Negative thinking traps (or cognitive distortions) are errors, or negative patterns in our thinking processes. When trapped, our thought processes tend to overlook context, leave information out, or assign motivations with no evidence behind them. Today we’re going to explore three more: Mind-reading, Should statements, and Emotional reasoning.

Thinking traps-also known as cognitive distortions–are something we all experience to a degree. They are basically errors in our thinking processes; where context is overlooked, information that was left out is assumed, or we assign motivations that we don’t actually know to the people around us.

Since we all experience them from time to time, we can all benefit from learning how to identify and address them when they show up in our lives.