Overgeneralization: The Thinking Trap Driving Toxic Shame (and How to Fix It)

Send us Fan Mail Liz explains overgeneralization as a shame-induced cognitive distortion that hurts performance and identity by turning a single incident into a sweeping conclusion, often marked by absolute words like “always,” “never,” “all,” and “everybody,” or by nominalization (making a process into a fixed “thing,” e.g., “my marriage is sick”). She describes thinking traps as typically showing up as self put-downs, catastrophic future beliefs, or critical regret-based thoughts, and notes...