Cognitive Distortions

Most of us may have experienced thoughts like; “I failed to submit my work on time, I am a failure, and everyone hates me”, “He is late by an hour, and its raining, he must have had an accident” “I need to find the perfect sweater. It needs to be the right shade, shape, material, etc. If I don’t find it I have the worst luck in the world”.

These thoughts are commonplace and can mostly be shrugged off in a short period of time. But, when these thoughts become habitual, unconscious, and automatic they can cause a lot of complications. It can lead to, lowered self-esteem, reduced motivation even substance abuse, anxiety, depression, and cause a host of difficulties in our relationships.

So cognitive distortions are negative irrational patterns of thinking that we unknowingly reinforce over time.

To clear any confusion, let’s remember cognitive biases are systematic errors in judgments, while cognitive distortions are “unhelpful thinking patterns” that get reinforced with our experiences and become deep-rooted in our thought processes.

All cognitive distortions are :
• Tendencies or patterns of thinking or believing that is false or inaccurate.
• They have the potential to cause psychological damage.

Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT)
This behavioral therapy is one approach that helps people recognize patterns of unhelpful thinking or learned patterns of unhelpful behavior. It teaches people better, healthier ways of coping and becoming more effective in their lives.
Strategies of CBT include
1. Recognizing the distorted thinking and reevaluating them
2. Getting better understanding of our and other’s behaviours.
3. Using problem solving skills to cope with difficult situations
4. Learning to gain confidence in our abilities

That is to say, all CBT will not follow the same pattern. Therapists and clients form a partnership to modulate the therapy in a way that works for the client.
In this article, while talking about distortions I have tried to follow the principles of CBT to help you recognize and cope with your own negative thought patterns. You can try the methods we have given. If you want more help you can look for a certified and experienced therapist near you to guide you.

The Cognitive distortions we will talk about in this article are:-
1. All or none thinking
2. Overgeneralization
3. Mental Filter
4. Jumping to conclusions
5. Disqualifying Positives
6.Catastrophizing
7. Emotional Reasoning
8. Labeling
9. Personalization and Blame
10. Shoulds and Musts

1. All or none thinking
Also known as “Black-and-White Thinking,”. In other words, you see things in terms of extremes – something is either fantastic or awful. Thus, you believe you are either perfect, or a total failure.
This type of thinking makes us abandon new endeavours quickly and easily, because feeling like a failure is a very uncomfortable mental state which no one would want to endure.
In real life there are rarely any absolutes. In this distortion we don’t take into account the greys, and try to fit everything in black and white boxes.
Examples
A friend of mine once said, “I need to have the perfect first sip of tea in the morning or I feel like a failure all day”.
Phrases like this showcase all or nothing thinking.
More examples:-
“The presentation has to be given perfectly, if I don’t do this, I have failed and I don’t deserve this job”
“I need to find the perfect matching dupatta or this outfit is ruined”
“If I don’t execute my plan perfectly, go for a run everyday and stick to my diet chart exactly, I have failed”

2. Overgeneralization
You view a single negative event as a pattern of defeats and failures.
You use words like “always” or “never” when describing simple incidents.
We all exaggerate a bit when we tell stories. But, It is a cognitive distortion when the individual truly believes it. It is an established thinking pattern and every negative event reinforces this belief
Examples
You get passed over for a promotion you thought you were going to get – “It is always me, this is what happens, I put in so much hard work and I am never noticed or acknowledged”
You are getting late for work and hit a red light “I am always the unlucky one, nothing ever goes my way”

3. Mental filter
The mental filter distortion, focuses on a single negative piece of information and excludes all the positive ones. Basically, you dwell on the negative and ignore the positive.
Examples
1. Nat and Tom are in a romantic relationship. They have an argument and now Tom is dwelling on the negative comments made by the other partner and viewing the relationship as hopelessly lost. He is ignoring the many instances of positive conversations and experiences.
2. You give your presentation and get mostly good reviews, except from one person who points to a mistake you made in slide 12. Now you can only think about his comment and the mistake. You have forgotten everything good that anyone said about your presentation.

4. Jumping to conclusions
This “Jumping to Conclusions” distortion manifests as we make assessments with little to no evidence for them.
This can manifest as mind reading; the inaccurate belief that we know what another person is thinking. And fortune telling which refers to the tendency to make conclusions and predictions based on little to no evidence and holding them as gospel truth.
Examples
Some examples of mind reading – In a one-on-one meeting with your supervisor, you are trying to tell them about the problems you faced when trying to complete a project. But they seem distracted, they are not really looking at you, and they take several calls during the meeting . So you conclude “they are not interested in me, they don’t want to hear what I have to say.” However it was equally possible their distractedness was because they were busy, or dealing with an emergency situation.
Another example of fortune-telling is a young, single woman predicting that she will never find love or have a committed and happy relationship based only on the fact that she has not found it yet. When there is simply no way to tell how life will turn out.

5. Disqualifying positives
The “Disqualifying the Positive” distortion acknowledges positive experiences but rejects them as “they don’t count”. This is a difficult and persistent distortion, as it can facilitate the continuation of negative thought patterns even in the face of strong evidence against it.
Examples
Some examples of this type of thinking :
You do a good job and tell yourself “it doesn’t matter”, “anyone could have done it”, “Its good, but it should have been much better than this”
Your boss tells you that you have done well and you think “This is what they have to say”, “they don’t really mean it”, “they don’t want to talk about the negatives”.
You score well in an exam and are ranked 4th – “I got lucky”, “it wasn’t an all India exam, so it’s not a big deal”, “I am only good at rote learning, that is why I got the rank, it doesn’t matter”

6. Catastrophising
Also known as the “Binocular Trick”. This distortion involves exaggerating your shortcoming and problems and minimizing your qualities and resources.
Example:
When thinking of pursuing a career in a new country – “I can’t do this, I will have to do everything on my own,” “I don’t know where or what to start learning to do this” In reality this person may be more adaptable than they give themselves credit for.
You want to ask your boss for a promotion “why would they give me a promotion”, “they would never want to give a leadership position to someone who stutters anyway”

7. Emotional reasoning
This refers to the acceptance of one’s emotions as fact. It can be described as “I feel it, therefore it must be true. You reason using your emotions rather than facts and logic.
Examples:
“I feel inferior, This means everyone around me is better, and I am a second rate person.”
“I feel guilty, so I must be the worst person”,
“I feel jealous when I see my partner with that one lady, so he must be untrustworthy”.
With no evidence other than our feelings.

8. Labeling
These tendencies are basically extreme forms of overgeneralization, where we identify with our shortcomings. “I lost, so I am a loser”
Mislabeling refers to the application of highly emotional, and inaccurate or unreasonable language describing ourselves or events.
Examples:
A student who labels herself as “a stupid person” for failing an assignment.
An employee who thinks he is “an unworthy individual” when he gets a review of improvement by his boss.
A leader who thinks he is “an utter failure” because his peers pointed out a mistake he made in his lecture.

9. Personalization and blame
The tendency of holding yourself responsible for an event that was entirely out of your control.
In some cases, people also do the opposite, where they put the blame completely on the shoulders of their circumstances, or on someone else, not seeing their contribution to their problems.
Examples
This distortion covers a wide range of situations:
You went out with a group of friends, you notice one of them is seeming moody and irritable. You decide to ask her about it and she snaps at you to leave her alone. You are now convinced you are the reason for her moodiness.
Your son gets a note from the teacher, and you convince yourself, its because you are bad parents. Or the opposite, you are convinced it’s the teachers, or his classmates faults. Both are incorrect, and you have overlooked finding the cause of the problem, so you could help the child.

10. Shoulds and musts
Should statements are statements that you make to yourself about what you “should” do, what you “ought” to do, or what you “must” do. They can also be applied to others, imposing a set of expectations that will likely not be met.
These types of statements do not take into account variables that are beyond a persons control.
Should statements about ourselves make us feel guilty when we don’t live up to them. When there are “shoulds” for others it leads to disappointments, resentment and anger.
Example
After performing a particularly difficult song on stage, the singer may tell themself “I should not have made so many mistakes” and become frustrated with their performance.
“I must finish this project perfectly” (sounds right?)
You handle the weekly reporting of 50 people. Everyday you monitor, who has reported and who hasn’t and immediately call, text, email whoever misses their report. One week you see around 13 people missed making their report on the last day and you were unable to reach them even after repeated calling and emailing. In the end you had to submit the report with 13 empty spaces. You end up feeling like a failure, and are extremely angry with yourself and the 13 people. Come Monday you try calling them again one by one, the first person who picks up, you yell at for their irresponsibility. When your tirade is over, they tell you the area they work in suffered from flash floods. So all network had been lost. They have just gotten the power back. Your ‘shoulds’ were so powerful, you may have seen the news and still not made the connection. You were focused on what should have happened and your frustration that it didn’t overtook your reasoning abilities.

Overcoming Distortions
There are many ways to deal with distortions. I will share a few of the common ones here. Try and practice with the methods. Some may work for you, some may not, experimenting with these will help you understand the best method for yourself.

Identify your distortion – Write down your negative thoughts and try to identify which distortion you are applying to yourself. It will help to be more objective about your thought process. Also seeing that we are using a distortion, helps us understand how unreasonable the thought is and let go of it. One question to ask yourself to help you identify distortions “what led to the unpleasant feeling I am experiencing right now?”. For instance, you may be having a really bad day, every single obstacle is making you angry, even simple questions are frustrating. Pause for five minutes. Reflect on your day, and ask yourself what was the triggering event. Write it down and try to identify from the list if you are experiencing distortion and which type of distortion it could be.

Examine the evidence- Instead of automatically believing your thoughts and emotions, think about why and how you came to the conclusions, what is the evidence that backs this up. Let use a previous example; “My friend is angry with me because her mood seems low”. So the questions to ask yourself are- What evidence do I have to support this statement? Can there be other reasons for this person’s mood? How much can I reasonably affect someone else’s mood? Am I making an objective assessment based on the evidence I have?

Double standard method- Ask yourself if the way you talk to yourself is the same way you would speak to someone you respect or a trusted friend. Try speaking to yourself with the same compassion. For instance, if you keep discounting your wins with statements like; “actually I could have done better” “this is nothing”. Imagine having a friend like this, that never celebrates your achievements, and keeps putting you down. You would avoid such a person. So instead, try and recognize when you are being this type of friend to yourself and change it to statements like “You did well”, “This is a great achievement”

Experiment techniques- My friend once told me, she feels like she is having a heart attack when she has to confront someone. Only after putting herself in the confrontation situation a few times, and basically experimenting, she found that the feeling of heart attack seemed to have lessened. Try doing the same with your irrational thought processes. Collect evidence to test their validity.

Thinking in shades of grey- When you notice yourself thinking in extremes, try shifting gears. For instance when something you planned for did not work exactly as planned, think about it as a partial success, rather than a complete failure.

Survey method- Ask someone you trust if your thoughts and beliefs seem realistic. Remember it might be hard to receive or give this information so prepare yourself before you ask someone else.
For instance, if I were to ask you, “I did a presentation at work, and it was mostly well-received but, after one person pointed out a mistake I made, I feel quite stupid. What do you think? Am I a complete failure?” You would probably tell me something like, “Mistakes are human, it was one mistake in the entire presentation. Even two or three would not make you a failure or stupid. You will be making mistakes again, you are strong enough and smart enough to learn from them.”

Define it- Especially when you find yourself using labeling, with phrases like- “I am stupid.” Then, what is stupid? How am I defining a stupid person? If someone else had made this error would I define them as “stupid” as well? Questions like this make you analyze your associations and challenge long-held beliefs.

Semantic method- Substitute your emotionally charged language with rational, objective language. For instance “I am a failure because I made this error, and it’s making me feel so angry and disappointed in myself” to “it would have been nice if this error hadn’t been committed. Now that I know I will be careful about it”.

Reattribution – We automatically blame ourselves or someone else, completely, in problem situations. Instead, pause and think about more reasons and factors contributing to the event. Shift your energy from blame and guilt, to trying to find a solution for the problem. As an example; shift from statements like “this is all my fault” or this is all their fault” to “No matter whose fault it is, what can I do to solve this problem. What is in my control, and what are the variables that are beyond me.”

Cost-benefit analysis- We often cling to our negative thought patterns, even after we know about them. This could be because they are serving some purpose in our lives. So try and list the benefits and pitfalls of the negative beliefs to show yourself honestly what purpose they are fulfilling in your life. This will help you see if it is logical to continue holding on to these patterns, or is it worth the effort to change them.
For instance, we may be clinging to shoulds such as “we should do this perfectly, we must do this in this time limit” because it forces us to be productive. Instead, ask yourself honestly how it has served you, and how it has harmed you. Although you may be productive, you apply unreasonable standards to yourself and people around you, it may make you angrier with yourself and slower to recover from setbacks. With this analysis, do you want to continue using this method to be productive or apply a healthier method for yourself?

Overcoming distorted patterns of thinking takes time and effort. So it’s important to be consistent and keep practicing.
Worksheet
We will now do a simple exercise, where you briefly note down a situation that causes unpleasant feelings. Then write down the thoughts that came to you during the incident. Next, you fill in your emotional, behavioral, and physiological responses. After this, you pause and look at the list of distortions to see if you are thinking in any of those biased unreasonable ways. In the end, you try and reframe your thoughts and assess how you feel about the reframed situation.

Situation
Thoughts
Response (emotional, behavioral, physiological)
Cognitive distortion
Reframing the incident

Let me show you with an example

Situation : Fighting with the Auto driver for overcharging
Thoughts : “He is taking me for a fool”, “He is taking advantage of me”, “he treated me like an idiot”, “he should have only charged 40 rupees, he was wrong and should have admitted it”
Response (emotional, behavioral, physiological):-
Emotional: Extremely angry and upset.
Behaviour: Fought with the auto-driver for 20 minutes.
Physiological: Increased heart- beat, Sweaty palms.
Cognitive distortion : Personalization, Jumping to conclusions, and Shoulds and musts.
Reframing the incident : “He is an auto-driver who is on the road all day, meeting all kinds of people, in a city with the worst traffic in the world. He has a hard job and probably gets frustrated and angry a lot. It could have been ‘n’ number of reasons, it probably wasn’t about me, or him thinking I am a “fool”. Lastly, the shoulds and musts are my unreasonable expectations.
Logically a stranger will not live up to them”

Now try and do this yourself.

References

Cognitive Distortions, Humor Styles, and Depression Katerina Rnic,a David J. A. Dozois,*,a and Rod A. Martina https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4991044/
https://www.verywellmind.com/ten-cognitive-distortions-identified-in-cbt-22412
Burns’ Feeling Good Handbook