Realities, Cognitive Distortions, and Unnecessary Suffering
How do we find our center in ambiguous and painful realities when our minds have been conditioned to believe that stability only comes by trying to predict or control the outcome?
If you’re new to I’m Not Saying There’s Hope, Iterative and Agile Frameworks of Resilience is a good place to start. If you haven’t yet done so, the most important thing before January 2Oth is to start working on your Mosaic of Connection which you can start reading about here - Foundations of a Mosaic of Connection. Lastly, if you’re an overachiever head over to The Foundations of a Framework of Sense-Making to read the introduction to what follows below (not necessary context for what follows).
This is the first article where I will attempt to unpack a concrete tool for the Sense-Making portion of my larger framework for nurturing resilience and res!stance for the long-haul.
Bump, Set, Spike Protein.
Unbeknownst to me, I had Covid on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day this year. I felt a little tired and a little off, but those were the only symptoms I had, so I thought I might be coming down with a mild cold. I wore a mask just in case my cold was contagious and went on my Holly Jolly way to celebrate and eat with friends and family on both days. I stayed home from work the next day and in the evening I noticed that my sense of smell was gone.
Three days later, SEVEN of my family members and friends were sick with Covid… I was patient zero… a bon-a-fide superspreader.
For personal reasons beyond the obvious, I was very very cranky that 2024 ended with this Covid crescendo, especially because 2024 started with my 86 year-old father taking me to hospital at 2am New Years Day in the worst pain of my life with, what turned out to be a ruptured endometrioma.
Those bookends to my year (and everything in between) aside, I was very concerned about my parents a few days ago. My mom is 80 and still in recovery from having cancer treatments last year and my dad is 87 and loosing mobility. Miraculously, neither of them have had Covid in the last four years, until now… and they got it from me, their ridiculously vigilant daughter who worked very hard in those first two pandemic years to keep them safe from the deadliest of the strains for their demographic. Thankfully, as of today, it seems that the worst may have passed and they are now on the mend, but this skirt with danger felt like a good example to share of how I practically used one the tools in my sense-making framework this week to help prevent additional suffering and energy drain in an already stressful situation.
As a reminder, I define sense-making as the following —
One of the best and most challenging concepts from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) that I learned in my mid-20’s was the concept of cognitive distortions.
⏸️ PAUSE ⏸️
Now, before I get into this more, one HUGE and important caveat - CBT has been the least successful form of therapy for me personally. As someone with PTSD and a neurocomplex brain, CBT has been largely ineffective for helping me overcome and heal from trauma. I am not a therapist, but personally I do not recommend CBT therapy to my friends who have moderate to severe trauma. Trauma is held and processed in the body and trauma-responses come from an activation of the nervous system, which bypasses our cognitive functions. It’s that whole fight, flight, freeze (and fawn) thing you’ve heard about. It’s not coming from same place in our brain that our thinking self resides, so trauma, especially severe trauma, can’t be addressed by thinking our way into healing. Moderate to extreme trauma is usually most effectively processed and healed somatically (e.g. body-based therapy, ex. learning nervous system regulation, EMDR, etc.), not cognitively. If this concept is new and intriguing, you can learn more in this video and find heaps more free and practical tools on my favorite mental health YouTube channel —
Okay, now that I’ve convinced you CBT is garbage (j/k 😂), let me tell you about one of the tools that CBT has to offer that can be really helpful right now in the scary political climate we are already in and heading more deeply into 16 days from now.
What are Cognitive Distortions?
Cognitive distortions are biased perspectives and deeply ingrained styles of thinking that can unintentionally become the architects of our emotional lives and tend to have a significant and often detrimental impact on our mental health. These distorted thinking patterns often create additional and unnecessary suffering in situations that are already difficult.
One aspect of the Sense-Making framework that might give us resilience to resist injustice over the long haul is intentionally working towards healing patterns of thinking that lead to unnecessary suffering, as much as we are able, right now. This intentional work helps to decrease our personal suffering, but is also worth taking the time to heal so we can cultivate the mental health and energy to walk on over the long haul in the struggle for justice for folks on the margins in our communities.
We cannot prevent all suffering, but some of the suffering we experience is preventable. This is where cognitive distortions often come in...
The Spectrum of Thought
Back to my parents.
When I found out that they had Covid last week I had multiple roads (patterns of thinking) that I could have gone down…
Dire-gon Alley - “Oh no. My parents are old. And they have Covid. And they’ve never had it. They are going to be hospitalized or die.”
La-La Lane - “Everything happens for a reason! It’s all going to work out for the best. God will never give you more than you can handle. Good vibes and positive energy only, please!”
Misattribution Mile - “The universe/God/fate is cruel and punitive. This is a personal attack. Why does this only and always happen to me?”
Certainty Circle - “They must be so scared. They don’t have the things they need. They didn’t start taking their medication, I’m sure they didn’t. This is going to end badly. I bet I got everyone sick.”
Rumination Roundabout - “This is all my fault. If only I stayed home. If only I had worn a different mask. What was I thinking? How could I be so careless?”
And the list could go on and on.
So what do we do? Especially when some of the things on that list could actually happen? My parents could still take a turn and get very sick, that is a possibility, it could happen. I did have to spend an hour on the phone convincing them to take their meds 🤦♀️- that ended up being a reality. It all working out and being okay is a possibility as well.
So how do we hold reality, especially when it’s scary and there are very real threats, without causing unnecessary suffering by also trying to control it?
It makes sense that our brain creates biased patterns of thinking that serve us when we feel out of control in the midst of what’s uncertain. Distorting reality (catastrophising, fortune telling, etc.) and dismissing reality (spiritual bypassing, toxic positivity) are really just funky and creative ways our brains try to cope and feel more in control in the midst of uncertainty and fear of the future.
But, like many things, the truth and path forward is somewhere in the middle, and everywhere in-between.
When I found out my mom had Covid, and when she was very very sick those first few days, I had a choice of which road to take. This go-around I was able to choose to walk down “Reality Road” instead of all those others. Although the other ways of thinking were familiar and tempting comforts, I’ve worn down this new path over time, so choosing it now takes far less effort than it used to.
Reality Road - “My mom is very sick. It’s possible that it could get really bad with her current state of health from last year and she might need to be hospitalized. It’s possible that this is the worst and she will get better soon. What is mine to do today in light of what I actually know?”
Choosing Reality Road was empowering (rather than paralyzing) because it helped me see things clearly so that I could sort through what was and wasn’t mine to do this week to support my parents well.
There are heaps of skills you can find out there about how to reroute cognitive distortions, but one small step and simple key that helps me start to break up the gridlock in my brain from these rigid patterns of thinking is to simply take a few breaths, and then replace certainty with possibility. Attempting this simple pivot from needing certainty to accepting reality and many possible futures may seem trite or just semantics, but maybe try it out a few times this week? Especially with January 2Oth around the corner.
If you tend to deny difficult realities, next time you find yourself saying “don’t worry, it will all work out” (denial often helps people feel a false sense of control), give acceptance of reality and multiple possibilites a shot and say, “some of this might work out, some of this might not work out,” and breathe…. and practice breathing and moving with the discomfort of the truth of multiple uncertain realities and futures.
If you tend to distort reality, next time you find yourself saying, “this is the end of life as we know it, there’s no way forward” (distortion often helps people feel a false sense of control), give acceptance of realityand multiple possibilities a shot and say, “some things might go to shit and fall apart, and some things could work out somehow maybe,” and breathe… and practice breathing and moving with the discomfort of the truth of multiple uncertain realities and futures.
Ground Control to Major Tom
Don’t get me wrong, having a sense of control in our world is not at all a bad thing. To the contrary, having some sense of healthy control is necessary for mental health and thriving. Our brains and bodies are wired to find comfort in predictability, to find solace in routine. Owning our agency is a good and empowering posture. The unnecessary suffering comes, however, when we cannot accept the (often terrible) realities that are outside of our control… so we contort our minds to predict and control this feeling of helplessness through platitudes or catastrophizing — but they are two sides of the same debilitating coin.
This re-frame of reality encompasses one of the meanings behind the name of this Substack - I’m Not Saying There’s Hope. Do I think it’s all going to go to shit in the next couple of years? Very possibly. Do I think it is possible that something else might happen for a better future? Well, hell, most anything is possible. I’m not saying there’s hope, and I’m not saying there’s not hope.
I think sustainability in the struggle for justice might be helped along with this mindset. And I really think that it’s never too late to learn to hold the paradoxes of reality gently, with determined and open hands.
What About that F*ing Arc?
On a meta level I’ve always loved the quote by MLK about the arc of the moral universe bending towards justice. However, in the day to day, and from what I’ve seen with my own eyes (in the slums of Kolkata and elsewhere), when MLK’s words are chucked at a suffering world, they land with a cruel indifference, like tossing lemon juice onto the open sores of the man with leprosy on the side of the busy dusty lane, strewn with trash and sewage.
TW: Trigger warning: child harm/endangerment - Skip italicized section
One morning when I lived in Kolkata, I was walking to language school down the sidewalk of a very busy street. It was a road I hadn’t taken before and something I nearly didn’t see stopped me in my tracks. It was a little girl sitting on a 2x3 foot ledge about five feet off the ground, crying, probably just three years old, with a rope tied around her waist and the other end tied to the concrete post next to her.
Once I realized what I was seeing, I hurried over to her, searching the crowd for any sign of family. Hundreds of people walked by her in the span of the time I was there, and no one stopped. This indifference to the suffering of lower caste people was something I’d grown accustomed to seeing while living there, but this time it struck an aching and deep chord inside. Where is the arc of justice for this little girl?
After about 15 minutes the little girl’s older sister (probably 8-10 years old) came back and was very embarrassed that a foreigner stopped to stay with her sister there. I think she tried to explain where she was and why, but I didn’t understand. She said that her mother was at work and this is where they stayed until she was done. I got them some biscuits and water and said goodbye. It was all I could do. Stay so the baby didn’t fall off the ledge until her family returned. Try to explain to the sister in broken Bangla how the baby could fall and get hurt. And walk away into the crowd, with a feigned smile and wave goodbye.
Stories like this—that I have lived—is why preventing unnecessary suffering is so important to me. I’ll say it again, we cannot prevent all suffering, but some of the suffering we experience is preventable. This world is terrible enough already for so many (and maybe for some of you reading this) and there are very real threats already here and coming... and… Cognitive Distortions sap so much of the strength and courage we will need to take thoughtful and meaningful action in the days to come… and… when we close our ears and eyes to the reality of suffering by Spiritually Bypassing the pain, our work for justice becomes patronizing and anemic.
My favorite words from Ta-Nehisi Coates speak to much of what I am trying to get to in this ridiculously long post… the part about accepting realities and possibilities anyhow. His frank words give me a strange and deep courage to settle in with the reality that uncertainty doesn’t have to be a paralyzing force. What we don’t know might actually be the light and heat of a fire that warms and illuminates just one needed next step.
I’ll end here, with the sober, whimsical, and weirdly empowering (for me at least) uncertainty of Coates—
I don’t believe the arc of the universe bends towards justice. I don’t even believe in an arc. I believe in chaos. I believe powerful people who think they can make Utopia out of chaos should be watched closely. I don’t know that it all ends badly. But I think it probably does.
I’m also not a cynic. I think that those of us who reject divinity, who understand that there is no order, there is no arc, that we are night travelers on a great tundra, that stars can’t guide us, will understand that the only work that will matter, will be the work done by us. Or perhaps not.
Maybe the very myths I decry are necessary for that work. I don’t know.
I’m going to adopt all of your sayings though 😂 “Reality Road”! Pheweeeeee
I’m so sorry you were in the hospital too! What?!???