You're hopeless, useless, burdensome. Nothing will ever go well, everyone is always better than you, you'll never be perfect. You want to be liked, but you're unlovable, and a failure at life. Sound familiar? To the majority of people this language does. Mental traps – or ego defense mechanisms – serve as the rusty cogs that continue the mechanic cycles of pain, toxic shame, and hopelessness within us. In many instances, they are so deeply ingrained in the mind, that we are completely oblivious of their existence. The most important thing to realize about these cognitive errors is that they're