Cognitive distortion

Cognitive distortions are exaggerated or irrational thought patterns that are believed to perpetuate the effects of psychopathological states, especially depression and anxiety. Psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck laid the groundwork for the study of these distortions, and his student David D. Burns continued research on the topic. Burns's The Feeling Good Handbook[1] (1989) describes these thought patterns and how to eliminate them.

Cognitive distortions are thoughts that cognitive therapists believe cause individuals to perceive reality inaccurately. These thinking patterns often are said to reinforce negative thoughts or emotions.[2] Cognitive distortions tend to interfere with the way a person perceives an event. Because the way a person feels intervenes with how they think, these distorted thoughts can feed negative emotions and lead an individual affected by cognitive distortions towards an overall negative outlook on the world and consequently a depressive or anxious mental state.

History

In 1972, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and cognitive therapy scholar Aaron T. Beck published Depression: Causes and Treatment.[3] Dissatisfied with the conventional Freudian treatment of depression, he concluded that there was no empirical evidence for the success of Freudian psychoanalysis in the understanding or treatment of depression. In his book, Beck provided a comprehensive and empirically supported look at depression — its potential causes, symptoms, and treatments. In Chapter 2, "Symptomatology of Depression," he describes certain “cognitive manifestations” of depression, including low self-evaluation, negative expectations, self-blame and self-criticism, indecisiveness, and distortion of body image.[3]

In 1980 Burns published Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy[4] (with a preface from Beck), and nine years later published The Feeling Good Handbook. These books built on Beck's work, delving deeper into the definition, development, and treatment of cognitive distortions, specifically in regards to depression or anxiety disorders.

Main types

Examples of some common cognitive distortions seen in depressed and anxious individuals. People may be taught how to identify and alter these distortions as part of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.

The cognitive distortions listed below[1] are categories of automatic thinking, and are to be distinguished from logical fallacies.[5]

Always being right

Being wrong is unthinkable. This cognitive distortion is characterized by actively trying to prove one's actions or thoughts to be correct, while sometimes prioritizing self-interest over the feelings of another person.[2]

Blaming

The opposite of personalization; holding other people responsible for the harm they cause, and especially for their intentional or negligent infliction of emotional distress.[2]

Example: someone blames their spouse entirely for marital problems, instead of looking at his/her own part in the problems.

Disqualifying the positive

Discounting positive events.

Emotional reasoning

Presuming that negative feelings expose the true nature of things, and experiencing reality as a reflection of emotionally linked thoughts. Thinking something is true, solely based on a feeling.

Fallacy of change

Relying on social control to obtain cooperative actions from another person.[2]

Fallacy of fairness

Becoming guilty when one acts against justice or upset when someone else acts unjustly.[2]

Filtering

Focusing entirely on negative elements of a situation, to the exclusion of the positive. Also, the brain's tendency to filter out information which does not conform to already held beliefs.

Jumping to conclusions

Reaching preliminary conclusions (usually negative) from little (if any) evidence. Two specific subtypes are identified:

Labeling and mislabeling

A more severe type of overgeneralization; attributing a person's actions to their character instead of some accidental attribute. Rather than assuming the behavior to be accidental or extrinsic, the person assigns a label to someone or something that implies the character of that person or thing. Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that has a strong connotation of a person's evaluation of the event.

Magnification and minimization

Giving proportionally greater weight to a perceived failure, weakness or threat, or lesser weight to a perceived success, strength or opportunity, so the weight differs from that assigned to the event or thing by others. This is common enough in the normal population to popularize idioms such as "make a mountain out of a molehill". In depressed clients, often the positive characteristics of other people are exaggerated and negative characteristics are understated. There is one subtype of magnification:

Overgeneralization

Making hasty generalizations from insufficient experiences and evidence. Making a very broad conclusion based on a single incident or a single piece of evidence. If something bad happens only once, it is expected to happen over and over again.[2]

Personalization

Attributing personal responsibility, including the resulting praise or blame, for events over which a person has no control.

Should statements

Doing, or expecting others to do, what they morally should or ought to do irrespective of the particular case the person is faced with. This involves conforming strenuously to ethical categorical imperatives which, by definition, "always apply", or to hypothetical imperatives which apply in that general type of case. Albert Ellis termed this "musturbation". Psychotherapist Michael C. Graham describes this as "expecting the world to be different than it is".[7]

Splitting (All-or-nothing thinking or dichotomous reasoning)

Evaluating the self, as well as events in life in extreme terms. It’s either all good or all bad, either black or white, nothing in between. Causing every small imperfection to seem incredibly dangerous and painful. Splitting involves using terms like "always", "every" or "never" when this is neither true nor equivalent to the truth.

Cognitive restructuring

Cognitive restructuring (CR) is a popular form of therapy used to identify and break down maladaptive cognitive distortions. It is typically used with individuals with depression.[8] CR therapies aim to eliminate "automatic thoughts" which create dysfunctional or negative views for individuals. Cognitive restructuring is the main component of Beck's and Burns's cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).[9]

As narcissistic defense

Exaggeration and minimization are commonly adopted by narcissists to manage and defend against psychic pain.[10][11]

Decatastrophizing

In cognitive therapy, decatastrophizing or decatastrophization is a cognitive restructuring technique to treat cognitive distortions, such as magnification and catastrophizing, commonly seen in psychological disorders like anxiety[8] and psychosis.[12]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Burns, David D. (1989). The Feeling Good Handbook: Using the New Mood Therapy in Everyday Life. New York: W. Morrow. ISBN 0-688-01745-2.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Grohol, John (2009). "15 Common Cognitive Distortions". PsychCentral. Archived from the original on 2009-07-07.
  3. 1 2 Beck, Aaron T. (1972). Depression; Causes and Treatment. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0-8122-7652-3.
  4. Burns, David D. (1980). Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy. New York: Morrow. ISBN 0-688-03633-3.
  5. 1 2 Tagg, John (1996). "Cognitive Distortions". Retrieved October 24, 2011.
  6. 1 2 3 Schimelpfening, Nancy. "You Are What You Think".
  7. Graham, Michael C. (2014). Facts of Life: ten issues of contentment. Outskirts Press. p. 37. ISBN 978-1-4787-2259-5.
  8. 1 2 Martin, Ryan C.; Dahlen, Eric R. (2005). "Cognitive emotion regulation in the prediction of depression, anxiety, stress, and anger". Personality and Individual Differences. 39 (7): 1249–1260. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2005.06.004.
  9. Rush, A.; Khatami, M.; Beck, A. (1975). "Cognitive and Behavior Therapy in Chronic Depression". Behavior Therapy. 6 (3): 398–404. doi:10.1016/S0005-7894(75)80116-X.
  10. Millon, Theodore; Carrie M. Millon; Seth Grossman; Sarah Meagher; Rowena Ramnath (2004). Personality Disorders in Modern Life. John Wiley and Sons. ISBN 0-471-23734-5.
  11. Thomas, David (2010). Narcissism: Behind the Mask. ISBN 978-1-84624-506-0.
  12. Moritz, Steffen; Schilling, Lisa; Wingenfeld, Katja; Köther, Ulf; Wittekind, Charlotte; Terfehr, Kirsten; Spitzer, Carsten (2011). "Persecutory delusions and catastrophic worry in psychosis: Developing the understanding of delusion distress and persistence". Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry. 42 (September 2011): 349–354. doi:10.1016/j.jbtep.2011.02.003.
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