Cognitive distortions, that is, the erroneous ways of processing and understanding the information that comes from the environment and that generally gives rise to negative emotional states. Assuming this perspective can be understood that there are numerous ways to distort that reality, these are the most common.
The 10 most common cognitive distortions that affect our daily life
- Arbitrary inferences: draw conclusions about a situation, which are not supported by the facts. Within the arbitrary inferences are:
Divination of negative intentions in others or interpretation of the thoughts of the other. Also known as mind reading refers to the attempt to decipher the intentions of other people without having enough data for it. For example: "These people are staring at me because they think I'm stupid and incapable, I'm sure they wish I was not here."
Self-fulfilling prophecy. The person is on notice, develops certain erroneous conclusions about what will happen in a certain situation and this prophecy ends up being fulfilled. The most classic example is the person who fears to speak in public and before his speech has already assumed that it will be a failure and that his ideas will not be understood. Thus, self-generated so much anxiety that the result is catastrophic and assumes a wrong conclusion: "I will not speak in public because I do not have the minimum communication skills."
- Selective abstraction: refers to the person who selects some negative details of reality and ignores all others. Thus, the vision of life acquires gray tones although there is really only a small cloud in the sky. For example: "I could not buy tickets for the game. My life is a disaster, I have no luck. "
- Overgeneralization: the person draws conclusions about the value of something from a single incident and then tries to apply this conclusion to everything else. For example: "That girl has not wanted to go out with me. No woman will love me "," I've done very badly with my boyfriend, no man is worth it ".
- Emotional reasoning: the person endows an exaggerated emotional meaning to all situations. In other words, everything is assumed as an attack or a highly personal problem. For example: "My boss has entrusted me with this task because it does not work for me, I find it unpleasant and unpleasant".
- Thinking of the "all or nothing": perhaps this is one of the most frequent cognitive distortions, we consider as a failure everything that does not fit our expectations. Usually it is nuanced by the use of the words: always, never, all ... For example: "I have suspended a subject, I will not be able to finish the race".
- Classification or labeling: a rigid label is attributed to everything that surrounds us and to ourselves. For example: "I am a failure", "he is an insensitive" ... which will later qualify our way of relating to the world.
- They should: they refer to preconceptions about how others and ourselves should behave. As we have preset possible behaviors, we end up locking ourselves into very rigid habits and narrow ways of understanding the world. For example: "I must go to church every Sunday because that is what a good Christian does", "I am always willing to help others for which others must answer me unconditionally".
- Disqualification of the positive: the positive traits or the achievements are subtracted, either individually or from the people around us since they are considered as "normal". For example: "I have obtained the maximum in the project but that would do it anybody", "I have been invited to dinner but it is their obligation".
- Personalization: the person assumes that the "faults" of most problems are in themselves or in others when the causes are really very different. For example: "I did not get the job because I'm totally incompetent."
- Catastrophic view: after an error or a small setback the person begins to ruminate on the harmful and highly unfortunate consequences of their actions. In short, it is about seeing an earthquake where there has only been one earthquake.
Some cognitive distortions are quite similar since they are usually very related in the mind of the person when he tries to make sense of the world around him. For example, if we are catastrophists, it is very likely that we also have an "all or nothing" thought and that we practice selective abstraction.
However, limited to theoretical knowledge will not do much, it is important to name our cognitive distortions and, what is even more important, learn to detect them in different situations and understand how they hinder our relationships or our Personal Development.
