We often think that we are good at knowing what other people are thinking. This is called mind reading and, the reality is, most people are terrible at mind reading. In depression and anxiety, mind reading takes the form of knowing what someone else is thinking or feeling and it’s usually always negative. The interpretations that are made in mind reading are usually possible, but they are given much greater weight than more other likely possibilities. This mind reading can cause us to think more negatively about ourselves, but also about other people. One of the big problems with mind reading is that it can make you feel more certain that you should about your negative predictions of ambiguous situations. What ends up happening in mind reading is that you become less and less accurate in your guesses of what the other person is thinking, while at the same time, becoming increasingly more convinced that you know how the other person feels.
So, if you catch yourself engaging in mind reading, what can you do? The key is to remind yourself to stay in your own head. If you want to know what someone else is thinking, ask them.
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