Cognitive Distortions
Many of us will have inaccurate thoughts that reinforce a negative emotion, these are known as cognitive distortions. CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) is the most effective therapy technique to combat these distortions. There are 15 main cognitive distortions that many people may experience.
Common cognitive distortions
- Filtering. This refers to ignoring all the positive or good things in your life and just focusing on the negative. We find ourselves trapped in a situation or event and disregard all the good we are surrounded by.
- Black-and-white Thinking. Also known as all-or-nothing thinking. This is common in perfectionists who fail to acknowledge grey areas and focus on either being a total success or a complete failure.
- Overgeneralization. When we use a negative experience to explain all future similar experiences. For example, you have a bad interview and believe that all future interviews will also be bad.
- Jumping to conclusions. Being sure of something without any evidence to support it. Thinking someone doesn’t like you, without an incident or any proof of this. You then avoid this person and don’t give them a chance.
- Catastrophizing. Expecting the worst possible outcome, with severe or detrimental consequences. You may make a mistake a work and believe you will lose your job or have ruined a project.
- Personalization. Believing that everything you do has an impact on external events or people. An exaggerated feeling that you have played a role in bad things happening around you
- Control Fallacies. Forgetting that things can happen that are out of our control. This distortion has us believing that something is always due to our actions.
- Fallacy of Fairness. Looking for every situation to be fair to you in some way. Neglecting the fact that life can, sometimes, be unfair. Taking fairness to extremes.
- Blaming. An inability to take responsibility for our actions. Placing blame on others or external sources.
- “Shoulds”. An explicit rule we have about how we or others should behave. “I should have done…” “They should have said..”.
- Emotional Reasoning. Thinking that if we feel a certain way, it must be true. Our feelings are not always true, but it can be hard to look past how we feel.
- Fallacy of Change. Expecting people to change to what suits you best.
- Global Labelling. Also known as mislabeling. A more extreme form of overgeneralization is when we generalize an instance into a global judgment. For example, we may fail a math test and conclude that we are a complete failure in all areas.
- Always being right. Thinking that being wrong is unacceptable. You may believe that being right is more important than the feelings of others.
- Heaven’s reward fallacy. Expecting that any sacrifice or self-denial will result in an immediate reward.
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