Best Self Family Post
What are Cognitive Distortions?
1/8/24
Ever hear your child say, “I can’t do anything right” or “I got a bad grade, now I’m never going to get into college”? Everyone has moments where they engage in errors in thinking such as these in their day-to-day life. Whether we are able to let these thoughts go or not typically determines how much we are impacted. Thinking errors or cognitive distortions are described as thinking traps that negatively distort reality.
Cognitive distortions can convince our minds that what we are telling ourselves is true even if it is illogical to anyone else. As our brains are designed to create shortcuts in order to be more efficient, we can make the same connections in our brains over time. As such, the cognitive distortions can become more entrenched in our thinking and can result in people experiencing more depressed mood or heightened anxiety due to the thoughts.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy believes that our thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and physical sensations are all interconnected in a complex web. While our physical sensations and emotions are not areas that we have direct control over, CBT would tell us that we do have the ability to change our behaviors and our thoughts.
With regards to our cognitive distortions, while we might not be able to change our immediate, automatic thoughts related to an event, we are able to work to reframe or challenge the illogical thoughts when they occur. However, in order to reframe these thoughts, we first must be able to recognize that the thinking errors are occurring in the first place.
One way to do so, is to work on recognizing the most common types of cognitive distortions including:
- Polarizing Thinking: viewing situations as all or nothing – such as “If I’m not successful at everything I do, then I’m a failure”
- Overgeneralization: seeing one event as a never-ending pattern - such as when someone gets a low grade on a test they might think “I am always going to get bad grades in this class.”
- Mental Filter: paying attention to only certain types of evidence, typically negative evidence - such as focusing on a coach’s criticism rather than the other positive feedback you received from the coach during practice.
- Disqualifying the Positive: similar to mental filtering, this involves rejecting positive experiences by insisting that they “don’t count” for various reasons. For example, dismissing a parent’s positive feedback because you feel that it is expected.
- Mind Reading: imagining you know that someone else is thinking based on assumptions rather than facts - such as seeing a parent appearing serious when they come home and assuming that they are mad at you.
- Fortune Telling: predicting the future based purely on assumptions - such as “I don’t need to work on homework because I always fail at everything.”
- Magnification: over-exaggerating a thought which will lead to worries rapidly escalating such as “My friend hasn’t texted me back yet. They might hate me and I don’t have any friends.”
- Minimization: reducing or shrinking the importance of something, typically a positive event or outcome. For example, an athlete receives an award and minimizes the importance of the award and views herself as mediocre or below average.
- Personalization: believing that you are the sole cause of something that is out of your control. For example, a student believing that they are responsible for a teacher being curt and appearing irritated during class.
After working to recognize or acknowledge when we are experiencing a cognitive distortion and which type of cognitive distortion, we then must work to challenge the thought. For instance, we might question what is factual versus interpretation. This allows us to take on an investigator stance to gather evidence for and against thoughts and to work to take a logical approach. The goal might not be to remove the thought entirely but rather to have a more balanced thought that is based on fact rather than interpretation or assumption. For example, a reframed thought might be “I got a lower than desired grade on my test and the teacher is allowing us to turn in some extra assignments to improve our grades. I will have the chance to take part in a study group before the next exam.”
This can be a challenging process due to the shortcuts our brains have created over time. With the support of others in our lives, we can work to build awareness of our internal and external dialogue and challenge ourselves to reframe thoughts. As we practice balancing out our thoughts, we have the opportunity to engage in healthy problem solving and regulate our emotions more effectively.