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Dec 18, 2019 · Cognitive distortions, or distorted thinking, causes people to view reality in inaccurate, often negative, ways. Find out how to identify them and how to change these distortions.
Feb 6, 2024 · Cognitive distortions are irrational or exaggerated ways of thinking that frequently affect people with anxiety or depression. Cognitive distortion examples include dwelling on negatives, overgeneralizing, catastrophizing situations, or characterizing things as either all good or all bad.
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- All-or-Nothing Thinking / Polarized Thinking. Also known as “Black-and-White Thinking,” this distortion manifests as an inability or unwillingness to see shades of gray.
- Overgeneralization. This sneaky distortion takes one instance or example and generalizes it to an overall pattern. For example, a student may receive a C on one test and conclude that she is stupid and a failure.
- Mental Filter. Similar to overgeneralization, the mental filter distortion focuses on a single negative piece of information and excludes all the positive ones.
- Disqualifying the Positive. On the flip side, the “Disqualifying the Positive” distortion acknowledges positive experiences but rejects them instead of embracing them.
- Mind reading. Mind reading is when you assume you know what someone else is thinking. Often, mind reading leads to believing that others have negative thoughts about you.
- Catastrophizing. This happens when you make the worst possible prediction about the future based on little to no evidence. You may think, “I bet my headaches mean I have brain cancer.”
- All-or-nothing thinking. There’s a reason all-or-nothing thinking is also called black-and-white thinking. This type of thinking has two extreme conclusions and doesn't consider a range of possibilities.
- Emotional reasoning. Emotional reasoning happens when you believe your emotions reflect reality and use them to guide decisions or draw conclusions. For example, you make a mistake; you feel bad about the mistake, and you feel bad toward yourself for making a mistake.
- Filtering. Mental filtering is draining and straining all positives in a situation and, instead, dwelling on its negatives. Even if there are more positive aspects than negative in a situation or person, you focus on the negatives exclusively.
- Polarization or all-or-nothing thinking. Polarized thinking is thinking about yourself and the world in an “all-or-nothing” way. When you engage in thoughts of black or white, with no shades of gray, this type of cognitive distortion is leading you.
- Overgeneralization. When you overgeneralize something, you take an isolated negative event and turn it into a never-ending pattern of loss and defeat. With overgeneralization, words like “always,” “never,” “everything,” and “nothing” are frequent in your train of thought.
- Discounting the positive. Discounting positives is similar to mental filtering. The main difference is that you dismiss it as something of no value when you do think of positive aspects.
Sep 26, 2020 · Examples of Negative Core Beliefs: 10 Common Cognitive Distortions (AKA Distorted Thinking Patterns) 1. All-Or-Nothing (AKA Black or White) Thinking. 2. Labeling. 3. Magical Thinking. 4. Emotional Reasoning. 5. Should Statements. 6. Mind-Reading. 7. Fortune Telling. 8. Catastrophizing (Or Minimizing) 9. Ignoring The Good. 10. Mental Filtering.
Apr 7, 2015 · For those looking to improve their mental health by recognizing pesky cognitive distortions, we’ve compiled a list of 20 common ones that may already be distorting your perception of reality: 1....
