Cognitive Distortions
- Catherine Moscatt
- Apr 5, 2024
- 3 min read
A lot of times when you are dealing with mental illness, you are plagued with cognitive distortions and ways of thinking that are harmful to you. Today I am going to introduce some cognitive distortions, which I learned from therapy and David Burns, author of the Feeling Good Handbook which I once owned before I marked it up.
“All or nothing thinking”: ““If I don’t ace this test I’m nothing” “Everything sucks” All or nothing statements are poison and rarely true. Absolutes are not your friend. Your life does not depend on one test. Does everything really suck? Do you think there might be one or two things in your life that are going in the right direction?
“Overgeneralization” This is making collective assumptions based on one or two events or examples. For example, if one popular girl makes a rude comment to you you could believe “Popular girls are always rude to me” Or if you don’t make the basketball team, you could think “Good things never happen to me” discounting all the good things that do happen to you, probably on a daily basis.
Mental filter. This is when you focus on a negative comment or observation and ignore all the positives. For example, in a progress report or performance review, you may tune out the positive comments for the one negative comment on the paper.
Discounting the positive. This is kind of like a mental filter. If you’re having a crappy night and someone compliments your dress, you barely acknowledge the nice gesture in lieu of all the bad stuff going on.
Jumping to conclusions. I am very good at this. I don’t just jump to conclusions. I leap to them. If someone cancels plans or if my boyfriend is late at returning a text, I automatically think they are mad at me or that I have done something wrong.
Magnification. Blowing your negative traits to make them bigger than they are. For example, if no one laughs at a joke I could conclude that I’m just not funny when maybe it was just a tough crowd.
Emotional reasoning. When we operate under emotional reasoning, we let our feelings dictate over logic. “I feel bad about myself. This must mean I’m not important” Our feelings don’t equate reality. Emotions are not known for their reasoning.
Should statements. I remember a time in my life when I was consumed with “shoulds” after losing my best friend and being betrayed by my roommate. I kept a steady stream of shoulds in my head: “I shouldn’t have trusted —-----” “I should not have said this about —----” We can live our lives chasing shoulds but it’s not going to get anywhere.
Labeling. We know what labeling is. We’ve all been through middle school haven’t we? I am also quite skilled at this. I was taken advantage of when I was young and since then I usually call myself a “slut”. Not only is this demeaning, it's really damaging when your own mind calls you names.
Personalization and blame. This is where you take all the blame for something that happened, even something that might not have anything to do with you. When my boyfriend’s grandpa went into the hospital, I was convinced (for some reason) that I had done something wrong. I could also blame other people for things in my life. In truth, most things that happen in life are no one's fault.
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