Ten Cognitive Distortions That Are Holding You Back
We are thinking all the time but how often do we take time out to really think about and reflect on our thoughts? How they are affecting our moods, our behaviours and our relationships? Cognitive distortions refer to irrational and illogical thought processes that our mind uses to reinforce negative thinking. So what are they?
All or Nothing: When we think this way, we are essentially seeing things in a black and white manner. That is, things are either good or bad, right or wrong; we only see the extremes of any given situation leaving no room for any grey area. For example, a boy who fails his maths test thinks “I’m such a loser. I’m so stupid. I’ll never amount to anything”. This type of thinking places us in a ‘victim’ type framework and gives us limited opportunities to see alternatives or to explore solutions to problems.
Disqualifying the Positives: We are often quite good at identifying when things are going badly in our lives, however many of us tend to dismiss or brush it off when things go well. For example, a girl paints a portrait and receives a positive response from her teacher and peers, but instead of celebrating this achievement she concludes that it’s really terrible and everyone is trying to be nice. This unhelpful thinking style can often spiral people into a cycle of depression as they will view their lives as primarily negative events with little to no positive experiences.
Mind Reading: A girl goes on a date with a boy and notices that he does not appear to be paying attention to their conversation, immediately she concludes that he thinks she is boring. There could be a number of other reasons for his behaviour however when we are playing mind reader, we become fixated on whatever conclusion we have generated and refuse to consider any other alternatives.
Overgeneralisation: If she didn’t like me then no one will. If I couldn’t pass this assignment then I’ll never graduate. Over generalising occurs when one bad incident happens and we therefore expect that this will continue to happen over and over again. In this way, we begin to view a single unfortunate incident as the beginning of many.
Personalisation: When we adopt this thinking style we believe that everything others do or say is somehow in reference to us. For example, someone at a party might exclaim that this party is boring, if we are personalising we might believe that they are implying we are boring. We start to take everything personally even when it may not be.
Fortune Telling: "There’s no way I’m asking her out, she’s definitely going to say no". Fortune telling refers to the belief that we know what someone is thinking, what they are feeling and what they will do. This is something many of us do subconsciously and one that may prevent us from pursuing things that are meaningful to us.
Emotional Reasoning: When we do this we believe that whatever we feel must be true. If we feel that we’re dumb then we must be dumb, if we feel ugly then we must be ugly. We throw logic and reasoning out the window and may refuse to explore the reality of any given situation, coming to conclusions purely based on our emotional reasoning.
Rationalising: “I only failed because the teacher hates me” … “I can’t give up smoking until after summer” ... Rationalisation is when we attempt to make excuses for unfortunate events that occur or the poor choices that we (or other people) make. This is usually done in an attempt to protect ourselves from feeling disappointed, hurt or unconfident.
Shoulds and Musts: When we think that someone should treat us better or that we must get this job, we begin to place unrealistic expectations on ourselves and/or on others. There is no room for any other outcome and we are therefore setting ourselves up to feel let down, angry, sad or disappointed.
Catastrophising: When we catastrophise we exaggerate the importance of things, overemphasise the consequences of particular events and blow things way out of proportion. For example, a student who fails a subject believes that they will fail every subject, never get into university and be unsuccessful in life.
We can often engage in a number of these cognitive distortions on a subconscious level without realising the impact they may be having on our lives. By becoming aware of them we can begin to challenge these thought processes and replace them with a healthier and more realistic narrative.