Jodechi's blog
Healing your cognitive distortions
Tuesday 30th of June 2009
In using CBT to help clients I often give them this list of what Beck has identified as the most common cognitive distortions (negative thoughts). By identifying these, the client can then move on to challenge and generate more adaptive (healthy) thoughts. Have a read and see which ones you use.
All or nothing thinking- Placing experiences in one of two opposite categories.
Over generalising- Making sweeping inferences based on a single incident.
Discounting the positives- Deciding that if a good thing has happened, it couldn’t have been very important.
Jumping to conclusions- Focusing on one aspect of a situation, when forming a judgement, or deciding what the data means.
Mind reading- Believing one knows what another person is thinking, with little or no evidence.
Fortune telling- Believing one knows what the future holds, while ignoring other possibilities.
Magnifying/Minimising- Evaluating the importance of a negative event, or the lack of evidence of a positive event, in a distorted manner.
Emotional reasoning- Believing that something must be true, because it feels like it is true.
Making should statements- Telling oneself one should do, or should have done something, when it is more accurate to say that one would like to do (or wishes one had done) the preferred thing.
Labelling- Using a label (stupid, useless driver) to describe a behaviour -and then imputing all the meanings that the label carries.
Inappropriate blaming- Using hindsight to determine what one should have done even if one could not have known the best thing to do at the time. Also, ignoring mitigating factors, or ignoring the role played by others in a negative experience or event.
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