Distortions of the mind (Part 1)
January 10th, 2008
When you come up with negative beliefs as to why you can’t do something a lot of the time it is your mind distorting reality to such an extent that the belief seems totally real. The following are some cognitive distortions you may recognize:
- All or nothing thinking: You see things in black and white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.
- Over generalization: You see a single negative event as a never ending pattern.
- Mental filter: You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively, so that your version of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors the entire beaker of water.
- Disqualifying the positive: You reject positive experiences by insisting they ‘don’t count’ for some reason or another. In this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences.
- Jumping to conclusions: You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion.
- Mind reading. You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you, and you don’t bother to check this out.
- The fortune-teller error. You anticipate that things will turn out badly, and you feel convinced that your prediction is an already established fact.
See part 2 here.
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