Disqualifying The Positive (2024)

FAQs

What is an example of disqualifying positive? ›

Perhaps a stranger compliments your outfit and you dismiss it as the stranger just trying to make small talk. Maybe you get a good score on an exam but dismiss it as the exam being extremely easy. This negative pattern of thinking is a type of cognitive distortion known as disqualifying the positive.

Disqualifying the positive happens when we experience something that is good, or even neutral, and we convince ourselves that it is not actually positive. We find ways to reject these experiences, insisting that they don't “count.” This often looks like turning compliments or words of praise from others into negatives.

Disqualifying the Positive

You reject positive experiences by insisting they "don't count" for some reason or other. In this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences.

Examples of disqualify in a Sentence

His poor eyesight disqualified him from becoming a pilot.

Disqualifying the positive is a cognitive distortion which involves ignoring, downplaying or dismissing positive attributes, experiences, achievements or compliments.

Discounting the Positive: You reject positive experiences by insisting they "don't count." If you do a good job, you may tell yourself that it wasn't good enough or that anyone could have done as well.

For example, a person jumping to conclusions might assume that someone they just met is angry at them, simply because that person wasn't smiling at them while they talked, even though there are many alternative explanations for that behavior.

Take the example of someone eating alone in a cafeteria, thinking everyone thinks she is a loser for eating alone. Or if you get to work a few minutes late, and you think everyone else is thinking about your tardiness. Engage in enough distorted mind reading, and you can feel pretty miserable after a while.

Have you ever felt anxious about something and thought to yourself, "I know this isn't going to work out well" and everything turned out just fine? If you have, it's likely that you were using emotional reasoning. In this case, we tend to take our emotions as being evidence for the truth.

Mental filtering, also known as selective abstraction, is a type of cognitive distortion in which someone focuses only on the negative aspects of a situation, filtering out the positive ones.

What small positives are you discounting? ›

What Does Discounting the Positive Mean? If you've ever said, “Oh, that was just luck,” you've discounted the positive. Discounting the positive means you don't take credit for the good things you've earned or achieved in your life. You think it's just a wild coincidence that something good happened.

To manage selective abstraction, you must consciously start to manage negative thought patterns so you can begin to see your efforts and achievements and those of others in a more positive light. Next time that you find yourself focusing on negative thoughts, take a step back and examine all aspects.

Journaling is one strategy that might help overcome mental filtering. Make an effort to intentionally shift your focus from the negative and look for more neutral or positive aspects of a situation.

Examples of Overgeneralization

Spending five minutes trying to learn a new language. Then you give up because it seems too confusing. This can lead to the assumption that learning a new language is impossible. Getting rejected from a job after an interview.

The patient may be diagnosed with diabetes when they actually do not have the disease. This is a false positive. This can lead to unnecessary medical treatment. On the other hand a false negative is when the test shows that a patient does not have diabetes when they actually do.

This is a form of discrimination that favours someone by treating them differently in a positive way. An example might be an organisation appointing someone from an underrepresented group into a role without considering whether they have right skills for the post.

An affirmative statement can also be referred to as an assertive sentence or affirmative proposition: "Birds fly," "Rabbits run," and "Fish swim" are all affirmative sentences where the subjects are actively doing something, thereby making a positive statement about the noun in motion.

Examples of positive perception

Feedback from students and increasing competition for admission also confirm the school's positive perception and educational impact. Its members demonstrated positive perception of quality of life and were without indications of depression and cognitive diminution.