What Are Cognitive Distortions?
Cognitive distortions were first defined by the psychiatrist, Aaron Beck, and are the basis of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), also developed by Beck. Cognitive distortions are unhelpful thinking styles that cause people to view reality in inaccurate, often negative, ways. There are several different types of cognitive distortions. I have outlined below the most common ones.
All or nothing or black and white thinking is when you think or act in extremes. An example of this type of thinking would be "I never get anything right" or "Nothing ever goes my way." Chances are, for most people, this is not true. There may be some things that do not go your way or that you do not get right, but at least some of the time, things do go your way or you get things right.
Overgeneralization is when you see a pattern based on too little information. For example, if you interview for one job and do not get the job, you may overgeneralize and start believing that you can never get any new job, just because that one job interview did not work out.
Fortune telling is when you predict negative outcomes for yourself that are not based on facts. For example, predicting that you will not get a job, even when the interview went well.
Mind reading is when we assume that other people are thinking negative things about us. So, using the previous example, you might think that the manager you interviewed with does not like you, even though they never stated anything to that effect.
Mental filtering is when you only pay attention to certain types of evidence, often the negative. An example would be getting great scores on a performance review at work and only focusing on the one area that needed improvement. If your mental filter is going, you would focus on that one negative and ignore all the rest that was good.
Magnification and minimization describe how we exaggerate faults while minimizing strengths and achievements.
Catastrophizing occurs when you assume the worst when facing uncertainly or the unknown. For example, if you do not hear from your friend at 7 pm when she said she would call, you start imagining that she is angry with you, hates you for something, or she was in a terrible accident.
Emotional reasoning is when you falsely believe that your emotions are facts. For example, you feel hopeless when facing a certain difficult problem and assume there is no solution.
Labeling is when we assign labels to ourselves or others, such as "I am a loser" or "He is such a failure."
Personalization is when you assign blame to yourself for something that was not your fault.
"Should" statements are statements that reflect unreasonable standards, such as "I should be eating less" or "I should do a better job of cleaning my house." These types of statements often lead to feelings of guilt or shame.
Cognitive distortions often develop over time and happen automatically. There is not a conscious effort to think negatively. Stay tuned for my next blog post which will detail some ways to try to conquer some of these cognitive distortions.
