We are very good at anticipating the thoughts, actions, and feelings of others (or at least we like to think we are). Theoretically, this has survival value. If you’re around a dangerous person, it’s probably a good idea to anticipate what they might do that could threaten your wellbeing. So we’re good at it. The problem comes in when we anticipate what another person is feeling, and we get it wrong. How often have you guessed at what another person might be thinking or feeling? How often have you guessed incorrectly, and how did that person react?
In my private practice, the past gets brought up quite often between arguing couples. The justification for this sort of behavior is that when a partner has done something wrong in the past, the other partner automatically assumes that this behavior will continue in the future, based on past performance. The problem from the other partner’s viewpoint is that, until someone invents a time machine, he or she cannot go back in time and correct past mistakes. So if the other partner continues to bring up the past, this individual will be constantly battling the ghosts of previous behaviors.
Likewise, a lot of arguments among family members come about because one family member guesses at what another family member is feeling at a given moment. Consider this conversation:
Jane: “What are you mad about?”
Joe: “I’m not mad about anything.”
Jane: “Yes you are, I can tell. So what is it?”
Joe: “I told you, I’m not mad about anything.”
Jane: “Come on, I know you. I can tell when you’re mad!”
Joe: “I’M NOT MAD!”
In the above scenario, Jane’s interpretation of Joe’s emotional state became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Although Joe wasn’t angry at the start of the conversation, by the end of it he most definitely was! This is because we don’t like to be told how we feel. Doing so invalidates our own right to self-determination at a fundamental level.
The easiest way to tell what a person is thinking or feeling at a given time is to simply ask them, and not to try to guess what their motivations or emotions might be. If you feel tempted to anticipate what a person is thinking or feeling, you are engaging in what I call Crystal Ball Thinking.
Unless you have a crystal ball, you cannot possibly know what another person’s thoughts or feelings may be. Of course, if you ask them, they can always be deceptive in their answers, but if they are, then that’s their responsibility, not yours. All you are responsible for is the information they give you, and how you choose to respond to that information.
The way to avoid Crystal Ball Thinking is to remember the skills of mindfulness. In being mode, there is no past, there is no future. There is only this present moment. If you are truly connected to the present moment, then you avoid the temptation to blame others for their past mistakes, or to try to anticipate what their future mistakes might be. You also learn to accept whatever the person may be feeling or thinking in the present moment as their responsibility, and not yours. The only responsibility you have is to change yourself to accommodate your own sense of wellbeing. If this involves changing how you respond to difficult people, the choice is still yours. You get to decide whether such a change is worth it or not. In that case, “acceptance” might mean that you’ve accepted that this person is not going to change, so it might be time to move on.
Rumination and Avoidance
Rippere (1977) defined rumination as: “enduring, repetitive, self-focused thinking which is a frequent reaction to depressed mood.”
Such rumination is often associated with worries about events that occurred in the past or anxiety about events that may or may not happen in the future. Rumination has been positively correlated with an increase in symptoms of depression. Llearning to decrease instances of rumination has been correlated with a reduction in symptoms of depression (Nolen-Hoeksema, et al, 2008). From a clinical standpoint, rumination could be seen as an obsession about the future. Persons who have a stronger tendency to ruminate also have a stronger tendency to worry about the future. They believe that their situation is hopeless; that they have no reason to expect that the future will be any different than the present or the past. By teaching them to recognize this as crystal ball thinking, they are more able to live in the moment and minimize the tendency to ruminate.
One of the keys to ending ruminating behavior may seem paradoxical at first. If a person is trapped in a cycle of rumination, such a cycle usually consists of a list of things that the person is worried about. Telling such an individual to avoid rumination is merely adding one more thing to the list of things that they already have anxiety about. Instead of focusing so much on breaking the cycle of anxiety, they should instead focus on accepting the ruminative cycle as a process of the brain. One way I’ve heard it put before is that, “Your brain is going to do what your brain is going to do, but you don’t have to let it push you around.”
Rumination is also closely related to avoidance behavior. Hayes, et al (1996) conceptualize experiential avoidance behaviors as: “…unhealthy efforts to escape and avoid emotions, thoughts, memories, and other private experiences.”
Obviously if memories are being avoided, then those memories are necessarily about events that happened in the past. Once again, if crystal ball thinking is kept to a minimum, then regrets, ruminations and avoidance about those past events, and the thoughts and feelings associated with them, should diminish.
The Three Ps
One way to minimize crystal ball thinking, and to therefore minimize rumination and avoidance, is to become conscious of thought patterns that conform to the Three Ps: permanent, personal, & pervasive.
Permanent thought patterns are patterns that assume that things cannot change. For example, “That’s the way it has always been in the past, and there is no reason to think that it will be any different in the future.” Note the use of the word, always. In order to disprove this statement, all that is necessary is to produce a single instance in which things were not “always this way.” Note also that the key to avoiding crystal ball thinking here is to validate the feeling behind the thought process without validating the conclusion. For example, if a client says to you, “This is the way I’ve always been. I can’t help it,” you could validate their feeling while pointing out the contradiction in the following manner: “I understand that you feel that way, and sometimes it may feel to you that things will never change, but remember the other day when you did _____ ? That demonstrates that you aren’t always this way, and that you are capable of doing things in a different way.”
Personal thought patterns are patterns in which an individual takes responsibility for things that may not be his fault. For example, suppose you are riding in a car with your friend Paul, who is driving. As you approach an intersection, the light turns red. Paul launches into a diatribe. “I swear, every traffic light in this town is out to get me! Every single one of these lights turns red when I get to the intersection!”
Paul has personalized the traffic lights. Traffic signals are not sentient beings. They don’t know Paul’s car from any other vehicle on the road. They are not acting out of some sense of malice towards Paul, yet Paul has taken it upon himself to perceive all the traffic signals in town as ‘out to get me.’ This relates to another aspect of crystal ball thinking: assuming the motives and/or motivations of others. In this extreme case, Paul has assumed that an inanimate object has a vendetta. If you substitute a human being for the traffic light, you can see how easy it is to assume motivations in other people that may not be there. In the conversation above between Joe and Jane, Jane has assumed a feeling in Joe that was not present…at least not at the beginning of their conversation. By mindfully living in the present moment, we avoid the ‘crystal ball’ temptation of trying to predict the emotional states of others. We also learn that we are not responsible for those states.
Pervasive thought patterns are patterns that lead us to believe that what is true in one situation is true in all situations. For example, suppose Jill has married a man who turned out to be a real loser. He can’t keep a job, stays out all night, and generally has no regard whatsoever for what it means to be in a committed relationship. Jill finally has enough, and divorces this man. After the divorce, she often loudly pronounces to all of her friends that, “All men are losers. Why would I ever want another relationship?” There’s an old saying that most Statistics 101 students are familiar with: One sample makes for sloppy statistics. In other words, Jill has drawn a conclusion about all men based on a sample of one admittedly poor specimen.
This idea of pervasiveness can carry over into individual, internal thought patterns as well. For example: “I really screwed that up; that’s not surprising though, I screw everything up.”
By becoming aware of thought patterns that are permanent, personal, and pervasive, we become aware of our tendencies toward crystal ball thinking. Things to look for when watching for such thought patterns are words like always and never. The goal is to move from absolute terms to relative terms by finding exceptions to such thought patterns. For example, to refute a statement such as, “I always screw things up,” all that it is necessary to do is to find a single instance in where you didn’t ‘screw things up.’
By minimizing crystal ball thinking, we learn to minimize experiential avoidance and rumination. When we minimize avoidance and rumination, we move to mindfulness and radical acceptance.
ACTIVITY
