6 Cognitive Distortions: How to Stop Negative Thoughts

A cognitive distortion is a type of thinking that causes individuals to perceive themselves in a negative way. These distorted thoughts fuel negative emotions, anxiety disorders, and detrimental thinking styles. Often, such irrational thoughts are so innate to people’s thinking patterns that they are imperceptible, making them dangerous for their well-being and emotional reasoning.

People experiencing cognitive distortions might perceive a positive experience as an adverse event. Even when feeling good, such negative thinking can make a person feel undeserving of love, friendship, or affection. In many cases, such exaggerating and mislabeling can lead to depression and the perpetuation of psychopathological states.

Psychiatrist Aaron Beck studied cognitive distortions, and many psychiatrists consider him the father of cognitive behavioral therapy. CBT is an intervention that aims to reduce symptoms of mental health issues, including cognitive distortions.

There are many types of cognitive distortion. Some common cognitive distortions include:

• All-or-nothing thinking: This is a form of black-and-white thinking in which people see events, feelings, and reactions without understanding the nuances of people’s actions and emotions.
• Always being right: This cognitive distortion describes people who perceive opinions as facts. Perfectionists and people with imposter syndrome sometimes have difficulty accepting a difference in opinion.
• Catastrophizing: The cognitive distortion of catastrophizing gives disproportionate weight to the worst possible outcome, no matter how slim the odds are of such an outcome. Also known as the binocular trick, it involves the magnification or minimization of the importance of events.
• Overgeneralizing: This form of thinking means creating false patterns out of standalone events, thus making faulty generalizations from insufficient evidence. Labeling is an extreme form of overgeneralizing in which people apply emotional or inaccurate labels to behaviors.
• Mental filtering: Focusing on the negative parts of an event while disqualifying the positive aspects equals mental filtering. This cognitive distortion can affect the perception of an interaction, a relationship, or a personality, turning it into a negative event.
• Mind reading: Inferring others’ negative thoughts, even when they are unspoken or unlikely to exist at all, is like trying to read minds. This can also lead to fortune telling, in which someone predicts (usually negative) outcomes that are unlikely to occur.

Cognitive distortions can adversely impact a person’s mental health and lead to social isolation. Negative rumination can make it challenging to hold a conversation rooted in reality with others. Such distortions can also cause or be symptoms of depression and anxiety, which can lead to personality disorders if the person doesn’t seek treatment.

Cognitive therapy and psychiatry can be beneficial ways to combat cognitive distortions. Mental health professionals can provide exercises to help you reframe negative thoughts and better acquaint yourself with reality.

Cognitive restructuring activities include “facts or opinions,” a method in which you write down your thoughts and categorize them by fact or opinion to show you the difference between objective truths and subjective ideas. There is also “putting thoughts on trial,” in which you write out a simple law case and support with evidence the good and bad parts of each of your thoughts to determine their veracity.

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