Cognitive distortion is a psychological term most people probably have never heard. Basically, it involves the ways our mind convinces us of something that isn’t really true. These inaccurate thoughts are usually used to reinforce negative thinking or emotions—we tell ourselves things that sound rational and accurate, but really only serve to keep us feeling bad about ourselves.
Some Common Cognitive Distortions
1. Filtering: Filtering is when we take negative details and magnify them while filtering out all the positive aspects of a situation. For instance, a person may pick out a single, unpleasant detail and dwell on it exclusively so their vision of reality becomes darkened or distorted.
2. Polarized or “Black and White” Thinking: With polarized thinking, things are either “black-or-white.” We have to be perfect or we’re failures — there is no middle ground. You place people or situations in “either/or” categories, with no shades of gray. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.
3. Overgeneralization: In this cognitive distortion, we come to a general conclusion based on a single incident or a single piece of evidence. If something bad happens only once, we expect it to happen over and over again. A person may see a single, unpleasant event as part of a never-ending pattern of defeat.
4. Jumping to Conclusions: This is when we’re convinced we know what a person is thinking or feeling and why they act like they do, even without asking. In particular, we’re able to determine how people are feeling toward us. For example, a person may conclude that someone is reacting negatively toward them but doesn’t actually bother to find out if they’re correct. Another example is that a person may anticipate things will turn out badly and is convinced their prediction is already an established fact.
5. Catastrophizing: We expect disaster to strike, no matter what. This is also referred to as “magnifying or minimizing.” We hear about a problem and use “what if” questions (e.g., “What if tragedy strikes?” “What if it happens to me?”). For example, a person might exaggerate the importance of insignificant events such as a mistake, or someone else’s achievement. Or they may inappropriately shrink the magnitude of significant events until they appear tiny.
6. Personalization: Personalization is a distortion where a person believes that everything others do or say is some kind of direct, personal reaction to them. We also compare ourselves to others trying to determine who is smarter, better looking, etc. A person engaging in personalization may also see themselves as the cause of some unhealthy external event they weren’t responsible for. For example, “We were late to the dinner party and caused the hostess to overcook the meal. If I had only pushed my husband to leave on time, this wouldn’t have happened.”
7. Control Fallacies: If we feel externally controlled, we see ourselves as helpless, as victims of fate. “I can’t help it if the quality of the work is poor, my boss demanded I work overtime on it.” The fallacy of internal control has us assuming responsibility for the pain and happiness of everyone around us. For instance, “Why aren’t you happy? Is it because of something I did?”
8. Fallacy of Fairness: We feel resentful because we think we know what is fair, but other people won’t agree with us. People who go through life applying a measuring ruler against every situation judging its “fairness” will often feel negative because of it.
9. Blaming: We hold other people responsible for our pain, or take the other track and blame ourselves for every problem. For example, “Stop making me feel bad about myself!” Nobody can “make” us feel any particular way — only we have control over our own emotions and emotional reactions.
10. Shoulds: We have a list of ironclad rules about how everyone should behave. People who break the rules make us angry, and we feel guilty when we violate these rules. A person may often believe they’re trying to motivate themselves with shoulds and shouldn’ts, as if they have to be punished before they can do anything. The emotional consequence is guilt. When a person directs “should” statements toward others, they often feel anger, frustration and resentment.
11. Emotional Reasoning: We believe what we feel must be true, automatically. If we feel stupid and boring, then we must be stupid and boring. We assume that our unhealthy emotions reflect the way things really are.
12. Fallacy of Change: We expect other people will change to suit us if we just pressure or cajole them enough. We need to change people because our hopes for happiness seem to depend entirely on them.
13. Global Labeling: We generalize one or two qualities into a negative global judgment. These are extreme forms of generalizing, and are also referred to as “labeling” and “mislabeling.” Instead of describing an error in the context of a specific situation, a person will attach an unhealthy label to themselves. For instance, they may say, “I’m a loser” in a situation where they failed at a specific task. Mislabeling also involves describing an event with language that’s highly colored and emotionally loaded. For example, instead of saying someone drops her children off at daycare every day, a person who is mislabeling might say that “she abandons her children to strangers.”
14. Always Being Right: We are continually on trial to prove our opinions and actions are correct. Being wrong is unthinkable and we’ll go to any length to demonstrate our rightness. For example, “I don’t care how badly arguing with me makes you feel, I’m going to win this argument no matter what because I’m right.” For a person who engages in this cognitive distortion, being right is often more important than the feelings of others.
15. Heaven’s Reward Fallacy: We expect our sacrifice and self-denial to pay off, as if someone is keeping score and we feel bitter when the reward doesn’t come.
Through therapy, psychologists help people learn to change this way of thinking. By learning to correctly identify this kind of behavior a person can then refute the negative thinking. By doing this continuously, negative thinking slowly diminishes over time and is automatically replaced by more rational, balanced thinking.
Source: Psych Central
