Understanding Cognitive Distortions: A CBT Guide
CBT therapists employ a variety of techniques designed to address distorted thinking patterns and promote healthier, more constructive ways of thinking.
What are Cognitive Distortions?
Cognitive Distortions are like "funhouse mirrors for your mind." What do I mean by this? Just like a funhouse mirror warps and distorts your reflection, cognitive distortions bend your perception of reality, making events, thoughts, and feelings appear far more different or exaggerated than they truly are. What you see isn’t the truth, but a skewed version of it.
Cognitive distortions are a common part of daily life for everyone. However, some people can become trapped in these distorted thought patterns and may need support to recognize and move beyond the distorted perspective of their thoughts. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a short-term therapeutic approach designed to help individuals who frequently struggle with cognitive distortions. CBT helps individuals recognize and challenge negative thought patterns and behaviors, replacing these distortions with healthier and more realistic ways of thinking.
In this post, we’ll delve into the common cognitive distortions, their causes, their impact on your well-being, and how CBT can help you overcome them.
Common Cognitive Distortions
There are 15 common cognitive distortions that can shape your thinking patterns. By identifying them, understanding how they operate, and naming them, you can build greater self-awareness and recognize when they are influencing your thoughts.
Polarized Thinking: When an individual perceives situations as entirely good or bad, with no middle ground. It is also known as "all-or-nothing" or "black-and-white" thinking. This mindset leads to the belief that something must be perfect, or it is a failure.
Mental Filtering: When individuals focus solely on the negative aspects of a situation, ignoring any positive elements. For example, after receiving numerous compliments on a presentation, a person might fixate on a single piece of criticism, overshadowing the positive feedback.
Overgeneralization: When individuals draw broad, sweeping conclusions based on a single event or limited evidence. These conclusions are typically negative and ignore future possibilities. For example, after a job rejection, one might think, "I'll never find a job."
Jumping to Conclusions: When individuals make negative assumptions or predictions without enough evidence. There are two main types:
a. Mind Reading: Mind reading happens when a person believes they know what someone else is thinking and assumes their intentions, without any evidence.
b. Fortune Telling: Fortune telling occurs when someone makes predictions or conclusions without evidence, often anticipating negative outcomes.Catastrophizing: When individuals expect or imagine the worst possible outcome in a situation, often exaggerating the potential for disaster. It involves viewing a minor setback or challenge as a major catastrophe, leading to excessive worry and anxiety. The person either "magnifies" a situation by over-exaggerating its negative aspects or "minimizes" it by downplaying the importance of positive qualities.
Personalization: When an individual takes things personally, they react emotionally to what others do or say, even if it's unrelated to them. They often feel intentionally excluded or targeted.
Blaming: When an individual blames others for their pain and avoids taking responsibility. They view their suffering as caused by external factors, rather than acknowledging their own role in it. Essentially, they are adopting a "victim" role.
Labeling: When people assign negative labels to themselves or others based on specific actions, such as calling themselves "a failure" after a mistake, or labeling others "stupid" from one action.
Always Being Right: When an individual feels a constant need to prove correctness, often ignoring others' opinions and becoming defensive or argumentative. They may become defensive, dismissive, or argumentative, as they feel it’s crucial to be right in every situation, even when it may not matter.
Should Statements: When individuals impose the thoughts that they "should," "must," or "shouldn't" do something on themselves and others. This creates unrealistic pressure and expectations that are difficult to meet.
Emotional Reasoning: When a person believes their emotions are always true, they accept feelings as facts and ignore logical reasoning, often becoming stuck in the belief that negative feelings are the only truth.
Control Fallacies: When an individual believes that life is entirely controlled by either external or internal factors, they may feel powerless in certain situations or believe they have total control over themselves and others, feeling responsible for others' pain and happiness.
Fallacy of Change: When an individual believes their happiness depends on someone else changing to meet their needs, they often think that altering the other person will lead to their own happiness.
Fallacy of Fairness: When an individual believes that everything in life should be fair and equal. This cognitive distortion often leads them to feel anger and resentment when things don't go as they expect.
Heaven's Reward Fallacy: When an individual believes they should be rewarded for their hard work, they often feel frustrated, angry, and resentful when life doesn't seem fair or when rewards don't match their efforts.
(Pittard & Pössel, 2020)
CBT can be a powerful tool that helps rewire the brain, enabling you to replace cognitive distortions with healthier, more positive thought patterns that support your mental well-being.
Why Do We Have Cognitive Distortions?
Cognitive distortions are linked to our thoughts, behaviors, and emotions, with no single root cause such as anxiety or depression. Research indicates that cognitive distortions are influenced by various factors, including cultural, environmental, and social elements (Pittard & Pössel, 2020).
Culture: Culture significantly influences cognitive distortions as it shapes how we think about various aspects of life, such as behavior, communication, emotions, and even appearance. Culture encompasses language, religion, customs, moral values, and beliefs, all of which are passed down through generations and impact our thought patterns (Moser et al., 2022).
Environment: Environmental factors influencing cognitive distortions include genetics, financial status, education, and living conditions. These aspects shape your sense of security, resilience, persistence, and overall attitude (Tsuang et al., 2004).
Social Factors: Social factors, including peer stigma, media influence, parental impact, and negative relationships, shape our beliefs, thoughts, self-perception, and attitudes. These beliefs, thoughts, self-perceptions, and attitudes can contribute to negative views of ourselves and the world, and ultimately, cognitive distortions (Sireli et al., 2023).
How Cognitive Distortions Affect You
Cognitive distortions negatively impact your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. They can lead to increased stress, anxiety, and depression by promoting irrational beliefs and negative self-talk. Over time, they may harm relationships, reduce self-esteem, and create barriers to problem-solving and personal growth. Recognizing and addressing these distortions is essential for improving mental health and overall well-being.
How to Overcome Cognitive Distortions with CBT
CBT is widely regarded as one of the most effective methods for overcoming cognitive distortions. It focuses on identifying, challenging, and restructuring negative thought patterns that contribute to emotional distress and unhelpful behaviors. CBT therapists employ a variety of techniques designed to address these distorted thinking patterns and promote healthier, more constructive ways of thinking.
However, overcoming cognitive distortions requires more than just awareness—it takes consistent practice and effort to rewire thought patterns. By regularly applying these techniques, individuals can gradually replace irrational or harmful thoughts with balanced and positive ones, leading to improved mental health and overall well-being.
Here are some of the key techniques used by CBT therapists to help individuals manage and overcome cognitive distortions:
Identifying Distortions:
Learning to recognize recurring negative thought patterns that lead to cognitive distortions.Challenging Thoughts:
Learning to question these recurring negative thoughts and look for evidence that supports or contradicts them.Reframe Thinking:
Replace irrational beliefs with balanced, realistic thoughts. For example, "I always fail" becomes "I made a mistake, but I can improve."Practice Mindfulness:
Focus on the present moment to reduce overthinking and emotional reactions.Behavioral Experiments:
Test out beliefs through actions. For instance, if you think "I can't succeed," set small goals to challenge this thought.Keep a Thought Journal:
Track distorted thoughts, triggers, and more balanced responses to build awareness over time.
Breaking free from negative thought patterns can be difficult—we all face them in daily life. Recognizing and addressing these distortions is challenging, especially when they occur frequently. However, with practice, it becomes easier. CBT is a powerful tool that helps rewire the brain, enabling you to replace cognitive distortions with healthier, more positive thought patterns that support your mental well-being. For the best results, consider working with a CBT therapist who can guide you through this process. With their help, you can overcome these negative patterns, and the positive changes will be well worth the effort.
References
Moser, D., Steiglechner, P., & Schlueter, A. (2022). Facing global environmental change: The role of culturally embedded cognitive biases. Environmental Development, 44, 100735. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envdev.2022.100735
Pittard, C. M., & Pössel, P. (2020). Cognitive Distortions. In V. Zeigler-Hill & T. K. Shackelford (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences (pp. 706-708). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24612-3_965
Sireli, O., Dayi, A., & Colak, M. (2023). The mediating role of cognitive distortions in the relationship between problematic social media use and self-esteem in youth. Cogn Process, 24(4), 575-584. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-023-01155-z
Tsuang, M. T., Bar, J. L., Stone, W. S., & Faraone, S. V. (2004). Gene-environment interactions in mental disorders. World Psychiatry, 3(2), 73-83.
