Types of Unhelpful Thoughts
Being able to notice unhelpful thoughts is the first step you can take to adjust them to more helpful ones. Have a look at the following eight examples – do you recognise any of these thoughts?
Perfectionism is when you set yourself unrealistic expectations and are too hard on yourself when you don’t achieve them.
“I’m not as good as I was before, so I’m not good enough.”
Sometimes perfectionism can be very helpful, for example if you do something so well that you get rewarded, it could make you feel really good about yourself.
But perfectionism can be unhelpful when you expect yourself to reach certain high standards and don’t achieve them.
An example of perfectionism could be,
Or,
Rather than say something like,
You could think about what you can do rather than what you can’t and say,
