Last week we discussed some of the basics of how CBT functions. In this week’s post, we’re going to look at the specifics of cognitive distortions and how they can play a part in how people view themselves and the world. As CBT tackles a lot of restructuring thoughts and identifying these distortions, having a solid understanding of what they are can be a helpful starting point for many people.
What are cognitive distortions?
In CBT, cognitive distortions are logical gaps or fallacies. They’re what many of us use to explain why things happen or why we feel certain ways about things. To us, they make perfect sense. And honestly, we usually don’t even give the mechanism much thought. The distortions are often quick and immediate, bolstered by automatic thoughts and informed by our own schemas or core beliefs about ourselves and the world around us.
There are 11 common cognitive distortions that clinicians look for and help clients recognize themselves in their own thinking. By recognizing these cognitive distortions, clients can challenge them and then restructure their thinking in ways that are healthier and more adaptive.
Dichotomous thinking
This is sometimes considered “all or nothing” thinking. Often, dichotomous thinking involves believing that things are one way or the other and that there is no middle ground or gray area. It can also be called “black or white” thinking because of this.
Overgeneralization
This thought involves taking an experience or event that you have and applying it to your entire life. For example, if someone experiences a break up, they may then have the cognitive distortion that they’ll never be in a successful relationship. The problem with this kind of thinking and overgeneralizing a bad experience to other situations is that it can cause large amounts of distress and can impact our self-esteem. Sometimes it can even keep us from trying to try something that could put us into that type of situation again.
Selective abstraction / focusing on the negative
As the second part of this title suggests, this cognitive distortion involves focusing on specific parts of information in a situation. Often, the parts focused on are negative or upsetting to the person involved and it can contribute to them spiraling or exacerbating mental health disorders. By focusing so much on the worst parts of something that happened, it can make it more difficult to recover from negative experiences.
Disqualifying the positive
This often goes hand-in-hand with selective abstraction. When an individual disqualifies the positive, they will completely ignore or even talk away examples of positive experiences or events that contradict their negative thinking. For example, if someone does badly on an exam at school, they’ll focus so heavily on doing poorly that they’ll ignore all of the exams that they’ve passed and done well in. By disqualifying the positives, individuals make it more difficult to emotionally regulate themselves.
Mind reading
Mind reading is probably one of the more obvious ones on this list. It involves someone thinking that they know how another person is feeling or thinking and using that “information” to judge how they should act or feel themselves. They may assume someone is angry with them or is judging them when in fact there is no evidence to support this at all.
Fortune telling
Have you, or someone you know, ever been nervous or upset about a potential event coming up? The answer is more than likely yes for most people. For some people, they start assuming they know what will be happening at that event. Using the exam situation again, someone may say “What’s even the point of studying, I’m going to fail the exam anyway”.
Minimization
This is similar to disqualifying the positive but there is a significant difference. When someone engages in minimization, they acknowledge that positive things have happened in the past, but they minimize the importance of them. They may attribute it to luck, favoritism from another person, or any other thing that is out of their control.
Catastrophizing
When someone engages in catastrophizing, they’re usually immediately mentally going to the worst possible outcome of an event. A failed exam could make someone think that not only will they fail the class, they may end up failing out of their entire program or losing the ability to continue going to school.
Emotional reasoning
This is a cognitive distortion that many people engage in often. They will use their emotions or feelings to justify how we feel about ourselves or things we decide to do because of those emotions. Depression can come with feelings of worthlessness and those feelings can justify not caring for oneself, for example.
“Should” statements
This is another one that may be quite obvious to people based on the title. These are rules we create for ourselves and others that we expect the world to follow. When we, others, or the world do not follow these rules, it can cause a lot of emotional distress. We “should” behave certain ways, say certain things, feel certain ways. However, life is often much more complicated than what these rules tell us is allowed.
Personalization/attribution
Personalization involves assuming you, or someone else, is completely responsible for a negative outcome. This can cause a lot of guilt and shame in an individual. If applied to someone in their lives, it can result in resentment and anger.
