Faulty Thinking Leads to More Stress

Y'all! I am so happy to write this blog post!! I get to teach you about cognitive distortions, and how they not only stress you out more, but how they also make the whole family more stressed. There are ten main cognitive distortions: All-or-Nothing Thinking, Overgeneralization, Mental Filter, Discounting the Positive, Fortune-Telling, Magnification/Minimization, Emotional Reasoning, “Should” Statements, Labeling, and Personalization. I actually learned these terms while in therapy for my mental health, and I found that even knowing what was wrong with my thinking, the easier it became to call myself out when I was using them. 


I’m going to give details on each of these cognitive distortions, and then (depending on my word count) give some helpful ways to correct faulty thinking. Similar to how last week’s post was set-up.


• All-or-Nothing – Also known as “Black and White Thinking.” You see things as either right or wrong. There is no gray area in your life.
• Ex: You don’t do so good one exam and you think “I am a failure” even though you do well in classes.
• Overgeneralization – Viewing the outcome of a single event as the general norm. A bad thing happened once, and you now expect it to happen over and over again. 
• Ex: You see that one bad grade, and decide you are going to drop out because you are always going to fail.
• Mental Filter – Focusing on the negative in a situation. It may be negatively viewing the whole situation or event, or it may be finding a small negative detail, and hyper focusing on it and making it the center point of the situation.
• Ex: I forgot to include an important point in my presentation and now it’s ruined. It doesn’t matter I got an A, because I messed up and failed.
• Mind Reading – Putting words in the mouths of others. There’s not much else to explain on this one…
• Ex: “Those girls are looking at me and laughing, they must think I look dumb.”
• Fortune-Telling – Also known as Jumping to Conclusions. Fortune-telling is similar to mind reading, but it’s more about future events than in the now. Predicting the future is impossible and just creates unnecessary stress and anxiety.
• Ex: “I’m going to mess up my notes during the concert.”
• Magnification/Minimization – Magnifying the negative, and minimizing the positive. Think of the analogy, making a molehill into a mountain.
• Ex: “I’m not that good of a singer” or “I’m terrible at math”
• Emotional Reasoning – I feel it; therefore, it is true. This is another simple one, once you get the hang of seeing it.
• Ex: “I am anxious, so this is bad.” 
• “Should” Statements – This is another way of viewing norms (or rules) that you feel cannot be broken. When you do break these “unbreakable” rules, you may feel guilty or even shame yourself. They very “should” statements themselves bring a mess of negative views upon the thinker.
• Ex: “I should exercise more often.”
• Labeling – This is an extreme version of overgeneralization. You take a few negative things, and label a person as a whole. It can even be taken to the extreme of labeling the whole population.
• Ex: “Amy is an idiot” or “All men are heartless”
• Personalization – Believing everything others do and/or say is aimed as an attack towards yourself. Can also be taking responsibility for things that don’t even relate to you.
• Ex: “It’s my fault that dinner wasn’t good because I was late.”


I’m kicking myself for not bringing my therapy notebooks up to school with me. I have two 3-inch binders full of notes, readings, and activities that are all focused around understanding these distortions and how to combat them. Oh well… The one I remember the most (probably because we talked about it in class) is finding a truth that negates the cognitive distortion and is something you fully believe is true.


I’ll use a personal example for this one. I really struggle with body image and a thought I have quite often is “No one wants to date me because I’m fat.” Can you see the cognitive distortions in that sentence? I see overgeneralization (no one, which could also be said as everyone does not), there is All-or-Nothing thinking (no one, because of the same reason above). Mind-Reading is another one in that nine word sentence (for the same reason… I’m reading the minds of people around me). The truth that I tell myself is "I will get married one day." I know this is true because God has promised it to me, and God keeps His promises. It is a temporary fix though. The thought comes back, and I have to find more new truths that I believe to help calm my anxiety.


I want you to choose one of the above cognitive distortions that you think you do a lot. I want you to try and catch yourself thinking these distortions for a week. I was amazed at how often I did. Let me know what you see at the end of your week. I'll try to put a reminder at the end of next week's post.