What are Cognitive Distortions?

A cognitive distortion is an unhelpful or inaccurate thinking style. These are usually automatic, meaning a person does not consciously intend to think this way. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) categorizes the cognitive distortions to be able to understand one’s thoughts more accurately, evaluate them, and replace them with more helpful thinking patterns.

This article will not dive into thought evaluation and replacement, but it will simply list and describe various cognitive distortions to teach people how to find their own unhelpful thought patterns.

Cognitive distortions can lead to anxiety, depression, and other mood disorders, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, eating disorders, addictions, personality disorders, relational problems, and more. They contribute to low self-esteem, self-harming and suicidal thoughts, and confusion. Therefore, CBT is a highly effective treatment for these types of issues.

The following list is not exhaustive, but it will cover some of the more common cognitive distortions. Everyone will experience these uniquely, and some may struggle with many different distortions.

The goal is not to feel embarrassed or ashamed if a person notices that he or she deals with these things. The goal is to be aware so that people are then able to work toward changing their thought patterns and become healthier.

Cognitive Distortions

(Some from Aaron Beck and David Burns)

All-or-nothing thinking

(Also known as black-or-white thinking, polarized, or dichotomous thinking)

This distortion is exactly how it sounds. People think in the extremes instead of being able to see the gray. A person could be thinking about himself, others, a situation, or the world around him. Words used in conversations that can be a clue are words such as “always,” “forever,” “all,” “never,” “none,” and “every.”

An example could be, “I’ll never be able to pass this test.” Another example could be “Everyone hates me.” This type of thinking is harmful because it is rarely correct. The world generally does not operate in the extremes but more in the middle. “Everyone” does not hate you, for example.

This type of thinking could extend to other things like politics, religion, and ethics. Some things are true in the extremes like when God says that he will “never” leave or forsake his people. When he says this, he means it. When he says “nothing” is impossible for him, he means it. However, many gray areas in life require more balanced thinking.

Overgeneralization

Overgeneralization is the belief that because one person is this way or one thing happened this way, then all people will be this way, or all things will happen the same way. An example would be a thought like this after a husband cheats on his wife: “All men are scum. You can’t trust any of them.” Another example would be something like after a leader in a church disappoints the people because he lied: “All church leaders are corrupt, so why go at all?”

Yet another could be after someone gets in a wreck in the rain: “I can’t drive in the rain. It’s not safe.” This is also an extreme way of thinking, neglecting the gray, the truth that not all men are scum, and not all church leaders are corrupt, and it’s not always unsafe to drive in the rain.

Personalization

Aaron Beck says that personalization is “the patient’s proclivity to relate external events to himself when there is no basis for making such a connection” Here is an example of what this could look like: a person wakes up and realizes their air conditioning stopped working overnight, the alarm did not go off, traffic is terrible, and his boss is in an awful mood.

This person then says something like, “God, seriously? Are you playing a joke on me today or something?” Another example: a daughter does not make her bed, and her mother says, “You must hate me because you aren’t listening to me.” Another example: a person across the room looks at someone and that someone then thinks, “She is talking about me.”

One final example: someone does not text back, and the person thinks, “he is ignoring me.” The situation becomes centered on self, when it may have little or nothing to do with that person.

Mental Filter

(Also known as extreme pessimism or negative thinking)

This is usually described as narrowing in on the negative aspects of a situation and obsessing over it. It’s as if no positive information is allowed. Someone’s alarm did not go off, and they focus on that the entire day, thinking their entire day is ruined.

Someone else goes through a breakup and chooses only to focus on the pain of the breakup instead of remembering all the good memories of the relationship. Someone else keeps thinking, “I’m fat,” even though she has consistently been losing weight.

Rumination

Rumination is when a person overthinks and obsesses over something repeatedly, bringing it back up repeatedly. This could be many things, like thinking about a past hurt repeatedly, or feeling badly about a past mistake repeatedly, or thinking about a current event repeatedly.

It is simply bringing it back up into one’s mind when it needs to be laid to rest. For example, thinking a president is not the legitimate president well after a president is inaugurated or thinking about a spouse’s mistake that was made ten years ago.

Assumptions / Jumping to Conclusions

(Also known as mind-reading)

People make assumptions and jump to conclusions more often than they’d like to admit. People cannot read others’ minds, and they cannot always know another’s intentions. They cannot understand a situation fully all the time, especially if their role in it is minimal or none.

People make assumptions about other’s actions and feelings, beliefs, and thoughts. They act like they know why people do what they do, and they act as if they know everything. A person accidentally bumps into another in the hall, and the person assumes that person is mad at them. A person says, “I can’t come tonight,” and the other thinks that person must not want to hang out with them.

A spouse automatically expects her husband to know that she wants him to unload and load the dishwasher, but she has never told him to do so. “Clarity is kindness,” author Emily P. Freeman always says. One should never assume until the situation is presented clearly.

Emotional Reasoning

This is simply when someone views emotions as truth. If they feel something, it must be true. Though emotions can lead people to understand truth more deeply at times, much of the time emotions can be liars. “I feel unloved, therefore I must be. No one loves me.” “I feel abandoned, therefore that person must have left me.” “This feels good, so it must be the right decision.”

Feelings are not always truth-tellers, so it is important to be able to distinguish feeling from fact and lean into the logical part of the brain. Having feelings is not wrong but taking them as gospel truth? That can be harmful.

“Should” statements

These are shame-centered, shame-inducing types of statements. Some examples could be “I should know better,” “I should be less weight after having the baby,” “I should cook dinner every night,” “I should serve on a team at church,” “I should work overtime,” or “I should be less depressed.”

Hindsight bias

This is looking back at a situation and thinking about how one should have done this (since today they understand the situation so differently). A sexual abuse victim looks back on her trauma story and says, “I am angry with myself because I should have told someone” (when she is neglecting the truth that her perpetrator threatened her, and she knew of nothing else to do).

Comparison

This is when someone compares herself, another person, or a situation to another (person, situation, etc.). She cooks dinner every night. She is a better mom than me. He makes more money than me, so he must be a better lawyer than me. She is more outgoing, so more people like her. Teddy Roosevelt said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” It is unhealthy and harmful, and a person loses themselves in the comparison trap, unable to honor their own identity.

Again, this list is not exhaustive, but there are many that people struggle with in their minds. Pay close attention to your mind and notice if your thinking falls into any of these categories.