We all tend to think in extremes…and when stressful events happen we think that way even more. Here are some common cognitive distortions. We all have our own personal favorites.  Take a look at them and see if any of them are getting in your way.

1. 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.

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

3. 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.

4. Disqualifying the positive: You reject positive experiences by insisting they “don’t count” for some reason or other. You maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences.

5. 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 don’t bother to check it out.
• The Fortune Telling: You anticipate that things will turn out badly and feel convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact.

6. Emotional reasoning: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: “I feel it, therefore it must be true.”

7. 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 toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment.

8. 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 behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him, “He’s a damn louse.” Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded.

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

Cognitive distortions can sneak up on us throughout the day if we aren’t careful and can get us into a real funk. Often we are not aware of these irrational patterns of thinking even if they are knocking up on our door. When you know what to be on the lookout for, it becomes rather easy to spot the cognitive distortions in both yourself and others. Doing so usually brings lasting positive change in the way you experience stressors in your life.

From: Burns, David D., MD. 1989. The Feeling Good Handbook. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc.