Are You Letting the Three Pernicious Ps Ruin Your Life?

My family has been going through a rough patch lately, involving multiple family members with health crises, several of which have resulted in hospital stays. My husband and I have been spread thin. Our emotions have gone through upheavals and we have had sleepless nights and unexpected trips to deal with emergencies. All of which has led to altered expectations for life moving forward.

In times like these, it’s easy to feel discouraged. And that gives the negative voices in our heads a chance to speak up and ruin our day even more.

When we face traumatic situations, like the loss of a loved one, sudden illness, divorce, or the loss of a job, we often find ourselves thinking fatalistic thoughts, such as:

• This is all my fault.
• If only I had done ___ this wouldn’t have happened.
• I’ll never laugh again.
• I won’t ever be able to ___ again.
• My life is ruined forever.
• I’ve ruined everyone’s life.
• I’ll never have a happy, healthy life.
• From now on I’ll always cry when I think of__
• I’ll always be stuck here.
• This failure forever ruins my chances of ___.

Dig down to the root of these thoughts and you’ll find three pernicious Ps—Personalization, Permanence, and Pervasiveness.

• Personalization: the belief that what happened is completely your fault.
• Permanence: the belief that your current unpleasant reality will last forever.
• Pervasiveness: the belief that your failure or setback will spread to (and ruin) every area of your life.

When tough times hit us, you and I are prone to allow one or more of these pernicious Ps into our heads. Don’t believe these lies!

Let’s take a closer look at the lies behind the Three Pernicious Ps.

Personalization. Bad things happen in life through no fault of our own. Even when we do own some of the blame, the entire situation is not due solely to our action or lack of action. Any situation involves factors outside our ability to control, so unless we are God, we can never take sole responsibility for anything that happens.

And yet, that vicious inner critic tries to convince us that it’s all our fault, that somehow we ought to have been able to prevent what happened—even when what happened was a hurricane, cancer, or corporate downsizing.

Permanence. We humans tend to project our current feeling into the future. So it’s natural to believe the lie that we’ll always feel as awful as we feel right now. But in reality we won’t. People throughout history have survived similar (or worse) traumas and been able to move past them. We can, too.

Pervasiveness. Tragedy can color our thinking, making it look like every area of life is ruined. In reality, any event, good or bad, will impact some areas of life more than others. For example, a lost job does not ruin your athletic skills or eliminate your joy of bird-watching. In addition, over time you can find ways to cope with the areas that have been affected, so your new normal won’t be as miserable as it seems right now.

How to combat the three pernicious Ps

Fighting the Ps begins with renewing your thinking, one thought at a time. Here are some tips:

• Don’t label yourself. Change thoughts like I’m a failure to I’ve made mistakes.
• Refuse to take responsibility for what isn’t your fault. Change thoughts like If only I had __ this wouldn’t have happened to Even if I had done __ this still might have happened.
• Watch out for thoughts using words like always and never. Revise them using words like sometimes, someday, and lately. I’ll never laugh again becomes I don’t feel like laughing right now but someday I will. Likewise, I’ll always lose it when I see that photo becomes I sometimes cry when I see that photo.
• Don’t beat yourself up. Overcoming tragedy takes time. You’ll have setbacks. It’s OK. Give yourself grace and keep trying.

A silly exercise that may help

Remember the catchy, upbeat theme song from the Lego movie with the chorus “Everything is awesome”? Replace awesome with awful and sing it out as loudly as you can. Or, for fuller effect, here’s my life’s awful version of the entire chorus:

Everything is awful! Everything is crap when you’re life is a mess.

Everything is awful! And I’m living with the stress.

Maybe the ridiculousness of singing the awful song to a cheery, silly tune will help you remember that life’s not 100%, wholly-and-completely-for-all-eternity as horrible as it feels.

If you don’t know the tune, watch the first few seconds of this video.