Today’s post represents a change in format. Rather than examine the remaining five cognitive distortion on our list one-per-post, let’s pick up the pace and cover all five today. That way we can move on to the good stuff: doing something about them!
Ready? Let’s go!
- Magnification – Your thoughts magnify the negatives and minimize the positives of an event or situation.
- Emotional Reasoning – Your thoughts and decisions are based on how you feel rather than what’s really going on in reality.
- Should Statements – Your thoughts emphasize what you or circumstances should be, rather than how you or things actually are.
- Labeling – Your thoughts assign a specific name, or label, to you or someone else. This label is absolute and negative, such as: “I’m a failure.”
- Personalization Your thoughts assign all responsibility and causality to you personally. You assume that you directly caused events or circumstances though that’s not the case in reality and you actually had less direct control than you believe.
For a thorough examination of these distortions, please also see Feeling Good
In upcoming posts, we’ll learn how to detect these often-elusive but always detrimental cognitive distortions and how to deal with them.
[...] VIII. All Remaining Five Distortions! – In the interest of moving the series along at a reasonable pace, I bundled all five remaining distortions into one post: Magnification, Emotional Reasoning, Should Statements, Labeling, and Personalization. [...]