DevYou

In the last article, we took our first glimpse at Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). To review, we discussed three key points:

• All emotions arise from thoughts. All of them.
• Thoughts that cause negative emotions such as depression are automatic and easily escape our awareness.
• It’s possible to “debug” our thinking and thereby prevent negative emotions from arising in the first place.

Thoughts that give rise to negative emotions such as depression and anxiety but are incorrectly based on a distorted view of reality are called thinking errors or cognitive distortions.

Perhaps you feel you’re free of cognitive distortions. Unfortunately, this is extremely unlikely. Almost without exception, we all fall prey to them to one degree or another. If you ever find yourself depressed or anxious, it’s likely you’re suffering from one or more distortions of your making. Don’t worry; it’s perfectly natural, and the good news is you can take control of these distortions and ward them off in the future.

Cognitive therapists have identified 10 cognitive distortions. In future articles, we’ll look at each of them in depth, but for now here’s the list:

• All or Nothing
• Over-generalizing
• Mental Filter
• Disqualifying the Positive
• Jumping to Conclusions
• Magnification (or Catastrophizing)
• Emotional Reasoning
• Should Statements
• Labeling
• Personalization

For more information about cognitive distortions, read Feeling Good or come back tomorrow for the next article in this series.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 28th, 2007 at 10:34 am and is filed under Cognitive Therapy, Emotion, Mind. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.