An Overview of Cognitive Distortions

Cognitive distortions are thought patterns where people look at reality in an inaccurate way. In most cases, these distortions manifest in viewing things in a more negative than necessary way.

Cognitive distortions act as errors in thinking. When someone is experiencing one, events are interpreted in inaccurate ways that usually lean toward a negative bias.

In truth, almost everyone has cognitive distortions once in a while. However, when reinforced time after time, these types of thoughts can increase depression, deepening anxiety, cause relationship problems, and complicate life in dozens of other ways.

The Role of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in Challenging Cognitive Distortions

One of the best methods to identify, pause, and change cognitive distortions is through cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). This is the most commonly used type of talk therapy for this purpose. Those who may need assistance with changing and understanding distorted thought patterns will often find this therapy useful.

The main focus of CBT is meeting specific goals. Unlike some forms of therapy, it often lasts for a predetermined amount of sessions. Depending on the severity of the negative thoughts, it might take a few weeks to several months to start seeing positive results.

If CBT is something an individual wants to try, it’s important to work with a therapist who is licensed and certified in the state a person lives. This expert should be trained and educated in CBT. It can also be useful to select a therapist with experience in the exact types of thinking patterns that a person is struggling with.

A History of Cognitive Distortions

The first person to propose the concept of cognitive distortions was Aaron Beck, who went on to found CBT. He noticed people he was treating for depression referred to negative thoughts that didn’t come up in free association. He believed these thoughts were related to past experiences but weren’t always realistic.

These negative thoughts were seen as outside of conscious control and were called “automatic thoughts.” Beck believed these negative thinking patterns could combine with negative physical or emotional symptoms to create maladaptive cycles that could lead to serious mental health problems.

In Depression: Causes and Treatment, Beck listed the 11 most common cognitive distortions. A student of his would go on to make these theories more popular through The Feeling Good Handbook and Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy.

Different Types of Cognitive Distortions

There are a wide variety of cognitive distortions to be aware of. Below, we give brief information about many of them, along with links where you can learn more nuanced information related to a specific cognitive distortion.

Self-Serving Bias

A self-serving bias refers to when a person takes credit when positive events and outcomes occur but blames an outside influence when a negative event happens.

Fortune Telling

Fortune telling is a kind of cognitive distortion where someone predicts a negative outcome will occur without considering the actual odds that this outcome is likely.

Discounting the Positive

During the common cognitive distortion called discounting the positive, a person finds reasons to assume their positive experiences aren’t important or are marred in some way.

Magnifying

The cognitive distortion of magnifying refers to taking any situation and making it more important than it might be, leading to extreme reactions to minor events.

Minimizing

Minimizing is largely the opposite of magnifying in that someone will brush off a situation or ignore the positive aspects as a way to stay stuck in negative thoughts or behavior.

Black and White Thinking

Thinking of all things as right or wrong and good or bad is considered black and white thinking and leaves no room for all the gray areas in between.

Should Statements

Should statements are a common cognitive distortion that creates a binary set of options for a person and can result in negative thinking and behavior patterns.

Mind Reading

With the mind reading cognitive distortion, a person assumes that they know what someone else is thinking.

Catastrophizing

With catastrophizing, a person leaps to the worst conclusion about something that happens or could happen in their life.

All or Nothing Thinking

All or nothing thinking looks at things in absolutes like always and never and can make it challenging or even impossible to find solutions to problems.

The Heaven’s Reward Fallacy

Heaven’s reward fallacy assumes that people are rewarded based on their hard work, which may not be accurate and can lead to anger, resentment, and frustration.

Magnification and Minimization

Magnification and minimization can involve perceiving the importance of an event as extremely important or very unimportant, either of which can be very limiting thought processes.

Global Labeling

With global labeling, a single aspect of someone’s behavior is used to create an entire perception for that person rather than allowing for nuance.

Always Being Right

When someone has the always being right cognitive distortion, they claim to be right even if provided information that makes it clear that what they are saying is false.

Emotional Reasoning

When emotional reasoning comes into play, a person believes that what they feel to be true must be true, whether or not there’s any actual evidence that it’s so.

Change and the Pursuit of Happiness

The fallacy of change is when someone believes others must change for them to be happy, putting their pursuit of happiness on someone else instead of themselves.

The Fallacy of Fairness

In the fallacy of fairness, someone believes that things should and can be fair, which can cause struggles with reality, where things often are anything but fair.

Blaming

Blaming is one of the most common cognitive distortions and occurs when a person assigns responsibility for something that has happened, most often when it pertains to a negative act.

Personalization

During personalization, a person blames themselves or someone else when something occurs, even though it was outside of their control or related to a long chain of events.

Overgeneralization

Overgeneralization is a cognitive distortion where a person takes an event as a rule and applies it to all similar events in the future.

Jumping to Conclusions

Jumping to conclusions can occur in a variety of ways and is defined by a situation where someone assumes a certain conclusion without having the appropriate information to justify that conclusion.

Control Fallacies

Control fallacies work in various ways, but all are related to incorrect beliefs around our control or lack of control in a certain situation.

While there are many forms of cognitive distortions, all of them can be treated using cognitive behavioral therapy. It has been shown to be useful for creating a better sense of well-being while fostering positive behaviors, improving mood, and readjusting automatic thoughts.