What Are Your Cognitive Distortions- We All Have Them
*this post will contain amazon affiliated purchasing links as well as links to free resources
A Cognitive Distortion is a term for an internal bias or mental filter that can increase our anxiety, negative emotions, and damage our self esteem. It can be as simple as thinking, “this always happens to me!” We all have them and use them, it’s the degree to which we do that has the greatest impact on our mental health. One of the best ways to reduce your use of cognitive distortions is to first be aware of what they sound like and when you’re using them. They often build on each other-so catching one can help reduce your stress or frustration earlier. This blog is not only about some of the most common cognitive distortions but also ways to reduce them for yourself.
One key concept that I’m always discussing with my clients is that our thoughts and feelings are not always accurate. Just because we feel a certain way doesn’t mean that thought it is true, but the feeling definitely is. For example, just because we feel stupid doesn’t mean we actually are, but the feeling is valid and needs to be explored. So here’s some of the traps our thoughts can caught up in.
A very common distortion is All-or-Nothing thinking. It is when we start to think that something has to be all one thing (perfect) or it is going to be all the opposite (a failure). We begin to think in extremes instead of noticing the whole spectrum of experiences. This one can likely sneak up on us more often than you’d think. Do you sometimes remember experiences as either good or bad, feelings as either positive or negative, or yourself as either attractive or unattractive? It can cause you to use absolutes, like “Things never/always happen to me”. If a day was stressful it doesn’t mean it was a bad day. It’s about being able to stay present in the moment or an experience without letting your thoughts and feelings sway you to the other extreme. This can be increasingly difficult to do when we’re already stressed.
That builds into the next distortion- Overgeneralization. This is when we take a situation that has happened once or twice and begin to see it as a pattern. We can stretch the significance of that one event into an overall description of ourselves or our experiences. We have an awkward conversation with someone new and suddenly we’re ALWAYS so awkward, what is wrong with us? Going forward then, we may choose to focus only future experiences or memories that confirm that worry for us as we begin to build that thought of being ‘awkward’ into a core fear or anxiety. We may do this through a distortion called Disqualifying the Positive. This is a distortion where we ignore or downplay the good things that happen or that we’ve done. So when we’re really comfortable in certain settings and can feel confident and content, we downplay that as well those are my friends or that’s my job- I’m use to it. We can see this a lot when we’re uncomfortable with a compliment or praise and we downplay it to ourselves, “That’s just Katie, she’s always nice” or we choose to focus on a negative interaction we had with someone else the week before instead and try to ignore the compliment completely. It keeps our negative beliefs about ourselves more present and more in focus instead of allowing ourselves to challenge them using real experiences and feedback from our lives.
Another distortion that many of us may fall victim to is Jumping to Conclusions. It is where we make assumptions with little or no evidence and it often falls into two main categories- fortune telling and mind reading. Fortune telling is where we feel we can already predict how a situation will turn out. “I’m not even going to try because I know it will be a disaster”. Anxiety and Depression love this one. It can help fuel avoidance behaviors and keep you feeling more anxious and depressed as we withdraw more and more and avoid our ‘anxious events’. Mind reading is the assumption that we know what other people are thinking without talking to them. This could be saying to yourself, “I’m sure they think I’m annoying, I’m not going to ask for help” or maybe assuming that everyone is judging you when you walk into somewhere new. These distortions keep us from moving forward and choosing to actively address our worries or face the awkwardness of something. We can be missing out on making great memories or meaningful experiences.
The last distortion I’ll discuss today is Magnification. It has two forms- catastrophizing and minimization. Catastrophizing is when we blow a small or minor event out of proportion and then we can often have a strong reaction to it. This can happen for multiple reasons in the moment, but when it becomes habitual it can be a sign of something happening with our internal stress response and it can have an impact on our overall mental health, our relationships, and our daily responsibilities. Minimization is when we inappropriately downplay something significant and make it less important. Someone who is habitually late on payments due to forgetfulness may minimize the impact it is having on them financially. Someone who is being emotionally or verbally abused may excuse or justify their abuser’s actions as an attempt to avoid or make sense of the situation. Minimization can allow us to falsely continue in something that is harming us in some way- whether that is severely or not, and it often does not begin in it’s most severe forms but can gradually build if we don’t work to address it. Magnification, in its entirety, could begin as simply as overly focusing on one’s mistakes while easily forgiving the mistakes of others.
Everyone occasionally engages in cognitive distortions, especially in times of stress. Awareness of the one’s you typically use is the first step in actively addressing them and reducing them so they don’t become a habitual response for you. Use of cognitive distortions often fuel our stress response and prevent us from choosing healthier alternatives to actively address our concerns. If you find yourself repeatedly in the same situation, the same feeling, or repeating the same core fears/worries to yourself, then look for any possible distortions that could be guiding your responses to your stressors.
Here’s what you can do if you’ve identified your distortion. First, practicing these strategies while journaling can help prepare you to utilize them more easily in the future. These are some questions you can ask yourself to challenge your distortion:
1) How do I know this thought is accurate? How do I test that- is there someone I trust that I can talk to about it to see if they have the same conclusion?
2) Is this thought helping me or hurting me?
3) What would I say to a friend in the same situation? If it differs, perhaps I’m not treating myself fairly.
4) Am I noticing the ‘in-betweens’ or the experiences that disagree with this distortion. Can I take some time to focus on those now?
These questions can be hard to ask yourself if you haven’t first been able to identify that there may be an inaccuracy in your view of a situation. That is why familiarizing yourself with all the forms of cognitive distortions may give you that extra bit of pause to help yourself identify them. Also checking in with someone you trust about your worries can help you identify any biases you may be having.
Below are links for more information on other forms of cognitive distortions along with the one’s I’ve discussed and strategies to address them. Free resources can also be found through my pinterest page.
