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Exercise 10 - Cognitive Distortions
The following list of common cognitive distortions can help you to identify, label and pre-empt your own thinking process errors:
1
Catastrophising: Automatically assuming the worst
possible outcome.
2
Polarised Thinking: Viewing things in absolute or
black and white terms.
3
Over-generalising: Making sweeping inferences
based on a single negative event.
4
Negative Filter: Focusing on the negatives and
ignoring or discounting the positives.
5
Jumping to Conclusions: Drawing conclusions
without checking the facts.
6
Mind-Reading: Deciding what people are thinking
and feeling without any real evidence.
7
Emotional Reasoning: Interpreting feelings as
factual judgments.
8
Musts / Shoulds: Expressing wishes and
preferences as rigid demands.
9
Labeling: Using global labels to describe a person
based on a single characteristic or situation.
10
Blaming: Automatically attributing personal blame or
responsibility to self or others.
11
Perfectionistic Thinking: Demanding unhelpful
standards of exactitude and viewing anything less
than 100% as failure.
12
Comparing: Devaluing self-worth by negative
comparison with others.
13
Change Fallacy: Assuming that things should always
change to make us happy or suit our needs.
14
Control Fallacy - Assuming we are powerless /
victimised if we are not in control.
15
Fairness Fallacy – Expecting everything to be
measured in fairness and showing resentment when
it doesn’t work out.
16
Reward Fallacy – Expecting sacrice and self-denial
to pay off and feeling bitterness when the reward
doesn’t happen.
Make a note of the common thinking errors that apply to you, so that you can readily spot them when you are caught up in unhelpful thinking
processes. The following section of the workbook completes our trip around the Cognitive Tritangle by looking at perspective taking and how
we relate to our thoughts.
