Hope things would getting better
The sudden change in the way you feel is of no more causal relevance than a runny nose is when you have a cold.
Definition of Cognitive Distortions
1. ALL-OR-NOTHING THINKING: you see things in black-and-white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, your see yourself as a total failure.
2. OVERGENERALIZATION: you see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.
3. MENTAL HLTER: You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that colors the entire beaker of water.
4. DISQUALIFYING THE POSITIVE: You reject positive experiences by insisting they “don’t count” for some reason or other. In this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences.
5. JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS: Your 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 it out.
● The fortune teller error. You anticipate things will turn out badly, and you feel convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact.
6. MAGNIFICATION (CATASTROPHIZING) OR MINIMIZATION: You exaggerate the importance of things you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow’s imperfections). This is also called the “binocular trick.”
7. EMOTIONAL REASONGING: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: “i feel it, therefore it must be true.”
8. SHOULD STATEMENTS: You try to motivate yourself with shoulds and shouldn’ts, as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything. “Musts” and “oughts” are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct should statements to toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment.
9. LAGELING AND MISLABELING: This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself: “i’m a loser.” When someone else’s behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him: “He’s a goddam louse.” Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded.
10. PERSONALIZATION: You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event which in fact you were not primarily responsible for.
The mental prison is an illusion, a hoax you have inadvertently created, but is seems real because it feels real.
Your emotions follow your thoughts just as surely as baby ducks follow their mother. But the fact that the baby ducks follow faithfully along doesn’t prove that the mother knows where she is gonging!
Definition of Cognitive Distortions
1. ALL-OR-NOTHING THINKING: you see things in black-and-white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, your see yourself as a total failure.
2. OVERGENERALIZATION: you see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.
3. MENTAL HLTER: You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that colors the entire beaker of water.
4. DISQUALIFYING THE POSITIVE: You reject positive experiences by insisting they “don’t count” for some reason or other. In this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences.
5. JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS: Your 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 it out.
● The fortune teller error. You anticipate things will turn out badly, and you feel convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact.
6. MAGNIFICATION (CATASTROPHIZING) OR MINIMIZATION: You exaggerate the importance of things you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow’s imperfections). This is also called the “binocular trick.”
7. EMOTIONAL REASONGING: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: “i feel it, therefore it must be true.”
8. SHOULD STATEMENTS: You try to motivate yourself with shoulds and shouldn’ts, as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything. “Musts” and “oughts” are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct should statements to toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment.
9. LAGELING AND MISLABELING: This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself: “i’m a loser.” When someone else’s behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him: “He’s a goddam louse.” Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded.
10. PERSONALIZATION: You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event which in fact you were not primarily responsible for.
The mental prison is an illusion, a hoax you have inadvertently created, but is seems real because it feels real.
Your emotions follow your thoughts just as surely as baby ducks follow their mother. But the fact that the baby ducks follow faithfully along doesn’t prove that the mother knows where she is gonging!
