Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is one of my favorite therapy techniques. It helps us understand your patterns of thinking so that we can make changes. One of the first steps we might take is to start understanding your thinking patterns or thinking traps.
It is normal to have cognitive distortions when dealing with anxiety, depression, OCD, eating disorders, panic attacks, trauma, poor self esteem, and so many more issues.
Let’s look a few of the most common irrational thoughts/cognitive distortions that you might experience. The first step to making changes is to know what is going on. Do you have any of these thinking traps?
All or nothing (black or white) thinking: thoughts tend to be extremes, all or nothing/black or white. “This always happens” or “I never get this right”.
Negative labeling: We will put a label on something/someone which directs our assumptions, impression and expectations toward the label. “I am a terrible driver” or “She is the worst friend”.
The “shoulds": Should haves can get us into the habit of feeling we are not meeting expectations (ours or others) and the more we think in terms of ‘should haves’ the more we tend to feel ‘not good enough’ or that we are ‘failures’.
Blaming: Sometimes blaming can mask the real issue and we focus on who is at fault instead of trying to change the situation. “It’s ____ fault that I got to work late today” or “My S.O never does what I want”.
Fortune telling: This is when you start to predict what will happen, but this is unrealistic— no one knows what will happen. “If I go to the party, I will hate it” or“I know that if I talk to my parents they are just going to yell at me”.
Overgeneralization: This is when you draw a conclusion based on limited information. “Tommy can’t go ride his bike today because last week he skinned his knee” or “I can’t go to the game because once before I tripped and people will laugh at me”.
Mind reading: We will sometimes tell ourselves we ‘know’ what other people think but we don’t actually know this. These assumptions might look like “When I walked in the door people looked up and stopped talking… they must have been talking about me” or “I think Sarah saw my grade when they were passed out so now everyone knows I didn’t do well on the test”.
Catastrophizing: The worst thing is going to happen, I have to prepare for the worst. These thoughts tend to be extreme but feel real in the moment. “If I don’t turn in this test I will fail out of school and be homeless and no one will ever love me” or “If I see Hannah again she is going to yell at me and everyone will stare and no one will be my friend anymore”.
Emotional reasoning: We become reactive when we are upset and emotions will twist our thoughts around to be irrational. These thoughts tend to lead to a perfect storm. “I feel dirty because I didn’t shower this morning, people must think I smell bad”.
Minimizing: This is the idea of wearing ‘rose colored’ glasses and not seeing things for how they are with dismissing the positive. “Well Josh lied to me before so I can’t trust him ever again” despite him only lying once.
Personalization: When we take something that isn’t about us but we twist it to make it about us. Stan was telling a story about someone being rude earlier and Chris thinks it must be about him.
Magical thinking: This is common with OCD and is the belief that doing something (or not doing something) will prevent something bad from happening. I have to check the doors every night to make sure no one breaks in to hurt me.
Jumping to conclusions: We assume that something will happen or someone will do something. We jump to conclusions and this changes the way the situation will play out as our expectations will shade the outcome. Abby might assume that everyone at school hates her, or that anyone who is whispering is talking about her .