How distorted thinking leads to poor mental health

We all know the way we think has a profound impact on how we see ourselves, others and the world around us. But how much aware are we of our thoughts? Sometimes, our thinking is distorted and we are not even aware of it. Soon, we pay a heavy price for such distorted thinking (aka cognitive distortion) by a rupture in some of our relationships or worse, our mental health.

Cognitive distortion – and there are many – is a pattern of thought we believe to be true despite having no basis at all. Consequently, this leads us to view things more negatively than they really are. To put it bluntly, cognitive distortion is nothing but your mind convincing you to believe things about yourself and others that are not true.

Common Cognitive Distortions

The concept of cognitive distortion was initially proposed by Aaron Beck in 1976. However, it was David Burns who popularised the theory behind cognitive distortions with easy to understand names and examples. Here is a list of the 7 most common cognitive distortions. And there are many!

1. All-or-Nothing thinking: You see everything as black and white. This is a kind of polarised thinking where everything is in “either/or” categories. Example: If your social media post garners only a few likes, you see yourself as an utter failure. Or, your husband was the perfect specimen on earth to you until he forgot your birthday one day!
2. Overgeneralisation: If one thing goes wrong in your life, you immediately conclude everything else will go wrong. Example: If you receive negative feedback after your presentation at the office, you start thinking you have lost your chance for a promotion that year.
3. Mental Filtering: Filtering or ignoring all the positive experiences of your life and concentrating only on the negatives happening around you. Example: When you go through your feedback forms, you overlook all the positive feedback to focus only on that single negative feedback.
4. Catastrophising: Thinking of the worst possible outcome in every scenario, even when that possibility of such outcome occurring is highly improbable. Example: Thinking your friend is not interested in you anymore, as she failed to respond to your text message.
5. Personalisation: Thinking that you are responsible for some negative events in your life when the reality is it happened due to forces outside your control. Example: When your child develops a fever, you blame yourself for being a bad parent.
6. Mind Reading: Believing someone is doing/thinking something or going to do something without an ounce of evidence for such belief. Example: Jumping to a conclusion that your manager doesn’t like you, as you see him sport a wicked smile towards you.
7. Emotional Reasoning: Thinking that the way you feel is a reflection of reality. It’s like, “I feel it therefore it must be true.” Example: You think you are dumb because you felt dumb when someone asked you a difficult question.

Becoming aware of cognitive distortions is the first step towards eliminating them. Everyone falls into the trap of one or more cognitive distortion from time to time. But if you let this distorted thinking run wild, it would soon develop into a negative pattern which then affects your mental health. So, start challenging your thoughts and see if it is always in line with reality.