Which of the numbered cognitive distortions below at least partially
apply to your situation?
Cognitive distortions are logical, but they are not rational. They can
create real difficulty with your thinking. See if you are doing any of
the ten common distortions that people use. Rate yourself from one to
ten with one being low and ten being high. Ask yourself if you can
stop using the distortions and think in a different way.
Cognitive Distortions
1. Mind reading: You assume you know what people think without having
sufficient evidence of their thoughts. "He thinks I'm a loser."
2. Fortune telling: You predict the future; things will get worse or
there is danger ahead. "I'll fail that exam" and "I won't get the
job."
3. Catastrophizing: You believe that what has happened or will happen
is so awful and unbearable that you won't be able to stand it. "It
would be terrible if I failed."
4. Labeling: You assign global negative traits to yourself and others.
"I'm undesirable" or "He's a rotten person."
5. Discounting positives: You claim that the positives you or others
attain are trivial: "That's what wives are supposed to do, so it
doesn't count when she's nice to me." "Those successes were easy, so
they don't matter."
6. Negative filter: You focus almost exclusively on the negatives and
seldom notice the positives. "Look at all the people who don't like
me."
7. Over generalizing: You perceive a global pattern of negatives on
the basis of a single incident. "This generally happens to me. I seem
to fail at a lot of things."
8. Dichotomous thinking: You view events or people in all-or-nothing
terms. "I get rejected by everyone" or "It was a waste of time."
9. Shoulds: You interpret events in terms of how things should be
rather than simply focusing on what is. "I should do well. If I don't,
then I'm a failure."
10. Personalizing: You assign a disproportionate amount of blame to
yourself for negative happenings and fail to see that certain events
are also caused by others. "The marriage ended because I failed."
11. Blaming: You focus on the other person as the source of your
negative feelings, and you refuse to take responsibility for changing
yourself. "She's to blame for the way I feel now" or "My parents
caused all my problems."
12. Unfair comparisons: You interpret events in terms of standards
that are un-realistic; for example, you focus primarily on others who
do better than you and find yourself inferior by comparison. "She's
more successful than I am" or "Others did better than I on the test."
13. Regret orientation: You focus on the idea that you could have done
better in the past, rather than on what you can do better now. "I
could have had a better job if I had tried" or "I shouldn't have said
that."
14. What if?: You keep asking a series of questions about "what if"
something happens, and fail to be satisfied with any of the answers.
"Yeah, but what if I get anxious? Or what if I can't catch my
breath?"
15. Emotional reasoning: You let your feelings guide your
interpretation of reality; "I feel depressed, therefore my marriage is
not working out."
16. Inability to disconfirm: You reject any evidence or arguments that
might contradict your negative thoughts. When you think, "I'm
unlovable," you reject as irrelevant any evidence that people like
you. Consequently, your thought cannot be refuted: "That's not the
real issue. There are deeper problems. There are other factors."
17. Judgment focus: You view yourself, others, and events in terms of
evaluations of goodbad or superiorinferior, rather than simply
describing, accepting, or understanding. You are continually measuring
yourself and others according to arbitrary standards, finding that you
and others fall short. You are focused on the judgments of others as
well as your own judgments of yourself. "I didn't perform well in
college" or "If I take up tennis, I won't do well" or "Look how
successful she is. I'm not successful."
http://www.cognitivetherapynyc.com/default.asp?sid=727
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1. ALL-OR-NOTHING THINKING: You see things in black-and-white
categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see your
self 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. In this way you
can 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.
6. MIND READING: You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting
negatively to you, and you don't bother to check this out
7. THE FORTUNETELLER ERROR: you can anticipate that things will turn
out badly, and you feel convinced that your prediction is an already-
established fact.
8. MAGNIFICATION (CATASTROPHIZING) OR MINIMIZATION: You exaggerate the
importance of things (such as your goof-up or someone else's
achievement), or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear
tiny (your own desirable qualities or other fellow's imperfections).
This is also called the binocular trick."
9. EMOTIONAL REASONING: You assume that your negative emotions
necessarily reflect the way things really are: "I feel it, therefore
it must be true."
10. SHOULD STATEMENTS: You try to motivate yourself with should and
shouldn't, 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 consequences are guilt. When you direct should
statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment.
11. 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 Goddamn louse." Mislabeling involves describing an event with
language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded.
12. PERSONALIZATION: You see your self as the cause of some negative
external event, which in fact you were not primarily responsible for.
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