I had an instance where I strongly disagreed with my therapist's point of view recently. Was hoping I could hash it out here to get some more thoughts.
Most of you are probably familiar with the concept of cognitive distortions - if not, and you're struggling in any way with mental health, they can be a VALUABLE weapon in your fight for recovery. Mind-reading, minimization, maximization, personalization, fortune-telling, projecting - these are just SOME examples of things that almost every person does that can distort perception.
I was discussing a memory where a friend and I were out with this girl. I looked over at my friend and he had a smug expression on his face. When I looked down, he was grabbing the girl's ass. I made the comment to my therapist, "If *I* had been the one to grab the girl's ass she would have either kicked me in the balls or reported me to HR" (the 3 of us were all coworkers). My therapist was ALL OVER ME, CHASTIZING me for "assuming facts not in evidence" - "You're MINDREADING! You don't KNOW that's how she would have reacted, You CANNOT ASSUME FACTS THAT YOU DON'T KNOW ARE NOT TRUE! You are being SO HARD on yourself!!!!"
I was astonished. I was barely even FRIENDS with that girl. Obviously my friend had established enough of a rapport with her to feel pretty confident she wouldn't be pissed if he grabbed her ass in public. I had NOT established such rapport with the girl.
This is the year 2023 (granted, the memory happened in like 1999 but that's beside the point) - how could believing that something bad would happen if I publicly grabbed the ass of a girl I barely had a rapport with POSSIBLY be a negative reflection on ME? How could it possibly be MINDREADING?!?!?!? Isn't it just basic common sense that you don't go around grabbing people's asses????
If there's something I'm missing here I'd REALLY appreciate being enlightened.
Thanks
MoM