Cognitive Distortions

Not everything you think is true. Cognitive distortions are biassed unhelpful thinking styles we take on ourselves, our future and our world. They are like filters through which we interpret the incomes and consider them as reality but ignoring other information. As if we focus our vision in one part of the picture instead of seeing the whole draw. Those inaccurate and automatic thinking styles are shortcuts to our mind because our process capacity to pay attention to all the environment stimulus is limited. So they save our mind energy and help us to make efficient use of our attention. “Everyone is biassed sometimes, and in small doses it’s not a problem, but if your thinking is often biassed it can cause difficulties in your life” (Psychology Tools, 2022).

Polarized Thinking

Also known as “All-or-Nothing Thinking”. This distortion prevents us from seeing shades of grey. You can’t see middle terms, and only codify things in terms of extremes: people are bad or good, you are either perfect or a total failure.

Overgeneralization

You focus on a single event that occurred and make a general conclusion based on it. So, if the result became negative you incorrectly conclude all similar future events will result in the same failure or negative experience.

Mind Reading

You assume you know what the other person is thinking or will think. You jump to a conclusion about other people’s reasons or intentions based on that interpretation.

Fortune telling

You jump to conclusions and predictions based on little or no evidence. These thoughts are often overly negative.

Catastrophizing

You jump to the worst possible conclusion, think about the absolute worst result and horrible future. The magnitude is exaggerated resulting in a magnification of the facts.

Emotional Reasoning

Your current feeling about a situation or a person is accepted as fact. You assume your emotional ‘hunch’ must be true.

Labeling

You automatically assign labels to yourself or others based on an event or characteristic. Instead of recognizing that you are not just a feature, you judge yourself or others based on that characteristic alone.

Personalization

Take things personally, as if everything others do or say was related to or directed at us. For example, self-blaming circumstances or assuming someone’s behaviour is against you.

Mental Filtering

You focus your attention only on the negative aspects of an experience and filter out all the positive aspects. For example, it doesn’t matter if you pass that exam because you fail in two others.

Disqualifying the positive

You quickly discount positive information or experiences. For example, when you have successes or receive a compliment, you don’t value them because “others have achieved them too.” Or “it doesn’t matter if you are considered funny because you think you are ugly and not smart”.

Identifying these inaccurate ways of thinking allows us to change them and choose the glasses through which we want to see our reality: a more accurate and realistic one instead of one that may cause us suffering and problems.