filthy rich
[31:34] Leanne Elliott: Mm-hmm
[31:35] Al Elliott: Um, you know, and that's just, I know that's not catastrophizing, but that's sort of going, I'm associating that someone who's got money is filthy and therefore I don't want anything to do with it. Um, so I think there's all kinds of things like this. And, and I mean, the other one is like the people who are, who overgeneralize, who say things like all, um, you're like, oh, here's a perfect one. Oh, all staff are just— who work from home are on Facebook. Um, I know someone who says, who says that quite a lot. Well, no one can work from home because they'll just all be on Facebook, won't they? And I mean, this is just, as you say, it's a thinking error, but also it's kind of, it's gonna have a massive ramification on the way that you act if that becomes your belief because you're saying it, even if you're saying it, starting off saying it in a flippant way
[32:16] Leanne Elliott: Yeah, completely. And, and I think that is the danger, isn't it, that And I think this is where kind of the— bring it back to the imposter phenomenon. It can, it can become this flippant term that's thrown around, whereas actually— and I think in itself then kind of takes away from people that are either experiencing discrimination and bias in their workplace, or people who are genuinely, authentically struggling with imposter phenomenon. So I think we need to— I guess it's a lot of people, you know, saying, oh, I'm depressed. It's like, you might be a bit down. We're not talking clinical-level depression. I think it's a similar thing. But yeah, I mean, if you think you're experiencing these thinking errors, my advice would be just to keep a little journal, a little notebook, and if you catch yourself in a thinking error, just jot it down and maybe make a couple of notes in terms of the time of day it was, if you just come out of a stressful meeting, if little Billy is— your little kid's driving you crazy, because often environmental factors are gonna Brilliant
[33:18] Al Elliott: So do you think we're ready to talk about if someone notices imposter syndrome on a member of their team?