Cognitive Distortions
ALL-OR-NOTHING THINKING: You see things in black-and-white categories. All-or-nothing statements include: “I am a totally worthless parent/spouse/employee/ friend”, “I’m a loser.” If a friend doesn't call you back, they "hate" you. If you have a bad date, it means you will be alone "forever".
DISQUALIFYING THE POSITIVE: You reject a compliment, or a positive aspect of your life, by insisting that it doesn’t count. For example, you might say to yourself: “I just got lucky”, “If they knew the real me, they wouldn’t like me”, or “Yeah, I’m improving, but I still more anxious than so-and-so.”
JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS: You make assumptions based on limited information: “I’ve been shy for too long, so I can never get better”, “They didn’t text me back yet, so they must not like me,” or “She didn’t laugh at my joke, so I must have no sense of humor.”
MIND READING: You assume that you know what other people are thinking: “He didn’t say hello to me today, so he must think I’m nerdy”, “They looked uncomfortable, so they must think I'm worthless”, or “I was really quiet, so she thinks I'm boring”
FORTUNETELLING: You anticipate that things will turn out badly: “No one will ever love me” or “I have a bad time at dinner” or “I will never feel better.”
CATASTROPHIZING: You exaggerate the importance of a negative event or a personal flaw: “If I lose this job/ marriage /relationship, my life will be over - I can’t possibly be happy again”, “If I’m in pain/sick/anxious/sad, then I can’t accomplish anything”, or “If this date goes badly, my life is over.”
EMOTIONAL REASONING: You give too much credence to your feelings and intuitions, rather than acknowledging that they are fallible: “I feel deep down inside like I will never get better, so it must be true,” “I get a bad feeling about this presentation, so it’s going to be horrible.”
SHOULD STATEMENTS: You tell yourself you should or must do something and hold yourself to inflexible and impossibly high standards: “I must always be charming” or “I should never do something embarrassing,” or “I must be the perfect parent/spouse/employee/friend.”
PERSONALIZATION: You blame yourself entirely for something. This most typically happens when a relationship ends, a group endeavor fails, or you have a bad date: “It’s all my fault.”
There is a lot of overlap between the distortions, but the general idea is that the more sad or anxious we are, the more distorted our thinking tends to be.
Do any of these distortions apply to you? If you are like most people, they all do at one time or another.
Going back to the legal analogy, the list of distortions are like the “objections” your lawyer is allowed to raise to the judge. He can say “Objection your honor. That was fortunetelling.” or “Objection. That was all-or-nothing thinking.”
For each sentence, identify the 2-3 distortions that stand out to you the most. Don’t use all of the distortions or else the judge will get irritated.
For example, here’s how I would filled out the distortions column for my distressing thoughts:
