Definitions of
Cognitive Distortions
1. 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.
2. OVERGENERALIZATION:
You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.
3. 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 discolors the
entire glass of water.
4. DISQUALIFYING THE
POSITIVE: You reject positive experiences by insisting they “don’t count”
for some reason or other. In this way you can maintain a negative belief that
is contradicted by your everyday experiences.
5. JUMPING TO
CONCLUSIONS: You make a negative interpretation even though there are no
definite facts that convincingly support your conclusions.
a. Mind Reading. You arbitrarily conclude that
someone is reacting negatively to you, and you don’t bother to check this out.
b. The FortuneTeller Error. You
anticipate that things will turn out badly, and you feel convinced that your
prediction is an already established fact.
6. 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). This is also called the “binocular trick.”
7. EMOTIONAL
REASONING: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the
way things really are: "I feel it, therefore it must be true." Feelings are NOT an accurate indicator
of the nature of reality.
8. SHOULD STATEMENTS:
You try to motivate yourself with shoulds and shouldn’ts, as if you had to be
whipped and punished before you could 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.
9. 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 and
do name calling and fault finding. Mislabeling
involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and
emotionally loaded.
10. PERSONALIZATION: You see yourself as the cause of some
negative event which in fact you were not primarily responsible for. STIP (Stop Taking It Personally)
(Hat tip to David Burns MD)
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