Cognitive Distortions – It’s Time to Reframe Your Thinking

Cognitive Distortions – It’s time to reframe your thinking

Our brains are incredibly busy little bees! They are pretty much always processing information. Because of this, our brains tend to take as many shortcuts as they can to lessen the mental load. One of the types of shortcuts our brain makes is called a cognitive distortion. A cognitive distortion is an internal bias that can control how you see yourself or others. Generally, these filters are negative, inaccurate, and can make us feel worse.

The 15 types of cognitive distortions:

1. Filtering: Magnifying the negatives and filtering out the positives
   • “I got my test back today and I can’t believe how stupid I am for missing that one question”
2. Polarized Thinking: Black and white thinking – no middle ground
   • “If I don’t get everything on my to-do list done today, I’m a failure”
3. Over-generalization: Using a single piece of evidence to make a sweeping conclusion about the future
   • Believing you will never get a job because you found out you failed one interview
4. Mind Reading: Deciding how other people are feeling (particularly toward you)
   • My friend didn’t smile at me when she saw me, she must be upset with me
5. Catastrophizing: Jumping to the worst possible conclusion – a lot of “what ifs”
   • I think something is wrong with my car, what if it completely breaks down on the way to work
6. Personalization: Believing that responsibility for events and other people’s reactions falls on you
   • Everyone had a bad time at the party because I showed up late
7. Control Fallacies: External – you are helpless and have no control. Internal – you are responsible for yourself and everyone else
   • I can’t protect my family from the pandemic, everyone is going to get sick.
   • My daughter is going to fail her exam because I didn’t help her study enough
8. Fallacy of Fairness: Other people don’t have the same measure of fairness as you do so they will always disagree with you
   • It’s not fair that my partner makes more money than me doing the exact same job
9. Blaming: Holding others responsible for your feelings
   • I don’t know why my partner always treats me so poorly, I don’t do anything wrong
10. Should Statements: Making subjective rules about how everyone should act, including yourself
    • I should stop being lazy and walk the dog today
11. Emotional Reasoning: However you are feeling must be reality – I feel X so I must be X
    • I feel uncared for because my partner is working overtime. She doesn’t care about me at all.
12. Fallacy of Change: If you pressure others enough, they will change to meet your expectations
    • If my partner would just stop doing X, our relationship would be perfect
13. Global Labeling: Making an absolute out of a single quality
    • My partner is lazy because they didn’t walk the dog today
14. Being Right: continuously proving that your actions and opinions are correct
    • I told the new hire how to do this task, I don’t know why they did it the way that the other employee told them to.
15. Heaven’s Reward Fallacy: Believing that your sacrifices will always pay off
    • I worked the most hours so I deserve the promotion

Why is this important?

Believing these cognitive distortions can have a great impact on our mental health and how we feel. This is especially true because we are more prone to falling into a cognitive distortion when we’re already feeling down. To help you reframe your thinking, it’s important to remember that it’s your thoughts, not your actual life events that are making you feel upset. Make sure to take in the facts of your situation and consider if you might be falling victim to a cognitive distortion. Then, you can reframe whatever distorted thought you were having.

I know for me, in my eating disorder, I fell victim to a lot of polarized thinking and should statements. I used to fall into a lot of “If I don’t weight X pounds less today, I am a failure” type of thoughts. I can recognize now how black and white or polarized that is. I was never a failure because I didn’t meet some arbitrary marker, but more importantly I was never a failure because of my weight. I still catch myself from time to time thinking things such as “I SHOULD choose the lower calorie option” even when it’s not what I want. I have to stop, take a breath, and tell myself “my ED would prefer if I chose the lower calorie option, but my healthy self would prefer the other.” 

Becoming aware of cognitive distortions can help you to realize when your own brain is getting you down unnecessarily. I will warn you – it takes a lot of work to catch yourself in the act of believing a cognitive distortion and reframing your thought. However, the more familiar you are with cognitive distortions and the more you practice, the easier it gets. One tip I have is if you are actively believing something negative, think about how it would sound to explain that thought to someone else (maybe even type or write it out). Sometimes hearing and seeing our thoughts can help us to take a new point of view. While it may be difficult, it can make a big difference in your capacity for self-love!