Cognitive Distortions or Messed up Thinking

Cognition basically means thinking, so ‘cognitive distortions’ put simply, means messed up thinking or distorted thinking. I don’t know if there is any kind of thinking that can truly be deemed ‘normal’. I’m not a psychologist. What I do know is that A LOT of people have messed up thinking or cognitive distortions.

When you have messed up thinking patterns going on in your head, the first thing you need to do is recognize that your thinking is messed up. This is a really big deal. It is extremely easy to think that what you are thinking makes all kinds of sense because that is the way you think all the time. It is something you are accustomed to doing - so how are you supposed to know it is not right?

Logic is the answer. This sounds simple, but isn’t. Here’s an example to consider. Let’s say you’re walking into a classroom on the very first day of class. You look around the room and see a pair of girls talking pleasantly. After they glance in your direction, one girl lifts her hand up to whisper in the other girl’s ear. They smile and giggle afterwards. You immediately assume something negative has been said about you, that they are making fun of you.

Yes, it is possible that they are making fun of you. Logic, however, lets us know that the whisper probably has nothing to do with you, but rather what they’ve been discussing before you even came along. Logic says that their conversation could just as easily be complimentary about you as it could be non-complimentary. You don’t know. All you see is a couple of girls talking and whispering to each other.

So you think to yourself - but I got this feeling. Feelings are tricky little demons when it comes to thinking and reasoning. For depressed people it is very important to pay more attention to the logic associated with a situation rather than the emotions the situation may evoke.

Sometimes it is extra hard for me to keep things clear in my mind. I start following my emotions and impulses more than logic. To help myself I have abbreviated charts about cognitive distortions to help remind me what kind of thinking is self defeating.

The following are some general examples of messed up thinking. Please be sure to note that all of this is gleaned from David Burns’ book FEELING GOOD.



COGNITIVE DISTORTIONS

All or Nothing Thinking:
You see things in black and white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect you see yourself as a total failure.

Over Generalization:
You see a single negative event as never ending pattern of defeat.

Mental Filter:
You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that colors the entire beaker of water.

Jumping to Conclusions:
You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion. These include
Mind Reading- You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you, and you don’t bother to check this out.
The Fortune Teller Error - You anticipate that things will turn out badly, and you feel convinced that your prediction is an already established fact.

Magnification (Catastrophizing) or Minimization:
You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your goof-up or someone else’s achievement), or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow’s imperfections).

Emotional Reasoning:
You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: “I feel it, therefore it must be true.”

“Should” Statements:
You try to motivate yourself with shoulds and shouldn’ts as if you had to be whipped and punished before you would be expected to do anything. “Musts” and “oughts” are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct should statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment.

Labeling and Mislabeling:
This is an extreme form of over generalization. Instead of describing your error you attach a negative label to yourself: “I’m a loser.” When someone else’s behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him: “He’s a stinking louse.” Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded.

Personalization:
You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event which in fact you were not primarily responsible for.


That’s my list. A good trick I’ve learned to use for myself is to try thinking about the situation from another person’s point of view. If I were an outsider watching the situation how would I interpret it? If I were my husband how would he see the situation - would he say I was a loser because I didn’t do my workout today? No. He’d say, so you missed a workout. Do the next one. Get on with your life. No big deal. 

All of that is more than enough to consider. Think about it and evaluate how your own mind seems to function.