Selective Abstraction: Maximize The Negative And Minimize The Positive

Selective abstraction is a distortion of thought that leads you to feel that the negative is more relevant and more present in situations than the positive. It is not something you set out to do, it just becomes an automatic way of processing reality. It is very likely that you have adopted this way of thinking for “educational heritage” and have not stopped to question it.

When you have lived in environments where the negative of each person or situation is highlighted, you get used to thinking that this type of analysis is the correct one. In addition, this perspective is gradually becoming fixed in your brain, and that is why you cannot detect the cracks that really exist in your reasoning.

You may even have incorporated some justifications for thinking this way. Maybe you think that if you only stop at the negative, you will run less risk of feeling disappointed or frustrated by not reaching a goal, or discovering the mistakes or gaps of other people.

It is also possible that you believe that seeing the negative is a more analytical and critical attitude, because the good must not be touched and instead the bad is what must be improved.

People who maintain this distortion in thinking are often angry. It is usual that they have a whole catalog of what they do not support or what they are angry about.

They can’t stand being late, they tolerate everything except lies, they hate that people are conformists and things like that. At the same time, they feel outraged and even attacked by the mistakes of others. This can also be a way of thinking that makes them proud.

Selective abstraction not only addresses the external world, it also, and most especially, ends up applying to oneself. This results in those people whom we say “make a movie in their heads.” In other words, they are the ones who tend to imagine the outcome of all situations as something terrible or, in any case, negative for them.

Some examples to understand

This may be an example: the groom takes a while to get to the date with the bride. She begins to despair and what she imagines is that it may be a way that he has to communicate that he is not as interested in the relationship as before.

She ends up thinking that he is an inconsiderate, selfish man and that, in addition, he does not love her, as in her mind she has told herself many times. When he arrives, what he does is throw all these accusations at him, without taking into account that his delay was due to a traffic accident, something that completely escapes the will of the boyfriend, but that he has had to suffer as much or more than the bride.

Another example, applied to work, that of someone who has carefully prepared an exhibition and, as he hopes, it is successful. But one of the attendees makes some criticism regarding a minor aspect of the presentation. Thus, our presenter eliminates the feeling of triumph and only this criticism is stored in his memory, in which it will be recreated over and over again the following days.

He leaves thinking that perhaps the others also had objections, but the only one who expressed it out loud was the one who made the criticism. He comes to believe that perhaps all his effort was in vain, because the presentation did not meet his expectations, which at all times were conditional on meeting the expectations of others.

Fighting selective abstraction

Keeping the mind on the register of selective abstraction inevitably leads to states of frustration and anger. It is not something that enriches life in any way, nor is it a type of thinking to be cultivated. Quite the contrary: the advisable thing is to eradicate that automatism from our mind, to lead a fuller life. But how to achieve it?

Like all mechanical behavior, the first thing to do is to become aware that we are engaging in it. It is good that you ask yourself the following question: how much value do I place on the negative in people or in situations? Do I think, in any way, that the negative is something that deserves more appreciation than the positive?

Once the existence of this selective abstraction in our thinking is recognized, the next thing is to carry out a process of self-observation to detect if it happens to us with everything and everyone or is it activated only in certain circumstances.

This self-vigilant attitude will allow us to become aware of what unleashes the distortion. Most likely, we will discover that the mechanism is triggered in circumstances that generate insecurity.

When that time comes when we say to ourselves, “Hey, you’re only seeing the bad,” we are ready to take the next step. Why not try to see the good, the positive?

Try to make it a permanent exercise, almost another automatism: every negative assessment you make of something or someone, you must immediately counter a positive assessment. “I found this defect, now the task is to find a virtue.” Thus you will be on the way to overcome the terrible weight of a thought with selective abstraction.