A cognitive distortion is a thought that causes a person to perceive reality inaccurately due to being exaggerated or irrational. Cognitive distortions are involved in the onset or perpetuation of psychopathological states, such as depression and anxiety. Cognitive distortions are negative or biased thought patterns that distort one’s perception of reality, often leading to unnecessary stress, anxiety, or self-doubt. These distortions, such as mind reading, fortune telling, and emotional reasoning, warp the way individuals interpret situations and themselves, reinforcing negative emotions and behaviors. Understanding and challenging these distortions is crucial in cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) to help individuals overcome them and improve their mental well-being.
According to Aaron Beck's cognitive model, a negative outlook on reality, sometimes called negative schemas (or schemata), is a factor in symptoms of emotional dysfunction and poorer subjective well-being. Specifically, negative thinking patterns reinforce negative emotions and thoughts. During difficult circumstances, these distorted thoughts can contribute to an overall negative outlook on the world and a depressive or anxious mental state. According to hopelessness theory and Beck's theory, the meaning or interpretation that people give to their experience importantly influences whether they will become depressed and whether they will experience severe, repeated, or long-duration episodes of depression.
Etymology Cognitive comes from the Medieval Latin , equivalent to Latin , 'known'. Distortion means the act of twisting or altering something out of its true, natural, or original state, and comes from Latin dis- ("reverse, apart") and torquēre ("to twist").
History In 1957, psychologist Albert Ellis developed rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT), whose emphasis on identifying and challenging irrational beliefs influenced the development of cognitive therapy and related approaches to cognitive distortions. The ABC stands for the activating event, beliefs that are irrational, and the consequences that come from the beliefs. Ellis wanted to prove that the activating event is not what caused the emotional behavior or the consequences, but the beliefs and how the person irrationally perceives the events which aid the consequences. With this model, Ellis attempted to use rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT) with his patients, in order to help them "reframe" or reinterpret the experience in a more rational manner. Beck first started to notice these automatic distorted thought processes when practicing psychoanalysis, while his patients followed the rule of saying anything that comes to mind. He realized that his patients had irrational fears, thoughts, and perceptions that were automatic. Beck began noticing his automatic thought processes that he knew his patients had but did not report. Most of the time the thoughts were biased against themselves and very erroneous.
Beck believed that the negative schemas developed and manifested themselves in the perspective and behavior. The distorted thought processes led to focusing on degrading the self, amplifying minor external setbacks, experiencing other's harmless comments as ill-intended, while simultaneously seeing self as inferior. Inevitably cognitions are reflected in their behavior with a reduced desire to care for oneself, reduced desire to seek pleasure, and finally give up. These exaggerated perceptions, due to cognition, feel real and accurate because the schemas, after being reinforced through the behavior, tend to become 'knee-jerk' automatic and do not allow time for reflection. This cycle is also known as Beck's cognitive triad, focused on the theory that the person's negative schema applied to the self, the future, and the environment.
In 1972, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and cognitive therapy scholar Aaron T. Beck published Depression: Causes and Treatment. He was dissatisfied with the conventional Freudian treatment of depression because there was no empirical evidence for the success of Freudian psychoanalysis. Beck's book provided a comprehensive and empirically supported theoretical model for depression—its potential causes, symptoms, and treatments. In Chapter 2, titled "Symptomatology of Depression", he described "cognitive manifestations" of depression, including low self-evaluation, negative expectations, self-blame and self-criticism, indecisiveness, and distortion of the body image.
Beck's student David D. Burns continued research on the topic. In his book Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy, Burns described personal and professional anecdotes related to cognitive distortions and their elimination. When Burns published Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy, it made Beck's approach to distorted thinking widely known and popularized. Burns sold over four million copies of the book in the United States alone. It was a book commonly "prescribed" for patients with cognitive distortions that have led to depression. Beck approved of the book, saying that it would help others alter their depressed moods by simplifying the extensive study and research that had taken place since shortly after Beck had started as a student and practitioner of psychoanalytic psychiatry. Nine years later, The Feeling Good Handbook was published, which was also built on Beck's work and includes a list of ten specific cognitive distortions that will be discussed throughout this article.
Main types
John C. Gibbs and Granville Bud Potter propose four categories for cognitive distortions: self-centered, blaming others, minimizing-mislabeling, and assuming the worst. The cognitive distortions listed below are categories of negative self-talk.
All-or-nothing thinking
The "all-or-nothing thinking distortion" is also referred to as "splitting" and "black-and-white thinking." Someone with the all-or-nothing thinking distortion looks at life in black and white categories. Either they are a success or a failure; either they are good or bad; there is no in-between. According to one article, "Because there is always someone who is willing to criticize, this tends to collapse into a tendency for polarized people to view themselves as a total failure. Polarized thinkers have difficulty with the notion of being 'good enough' or a partial success." Example (from The Feeling Good Handbook): A woman eats a spoonful of ice cream. She thinks she is a complete failure for breaking her diet. She becomes so depressed that she ends up eating the whole quart of ice cream. This example captures the polarized nature of this distortion—the person believes they are totally inadequate if they fall short of perfection. In order to combat this distortion, Burns suggests thinking of the world in terms of shades of gray. Rather than viewing herself as a complete failure for eating a spoonful of ice cream, the woman in the example could still recognize her overall effort to diet as at least a partial success.
This distortion is commonly found in perfectionists.
Jumping to conclusions
Reaching preliminary conclusions (usually negative) with little (if any) evidence. Three specific subtypes are identified:
Mind reading Inferring a person's possible or probable (usually negative) thoughts from their behaviour and nonverbal communication; taking precautions against the worst suspected case without asking the person. Example 1: A student assumes that the readers of their paper have already made up their minds concerning its topic, and, therefore, writing the paper is a pointless exercise. Example 2: Kevin assumes that because he sits alone at lunch, everyone else must think he is a loser. (This can encourage self-fulfilling prophecy. Suggested ways to combat this distortion include examining the evidence for and against a particular conclusion, testing its validity by challenging it in a real-world context, and reflecting on whether its importance to the person is actual or exaggerated, were it correct.
Fortune-telling Predicting outcomes (usually negative) of events. Example: A depressed person tells themselves they will never improve; they will continue to be depressed for their whole life.
Labelling Labelling is a cognitive distortion in which a person assigns an overly negative and broad label to themselves, someone else, or a situation, after a single adverse event. Instead of evaluating a specific behavior or circumstance, the individual might apply a broad negative judgement, like "I am a failure" or "My meeting will go badly". It is a more extreme form of jumping-to-conclusions cognitive distortion where one speaks in extremes and makes unfounded conclusions.
Emotional reasoning
In the emotional reasoning distortion, it is assumed that feelings expose the true nature of things and experience reality as a reflection of emotionally linked thoughts; something is believed true solely based on a feeling. Examples: "I feel stupid, therefore I must be stupid". Feeling fear of flying in planes, and then concluding that planes must be a dangerous way to travel. Feeling overwhelmed by the prospect of cleaning one's house, therefore concluding that it's hopeless to even start cleaning.
Should/shouldn't and must/mustn't statements Making "must" or "should" statements was included by Albert Ellis in his rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT), an early form of CBT; he termed it "musturbation". Michael C. Graham called it "expecting the world to be different than it is". It can be seen as demanding particular achievements or behaviors regardless of the realistic circumstances of the situation. Example: After a performance, a concert pianist believes they should not have made so many mistakes. In Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy, David Burns clearly distinguished between pathological "should statements", moral imperatives, and social norms. A related cognitive distortion, also present in Ellis' REBT, is a tendency to "awfulize"; to say a future scenario will be awful, rather than to realistically appraise the various negative and positive characteristics of that scenario. According to Burns, "must" and "should" statements are negative because they cause the person to feel guilty and upset at themselves. Some people also direct this distortion at other people, which can cause feelings of anger and frustration when that other person does not do what they should have done. He also mentions how this type of thinking can lead to rebellious thoughts. In other words, trying to whip oneself into doing something with "shoulds" may cause one to desire just the opposite.
Gratitude traps
A gratitude trap is a type of cognitive distortion that typically arises from misunderstandings regarding the nature or practice of gratitude. The term can refer to one of two related but distinct thought patterns:
A self-oriented thought process involving feelings of guilt, shame, or frustration related to one's expectations of how things "should" be. An "elusive ugliness in many relationships, a deceptive 'kindness,' the main purpose of which is to make others feel indebted", as defined by psychologist Ellen Kenner.
Personalization and blaming
Personalization is assigning personal blame disproportionate to the level of control a person realistically has in a given situation. Example 1: A foster child assumes that they have not been adopted because they are not "loveable enough". Example 2: A child has bad grades. Their mother believes it is because they are not a good enough parent. Blaming is the opposite of personalization. In the blaming distortion, the disproportionate level of blame is placed upon other people, rather than oneself. In this way, the person avoids taking personal responsibility, making way for a "victim mentality". Example: Placing blame for marital problems entirely on one's spouse.
Always being right