Cognitive Distortions

As we step into various situations throughout our day, cognitive distortions often pop up automatically. Cognitive Distortions are irrational thoughts that everyone experiences.  This tool can teach you to catch, check and challenge cognitive distortions to improve how you feel and respond in distressing moments.  Read the list of cognitive distortions and see which ones look familiar to you.  Then, walk through the “Challenging Cognitive Distortions” steps below to start improving your perspective, emotions and behaviors from here on out!

The Cognitive Distortions

1. Magnification: Exaggerating the importance of events.

2. Minimization: Minimizing the importance of events.

3. Catastrophizing: Assuming the worst case future scenario is going to happen without adequate evidence.

4. Overgeneralization: Noticing a single or few events and making generalizations that these things happen more frequently than they actually do.

5. Unreal/Ideal: Comparing yourself to someone else and then criticizing yourself.

6. Personalization: You see yourself as the cause of a negative event which you were not primarily responsible for.

7. Jumping to Conclusions: Interpreting the meaning of a situation with little or no evidence.

8. Mind Reading: Assuming you know what someone is thinking without having adequate evidence.

9. Fortune Telling: The expectation that a situation will turn out badly without adequate evidence.

10. Emotional Reasoning: The assumption that emotions reflect the way things really are. "I feel it, therefore it must be true."

11. Disqualifying the Positive: You reject positive experiences by insisting they don't count.

12. Should Statements: You try to motivate yourself with "shoulds" and "shouldn'ts." “Musts'” and “oughts” also fall into this category. When we do this to ourselves, we feel guilt. When we direct these towards others, we feel anger, frustration and resentment.

13. All-or-Nothing Thinking: Thinking in absolutes such as "always," never," or "every."  When you do this, you do not see the gray area or middle ground that exists.

14. Labeling: Instead of simply and graciously describing your error, you attach a negative self-critical label to yourself.

15. 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 discolors the entire beaker of water.
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Challenging Cognitive Distortions

• Identify which thought is leading to the unpleasant emotion.
  
• Identify which cognitive distortion category that thought fits in to.
  
• Challenge the unhelpful thought:
  
  
  • Realistic: Am I looking at this situation realistically? How can I view it more realistically?
    
  • Positive: Am I looking at this situation positively? How can I view it more positively?
    
  • Helpful: Am I taking helpful steps to improve the situation? What helpful steps can I take to improve the situation?