You’re having a perfectly fine day and then your brain decides to ruin it. “You’re falling behind.” “This isn’t going to work.” “Everyone’s figured this out except you.”
It arrives with zero evidence but total certainty, and because it sounds like you, you believe it.
This week, we’re pulling that apart. Psychiatrist David Burns identified the specific, predictable ways your brain lies to you, and once you can spot them, they start losing their grip.
This is the first episode in The Spring Clear-Out!
In this episode:
The thought I had by the Bacalar lagoon that was so ridiculous it made me laugh
The 4 cognitive distortions that would ruin my life if I let them
Why “always” and “never” are red flags in your own self-talk
Albert Ellis’s A-B-C-D-E framework (brilliant psychologist, terrible branding)
The one shift between reacting to your thoughts and choosing what you believe
Chapters:
[00:00] Your brain is lying to you
[04:14] 6,000 thoughts a day and most of them are unchecked
[05:08] The 4 cognitive distortions running your life
[07:37] Where the lie actually lives: the A-B-C-D-E framework
[09:06] D is for disputing: “show me the receipts”
[10:03] Your experiment: name the glitch
Your experiment for this week:
When a thought makes you feel like shit, don’t fight it. Get curious. Ask: which distortion is this? All-or-nothing? Catastrophising? Overgeneralising? Labelling? Name it. Out loud or in your head. Because the moment you name a pattern, it stops being the truth and becomes a thing your brain does sometimes.
“You don’t need to fix your thinking. You just need to stop believing all of it.”
Which distortion do you catch yourself in most? All-or-nothing, catastrophising, overgeneralising, or labelling?
Noemie x
