Our minds chatter on all day long. It’s impossible to be aware of each & every single thought, and while I dislike talking in absolutes, I’ll venture to say it’s just impossible for us to be THAT aware. While it isn’t usually a problem, our thoughts are behind the steering wheel driving to our emotional destination.

It isn’t just our thoughts, but how we’re reacting to them, how we’re perceiving them, and the fact we don’t, well, think about what we’re thinking! We normally go about our days not even thinking about what we’re thinking.

David Burns, in his book - Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy - discusses the 10 cognitive distortions we often look for during Cognitive Behavorial Therapy (CBT). They blend in so naturally we usually don’t think of them as distortions at all. Until we write them down, dissect them, and then we can often have an A-HA moment! And we all do this – we all can have distorted thinking from time to time.

So, let’s take a look at what these cognitive distortions are, with examples how you can spot them. It’s one of the first tools I teach my clients in our therapy sessions:

1) All-or-nothing thinking: black-and-white, absolute, no gray area

2) Overgeneralization: It’s always that way

3) Mental Filter: negative focus, not looking at any positives

4) Discounting the Positives: anything positive doesn’t count

5) Jumping to Conclusions: entails mind-reading and fortune-telling

6) Magnification (or minimization): blowing up or shrinking the importance of something

7) Emotional reasoning: I feel (stupid); therefore, I must be (stupid)

8) (My personal favorite- I was raised in the Land of Should’s) – The “Should’s”: You say I should, they should, he/she should, ought to, have to, must….

9) Labeling: I’m an idiot instead of I made a mistake

10) Blame: yourself or someone else

If you take a few moments and really review these, you can see how easily we can distort our thoughts. How many of these do you use? Most of us use them all even within the same thought.

You can build your awareness by writing down your thoughts (yes, you do need to spend a few minutes writing down your thoughts each day even if you hate to journal, etc) because in the process of writing we can see much more clearly how these distortions present themselves as we look at each thought as its own entity.

You can also download the worksheet I’ve attached here. Write down each thought about a certain event or situation, go over the list of distortions and mark down which distortions you can find. Then, go back and re-write the thought to what is truly representative of that situation or event. Keep working at it until you get to the thought that is 100% true and accurate.

If you need help with this, please reach out to me. It’s one of the many exercises I teach my clients to help them decrease their levels of anxiety & depression – and it works quickly to bring about relief for many people.

Reach out to us

Downlaod the PDF Worsksheet

Wishing you peace,

Beth

For more information about our counseling services, please click here: Anxiety Counseling / Depression Counseling

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