WEEK 8

10 FORMS OF TWISTED THINKING

The following 10 forms of twisted thinking are summaries from Dr. David Burns and his book “Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy.” He also has a handbook with extensive exercises designed to change the way you think about & perceive the world by transforming your thinking patterns and filters. Understanding ad identifying these 10 twisted ways of thinking for someone who struggles with anxiety or depression could be a solution to their problems by working with cognitive distortion. Often negative thoughts connected to these cognitive distortions are false, by thinking positively you can find truth the changes the negative untruthful forms of thinking.

10 FORMS OF TWISTED THINKING

• ALL OR NOTHING THINKING

You see things in black‑or‑white categories. If a situation falls short of perfect, you see it as a total failure. When a young woman on a diet ate a spoonful of ice cream, she told herself, “I’ve blown my diet completely.” This thought upset her so much that she gobbled down an entire quart of ice cream!

• OVERGENERALIZATION

You see a single negative event, such as a romantic rejection or a career reversal, as a never‑ending pattern of defeat by using words such as “always” or “never” when you think about it. A depressed salesman became terribly upset when he noticed bird dung on the windshield of his car. He told himself, “Just my luck! Birds are always crapping on my car!”

• MENTAL FILTER

You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively, so that your vision of all of reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors a beaker of water. Example: You receive many positive comments about your presentation to a group of associates at work, but one of them says something mildly critical. You obsess about his reaction for days and ignore all the positive feedback.

• DISCOUNTING THE POSITIVE

You reject positive experiences by insisting they “don’t count.” If you do a good job, you may tell yourself that it wasn’t good enough or that anyone could have done as well. Discounting the positive takes the joy out of life and makes you feel inadequate and unrewarded.

JUMPING TO CONCLUSION

You interpret things negatively when there are no facts to support your conclusion. – Mind reading: Without checking it out, you arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you.

– Fortune‑telling: You predict that things will turn our badly. Before a test you may tell yourself, ‘I m really going to blow it. What if I flunk?” If you’re depressed you may tell yourself, “I’ll never get better.”

• MAGNIFICATION

You exaggerate the importance of your problems and shortcomings, or you minimize the importance of your desirable qualities. This is also called the “binocular trick.”

• EMOTIONAL REASONING

You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: “I feel terrified about going on airplanes. It must be very dangerous to fly.” Or “I feel guilty. I must be a rotten person.” Or” I feel angry. This proves I’m being treated unfairly. Or “I feel so inferior. This means I’m a second‑rate person.” Or “I feel hopeless. I must really be hopeless. ”

• “SHOULD STATEMENTS”

You tell yourself that things should be the way you hoped or expected them to be. After playing a difficult piece on the piano, a gifted pianist told herself, ”I shouldn’t have made so many mistakes.” This made her feel so disgusted that she quit practicing for several days. ‘Musts,’ ‘oughts’ and ‘’have tos’ are similar offenders.

“Should statements” that are directed against yourself lead to guilt and frustration. Should statements that are directed against other people or the world in general lead to anger and frustration: “He shouldn’t be so stubborn and argumentative.”

Many people try to motivate themselves with ‘should’ and ‘shouldn’ts’, as if they were delinquents who had to be punished before they could be expected to do anything. “I shouldn’t t eat that doughnut.” This usually doesn’t work because all these ‘shoulds’ and ‘musts’ make you feel rebellious and you get the urge to do just the opposite. Dr. Albert Ellis has called this “musterbation.” — the “shouldy” approach to life.

• LABELING

Labeling is an extreme form of all‑or-nothing thinking. Instead of saying “I made a mistake,” you attach a negative label to yourself: “I’m a loser.” You might also label yourself “a fool” or “a failure” or “a jerk.” Labeling is quite irrational because you are not the same as what you do. Human beings exist, but “fools,” “losers,” and “jerks” do not. These labels are just useless abstractions that lead to anger, anxiety, frustration, and low self-esteem.

You may also label others. When someone does something that rubs you the wrong way, you may tell yourself: “He’s an S.O.B.” Then you feel that the problem is with that person’s “character” or “essence” instead of with their thinking or behavior. You see them as totally bad. This makes you feel hostile and hopeless about improving things and leaves little room for constructive communication.

• PERSONALIZATION AND BLAME

Personalization occurs when you hold yourself personally responsible for an event that isn’t entirely under your control