Have you ever achieved something you had been working towards, only to find that the satisfaction lasted for a surprisingly short time? Perhaps you received positive feedback at work and immediately thought: “They were just being nice”. Maybe you managed something that had made you anxious for weeks, but afterwards told yourself: “It wasn’t really that difficult”. Perhaps someone complimented you and, rather than taking in what they said, you found yourself explaining why the compliment wasn’t really deserved. We can be remarkably creative when it comes to finding reasons why the things we do well don’t quite count. In CBT, this pattern is often described as “discounting the positive”. It involves dismissing, minimising or explaining away positive experiences while often giving much greater weight to mistakes, difficulties or perceived shortcomings. Over time, this can have an important effect on how we see ourselves.
When there is always a “but”
Imagine you have been worrying about giving a presentation at work. In the days beforehand, your thoughts might include:
- “I’ll lose my train of thought”
- “Everyone will notice how nervous I am”
- “I’ll make a fool of myself”
You give the presentation. You feel anxious, but you get through it. You answer the questions. Afterwards, two colleagues tell you that it was useful. This could provide valuable new information. Perhaps you can function even when you feel anxious. Perhaps other people don’t notice your anxiety as much as you imagine. Perhaps feeling nervous doesn’t necessarily mean you will perform badly. However, then the mind responds:
- “Yes, but I stumbled over one answer”, or
- “They were only being polite”, or
- “Anyone could have done it”.
The positive evidence has arrived - and almost immediately been disqualified. This little word “but” can sometimes tell us quite a lot.
- “I did well, but…”
- “I coped, but…”
- “They said something nice, but…”
- “I achieved what I wanted, but…”
What follows the “but” often becomes the part we remember.
Why does the mind do this?
One of the ideas we work with in CBT is that our thoughts don’t occur in isolation. The way we interpret situations can be influenced by beliefs we already hold about ourselves, other people and the world. Suppose someone has developed a belief such as: “I’m not good enough”. Experiences that appear to support that belief can be absorbed very easily.
- A mistake at work? - “There you go. I knew I wasn’t good enough.”
- A difficult conversation? - “I’m terrible with people”.
However, what happens when the evidence points in the opposite direction?
- You receive excellent feedback. - “They were being generous”.
- You solve a difficult problem. - “I got lucky”.
- Someone tells you that they value you. - “They don’t really know me”.
Without necessarily realising it, we can apply very different standards to evidence depending on whether it fits what we already believe. Negative information is accepted. Positive information is cross-examined.
When success becomes the minimum requirement
Discounting the positive can also be closely linked with perfectionism. Imagine someone who believes: “If I’m capable, I should always perform well”. Doing well doesn’t feel like an achievement because it is simply what they believe they “should” have done. Making a mistake carries much more meaning. A successful week at work might barely register. One error may be replayed for days. This creates a rather unfair system. Success earns no points because it was expected. Mistakes lose points because they are treated as evidence of inadequacy. The person can therefore work extremely hard, achieve a great deal and still experience themselves as somehow falling short. Given each achievement quickly becomes the new baseline, the goalposts keep moving.
What happens emotionally?
CBT encourages us to look not only at “what we think”, but also at what happens next. If I repeatedly dismiss my achievements, what effect might that have on how I feel? Perhaps I feel inadequate despite evidence of competence. Perhaps I become more anxious before the next challenge because previous successes haven’t been allowed to inform my expectations. Perhaps I work harder and harder because nothing ever feels sufficient, or I might stop trying altogether because achievement brings little satisfaction. There can also be an effect on behaviour. Someone who discounts positive feedback may seek more reassurance. Someone who never feels that their work is good enough may repeatedly check or overprepare. Someone who dismisses every small step forward may believe they are making no progress at all. This is why, in CBT, we are interested not only in whether a thought is accurate, but also in “what the thought does” and how it may contribute to a pattern that keeps going.
Becoming curious about the “but”
In CBT, we might start by becoming curious about what happens in that small space between something positive happening and the mind finding a reason to dismiss it. Why is “I did well” so quickly followed by “but…”? What would it mean to simply accept the positive feedback? Why might that feel uncomfortable? What does the mind predict would happen if you allowed yourself to feel pleased with something you had achieved? Perhaps most importantly, why does the negative evidence seem to deserve more credibility than the positive? These questions can sometimes take us beyond the individual thought and towards the beliefs sitting underneath it. For one person, the “but” might be connected with perfectionism: “Doing well is simply what I should do”. For somebody else, accepting praise may feel uncomfortable because they have learned that acknowledging their strengths is arrogant. For another person, it might connect with a much deeper belief: “I’m not good enough”. If that belief has been around for a long time, positive experiences can create an interesting problem. They don’t fit the existing story. Dismissing them allows the story to remain intact. This is one of the reasons CBT is interested not only in what we think, but in the patterns that repeatedly shape the way we interpret our experiences. The work isn’t simply about replacing “I wasn’t good enough” with “I was brilliant”. It can involve understanding why one interpretation feels so much more believable than another, noticing the rules and assumptions that may be operating underneath it, and gradually developing a more flexible and balanced way of seeing ourselves. What that work looks like will be different for different people, because the same “but” does not necessarily mean the same thing for everyone.
Final thoughts
Discounting the positive can be difficult to recognise because it often sounds reasonable. There is usually an explanation. “I was lucky”. “They were only being nice”, “It wasn’t that difficult”, “Anyone could have done it”, “I did well, but…”. The individual explanation may seem perfectly plausible. It is the pattern that can be worth noticing. If achievements rarely feel satisfying, compliments are difficult to accept, mistakes carry much more weight than successes, or the standard for being “good enough” seems to keep moving, it may be worth becoming curious about what happens to positive evidence when it arrives. CBT can help us explore these patterns: where they may have come from, what keeps them going, how they affect the way we feel and behave, and whether the conclusions we have learned to accept automatically are the only possible way of seeing ourselves. Sometimes an interesting place to begin is simply noticing how often a positive statement about yourself is followed by one small word “but”.