How to Overcome Fears Associated with Reluctance (Continued)
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3. Disqualifying the positive… you reject positive experiences by insisting they “don’t count” for some reason. In this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by everyday experiences.

These are just a few of the ways irrational beliefs come up. They need to be examined and surrendered if more positive, coping styles are to be maintained. If you realize how you formed some of your irrational beliefs, as by these methods mentioned above, then hopefully you will be ready to discard them.

Another way of overcoming fear is to avoiding jumping to conclusions. You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that support your conclusions; discard mind reading… this is when you conclude, falsely, that someone is reacting negatively to you and you don’t bother to check this out. This is also known as the FORTUNE TELLER ERROR.

Finally, another cognitive error to avoid is catastrophizing or minimization. Catastrophizing is when you exaggerate the importance of little things that happen and scare your self unnecessarily. Minimizing is when you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow’s imperfections). This is also called the “binocular trick”.