You’re over-thinking it!
Cognitive Distortions are ways of thinking and interpreting situations, interactions and information that skews the truth. These types of thoughts normally reinforce negative thinking patterns or emotions. We tell ourselves things that sound rational and accurate but really only serve to keep us feeling bad about ourselves.
Below are a few examples of cognitive distortions. There are actually fifteen in total. If you would like to read all fifteen refer to: Beck A. T. (1976). Cognitive Therapies and Emotional Disorders. New York: New American Library. Burns, D. D. (1980). Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy. New York: New American Library
The point of these examples is to help you identify distorted patterns of thinking that hurt and hinder you, and give you tools to help change your thought patterns in order to promote healthy positive thinking to increase your overall sense of well-being as well as promote healthy relationships.
FILTERING
We take the negative details and magnify them while filtering out all positive aspects of a situation.
For instance, a person may pick out a single, unpleasant detail and dwell on it exclusively so that
their vision of reality becomes darkened or distorted.
My Fix to Filtering
Stop and ask yourself, “Am I just focusing on the negative details?” Then take a moment and list the positive details of the same situation and choose to focus on the positive aspects and allow the negative aspects to fade into the background.
POLARIZED THINKING
(or Black and White Thinking)
In polarized thinking, things are either “black-or-white.” We have to be perfect or we’re a failure there
is no middle ground. You place people or situations in “either/or” categories, with no shades of gray or
allowing for the complexity of most people and situations. If your performance falls short of perfect,
you see yourself as a total failure.
My Fix to Polarized Thinking
Remind yourself that most things in life have a little gray to them. As you assess a situation and look at
the extreme ends, allow yourself to move into the middle ground. Allow for the benefit of the doubt.
Allow yourself to see the situation in away that is less judgmental with more understanding and kindness.
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 o defeat.
My Fix for Overgeneralization
I believe this is a very common distortion used by many of us. As a way to combat this type of thinking check to
see if you are using language such as “always”, “should”, and “never” when describing a situation or a person’s behavior. There is no possible way that anything can always happen or never happen. We are too imperfect to be that consistent in our behavior.
