[Caveat: I’m not a trained therapist, and the discussions in this blog are not intended as therapy. If you are suffering from depression or other psychological problems, please seek professional help. If you don’t know where to begin, talk to your primary health care provider.]
Many years ago, I was on a casual date with an attractive woman. We were at a nightclub having fun, when I caught a glimpse of us in a mirror. To my eyes, we looked ridiculous. Or rather, she looked lovely, but I looked ugly, and the vision of this attractive woman with an ugly man such as myself filled me with revulsion and self-loathing. The thoughts that sprung into my mind were: “I’m ugly. An attractive woman like her would never want to be with an ugly man like me.” These thoughts spoiled my mood and drained enjoyment from my evening — leaving me feeling depressed and hopeless.
Can you name the cognitive distortions?
“I’m ugly” is labeling. “An attractive woman like her would never want to be with an ugly man like me” is both types of jumping to conclusions: mind reader and fortune teller.
Using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy concepts, let’s deconstruct these thoughts. Remember, all of our emotions begin with our thoughts. Deconstructing our distorted thoughts is the key to improving mood and preventing distortion-based depression in the future.
If I had known about Cognitive Behavioral techniques on that evening, I would have done the following Triple Column Technique on a blank piece of paper as my worksheet:
- Column One: I’d have written the two thoughts in the first column. “I’m ugly. An attractive woman like her would never want to be with an ugly man like me.” At the bottom of that column I’d write the emotions these thoughts created and how intensely I felt them on a scale of 1-10. For example: “Depressed 8, Hopeless 9.”
- Column Two: I’d have written the distortions: labeling, jumping to conclusions (mind reader, fortune teller).
- Column Three: I’d have written the rational replacements for each thought. “I’m ugly” would have become, for instance, “Like everyone else, I’m attractive to some people and unattractive to other people.” “An attractive woman like her would never want to be with an ugly man like me” would have become something like “She may or may not be attracted to me but I don’t decide whether she is attracted to me or not; that is her decision to make and I’m not privy to her thoughts” and “It’s absurd to say attractive women will never be attracted to me. All of them? Always? No, that’s a distortion. Moving into the future, some women will find me attractive and others will not.”
There’s a third distortion here, of course, and that is: disqualifying the positive. If this woman had truly found me as horribly repulsive as I thought I was, then it’s unlikely we would have been out on the town to begin with!
I hope this article will help you in your own Cognitive Behavioral practice.