CBT 1. Cognitive distortions and Mood swings.
A cognitive distortion is an exaggerated or irrational thought pattern involved in the onset and perpetuation of psychopathological states, especially those more influenced by psychosocial factors, such as depression and anxiety. Psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck laid the groundwork for the study of these distortions, and his student David D. Burns continued research on the topic. Burns, in The Feeling Good Handbook (1989), described personal and professional anecdotes related to cognitive distortions and their elimination.
Cognitive distortions are thoughts that cause individuals to perceive reality inaccurately. According to the cognitive model of Beck, a negative outlook on reality, sometimes called negative schemas (or schemata), is a factor in symptoms of emotional dysfunction and poorer subjective well being. Specifically, negative thinking patterns cause negative emotions. During difficult circumstances, these distorted thoughts can contribute to an overall negative outlook on the world and a depressive or anxious mental state.
Challenging and changing cognitive distortions is a key element of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).
Main types.
Always being right.
Being wrong is unthinkable. This cognitive distortion is characterized by actively trying to prove one’s actions or thoughts to be correct, and sometimes prioritizing self-interest over the feelings of another person.
Blaming.
The opposite of personalization; holding other people responsible for the harm they cause, and especially for their intentional or negligent infliction of emotional distress.
Example: someone blames one’s spouse entirely for marital problems, instead of looking at one’s own part in the problems.
Discounting positive events.
Example: Upon receiving congratulations, a person dismisses them out-of-hand, believing them to be undeserved, and automatically interpreting the compliment as an attempt at flattery or as arising out of naïveté.
Emotional reasoning.
Presuming that negative feelings expose the true nature of things and experiencing reality as a reflection of emotionally linked thoughts. Thinking something is true, solely based on a feeling.
Example: “I feel (i.e., think that I am) stupid or boring, therefore I must be” feeling that fear of flying in planes means planes are a very dangerous way to travel, or concluding that it’s hopeless to clean one’s house due to being overwhelmed by the prospect of cleaning.
Fallacy of change.
Relying on social control to obtain cooperative actions from another person.
Fallacy of fairness.
This is the belief that life should be fair and produces upset or angry emotions when life is perceived as failing to be fair.
Mental Filtering.
Focusing entirely on negative elements of a situation to the exclusion of the positive. Also, the brain’s tendency to filter information that does not conform to already-held beliefs.
Example: After receiving comments about a work presentation, a person focuses on the single critical comment and ignores what went well.
Jumping to conclusions.
Reaching preliminary conclusions (usually negative) with little (if any) evidence. Two specific subtypes are identified:
Mind reading: Inferring a person’s possible or probable (usually negative) thoughts from his or her behavior and nonverbal communication; taking precautions against the worst suspected case without asking the person.Example: A student assumes that the readers of his or her paper have already made up their minds concerning its topic, and, therefore, writing the paper is a pointless exercise.
Fortune-telling: predicting outcomes (usually negative) of events.Example: Being convinced of failure before a test, when the student is in fact prepared.
Labeling and mislabeling.
A form of overgeneralization; attributing a person’s actions to his or her character instead of to an attribute. Rather than assuming the behavior to be accidental or otherwise extrinsic, one assigns a label to someone or something that is based on the inferred character of that person or thing.
Example of labeling: Instead of believing that you made a mistake, you believe that you are a loser, because only a loser would make that kind of mistake. Or, someone who made a bad first impression considers himself or herself a “jerk”, regardless of alternative, extrinsic factors.
Example of mislabeling: A woman who places her children in a day care center is thought to be “abandoning her children to strangers,” because she has violated the bond between mother and child.
Magnification and minimization.
Giving proportionally greater weight to a perceived failure, weakness or threat, or lesser weight to a perceived success, strength or opportunity, so that the weight differs from that assigned by others, such as “making a mountain out of a molehill”. In depressed clients, often the positive characteristics of other people are exaggerated and their negative characteristics are understated.
Catastrophizing – Giving greater weight to the worst possible outcome, however unlikely, or experiencing a situation as unbearable or impossible when it is just uncomfortable.
Example: A teenager is too afraid to start driver’s training because he believes he would get himself into an accident.
Overgeneralizing.
Making hasty generalizations from insufficient evidence. Drawing a very broad conclusion from a single incident or a single piece of evidence. Even if something bad happens only once, it is expected to happen over and over again.
Example: A woman is lonely and often spends most of her time at home. Her friends sometimes ask her to dinner and to meet new people. She feels it is useless to even try. No one really could like her.
Personalizing.
Attributing personal responsibility, including the resulting praise or blame, to events over which the person has no control.
Example: A mother whose child is struggling in school blames herself for being a bad mother, because she believes that her deficient parenting is responsible for her child’s issues. In fact, the real cause may be something else entirely.
Making “must” or “should” statements.
Making ‘must’ or should’ statements was included by Albert Ellis in his rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT), an early form of CBT; he termed it “musturbation”. Michael C. Graham called it “expecting the world to be different than it is”. It can be seen as demanding particular achievements or behaviours regardless of the realistic circumstances of the situation.
Example: After a performance, a concert pianist believes he or she should not have made so many mistakes.
In Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy, David Burns clearly distinguished between pathological “should statements”, moral imperatives, and social norms.
A related cognitive distortion, also present in Ellis REBT, is a tendency to ‘awfulize’; to say a future scenario will be ‘awful’, rather than to realistically appraise the various negative and positive characteristics of that scenario.
Splitting (All-or-nothing thinking, black-or-white thinking, dichotomous reasoning).
Evaluating the self, as well as events in life in extreme terms. It’s either all good or all bad, either black or white, nothing in between. Even small imperfections seem incredibly dangerous and painful. Splitting involves using terms like “always”, “every” or “never” when they are false and misleading.
Example: When an admired person makes a minor mistake, she or he renders the admiration as contempt.
Heaven’s Reward Fallacy.
We expect our sacrifice and self-denial to pay off, as if someone is keeping score. We feel bitter when the reward doesn’t come.
Fixing Cognitive Distortions.
Cognitive distortions have a way of playing havoc with our lives. If we let them. This kind of “stinkin’ thinkin’” can be “undone,” but it takes effort and lots of practice — every day. If you want to stop the irrational thinking, you can start by trying out the exercises below.
1. Identify Our Cognitive Distortion.
We need to create a list of our troublesome thoughts and examine them later for matches with a list of cognitive distortions. An examination of our cognitive distortions allows us to see which distortions we prefer. Additionally, this process will allow us to think about our problem or predicament in more natural and realistic ways.
2. Examine the Evidence.
A thorough examination of an experience allows us to identify the basis for our distorted thoughts. If we are quite self-critical, then, we should identify a number of experiences and situations where we had success.
3. Double Standard Method.
An alternative to “self-talk” that is harsh and demeaning is to talk to ourselves in the same compassionate and caring way that we would talk with a friend in a similar situation.
4. Thinking in Shades of Gray.
Instead of thinking about our problem or predicament in an either-or polarity, evaluate things on a scale of 0-100. When a plan or goal is not fully realized, think about and evaluate the experience as a partial success, again, on a scale of 0-100.
5. Survey Method.
We need to seek the opinions of others regarding whether our thoughts and attitudes are realistic. If we believe that our anxiety about an upcoming event is unwarranted, check with a few trusted friends or relatives.
6. Definitions.
What does it mean to define ourselves as “inferior,” “a loser,” “a fool,” or “abnormal.” An examination of these and other global labels likely will reveal that they more closely represent specific behaviors, or an identifiable behavior pattern instead of the total person.
7. Re-attribution.
Often, we automatically blame ourselves for the problems and predicaments we experience. Identify external factors and other individuals that contributed to the problem. Regardless of the degree of responsibility we assume, our energy is best utilized in the pursuit of resolutions to problems or identifying ways to cope with predicaments.
8. Cost-Benefit Analysis.
It is helpful to list the advantages and disadvantages of feelings, thoughts, or behaviors. A cost-benefit analysis will help us to ascertain what we are gaining from feeling bad, distorted thinking, and inappropriate behavior. Note: 1) clinical concept of secondary gain; and 2) refer to cost-benefit analysis.