Underlying Thoughts

I was trying to get out of the habit of posting multiple times in one day, but this is related to what I wrote in the last post and short.  It strikes me that there are some underlying beliefs I have from childhood experiences that are unhelpful and which cause me problems on days like today:

1. If someone is angry with me, it means they dislike me; in fact they will never like me again.
2. If someone is different to me, they won’t like me.
3. If I make a mistake, I can never put it right.
4. In fact, if I make a mistake, I must be a terrible person, morally as well as in terms of competence.

I suspect that a lot of my issues with social anxiety/family and social interactions and depression stem from these beliefs.  3 and 4 probably even influence the OCD too (if I make a mistake with kashrut, I won’t be able to put it right and I will be a bad Jew).

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