Overgeneralization and Depression: When One Experience Becomes “Always”

This is the fourth in a five-part series about the most common mental mistakes that can lead to depression, keep you depressed, or make you more vulnerable to relapse. The five patterns are based on the work of Dr. Michael Yapko, an internationally known expert on depression.

In the third article, we focused on rumination: repeatedly returning to painful questions about the past, even when doing so is no longer helping you understand, heal, or solve anything.

The fourth mental mistake is overgeneralization, also called overly-global thinking.

Overgeneralization means taking one experience or one piece of knowledge and applying it to everything. It can make your thinking rigid and inflexible and cause one disappointment, frustration, or failure to feel like proof of what will always happen.

I’m sure you’ve heard this old saying:  A winner never quits.

But you’ve also heard:  Quit while you’re ahead.

Or how about:  Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

And yet there’s also:  Out of sight, out of mind.

So, which saying is right?

Imagine that the person you’ve been dating long-distance for three years has just broken up with you. In that moment you may imagine that “out of sight, out of mind” may feel absolutely true. The experience that has just brought you so much pain might outweigh every other possible explanation.

Then other conclusions may sprout from that decision…

“What if I’d moved? I was stupid not to.”

“I should never have trusted him. I can’t trust anyone ever again.”

“There must be something wrong with me to be treated like this.”

And yet, none of those conclusions is necessarily true.

Either popularized saying about absence could be “right,” depending on the circumstances. And circumstances can be very complex.

That’s the problem with overgeneralization. You take one painful event and decide that it proves something much larger about yourself, about other people, or about your future.

 

When overgeneralization leads to overly-global thinking…

You’ve probably heard the phrase, “You can’t see the forest for the trees.” That usually means someone is so focused on a particular detail that they miss the bigger picture.

Overly-global thinking creates almost the opposite problem. You become hyper-focused on the immensity of the forest and miss the individual trees…each one is distinct, each could invite a closer look.

Depression can encourage this kind of broad, all-or-nothing thinking:

“I didn’t get that job, so I’ll never get a job.”

“I tried to be more affectionate, and that didn’t work. So, I need to not be so affectionate.”

“I tried exercising yesterday, and it hurt, so I can’t exercise.”

These may be described generally as “negative self-talk.” That’s a fine term. But I want to be more specific.

Something happened once, and now you’re telling yourself it will happen all the time. That’s overgeneralization.

You wouldn’t teach a child that. You wouldn’t say, “You tried swimming once and weren’t very good, so you should give it up.”

You’d say, “Swimming involves a lot of things you have to learn to coordinate. Let’s break it down, try again, and give you time to get the hang of it.”

Why not offer yourself that same patience and accuracy?

Most things are more complicated than they look…

Consider how you might explain brushing your teeth:

“Pick up your toothbrush, put toothpaste on it, and brush your teeth.”

That sounds perfectly clear…unless you’re explaining it to someone who has absolutely no knowledge of brushing teeth.

What’s toothpaste? How do you open it? How much do you use? What does “brush” mean? Where does the water come in? Do you use hot or cold water? How long do you brush?

I’m not trying to be funny. We do things every day that involve a complex set of steps. Once we’ve done them a million times, we no longer have to think about those distinctions.

But when you’re depressed, or when your thinking is leading you toward depression, you may define a problem so broadly that you can’t see the smaller steps within it.

The problem becomes enormous. And when the problem feels enormous, change can feel impossible.

One fact is not the whole person

Overgeneralization can also affect your relationships…

How does overgeneralizing affect your relationships? It happens if you learn one fact about someone, then make a decision about their entire character based on that fact. Yet, is that how you want to be seen? I doubt it.

I have performance anxiety. If someone sees me speaking while I’m visibly nervous, does that make me a loser? Of course not.

If I don’t look nervous, does that mean I’m lying about having performance anxiety? No.

It can almost sound laughable when you say it that plainly. But pigeonholing people as wholly bad or wholly good isn’t very funny. Children tend to think in those categories because their minds are still learning to make distinctions. As adults, we’re capable of seeing far more complexity.

And that includes the way you see yourself.

How to recognize your own tendency to overgeneralize…

One mistake is not your whole identity. One rejection is not your entire future. One symptom is not proof that nothing can change.

Break the forest down into trees.

“I’m too tired to make the bed. But I can pull up the cover.”

“My doctor says walking could help, but it hurts to move. Maybe I can stretch for a few minutes.”

“I tried that yoga video yesterday, and it hurt a little. I’ll try again today because I know it can take time to get used to something new.”

This isn’t about pretending depression is easy to overcome. It’s about refusing to let one experience, one disappointment, or one broad conclusion define everything that’s possible.

When you hear words such as always, never, everyone, or nothing in your thinking, pause and ask:

• Am I treating one experience as proof of what will always happen?
• What facts or possibilities am I leaving out?
• Have I defined this problem so broadly that it feels impossible to change?
• What is one specific part of the problem I can address?
• What would I tell a child or a friend who had tried this only once?

Overgeneralization turns one tree into an entire forest. More accurate thinking helps you see the distinction.

And find the next step that is actually possible.

By the way… 

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