Most of my work is around movement, exercise and nutrition.
And after working with people for long enough, you start hearing some of the same thoughts come up again and again.
“If I can't do the full session, there's no point.”
“My knee is sore again today. I'm back to square one.”
“I've had a bad week with food. I've ruined it now.”
“Everyone else in the gym will know what they're doing. I'll look stupid.”
I've caught myself doing versions of the same thing.
We all do.
The Joint Pain Programme journal calls these unhelpful thinking styles. You may also hear the term cognitive distortions.
They're patterns in the way we interpret situations. And one of the things that makes them difficult to catch is that the thought often arrives automatically.
That doesn't mean every worrying, negative or cautious thought is a distortion. Sometimes a concern is useful information.
The pattern becomes unhelpful when the mind makes a much bigger leap than the situation supports.
“My knee is sore today” is information.
“I'm back to square one” is a conclusion.
Did you consciously decide which hand to use?
Think about the last time you picked up your mug.
You probably know which hand you used.
But did you actually stop and decide:
“Right, which hand am I going to use?”
Probably not.
You just reached for it.
The behaviour happened automatically.
A lot of our thinking can work the same way.
Something happens and a thought appears before we've consciously chosen it:
“This is going to get worse.”
“I've messed this up.”
“Everyone else here knows what they're doing. I'll be the one who looks stupid.”
You didn't deliberately choose the thought.
It arrived automatically.
And when that happens, it can be difficult to recognise the thought as a pattern rather than simply believing it.
And if the thought feels true, it can start changing what we do. We avoid something. We don't go into the gym.
We stop an activity. We give up on the session before it has even started.
Because before you can question a pattern, you first have to notice that it's happening.
Do any of these sound familiar?
I wouldn't worry too much about remembering the names.
The more useful question is whether you recognise yourself in any of them.
Cognitive Distortions (a few examples)
Everything becomes one extreme or the other.
How it can sound:
“If I can't do the whole workout, I might as well leave it.”
“I've eaten well all week and now I've blown it.”
“Either I get back to exercising properly or what's the point?”
There is very little room for something is still better than nothing.
Something difficult happens and your mind races towards what it could eventually mean.
How it can sound:
“My knee is sore again today. This is probably just going to keep getting worse.”
“If I'm struggling with stairs now, eventually I won't be able to get around at all.”
“One wrong movement and I could put myself back for months.”
A possibility starts feeling much more like a prediction.
How you feel starts becoming evidence for what is true.
How it can sound:
“I feel useless because I can't do what I used to. Maybe I am useless.”
“I feel scared doing that movement, so it must be unsafe for me.”
“I don't feel confident in the gym, so I'm obviously not capable of training there.”
The feeling is real.
But the conclusion we draw from it may not necessarily be.
One experience becomes a much bigger rule.
How it can sound:
“I've never been good at exercise. The gym isn't for people like me.”
“Every time I try to get active, something goes wrong.”
“Nothing ever works for me.”
Listen for words such as always, never, everything and nothing.
They're sometimes a clue that one experience has started speaking for all the others.
We carry around rules for what we think we should already be capable of.
How it can sound:
“I should be able to walk further than this.”
“I shouldn't need this much rest.”
“At my age I should still be able to do what I used to do.”
“I know what I should be eating. Why can't I just do it?”
Sometimes that gap between what we're doing and what we think we should be doing creates more guilt than useful action.
Something improves, but we immediately explain why it doesn't really count.
How it can sound:
“Yes, I went for a walk, but it was only 15 minutes.”
“I trained twice this week, but I was supposed to do three.”
“I've been eating better most days, but Saturday was terrible.”
“I managed the stairs today, but I used to do that without even thinking about it.”
The difficulty gets remembered.
The progress gets slightly ignored.
Knowing the names isn't the difficult bit
I can read that list and understand all of them.
That doesn't mean I'll notice myself doing them.
This is where I think about coaching movement.
Imagine you're doing a squat.
From where you're standing, everything might feel completely normal.
But somebody watching you may notice that each time you squat, you consistently shift your weight towards one side.
That doesn't automatically mean something is wrong.
But the coach has information that is difficult for you to see from inside the movement.
They can say: “You're doing that problematic movement again.”
And suddenly you have something to look at.
That is very close to what I find useful about Rosebud.
Rosebud sometimes sees the pattern before I do
Rosebud is an AI journalling app that I use to write or speak about things I'm working through.
I might talk to it about something happening today.
And then it may connect that with something I wrote about a week ago, three months ago or much earlier.
Different situation. Similar response.
And effectively say: “You're doing this again.”
Maybe it's a similar assumption.
A similar worry.
A similar way of reacting.
A repeated behaviour.
That's the part I find genuinely useful, because quite often I hadn't connected those situations at all.
Rosebud can bring the pattern to my attention from outside the situation, a bit like the coach who can see something in your movement that is difficult for you to see while you're doing it.
Rosebud notices. I decide.
This distinction matters to me.
I don't want AI deciding what I should think or what I should do.
Once Rosebud notices something, it helps me explore it by asking questions.
It might help me look at where else the pattern has shown up, what was happening at the time, what I was assuming, or whether I want to do anything differently now.
It keeps the conversation going rather than simply handing me an answer.
The pattern recognition gives me something to look at.
The questions help me understand it.
The decision is still mine.
Rosebud isn't always right, and I don't treat its interpretation as fact or as a diagnosis. Sometimes I agree with what it has noticed. Sometimes I don't.
But even then, the question can still be useful.
Once I can see the pattern, I have more choice about what I do next.
And that, for me, is the point of this whole post: not to distrust every thought, but to notice the patterns that keep showing up so you can decide what to do with them.
If you want to have a look
You certainly don't need an AI app to reflect on your thinking.
You can write things down, talk them through with someone you trust or look back through an ordinary journal.
Rosebud is simply something I use personally and have found particularly useful because of its ability to connect patterns across time.
It isn't a Nuffield Health resource or recommendation, and I wouldn't use an AI journalling app as a replacement for appropriate professional mental-health support.
If you're curious, you can have a look and decide for yourself.
Have a look at Rosebud → https://my.rosebud.app?r=FXFDZ
A quick note about the link: it's my Rosebud referral link. If you use it and later become a paying subscriber, you receive $15 credit and I receive $15 credit too. Using my link doesn't cost you anything extra.
One practical thing before you sign up: Rosebud currently offers a 7-day free trial.
If you use my referral link, create your account through the link in your web browser rather than signing up through the iOS or Android app.
Rosebud says its referral programme only works for accounts created through the web application. Once the account is created, you can use the same login in the mobile app.
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