When your brain takes an event and turns it into “THIS IS HOW EVERYTHING IS!” Guess what, this thinking pattern has a name: it’s called overgeneralization.
Do you ever say something awkward at a party and your brain says, “Cool. I’m socially hopeless.”
Or you have a rough day at work and your brain goes, “Yep. I can’t handle anything.”
Maybe it’s one argument with someone you love and suddenly it’s, “This relationship is doomed.”
Overgeneralization is one of the fastest ways to turn normal emotions into a full-body, all-day spiral. In this video, you’ll learn how to notice overgeneralization, understand why it makes everything feel worse, and learn a few practical ways to interrupt it.
First, let me tell you about rattlesnakes. I promise it’s relevant.
Roots of Overgeneralization: Lessons from the Wild
I worked for years in wilderness therapy programs. We treated the kids with respect and had these amazing life-changing experiences in the outdoors. One year I was working down in the Grand Staircase Escalante area, and the previous winter had a lot of rain, which meant more grass, which meant more grass seeds, which meant more mice, which meant more snakes
So many rattlesnakes. Sometimes they’d come into camp, and we’d gently remove them with a stick, but then they’d come back. So we’d move camp. One time while driving, we saw one that was over 5 feet long.
Growing up in the Rocky Mountains and spending a lot of time outdoors, I was very aware of rattlesnakes. I had seen them occasionally on hikes and climbs, and my dad once accidentally ran over a rattlesnake on his bike.
Another time he was trail running and felt something stab his leg. He thought he just got poked by a stick, but later that night he looked and he had two perfect puncture marks, right through his pants. He’s pretty sure he got bit, but the snake didn’t release venom.
Once, my father-in-law was hiking ahead of me and my family. He climbed up over a ledge to get out of a canyon, and when I got there with my 3- and 1-year-olds, I asked, “How did you get up without going near the snake?” He said, “What snake?” A fat rattlesnake was sitting on the exact step he’d put his hands and feet on earlier.
There have been some cool studies showing that rattlesnakes are actually very reluctant to bite people. They’ll only do it as a last resort. This researcher stepped on 165 rattlesnakes with a fake leg, and the snakes only struck 6 times. It’s rare, but it does happen. I had a neighbor who got bit, and he was badly injured. The antivenom cost over $100,000, and he spent more than a week in the ICU.
Another time when we were hiking, I stepped over a crack in the rocks and heard a sharp rattle right between my feet. My body jumped out of the way before I even registered what I’d heard. I was highly attuned to snakes, and that year on the Escalante we were all on high alert.
Long story short, I knew that rattlesnakes weren’t out to get me, but try telling that to my nervous system after a dozen run-ins with rattlers.
After all these close calls, I was a little jumpy. I’d be walking through camp and see something long and snakey out of the corner of my eye, and I’d jump back, heart pounding. But when I took a closer look, I’d realize it was just a stick. Another time on a hike, we were crossing a stream and I heard a sharp rattle. I jumped again and called, “Snake!” before I realized that it was just a plant with rattly seed pods.
It was not a snake. It was just a plant. But my nervous system had a strategy: jump first, evaluate later.
It wasn’t very accurate, but I’m ok with that because those fast reflexes were keeping me safe from a potentially dangerous situation. My nervous system decided, “We’re going to lump everything that’s a little snakey into the snake category, just to be safe.” And guess what. With dozens of kids and dozens of staff on high alert as we hung out with probably thousands of snakes out on the Escalante, no one got bit—because we were overgeneralizing.
What is Overgeneralization?
Overgeneralization is a really cool survival strategy our brain uses. Making fast, broad, sweeping categories can keep you safe. (Thank you nervous system for trying to keep me safe.)
It’s when your brain takes one experience and turns it into a global conclusion, even when no actual danger is present.
There was a snake on the trail → “Everything snake-like is a snake.”
“I messed up.” → “I’m a complete failure.”
They didn’t text back → “No one cares about me.”
Your car breaks down → “Why does this ALWAYS happen to me?”
He was so rude → “Men are all so obnoxious.”
Overgeneralization isn’t always negative; it can also be excessively positive.
I met a super-nice investment broker → “I can trust that firm with all my savings.”
My horse won the race → “I’m on a winning streak.”
You can usually catch yourself overgeneralizing when you hear words like:
- “always”
- “never”
- “everyone”
- “no one”
- “everything”
- “nothing”
Why We Overgeneralize: Impact on Emotional Regulation
Those are the brain’s all-or-nothing shortcuts. But thinking this way distorts reality, and this overgeneralization fuels intense emotions. Research has found that you can predict who will develop depression by seeing who overgeneralizes.
Overgeneralization is also linked to anxiety, anger, bipolar, borderline personality disorder, chronic pain, eating disorders, low self-esteem, and prejudice.
Why would our brain do this to us? There are two pretty good reasons.
1. Overgeneralization for safety
First, unfortunately our brains aren’t designed to make us happy—they’re designed to keep us safe. Overgeneralization is often your brain trying to protect you.
So for example, if a guy from the green tribe attacks you, then it makes sense that your nervous system is going to assume that everyone from the green tribe is dangerous.
If you really let yourself down once, your nervous system might try to protect you from disappointment by saying “I always fail.” And that mistake becomes an identity.
If your brain can turn one bad experience into a rule, then it thinks it can keep you safe by saying, “Don’t get hurt like that again.” “All green people are dangerous.” “Everything that rattles is a snake.” “Don’t try new things where I might fail.”
Your nervous system is trying to keep you safe, but the cost is that you start living inside a story that is bigger, darker, and more hopeless than reality.
And if you grew up with a lot of criticism, unpredictability, bullying, trauma, chronic stress, or with a really sensitive heart, your brain may generalize faster. Trauma is simply nervous system learning.
That is not a character flaw. That’s a nervous system that learned to scan for patterns quickly.
And the more scared your nervous system is, the more it overgeneralizes, and the more it overgeneralizes, the more you perceive a threat.
And I know, it is hard to problem-solve when your brain is screaming, “This is forever.” I mean if you truly believe that EVERYTHING will ALWAYS be this way FOREVER and there are NO EXCEPTIONS, why bother problem-solving?
So your emotions get louder. Your body gets more activated. And your mind becomes more rigid, more hopeless, and you feel more powerless.
But your brain is building reasons based on an inaccurate nervous system response. One commenter said “It’s subtle how the story feels like truth because the nervous system already reacted — the thought just arrives afterward to justify it.”
Having random, inaccurate thoughts once in a while is normal. But why would we keep doing it if it was so harmful? If it makes us depressed, angry, hopeless?
2. Overgeneralizing is self-justifying
There’s another reason why you overgeneralize.
We only repeat things that are rewarding in some way. Our brain repeats things that give it some kind of payout. What’s the payout from overgeneralizing? How could it be rewarding if it makes everything feel so awful?
Let’s explore with some examples:
If something bad happens, do you say, “Why does this always happen to me?!” If your kid melts down in public do you think, “I’m a bad parent”? If you miss a deadline at work, instead of thinking “I need a better plan,” your brain goes, “I can’t handle anything.”
Notice how this extreme thinking makes you feel like shutting down instead of leveling up?
That’s the second biggest reason we often get stuck in a pattern of overgeneralizing. If I’m sure that the world is hopeless, then I’m excused from helping. If I’m sure that I’ll always fail, then I’m justified in not trying.
Overgeneralizing is rewarding, it feels good, it’s secretly comforting because it seems to excuse you from vulnerability.
But when you do this habitually, it changes your worldview and your sense of identity. And it’s easy to get stuck in a rut of constantly feeling helpless, hopeless, powerless, and emotionally reactive.
“Thank you” nervous system for this, but we can do better than this.
And the way out of this rut is not “positive thinking.”
The way out is more specific thinking.
4 CBT Strategies to Disrupt Overgeneralization
Before I give you a few practical tools that you can actually use, if you want to take a deeper dive and address your anxiety, trauma, depression, or reactive emotions, I hope you’ll check out my membership. I’ll walk you through practical exercises that can help you process and regulate your emotions.
Okay, overgeneralization happens spontaneously. It’s not your fault that you have these thoughts—but they also aren’t true, and you can do something about it. I have 4 strategies that will help you learn to notice this type of thinking, catch the lie, and then replace it with something more specific and helpful.
Remember, just because you think something, doesn’t mean it’s true.
CBT Strategy 1: Catch global language
Here’s the first skill: catch yourself when you say “never,” “everyone,” “no one,” “everything,” “nothing”, etc.
That’s your cue to pause. Then you’re going to replace it with “I’m having the thought that ___.”
So instead of “I’m a failure,” you say, “I’m having the thought that I’m a failure,” or “I’m overgeneralizing again”. That tiny bit of distance helps your brain switch from being inside the thought to observing the thought.
CBT Strategy 2: Shrink it down to size
Ask:
- “What exactly happened?”
- “What is the specific problem?”
- “Where does this start and end?”
Then use this reset phrase:
“This is specific. This is temporary. This is fixable.”
“I always fail.” → “I failed this time.”
“Everyone is self-centered.”→”Some people are self-centered.”
Even if you don’t know how to fix it yet, what you’re doing is creating space to choose, to decide if that story is really as helpful as it seems. When you have space, you have freedom.
Overgeneralization loves identity labels: “I’m a terrible parent!”
Switch from identity to behavior: “I didn’t handle that situation well”
Identity statements create hopelessness. Behavior statements create options.
CBT Strategy 3: Add counterexamples
Overgeneralization is basically bad science. It takes one piece of evidence and calls it a law of nature.
So we fix it with better data.
Ask:
- “When is this not true?”
- “What are two times I handled something similar?”
- “Who is one person who has shown me care?”
- “Are there any exceptions to this story?” Any times where your experience doesn’t agree with this conclusion?
- Can you think of anyone who would see this situation differently or reach a different conclusion? “How would someone else see this situation?”
You can also challenge your beliefs by checking the opposites. For example, if you believe “Forgetting my child’s lunch makes me an awful parent”, ask yourself if remembering their lunch would make you a perfect parent.
“I always let people down.” → “Untrue, I’ve helped and supported people in the past.”
“Everyone is out to get me!” → “Actually there’s a lot of people who have helped me too.”
You are not trying to prove you’re perfect.
You are trying to prove you’re complex. Healthy people replace all-or-nothing with allowing two things to be true at the same time: “I’ve messed up, and I can keep learning.” “That person betrayed me, and I can look for a better partner in the future.”
CBT Strategy 4 - Look for helpful action
If overgeneralization seeks to excuse us from responsibility, but then it leaves us feeling helpless, we can counteract it by looking for more helpful beliefs.
- What do I really value?
- What kind of person do I want to be? Courageous, trustworthy? Resilient?
- What actions could I take that might be helpful?
Don’t make yourself helpless. Ask “What is in my locus of control? What can I act upon?”
“What is one small action that lines up with my values?”
- Learn a new skill?
- Try again differently?
- Apologize?
This takes a lot of courage, but in the long run, it can help you be more flexible, resilient, more hopeful and empowered in your life.
Building Resilience Through Better Emotional Regulation
OK, so to summarize, if you overgeneralize a lot, this is a great opportunity to learn how to be more emotionally stable. You’re not broken, you’ve got a skill you can learn.
- Catch the global words like “always” or “never”.
- Shrink the story back to the specific moment.
- Look for exceptions and helpful actions
- And then take one next right step.
Because one hard moment is allowed to be…one hard moment. It does not get to become your whole life.
You really can improve your mental health and feel more empowered in your own life if you learn how to catch yourself overgeneralizing, and replace it with more helpful thinking.
