COGNITIVE DISTORTIONS

• A cognitive distortion is a distorted thought that leads to a specific negative behaviour.

• Cognitive comes from the Medieval Latin cognitīvus, equivalent to the Latin cognit(us), 'known distortion means the act of twisting or altering something out of its true, natural, or original state.

• Aaron Temkin Beck was an American psychiatrist who was a professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. He is regarded as the father of cognitive therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy.

• He gave the Aaron Beck Triad which is his cognitive theory of depression.

• The triad involves "automatic, spontaneous and seemingly uncontrollable negative thoughts" about:

1. The self

2. The world or environment

3. The future

Examples of this negative thinking include:

• The self – "I'm worthless and ugly" or "I wish I were different"

• The world – "No one values me" or "people ignore me all the time"

• The future – "I'm hopeless because things will never change" or "things can only get worse!"

• This triad happens because of some self-schemas we have about our mind, body, soul & self

• The self-schema refers to a long-lasting and stable set of memories that summarize a person's beliefs, experiences and generalizations about the self, in specific behavioural domains. A person may have a self-schema based on any aspect of themselves as a person, including physical characteristics (body image), personality traits and interests, as long as they consider that aspect of their self to be necessary to their own self-definition. When someone has a schema about themselves they hyper-focus on a trait about themselves and believe what they say to themselves about that specific trait. A self-schema can be good or bad depending on what that person talks to themselves about and what kind of tone they talk to themselves with.

Negative self-schemata

• Beck also believed that a depressed person will, often from childhood experiences, hold a negative self-schema. This schema may originate from negative early experiences, such as criticism, abuse or bullying. Beck suggests that people with negative self-schemata are liable to interpret information presented to them in a negative manner, leading to cognitive distortions. The pessimistic explanatory style, which describes the way in which depressed or neurotic people react negatively to certain events, is an example of the effect of these schemata on self-image. This explanatory style involves blaming oneself for negative events outside of their control or the behaviour of others (personalisation), believing that such events will continue forever and letting these events significantly affect their emotional well-being.

• In 1957, American psychologist Albert Ellis created what he called the ABC Technique of rational beliefs. The ABC stands for the activating event, beliefs that are irrational, and the consequences that come from the belief.

Types of Cognitive Distortions:

• Black-and-white (or all-or-nothing) thinking: I never have anything interesting to say.

• Jumping to conclusions (or mind-reading): The doctor is going to tell me I have cancer.

• Personalization: Our team lost because of me.

• Should-ing and must-ing (using language that is self-critical that puts a lot of pressure on you): I should be losing weight.

• Mental filter (focusing on the negative, such as the one aspect of a health change which you didn’t do well): I am terrible at getting enough sleep.

• Overgeneralization: I’ll never find a partner.

• Magnification and minimization (magnifying the negative, minimizing the positive): It was just one healthy meal.

• Fortune-telling: My cholesterol is going to be sky-high.

• Comparison (comparing just one part of your performance or situation to another’s, which you don’t really know so that it makes you appear in a negative light): All of my coworkers are happier than me.

• Catastrophizing (combination of fortune-telling and all-or-nothing thinking; blowing things out of proportion): This spot on my skin is probably skin cancer; I’ll be dead soon.

• Labelling: I’m just not a healthy person.

• Disqualifying the positive: I answered that well, but it was a lucky guess.

Emotional reasoning and not considering the facts

Finally, many of us engage in emotional reasoning, a process in which our negative feelings about ourselves inform our thoughts as if they were factually based, in the absence of any facts to support these unpleasant feelings. In other words, your emotions and feelings about a situation become your actual view of the situation, regardless of any information to the contrary. Emotional reasoning often employs many of the other cognitive filters to sustain it, such as catastrophizing and disqualifying the positive. Examples of this may be thinking:

• I’m a whale, even if you are losing weight

• I’m an awful student, even if you are getting some good grades

• My partner is cheating on me, even if there is no evidence for this (jealousy is defining your reality)

• Nobody likes me, even if you have friends (loneliness informs your thinking).

How do you challenge and change cognitive distortions?

• A big part of dismantling our cognitive distortions is simply being aware of them and paying attention to how we are framing things for ourselves. Good mental habits are as important as good physical habits. If we frame things in a healthy, positive way, we almost certainly will experience less anxiety and isolation. This doesn’t mean that we ignore problems, challenges, or feelings, just that we approach them with a can-do attitude instead of letting our thoughts and feelings amplify our anxiety.

Thanks for spending time on this article :). Hope this gives you more positive awareness. Happy Learning :)