What are Cognitive Distortions and how do they make you unhappy?
Do you often find yourself trapped in spirals of painful emotions and unpleasant behavior? It’s very likely that your mind has been playing tricks on you.
Whether voluntary or involuntary, our thoughts (or “cognitions”) influence our feelings and actions. Yet as much as we rely on our thoughts to make accurate sense of our worlds, our habitual thought patterns do not always reflect objective reality. As a result, we sometimes find ourselves engaged in modes of thinking that distort our perceptions of reality, negatively shaping our emotions, behaviors, and even our most important relationships. To complicate matters, these thought processes are also often automatic and activated unintentionally.
In clinical settings, these irrational and maladaptive patterns of thinking are called ‘cognitive distortions.’ Often deeply rooted, they lead us to make inaccurate assumptions and faulty interpretations about ourselves, other people, and the world. Indeed, as forms of irrational and biased thinking, cognitive distortions underlie many of the symptoms seen in mental health disorders such as depression, anxiety, substance dependence, and personality disorders!
Click on each of the cognitive distortions below to learn more about them, and discover whether some of the examples might seem familiar to you.
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Making sweeping conclusions based on limited, and often negative, experiences.
Example 1: Assuming that because one relationship did not work out, you will never find love again.
Example 2: “I messed up those calculations so I can’t be trusted to do a good job when any math is involved.”
Example 3: “All introverts are awkward.”
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Believing something is true simply because you feel it to be true.
Example 1: “I feel guilty, therefore I must have done something wrong.”
Example 2: “I feel angry and hurt by their comments, so they’re clearly toxic people who do not like me.”
Example 3: “I’m terrified of spiders, so they must be dangerous.”
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Holding unreasonably rigid rules about how you or others should behave.
Example 1: “When someone asks me a question, I must know the correct answer or else I'm stupid.”
Example 2: “Things should always go perfectly and according to plan.”
Example 3: “Only people who believe in God can have a strong moral compass, and if they don’t, then I won’t trust them.”
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Hyper-focusing on the negative details of a situation, while ignoring its other aspects.
Example 1: Feeling bad about one minor criticism despite a generally positive performance review.
Example 2: Dwelling on frequent disagreements with your partner and dismissing their other thoughtful gestures as either insincere or insignificant.
Example 3: “I’ve been exercising for three months now, but I’m still not thin enough; I’ll never be attractive.”
Recognizing these unhelpful cognitive distortions and finding ways to challenge them are important tasks for both patients and doctors in therapy. In fact, one specialized form of psychotherapy, called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), places a unique focus on such techniques. If you want to learn more about cognitive distortions and how to overcome them, ask your therapist for their qualifications and whether they are trained to provide Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, today.
This psychoeducational content is intended to supplement one’s knowledge and must not be used as a substitute for actual psychotherapy under the care of a fully trained board-certified psychiatrist or clinical psychologist.
