Jan 15, 2024
Have you ever turned in a project convinced it had gone terribly, only to be praised for a job well done later? Or are you convinced you’re a failure after you make a mistake, despite a history of continual success?
Everyone experiences cognitive distortions. Also known as distorted thinking, these negative thought patterns disrupt a person’s perception of reality. They’re little thoughts that can have a big impact on our emotions, behavior, choices, and mental health.
Fortunately, there are many ways to stop cognitive distortions from hijacking your brain and convincing you to believe negative, untrue statements. Whether it’s professional therapy, like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or through your own self-reflection, cultivating a strong, healthy cognitive space is possible
Types of Cognitive Distortions
Cognitive Distortions are a type of distorted thinking that leads you to many unfounded and usually destructive thoughts about yourself or the world around you. They can cause self-doubt, irritability, and low self-esteem, but are also the building blocks for mental health issues such as anxiety and depression.
Cognitive distortions are common, but become problematic when they are habitual. When your first thought after being confronted by a mistake is “Well, I shouldn’t even try anymore, I’m a failure!” That’s your cognitive distortions getting the best of you and influencing the choices you make.
There are many therapeutic techniques you can use to dismantle cognitive distortions and stop believing them. The first step is to recognize which cognitive distortion you are experiencing can call it out on its lies.
Let’s go over 15 of the most common cognitive distortions.
1. Mental Filtering
Mental filtering focuses only on the negatives, no matter how many positives are present.
Example: Your quarterly work review comes and your boss is raving about your excellent communication, work ethic, and quality work. However, he notes you’re always a few minutes late and asks you to make an effort to show up on time. Despite the overwhelming majority of the review being positive, you go home slouched in defeat, assuming you’re the worst employee ever.
2. All-or-Nothing Thinking
Also known as polarized or black-and-white thinking, this cognitive distortion is when you lose the ability to see nuance. It tells you the lie that there are only two options and you must choose only one.
Example: You did nine out of ten tasks on your to-do list; because it was not fully completed, your entire day was wasted.
Example: You’re trying to make a habit of going to the gym. You don’t go one day, so you feel as though you failed and might as well never go again.
3. Over-Generalization
With this cognitive distortion, you take something that happened once and apply it to all future instances.
Example: You were rejected once by someone you had a crush on, so now you assume you'll always be rejected.
Example: When you took the lead on a project, it went poorly, so now any time you lead will end in disaster.
4. Discounting the Positive
Similar to Mental Filtering, Discounting the Positive is when you assume any positive attribute of yourself doesn’t have value, is pure dumb luck, or is something anybody could do.
Example: Someone pays you a compliment, but you just think they’re being nice.
Example: You get your dream job, but you assume it was a mistake they will regret.
5. Mind-Reading
Mind-reading is when you jump to conclusions about what someone is thinking or feeling without getting all the facts. These conclusions are usually based on your insecurities, past hurts, or fears.
Example: Your partner is extra quiet this evening and you assume they’re mad at you.
Example: Your friend doesn't text back and you assume they're mad at you.
6. Catastrophizing
Catastrophizing is jumping to the worst-case scenario, even if there is no evidence to support it or if the conclusion is outlandish. Often it also involves spiraling: one worst-case scenario spirals into another, and another, until you have something that started small and ended up huge.
Example: You were late to turn in a big report and now you think you’re going to get fired, and if you get fired you might lose your home, and then you’ll have to move back in with your parents, and then . . . the spiral can continue down into worst-case scenarios.
7. Personalization
Personalization is believing you are personally responsible for the events around you. It can also look like assuming people are talking about you when they’re making a general statement or talking about themselves.
Examples: You move to a new town, where your child has trouble making friends. You feel like it is your fault he is lonely.
Example: Your friend is talking about a new diet they’re on. You think she is telling you that you should be dieting.
8. Control Fallacies
A fallacy is a mistaken belief based on unsound reasoning. A control fallacy is either when you believe you are in control of everything around you (including other people’s thoughts, emotions, and actions) or that everything is out of your control and not your fault. It is possible to experience both types of control fallacies back-to-back.
Example: Your partner is feeling sad after a hard day at work, but you think they must be feeling sad because of something that you did.
Example: You’re always running almost an hour late to hang out with friends, but that’s only because it’s impossible to arrive anywhere on time with how bad traffic is and the meeting spot your friend chose was way out of your way and at an inconvenient time.
9. Fallacy of Fairness
This fallacy will convince you that you have the only correct measure of fairness and that everyone else is wrong. It’s easy to get frustrated when other people’s ideas of what is fair don’t match with your own.
Example: You believe it’s only fair that your kids buy everyone a holiday gift when they come home. After all, they will be getting gifts from everyone, so it’s only fair that they give gifts in return. However, your kids believe that since everyone else lives nearby and they’re the only ones who have to pay for an expensive plane ticket, it’s only fair that they give less expensive or fewer gifts than the others.
Example: You took out the trash, so you think it’s only fair that your boyfriend does the dishes. However, your boyfriend says that doing the dishes is a much bigger chore than doing the dishes, and he will only do them if you also put in a load of laundry so everything is fair. You get frustrated and yell that you do all the work around here, and he yells back that he does the majority of the chores.
10. Blaming
Blaming is exactly as it sounds—you blame others for your emotional state. Although other people’s actions will influence our emotions, we remain in control of how our emotions impact our actions.
Example: Your friend says they don’t want to hang out because they had a long week at work. You spend the rest of the day feeling bad for yourself that your friends don’t want to hang out with you, and text them at the end of the night “You made me feel bad all day.”
11. “Should” Statements
You may have heard the phrase: “Don’t Should yourself!” This refers to the cognitive distortion of “Should” statements. These statements are rules that you hold yourself and others to and often result in feelings of guilt or shame when they are not accomplished.
Example: “I should never have to ask for help, because I’m an independent person.” or “They should always be on time, I gave them plenty of heads-up.”
12. Emotional Reasoning
Emotional Reasoning is when our emotions become our identity. The way you feel becomes who you are.
Example: You feel awkward in a social situation, so you start to believe that you are an awkward person.
Example: You feel dumb while taking a test, and extrapolate that feeling into thinking you are dumb in all situations.
13. Fortune Telling
This is the belief that you know what will happen before it does, usually a negative outcome.
Example: There’s no point in trying to buy tickets, they’ll be sold out!
14. Self-Serving Bias
A self-serving bias is one where you attribute all your positive traits to yourself but all the negative traits to things outside of your control.
Example: You turn in high-quality work because you’re a great worker, but you’re always late because traffic is always bad.
15. “Heaven’s Rewards” Fallacy
This is the misbelief that all good deeds will be rewarded in some way. While this can present itself as selflessness at the time, it often leads to resentment and anger when no rewards come.
Example: You did your partner’s laundry for them as a surprise, but it’s been two weeks and they still haven’t done anything nice in return. Now you feel resentful and angry at them.
How Do Cognitive Distortions Affect Mental Health?
These little thoughts may not look like they have a great impact, but they do. When left unchallenged and unchanged, cognitive distortions can leave you:
- Avoiding your real thoughts, emotions, and memories
- Stuck in a cycle of avoiding harmful beliefs and preceptions
- Negative self-worth and self-esteem
- Self-destructive behaviors
- Depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and other mental health issues
Cognitive Distortions are the building blocks of a lot of mental health disorders. Our thoughts influence how we feel and act, so when they are negative and untrue, our emotions and behaviors become that too.
How to Take Control of Cognitive Distortions
Cognitive Distortions are everywhere. Once you start recognizing them you might realize just how often you experience them. Remember that your thoughts do not control you: you don’t have to believe everything your mind tells you or follow through with what it says. Take stock of your personal values, goals, and beliefs. Do the cognitive distortions hold up in that light?
If not, then it’s time to replace them with thought patterns that are positive and true. In therapy, we would do this through Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Cognitive Distortions
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a very popular therapeutic method. Many of Lifebulb’s licensed counselors use CBT in their practice. The goal behind CBT is to recognize cognitive distortions and replace them with thoughts that are true and positive and help you better yourself and progress towards your goals.
CBT is great at dismantling cognitive distortions in mental health issues such as:
How to Dismantle Cognitive Distortions On Your Own
Having the help of a licensed therapist to dismantle and replace cognitive distortions can be instrumental, but there are things you can do on your own as well. The next time you feel yourself spiraling, experiencing uncomfortable emotions, or are acting in a way that doesn’t align with your values, stop and think:
- What am I feeling right now?
- What am I thinking?
- What Cognitive Distortion is at play right now?
- Is the cognitive distortion true or untrue? List all the ways it is untrue.
- What thought can I replace the cognitive distortion with?
- How do I want to act according to my goals and values?
Let’s practice using this pretend scenario:
Susan is up for a big promotion at work. All she has to do is nail the interview. She’s been practicing for weeks now and all of her coworkers and friends think she should get the job. But the morning of the interview, she forgets to pack her son’s lunch. They have to drive all the way back home to get his lunch, which almost makes her late to work. She calls her boss to explain what happened. As she is rushing into the interview she keeps thinking how none of this would have happened if she had just packed her son’s lunch, how she is so dumb for not packing it, and how there is no way she was going to get a promotion if she can’t even remember to pack her kid’s lunch.
What is she feeling?
She’s probably feeling flustered, anxious, mad at herself, and silly for making such a small mistake.
What is she thinking?
She’s thinking she won’t get the interview because she was late and how dumb she had been that morning.
What cognitive distortions do you recognize in that scenario?
There is Catastrophizing: Because she forgot her son’s lunch she won’t get the promotion.
And emotional reasoning: She felt dumb over a small mistake and now believes that she is dumb.
Is the cognitive distortion true or untrue?
She won’t get the promotion because she forgot her son’s lunch: Untrue! Susan doesn’t know the outcome of the situation yet and has no way of telling if being a little late will affect the outcome.
She is dumb: Very untrue! Making a small mistake like forgetting lunch the morning of a big interview is completely understandable. She had a lot on her mind and one thing slipped. She quickly corrected the situation. She worked hard for this interview and deserves it.
What thought can I replace the cognitive distortion with?
“I won’t get the promotion because I forgot my son’s lunch” -> “My personal life and work life are separate. The only thing affecting this interview is how I act, the work I present, and how I answer the questions.”
“I made a dumb mistake, so I am dumb.” -> “I was offered this interview because my employers are happy with my work. I studied hard and am deserving of this position. Small slips of the mind are not a representation of my intelligence.”
How do I want to act according to my values?
This interview is important to Susan, so regardless of the lies her mind is telling her, she’s going to go in there, do her best, and believe she has what it takes to get this promotion.
Help is Available
Cognitive Distortions may seem small, but their impact is large. If you are overwhelmed with the weight and power of your thoughts and cognitive distortions, Lifebulb therapy can help. Our licensed therapists are affordable, accessible, and skilled at helping clients dismantle the cognitive distortions in their life. Reach out to our team to learn how you can break free from the lies of cognitive distortions today.
