2360Cognitive Distortions

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Jul. 13, 2004

 

 

http://members.shaw.ca/alanjstewart/FeelingGood.html

Table 3-1. Definitions of Cognitive Distortions


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.


OVERGENERALIZATION: You see a single negative event as a never-ending
pattern of defeat.


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 discolours the entire beaker of water.


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.


JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS: You make a negative interpretation even
though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your
conclusion.


Mind Reading - You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting
negatively to you, and you don't bother to check this out.


The Fortune Teller Error - You anticipate that things will turn out
badly, and you feel convinced that your prediction is an already-
established fact.


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 the appear
tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow's
imperfections). This is also called the "binocular trick."


EMOTIONAL REASONING You assume that your negative emotions
necessarily reflect the way things really are: "I feel it, therefore
it must be true."


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 towards others, you feel anger, frustration, and
resentment.


LABELING AND MISLABELING: This is an extreme form of
overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a
negative label to yourself: "I'm a loser." When someone else's
behaviour rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to
him: "He's a goddam louse." Mislabeling involves describing an event
with language that is highly coloured and emotionally loaded.


PERSONALIZATION: You see yourself as the cause of some negative
external event which in fact you were not primarily responsible for.