Decades ago, I read about distorted thinking in David Burns’ book – The Feeling Good Handbook. It changed my life. I wrote the list of habits down in a little notepad, kept it in my handbag and read it on the bus, on the couch, whenever I had a moment. Of all the personal development tools I read in my twenties this helped me the most. David Burns’ book is still considered one of the top all time P.D. books even though it was published in 1989.
Cognitive distortions are about taking particular thought processes too far from the actual reality of what is happening. It creates all kinds of problems. If you can’t see the truth you can’t make good decisions. You end up causing all kinds of emotional harm. The twisted perception you think is real causes stress, anxiety and depressive feelings.
Here is my list. I have adapted it over the years to suit my insights and a-ha moments. Find what habit you do. Write it down and make a determined effort to change it. So much good will come from it. I guarantee it.
Distorted Thinking a.k.a. Cognitive Distortions a.k.a. Messed Up Junk in Your Head
Over Generalization
You think because you’ve had one or two bad things go wrong you’re bad at them always and forever. So what if your last two relationships didn’t work out. It doesn’t mean you’ll never find your soul mate. You say you haven’t slept well in years, or will never win a work contract. These are all due to poor editing of your life. It is destructive. It makes you think things are worse than they really are. It disempowers you and limits future growth.
Blame and Control
You believe the bad things that happened to you are the fault of your parents, upbringing, romantic relationship, and so on. You blame your lack of work output on your boss’s nasty attitude. You take on the victim role and give control to something else. You fail to take responsibility for your life, which is the opposite of the next distorted thinking.
It’s All My Fault
You take responsibility when it’s not your fault. You feel responsible when a student in your class fails. You think if you were a nicer person, then your boyfriend/girlfriend would treat you better. There are many ways in which we take responsibility for other’s behavior and actions. The vast majority of what people do has nothing to do with us. It has to do with them.
Blue Tinted Glasses
With rose tinted glasses you see the positive in everything. Well, blue tinted glasses are where you focus exclusively on the bad. You may have been to a party and it was a great night. But there was a significant unpleasant moment. The next day you focus on that and negate what was overall a great experience. There are degrees of this. First is focusing on the negative. Second would be removing the positive from your recollection completely – aka the magic trick.
Magic Trick
Here, you don’t take things at face value. Magically you turn something good into something negative. For example, you think an event you hosted is a disaster because the food was late, even though everybody told you they had a great time.
When someone gives you a compliment say, “Thank you” and believe them. And if, in the 1% chance they are being rude still say thank you. By doing so you are not accepting their reality. Their barb fell harmlessly to the ground. I know this bit of advice is a little off track, but I see women, all the time! refuse to accept the compliment and conclude there is a nasty agenda behind it. It does my head in. There are a few cognitive distortions going on in this particular mass hysteria – so see if you can find them.
Reading People’s Mind aka Projecting
The fault with this type of thinking is you believe their behavior is a direct result of interacting with you. You are convinced you know the reason for their behavior, and often this feeds directly into your neurosis. For example, you assume they are ignoring you or that a friend’s tone means something when it doesn’t. A friend may not have returned the calls because of a deadline or a family crisis. Their tone is a little off because they have a headache or had a difficult day at work. People are very busy and are far more concerned with their struggles and inner life then trying to make you feel bad.
You need to trust you are a good person who is worthy of love and respect. If you don’t trust yourself and who you are – you will interpret others behaviors as being deliberately negative towards you. It rarely is. You’re projecting your neurosis onto them – that’s the only thing going on here.
A more extreme version of this is you believe you can read what the future will be like (as well as reading people’s minds) and it usually is not good. You’ll know you’ll never meet the right person or get fit and healthy. You fortune tell an event and can even create that reality because of your expectations. If it does turn out to be good, you don’t trust it. Same goes for people.
Catastrophe Thinking
You think everything has gone wrong when you just had a small disagreement with your boss. When you have had a lot of bad experiences in the past you can tend to do this. Like an abused dog that cowers whenever you raise your hand, even though it is only to pet it. It can happen if you had a lot of trauma (any kind of trauma) in the past. You over-react to the stimuli. You pick through the past issues (in your mind) with your boss & be convinced he is going to fire you. If this is you make a habit of asking yourself how big is the problem really on a scale of 1 to 10.
Letting Your Emotions Run The Day
You wake up feeling depressed or lonely. Then you let the entire day be decided by that feeling. You may also decide that as you feel lonely, you must be lonely. You assume your unhealthy feeling is automatically true. Many times we can simply change our mood by engaging in an activity, getting out of the house, planning something nice. Now there is a time to honor your feelings and see them as a signpost for change. A sign something is not sitting right.
Remember, distorted thinking is about taking a particular thought process too far from the actual reality. Are you over indulging in your emotions and poor me? Are you using it to sit on the couch and not face the world?
Unrealistic Standards
You have unrealistic standards in your life, which others can never meet. You expect someone to return your call within 48 hrs always and are upset if they don’t. Or you get angry when someone is 45 mins late, even though they have been on time every other time. You confuse unrealistic standards with good boundaries. Your upset is out of proportion to the actual event. You see imagined slights everywhere. You may also hold yourself to this, which causes a lot of stress as you run around meeting these imagined standards that no-one else cares about.
Labelling
Here you narrow in on one characteristic of our own or another’s and give it a label. The house is messy and so you are a slob. If you label yourself like this you’ll start to believe it. You send negative energy inwards and make yourself feel worthless.
We also do it with other people. For example, we call someone a control freak. When we do this, from that point on, we will instantly notice that behavior in that person and react to it. We then ignore all the good qualities they have, which is what we should be relating to. Your continual negative reaction will eventually get noticed and undermine the relationship. In fact this is a form of perfectionism where you expect every person to be perfect. And when they are not you feel angry or hurt or both. It’s a way to keep yourself safe. You find their supposed faults so you don’t have to get close to them.
Black and White Thinking
You think if you don’t get it perfectly right then you are a failure. This can stop you from trying to do something because you become too scared to try. Or when you fail once you never try it again. Life is a shade of infinite grey, whites and blacks. Instead of thinking you have to make a big decision about your life, think how can I get creative with my life. It also applies to people. When you see them do one thing wrong you judge them and think they are ‘no good at all.’ You ignore the complexities of character and the beautiful array of colours that make up any individual.
Action Item
If even one of these jump out at you with a massive A-ha moment then great! From now on you will notice whenever you do that. Awareness is always the biggest hurdle. Challenge your reality. Ask yourself, “Is this really true? What would be a better way to view this?” Really scrutinize your thinking. Hold it up to the light.
Practice makes perfect. It may take a little fine-tuning to get the right calibration – or as close to reality as possible. Don’t give up. You will get there. It is sweet relief when you do. Life gets smoother and more pleasant. You’ll enjoy yourself more. Stress, anxiety and depressive feelings reduce.
Distorted thinking locks you into a particular viewpoint of the world. Jesus said, ‘the truth shall set you free’. And so it does.
Connected to distorted thinking is “Change Your Story To Change Your Life” which is a powerful three part series on empowering you. Another essential read is my article “The Mind Believes What You Tell It. Read How To Hear Your Intuition And Act On It. for my story of self trust and intuition and helping my mother with breast cancer.
Jan Zac says
Hello ,
I saw your tweets and thought I will check out your website. I have to say I really like your content. I’m also interested in this topic + have recently started my journey as young entrepreneur.
I have subscribed to your newsletter. 🙂
Hope to hear from you soon.
Regards
Jan Zac
Monique says
Thank you Jan for your lovely feedback!
Judy Denney says
Hiellol Monique,
Right on time. I just finished coauthoring a book that was released in April. I’m in the process of writing my own that is to be published before the end of this year. I am having a difficult time staying focused and I feel like the well is dry.
When I coauthored my first book the words just flowed. I couldn’t type as fast as the words were flowing. It was raw and my story, but it was cleansing and healing for me. It set me free and removed the layers that had accumulated over the years. I pray to God to lead me , direct my path and help me stay focused.
I truly enjoy reading your blogs. It would be wonderful to join you in Greece. But, who knows maybe someday you will come to Canada❤️
Regards,
Judy
Monique says
Hi Judy,
I’d recommend having a little break. When the well is running dry you serve yourself more by having a break and then when you get back you’ll have so much more productive juice and ideas juice and you’ll get outside of the bubble of the project and be able to look down on it, and thus make better decisions about it. I’d love to come to Canada to teach!
Gary Gruber says
Years ago we referred to this kind of “distorted” thinking as “Stinking Thinking” and that should be self explanatory. A bad smell is usually something we either want to get away from or avoid altogether when possible. Think skunks for example and there are plenty of others, the rotten egg smell, a baby’s poopy diaper, spoiled meat and so on. In fact, as a kid, a really bad smell prompted a gag response in me. OK, enough of that for now.
Secondly, The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale that came out in 1952 was, maybe still is in some places, very popular. I was a 9th grader and I remember my Dad reading it and I asked him what it was about. He told me that Peale was a Methodist minister and believed that people could change their lives by changing they way they thought about things. Little did I know then how that would play out in my own life over the next 65 years. What I can tell you is that I have seen many lives shift dramatically from negative to positive with a shift in attitude, outlook and belief. If you haven’t seen my own take, you can find it here: tinyurl.com/nxlvqjn
I think what happens is that some people seem to suffer from what I call Ophthalmic Rectal Enteritus. I made this up just for fun but it has a serious side too. This is a condition caused by a bad connection between the ocular and rectal functions that shape one’s view of life. If not treated properly it can leading to a “shitty” outlook that affects work, relationships, health and a sense of well-being. It’s not only negative but also toxic and can be contagious too. This is not to minimize the seriousness of thoughts that are negative but which, if left untreated, can ultimately be destructive. We’ve all seen this condition affecting people adversely.
Good luck and best wishes for much success in your upcoming workshop in September.
Gary
PS For Daniel. It seems like one of the final requirements for finishing a Ph.D. is to learn how to overcome the accompanying anxiety and stress, a kind of built-in form of hazing. Once done, it may not be the end especially in academia which is one of many reasons I left that environment. For others it seems to work fine.
Monique says
Thank you Gary for your wonderful input. And thank you for your best wishes for my course in Greece in September!! I love bringing out the best in people, and teaching them the tools to live a life they love right now and for the future. I am really looking forward to doing the worksop! Best of luck with your endeavours, Monique
Megan says
Hi Monique,
Thanks for sharing this. I know that I am capable of some very distorted thinking, that is very damaging to my psyche! But I feel like I am conditioned this way, it’s hard to stop. I identify the behaviors when they are presented to me, such as in this article, but when I am going about my life and have a rough day or week, I forget that my thinking is distorted! Any advice on how to rewire my brain to include this clause? HALT has helped me a lot – not sure who coined it, but if I’m feeling Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired, I try to get to my self care space (even if that’s a café or the bathroom in a public place!) as quickly as possible and identify what I am feeling and why. That helps.
Blessings!
Monique says
Hi Megan,
There are 2 things you can do. The first is do review at the end of the day the situation where you are doing the distorted thinking. Think about how you have been thinking about it. Think it through and think about a new way you will think about it for the net week and give it a go. Commit to thinking in this new way for as long as you can. Be gentle on yourself. When you go back to old thinking bring it back to the new way.
I like the halt process – It sounds good. I teach a neuroplastic tool that disrupts the thought process and gets you back on track to good thinking and changing how your brain works. To get you doing it properly would take more than writing about it here. If you are interested in this you can sign up for my online course here https://moniquehohnberg.com/courses/ It talks about my course at Greece but there is a sign up form for anyone who is interested in doing an online version later in the year. Make sure you also get my free resource from the website ( top menu) as I think it may help you as well. It will help with foundational beliefs.
Teri says
As I read your article, I felt as if I were the poster child.
I have tortured myself with these 11 sabotaging distortion of thinking majority of my life. I have overcome most, or should I say I can masterly talk myself out of most, some still seep through the cracks.
I’m in my 50’s and struggle with Blame & Control. I don’t blame my parents, I was just born into an unfortunate parenting experience. I never viewed myself as a victim, but the harrowing truth is, I cannot escape the years of verbal abuse. Especially this one that plays in my head like a broken recording…”You will mount to nothing, mark my word.”
I’m a writer and struggle to complete many of my personal books and screenplays, only to be haunted by the echo of their voices.
So, 10 out 11 isn’t bad. Thank you for the reassurance.
Vicky Love says
Right on time. Thank you so much… This is what I’ve been guilty of doing. Ummmm, I must change.
Monique says
Hi Vicky,
I am so happy it has helped you. You will change. Best, Monique
Daniel says
Thank you so much for this post. I feel I’m experiencing a lot distorted thinking lately. I’m towards the end of my PhD training, I have collaborated and taken leadership in multiple scientific papers, and I’m ready to finish and move on (I’m exploring alternative careers as I have realized bench-work/science doesn’t give me the fulfillment I was hoping to get and I have a number of skills that I don’t get to use much in Science that I would like to further develop and use in my career)… However, my boss wants me to publish one more “high-impact” paper before I graduate. This feeling of delaying the completion of my PhD has brought a lot of anxiety to me and throughout these past years of PhDing I feel I have lost my motivation for science, which is preventing me from doing my best work. As I’m trying to couple with these issues and get re-engaged, my experiments in the lab are not working and I feel my projects are getting stuck. The combination of all these factors have pushed me to a never-before-experienced dark phase in my life, in which I’m experiencing many depressing feelings that are clouding my mind and, again, stopping me from doing my best work; not only that, but also this is somehow preventing me from appreciating or even seeing the many great accomplishments I have had so far in my life, both inside and outside my PhD career. I’m feeling lost and stuck… After reading this article, I can recognize a great part of my feelings are the consequence of distorted thinking; I hope this realization will help me find again my reality and breakthrough the depressing feelings.
Monique says
Dear Daniel,
It sounds like you have a lot going on. I know that the final stage of doing a Ph.D. can be difficult and very tough. This is quite common. As well as this, there may* be other factors at play.
Sometimes people lose their passion for something because they have burnt out from it and need time to themselves and self care, and then passion returns. Other times it is because they have lost their WHY. The WHY they are doing it. Do trust your gut instinct about doing one last paper and talk to your supervisor about it. I am wondering if your feelings of anxiety about doing it are because you know deep inside you want the Ph.D. done as soon as possible? Do what is best for you. Once you are a Lecturer and have finished your Ph.D. I imagine there will be many other opportunities to publish papers. I am glad my article has helped you. If you are still having problems make sure you see a counsellor or coach. Kind Regards, Monique