Do you often blame yourself for things that aren’t actually your responsibility? This could be a sign of a thinking style called “personalization” which can hurt your self-esteem, and lead to anxiety and depression. Learn more about what personalization is and what you can do to address it and feel better.
What Is Personalization?
Personalization is one of several common unhelpful ways of thinking. These thinking patterns are called cognitive distortions. (For more, see our cognitive distortions page.) Personalization is a cognitive distortion in which you take excessive responsibility for negative events, assume other people’s reactions are about you, or overestimate your role in situations that are actually influenced by many factors. Assigning yourself undeserved blame makes it easy to feel anxiety, sadness, guilt, and shame.
Personalization, like all cognitive distortions, happens to everyone sometimes – it’s simply a part of being human. But some people are more vulnerable to getting stuck in personalization. These are often people who generally see themselves in a negative light. This type of thinking can become a habit, especially if these thoughts go unnoticed and unexamined. Over time, personalization can strengthen negative beliefs about yourself and damage your mood and self-esteem.
Examples of Personalization
Personalization can show up in all sorts of moments. Consider the following examples:
- “My friend must have canceled our plans for tomorrow because of something I said.”
- “The boss probably started yelling at people in the meeting today because I forgot to set up the water and snacks like I usually do.”
- “The person I went on a date with the other night hasn’t texted me because I didn’t wish them luck on the job interview that they told me about.”
- “My mom wouldn’t be depressed if I were getting better grades in school.”
- “Our team would have done better in the playoffs if I were in better shape.”
In the above examples, it’s easy to see how personalization makes things feel overwhelmingly like your fault – even in ways that don’t match reality.
Signs You May Be Personalizing
How can you know if personalizing is affecting your thinking? Here are some signs to look for:
- Assuming others are upset because of you
- Feeling responsible for other people’s emotions
- A tendency to apologize for things that aren’t your fault
- Overanalyzing social interactions
- Blaming yourself when things go wrong
- Feeling guilty even without evidence you did something wrong
Recognizing these patterns is important because persistent personalization can take a serious toll on your emotional wellbeing and make you more vulnerable to depression and anxiety.
The Dangers of Personalization
The various cognitive distortions can each have a negative impact on your mood, and personalization is no exception. How you think has a significant influence on how you feel. So if personalization is a mental habit of yours, your emotional wellbeing can suffer.
Here are some specific ways that personalization can negatively impact you:
- Inappropriate self-blame: Personalization can lead you to take on responsibility that isn’t rightfully yours – such as for the emotions or problems of others, or situations beyond anyone’s control. This can fuel patterns of guilt, self-doubt, and negative self-talk.
- Selective attention: When you’re focused on yourself as being at fault or as the source of a problem, new information that doesn’t fit this is ignored, and new information that fits your view gets amplified. As a result, over time, you build a habit of seeing many things in life as your fault or responsibility.
When the way you think makes you feel like you’re the cause of something negative, it’s easy to feel badly about yourself. Frequent and unchecked personalization can lead to anxiety, depression, social anxiety, and low self-esteem.
Personalization and Self-Esteem
Healthy self-esteem is based on having an accurate and compassionate understanding of yourself. Personalization distorts your thinking, leading you to look at yourself through a distorted lens – you see yourself less accurately and with more self-criticism. Thinking about yourself this way can lead to feelings of inadequacy connected to low self-esteem.
The example below illustrates how this can happen:
Robert gave a presentation at work, but wasn’t feeling good about his performance afterward. He noticed during his presentation that his colleagues seemed to be generally paying attention, but some looked uninterested and others were on their phones. After his presentation, the group dispersed and no one approached him to comment on his presentation. He felt worse about himself as time went on afterward, thinking “My presentation was so boring, I must be a terrible speaker. I mean…people couldn’t even bear to listen…they went on their phones! I guess I’m not cut out for this.”
Robert’s jump to self-blame for the actions and feelings of his colleagues, fueled by personalization, chipped away at his confidence.
How to Break Free from Personalization
As with all cognitive distortions, there’s no way to completely get rid of personalization or prevent yourself from getting stuck in this common trap. But there are ways to lessen the impact of this type of thinking and to feel better. For example:
- Building awareness/recognition: If you’re more aware of personalization and can notice when it’s shaping your thoughts, you can try to shift your perspective. Mindfulness practice is one effective way to improve this awareness.
- Assigning appropriate responsibility to yourself and others: Learning to look for things that accurately show you’re not fully responsible for something, or highlight that others are to blame, or that something is really outside your control is important. This can make you less prone to blaming yourself inappropriately or listening to negative beliefs about yourself.
- Practicing self-compassion: Personalization in your thinking often leads to self-criticism, guilt, and even shame. Self-compassion and encouragement can be helpful to counteract this, including in how you talk to yourself, about yourself. Treating yourself with the same kindness and understanding you would offer someone else that you care about is a good way to practice this, and stay clear of assigning yourself an inappropriate amount of responsibility or blame.
Changing your thinking isn’t always easy to do – in fact, it’s usually pretty hard! It requires time, practice, and effort. Fortunately, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) has proven treatment tools that can help you break out of unhelpful thinking patterns. Learning to think differently is a skill, and like other skills, one that becomes easier and stronger the more you practice it.
Personalization is a common cognitive distortion for many people suffering from anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem. If you recognize this pattern in your own thinking and find it’s impacting your wellbeing, consider working with a CBT therapist. CBT offers proven techniques to help you challenge personalization, cultivate healthier thinking, and improve your mood and self-esteem. You don’t have to carry the weight of unnecessary blame alone.
