Challenging Cognitive Distortions
What are cognitive distortions?
Cognitive distortions are unhelpful, damaging, irrational thoughts that may often be repeated in your head. They distort your reality and make decision making, judgement, and emotional regulation much harder.Â
What kinds of cognitive distortions are there?
There are several forms of cognitive distortions that are common. Primary examples are:
All-Or-Nothing Thinking: This is black and white thinking. An example of this could be that you can either be loved or hated only, with no in between or gray area.
Overgeneralization: Assuming a negative event to be a never-ending pattern. An example of this could be believing that because of a few few bad experiences with people working checkout all people that work checkout are bad.
Mental Filter: Focusing on a single negative detail and ignoring all positive aspects. An example of this could be assuming your friend is actually a terrible person over one disagreement, despite years kindness and compassion towards you.Â
Disqualifying the Positive: Rejecting positive experiences and insisting they either do not count or can be explained by other things that arenât positive. An example could be rejecting all the positives that have happened in your day to focus on the few negative things that have happened.
Jumping to Conclusions: Making an assumption based on your own interpretation of someoneâs behavior. An example of this could be assuming a friend is angry with you and ignoring you because they havenât replied to your messages right away.Â
Magnification and Minimization: Exaggerating the severity of mistakes or problems; or dismissing the significance of accomplishments. Examples of this could include discounting all your hard work because youâve made one mistake and believing you are terrible because of this; or receiving frequent praise for hard work and dismissing that and believing that your accomplishments arenât actually that great.Â
Emotional Reasoning: Assuming that your emotions always reflect reality. An example of this could be that because you are angry at someone in an argument that you are correct.Â
Should, Ought, Must: Scolding yourself for not improving right away. Examples of this could be believing you should already know something, you must always behave in a certain way, etc.Â
Labeling: Judging others or yourself with labels, limiting your beliefs around others/yourself. Examples of this could be assuming someone is a liar or believing you are a loser.Â
Personalization: Blaming yourself inappropriately for negative events that are out of your control. An example of this could be blaming yourself for abuse thatâs happened to you.Â
How can I challenge cognitive distortions?
To challenge these distortions, itâs important to ask questions and try to both understand why you believe this and why it is not true. Some questions that you may ask yourself are:Â
Is this a fact, or is it an opinion?Â
What evidence is there for this belief? What evidence is there against it?Â
Is this belief always and invariably true?Â
Does this belief promote your well-being, or is it harmful?Â
What events caused me to believe this?Â
Along with that, recite what works for you when disproving these distortions. Keep reminding yourself that it isnât true, and try to have rational explanations behind it. Some ways to do that could be as follows (basing responses from the examples above):
All-Or-Nothing Thinking: There are many gray areas in life, and most people do not have strong feelings that are solely positive or solely negative. Many people will like and dislike several aspects of you. People can still love you despite disagreeing with something youâve done.
Overgeneralization:Â Bad checkout employees do exist, however, it is not possible for every single checkout employee to be bad, and youâve had many neutral or good experiences when checking out.Â
Mental Filter:Â Your friendship with this individual is long-lasting and has proven to be a good friendship. Friends fight sometimes, and a few arguments will not ruin the friendship.
Disqualifying the Positive: Good and bad things happen every day, and itâs impossible to have a day where only bad things have happened. Including positive aspects of your day is important.Â
Jumping to Conclusions: People take longer times to reply all the time, whether it be that they arenât sure what to say yet or theyâve stepped away from their device.Â
Magnification and Minimization: Everyone makes mistakes, and itâs not the end of the world when it happens. You can still make progress and improve despite minor setbacks.Â
Emotional Reasoning: Emotions are not inherently founded in facts. Itâs important to listen to others rather than judging everything based off of your emotions.Â
Should, Ought, Must: Itâs unhelpful to try to improve yourself by shaming yourself for not having done it sooner. Instead of labeling things with âI should already know thisâ, recognize that you didnât know it before, but now you do.Â
Labeling: No one is a single label, and everyone exists with positive and negative traits. No one is inherently always a liar and no one is always a loser.Â
Personalization: Otherâs actions are not in your control. The only person you are in control of is yourself.Â