Our circumstances don’t define us. Regardless of what happens in life, we always have the power to choose our attitude. So what’s the difference between someone who remains hopeful despite experiencing great suffering and the person who stubs his or her toe and remains angry the rest of the day? The answer lies in the person’s thinking patterns.
Psychologists use the term “cognitive distortions” to describe irrational, inflated thoughts or beliefs that distort a person’s perception of reality, usually a negative way. Cognitive distortions are common but can be hard to recognise if you don’t know what to look for. For those desirous of recognising the pesky cognitive distortions to improve their mental health, and perception of reality, here is a list of some common ones:
Emotional Reasoning: This is the false belief that your emotions are the truth – that the way you feel about a situation is a reliable indicator of reality. While it is important to listen to, validate, and express emotion, it is equally important to judge reality based on rational evidence.
Polarised Thinking: When you are convinced that you are either destined for success or doomed to failure, that the people in your life are either angelic or evil, you are probably engaging in polarised thinking.
Overgeneralisation: When people overgeneralise, they reach a conclusion about one event and then incorrectly apply that conclusion across the board. For example, you make a low score on one math test and conclude that you are hopeless at math in general.
Fallacy of Fairness: Here a person feels resentful because he thinks he knows what is fair, but other people won’t agree with him. People who go through life applying a measuring ruler against every situation judging its “fairness” will often feel resentful and angry because of it.
Always Being Right: You feel continually on trial to prove that your opinions and actions are correct. Being wrong is unthinkable and you will go to any length to demonstrate your rightness. Having to be ‘right’ often makes you hard of hearing. You aren’t interested in the possible veracity of a differing opinion, only in defending your own.
Self-serving Bias: Here a person attributes positive events to his own character, and negative events to external factors.
Jumping to Conclusions;g Mind Reading: This distortion manifests as the inaccurate belief that we know what another person is thinking. Of course, it is possible to have an idea of what other people are thinking, but this distortion refers to the negative interpretations that we jump to.
Fallacy of Change: You expect that other people will change to suit you if you just pressure or cajole them enough. You need to change people because your hopes for happiness seem to depend entirely on them. The truth is the only person you can really control or have much hope of changing is yourself.
You may fall into one or more of these traps. The good news is that cognitive distortions don’t have to weigh you down like an anchor. By adjusting our automatic thoughts, we are able to influence our emotions and behaviours.
