“I know what she’s thinking,” I thought to myself.
“She thinks I’m a loser.”
“I need to hurry up and impress her before she gets bored and walks away. Quick. Say something clever.”
Have you been there? Or how about:
“They’re probably talking about how amazing I am and how well I crushed that project. I bet they’re discussing my promotion right now. I’m gonna be sooo promoted.
Wait. No I’m not. Why would they promote me? I’m the least talented person on the team. Are they gonna let me go? My boss looked at his watch while I was talking. They’re totally gonna let me go.”
Or this:
“My best friend has all the luck. Look at him and his new house and picture-perfect family all over Instagram, getting way more likes than me. Screw them.
Maybe I should just unfollow them and go do something amazing so I’ll never feel this way again. I won’t just be as happy as him — I’ll be happier.”
Or this?
“I sent over 300 job applications and only had one interview. That’s it. I’m un-hirable. My work history sucks and I’m never going to get hired in this field again.
Why don’t I quit and become a pizza delivery person or work at Starbucks? No — eventually robots are going to take those jobs and I’ll be homeless. That’s it. I’m 100% destined to be homeless.”
Any of these sound like you?
These are just a few examples of what psychologists call cognitive distortions.
Rooted in the survival part of our brain, comparing ourselves to others, pretending we can read minds, thinking we “should” or “shouldn’t” do something, jumping to conclusions, and catastrophizing are manifestations of anxiety often rooted in childhood.
While the human brain is wired for survival regardless of environment, unpredictable, chaotic, or abusive childhoods exacerbate and amplify these survival instincts, leading to a sensitive and reactive amygdala — the part of the brain that sends us into action or reaction before we have time to think.
Threat Detection and Response
Despite our technological advances, our brains are still wired for hunter-gatherer survival. We form tribes, define hierarchies, acquire food, land, and resources, defend what’s ours, and reproduce.
We haven’t drifted far from the tribal instincts and brain functions that once protected us from death by starvation, conflict, or exile, and propelled us to propagate our species. At our core, we’re wired to be consumed with thoughts about food, status, sex, and death.
In our preverbal years, our nervous systems became attuned to our primary caregivers and developed strategies to best get our needs met within that system. For many of us, that system was less than optimal. As a result, we developed anxiety patterns and behavioral strategies that ensured survival.
These strategies formed our relational blueprint and primary modes of conduct when threats were detected (or imagined). These are fight, flight, freeze, and fawn.
Below are high-level descriptions of each.
Fight
While the bully or the person quick to enter altercations may be seen as courageous or fearless, this behavior is usually a response to anxiety. This person developed a coping strategy that involved defending themselves when threatened, often leading others to see them as a “loose cannon” or volatile.
A telltale sign that someone’s fear response is fight is when those around them cannot see a real threat, yet this person feels compelled to defend against even the slightest infringement on territory, status, resources, or mate.
Flight
This strategy tells the brain and body to do one thing immediately: run.
Often seen in people who abandon relationships at the slightest provocation or conflict, those prone to flight avoid altercations by avoiding the situation altogether.
It’s common to see relationships where one person employs a fight response while the other employs flight, creating a chase-and-flee dynamic, followed by the high of reconciliation.
Freeze
This response is essentially a shutdown in the face of a real or perceived threat.
Unlike fight or flight, the person who freezes stays in the vicinity of the conflict but withdraws internally and hopes the threat will disappear.
Like a turtle withdrawing into its shell, the freeze responder learned that doing nothing was the best way to stay safe when threatened.
Fawn
This strategy attempts to neutralize the threat by appeasing the “attacker,” and it’s the one I identify with most.
Often used by Nice Guys (and women), the person who fawns seeks safety by “joining the enemy,” taking all of the blame, or abandoning their own opinions, views, or values in hopes the threat will dissolve through agreement.
Other names for this behavior include “becoming small” or “being a doormat” — often followed by an eventual explosion of rage once resentments pile up, aka the “exploding doormat.”
In our ancestral tribes, perceived threats were real threats to survival.
Lower status could mean fewer resources for ourselves or our families. It could lead to exile, which almost certainly meant death.
Lower status also meant less protection and reduced access to mates, lowering reproductive opportunity. Higher mate value meant stronger offspring and more resources, leading to a stronger tribe.
Today, food is so plentiful that we worry more about overconsumption than survival. Mate value is often associated with fitness, while displays of resources show up as expensive cars, jewelry, travel, or even maintaining a tan year-round.
Where our ancestors lived in huts, modern humans equate massive houses, excess wealth, and fame with success.
Despite our evolution, we’re still bound by the same tribal survival instincts — instincts forged when resources were scarce, threats were constant, and a drop in status or tribal acceptance could mean death for us and those we loved.
In other words, our anxiety was once rooted in reality.
What’s also interesting, is that fame or an elevated status can make someone less safe, as criminals often target celebrities or wealthy individuals. However, the drive to acquire an excess of status and resources is seen in almost every culture.
“But it feels real…”
While we place warning labels on chemicals and use childproof containers for prescription drugs, we do very little to warn ourselves about incoming thoughts and emotions.
Most of us grow up treating feelings as facts and acting on them as if they’re instructions for living.
Anger, rage, jealousy, sadness, rejection, and fantasy-based happiness are powerful emotions that can dramatically affect employment, romantic relationships, and families.
Very few of us stop to question whether these thoughts and feelings are based on reality because they feel real. They feel as if the threat is going to consume us, kill us, or get us banished from the tribe.
Cognitive distortions are a byproduct of an alarm system that was designed to keep us safe, but keeps us stuck in a loop of falsehood.
Here is a list of common cognitive distortions:
- All-or-Nothing Thinking: Seeing things in extremes, e.g. “If it’s not perfect, it’s a failure.”
- Overgeneralization: One event defines a pattern, e.g. “This always happens to me.”
- Mental Filter: Focusing only on the negative. One flaw outweighs everything else.
- Disqualifying the Positive: Rejecting good things, e.g. “That win doesn’t count.”
- Jumping to Conclusions
- Mind Reading: “I know what they think.”
- Fortune Telling: “I know how this ends.”
- Magnification/Minimization: Exaggerating negatives or shrinking positives.
- Emotional Reasoning: Feelings equal facts, e.g. “I feel it, so it must be true.”
- “Should” Statements: Rigid rules, e.g. “I should be further along.”
- Labeling & Mislabeling: Turning actions and emotions into identities, e.g. “I’m a failure.”
- Personalization: Taking responsibility for things outside your control.
- Blame: Assigning fault while ignoring your role.
- Catastrophizing: Expecting the worst-case scenario.
- Control Fallacies
- External: Life happens to me.
- Internal: Everything is my fault.
- Fallacy of Fairness: Life should match your expectations.
- Heaven’s Reward Fallacy: Suffering guarantees payoff.
- Being Right: Needing correctness at all costs.
- Comparison Filtering: Measuring your worth against others.
The Roots of Suffering
I don’t claim to be a Buddhist or an authority on enlightenment, but through my studies I’ve come to see how our attachment to tribal drives becomes a root of suffering in modern life.
We get upset when a friend buys a bigger house. When a neighbor drives a nicer car or has a more attractive partner.
We think a promotion will finally make us happy, until the feeling fades a day later and we’re left wanting more.
Social media fuels a global epidemic of discontentment by turning life into a comparison contest where others appear to live better lives because they only post highlights.
Our primitive survival mechanisms tell us we’re not enough, that we’ll be left behind, that we’ll cease to exist in the dating or status marketplace.
We fear a drop in status, and so we compulsively acquire more — even when we already have more than enough to survive.
A Different Path Forward
Freedom from self-inflicted suffering, as I see it, is not in the acquisition of “more,” but learning to be content with what we have and recognizing that many economic and social systems exploit our tribal wiring for profit.
When paired with unstable or abusive childhoods, our protective amygdala can turn cognitive distortions up to eleven, increasing suffering through protection mechanisms gone awry.
I’m not saying all ambition is wrong; wanting security and a high quality of life for ourselves and our families is healthy. But excess driven by cognitive distortions, rather than genuine need, is where suffering multiplies, while reality provides relief.
Furthermore, continuously questioning our thoughts and emotions and treating them as information to be fact-checked, can also lead to serenity and greater success in relationships.
Tools and Techniques
Mindfulness meditation, journaling, talking things out, and spending time in nature are my favorite techniques to calm the nervous system and get back to baseline.
Ironically, when I put myself in physically challenging situations and make it out alive, all of the nagging thoughts and fears fade into the background where they lose most of their power. Science has documented the power of the flow state, which is characterized by full immersion in the present.
Meditation, on the other hand, teaches the body that not every perceived threat requires action. In fact, hardly any of them do. Taking a 20-minute walk when a confrontation gets heated is a well-known way to turn off the alarm system and re-engage with clarity.
Different traditions describe this state of attunement to reality in different ways. Buddhists call it “Dharma.” Dr. David R. Hawkins, author of books like “Transcending the Levels of Consciousness,” calls it “separating truth from falsehood.” In the movie The Matrix, it’s called “taking the red pill.”
What works varies from person to person. Some find therapy or coaching essential, while others need body-based practices like yoga, martial arts, or action sports like surfing. Many, like myself, find benefit from a combination.
Conclusion
While we may never eradicate all erroneous thoughts or feelings or erase our tribal nature, we can develop awareness, grounding, and discernment, allowing us to separate truth from fear and live a life where enough truly is enough.
When we stop taking our thoughts and feelings at face value or as a sign that action is required, we can re-train our nervous systems. Fight, flight, freeze, and fawn can be seen for what they are: threat responses rooted in tribal physical survival. And while an Instagram post may feel like life or death, it’s our perceptions and triggers that are at play.
So remember this: just because someone has something “better” does not mean you’ll be any happier if you get it. What’s right for some may not be right for you, and there’s no telling what burdens come with fulfilling that desire.
Anxiety and cognitive distortions oversimplify reality in exchange for the immediacy of action, ignoring the nuances that might actually set us free.