Cognitive Distortions

Cognitive distortions can cause you to feel overwhelmed...

You're sympathetic towards your friends when they make mistakes, right?

Your friend or someone you know (let's call him John) in your class is pulling an all-nighter. John should have prepared for the mid-term exam tomorrow, but he didn't. Now he feels overwhelmed. There's no way he's going to pass tomorrow.

The grades come back and John sees a big, red "D" at the top of his paper. You think to yourself "it's ok, he'll do better next time, he was just unprepared." See, you're not coming down hard on John for being unprepared at all. In fact, you're extending him a round of sympathy.

But how many times have you been hard on yourself?

What if you were in your friend's situation? Would you say to yourself "I'm so lazy, I should have prepared in advance", even if the reason you didn't prepare was because you had to visit a sick friend in the hospital unexpectedly?

Would you come down hard on yourself for being "unprepared" when you clearly had a good reason not to be? Does it seem silly to you that you would cut your friend John a break but you wouldn't do the same thing for yourself?

Welcome to the wonderful world of cognitive distortions...

Cognitive distortions are inaccurate patterns of thinking that keep you feeling bad. It's a concept largely associated with cognitive therapy, a type of therapy designed to help individuals overcome their difficulties by changing dysfunctional thinking, behaviors, and emotional responses.

You don't necessarily have to have been abused to have them, although if you survived child abuse, it is likely that you do engage in the following cognitive distortions. So what are they and how do you know if you're using them? Read on and see if any of the following apply to you.

Ten Cognitive Distortions

• All-or-nothing-thinking: This type of thinking is when you evaluate things in absolute or black-and-white. For instance, if you fall and trip and you tell yourself: "I am an absolute klutz. I can never do anything right." All-or-nothing-thinking is a distortion because things are rarely so cut and dry. All-or-nothing thinking leads to perfectionism, a type of defense mechanism used to cover up feelings of shame.


Overgeneralizing...

• Overgeneralization: This is where you use the outcome of a single event to conclude that the event will keep happening. For instance, while studying for a test, you miss an answer on a self-study question. You then say to yourself "I can never do anything right." But had you taken the time to think about the previous week, you might have realized you successfully completed a homework assignment and handed it in on time.
• Selective negative focus (or mental filter): You find yourself focusing on the negative aspects of a situation exclusively, and conclude that the whole situation is negative. For instance, your car breaks down by the side of the road and you conclude that "all cars are junk." You ignore the fact that your car is over 15 years old and has over 300,000 miles on it.
• Disqualifying the positive: You continually discount positive feedback and experiences in order to maintain negative beliefs. For example, suppose your neighbor tells you that she thinks you are a wonderful person. You then think to yourself "that's because she doesn't know who I really am." You think this in spite of the fact numerous other people have told you so as well.
• Jumping to Conclusions (or arbitrary inference): You make negative conclusions which are not warranted by the facts at hand. There are two subtypes of this behavior. In mind reading, you assume that people are making negative assumptions about you and you don't bother to check it out. This can become a self-fulfilling prophecy and setup negative interactions with others. With fortune telling (or negative prediction), you assume that something bad will happen even though it may be unrealistic.
• Magnification and Minimization: When you engage in magnification, you exaggerate the way something or someone is. For example, with magnification, you would overstate someone's talents as being better than what they actually are. With minimization, the opposite occurs. You understate the way something or someone is. When focusing on yourself, you may notice you have a tendency to magnify your faults and minimize your strengths.
• Emotional reasoning: You use your emotions to justify the way things really are. For instance, you may feel ashamed. Therefore, you conclude that you are a bad person. Or if you feel overwhelmed, you conclude all your problems are impossible to solve.
• Should statements: These kind of cognitive distortions involve coming up with rigid rules and expectations for yourself or others regardless of the circumstances. Of course, not everything is black and white. Making should statements towards yourself is an attempt to motivate yourself. For instance, you tell yourself "I should scrub the floors one more time" even if you're running late for an appointment. Should statements make you feel pressured and guilty. All you end up is feeling unmotivated. Psychologist Albert Ellis called these statements "musturbation."
• Labeling and mislabeling: Labeling involves creating a negative self identity based on your mistakes and imperfections, as if your mistakes and imperfections were your entire self. For instance, if you trip and fall, you tell yourself "I'm a loser." Mislabeling occurs when you describe an event with highly loaded emotional language which does not accurately describe it. For example, suppose you eat two hamburgers while on a diet. You then think to yourself: "How disgusting. I'm an overgrown pig."
• Personalization: You assign blame to yourself when there is no good reason for it. For example, suppose you're a teacher who assigns a homework assignment and a student does not do it. You then conclude "I must be a lousy teacher, or the student would have done it."

 

Treat Yourself Like You Would a Friend

Now that you're aware of what cognitive distortions are, remember to treat yourself the way you would want to treat a friend - sympathetically. It's ok to make mistakes. Learning from them (and being nice to yourself while you're doing it) is an important part of personal development.

 

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