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Cognitive Distortions Handout

This document outlines 10 common cognitive distortions: 1) All-or-nothing thinking, 2) Overgeneralization, 3) Mental filtering, 4) Disqualifying the positive, 5) Jumping to conclusions, 6) Personalization, 7) Emotional reasoning, 8) "Should" statements, 9) Labeling and mislabeling, and 10) Magnification or minimization. These distortions involve making irrational thoughts based on incomplete information, personal biases, or illogical inferences about oneself, others, or situations.

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Sabrine Bouleghraif
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806 views1 page

Cognitive Distortions Handout

This document outlines 10 common cognitive distortions: 1) All-or-nothing thinking, 2) Overgeneralization, 3) Mental filtering, 4) Disqualifying the positive, 5) Jumping to conclusions, 6) Personalization, 7) Emotional reasoning, 8) "Should" statements, 9) Labeling and mislabeling, and 10) Magnification or minimization. These distortions involve making irrational thoughts based on incomplete information, personal biases, or illogical inferences about oneself, others, or situations.

Uploaded by

Sabrine Bouleghraif
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

COGNITIVE DISTORTIONS

Adapted From: Feeling Good, the New Mood Therapy by David Burns

1. All-or-nothing thinking
• When we interpret in extremes, we think in black and white, all or nothing categories.
• Ex: If you fall short of perfection, you call yourself a failure; you’re either great or awful.
2. Overgeneralization
• When we perceive a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat, we draw
flawed conclusions based on one or few experiences.
• Ex: He insists that she is always or never right about handling a particular situation.
3. Mental filter
• When we select a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively, our view of all reality
becomes darkened and shaded by this detail.
• Ex: One typo in an otherwise flawlessly written 10-page paper causes a Professor to
consider a student sloppy and lazy.
4. Disqualifying the positive
• When we reject good experiences, we insist they “don’t count.”
• Ex: Someone who I don’t respect made a suggestion you thought was reasonable, but I
discounted because of the source.
5. Jumping to conclusions
• When we make negative interpretations of events without facts or logic that support our
deductions, our faulty thinking is like “fortune-telling.”
• Ex: You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you, or you are
convinced that something will turn out badly when you have not yet experienced it.
6. Personalization
• You believe that what other people say or do is a negative reaction to you, and must be
all about you.
• Ex: When you overhear a group of students praising or complaining about a Professor,
you assume they’re talking about you.
7. Emotional reasoning
• You assume that your negative feelings logically and factually reflect reality.
• Ex: A PhD student is feeling anxious about a presentation to Ladder faculty, assuming that
means the group is expecting incompetence, inexperience and unworthiness.
8. “Should” statements
• Using this language reinforces our negative judgment of ourselves and others, which can
trigger emotions such as guilt, frustration or resentment.
• Ex: “You should have known better,” “I should have been better prepared.”
9. Labeling and mislabeling
• When we take one characteristic of a person and globally apply it to the whole person,
we unfairly misclassify and mis-read that person.
• Ex: Thinking of someone as “flaky,” a terrible person, “just a…”, etc.
10. Magnification or minimization
• When we exaggerate/catastrophize or downplay the importance of something, we
believe it is much worse or better than it is in reality.
• Ex: He was so devastated when he heard himself using verbal crutches in his video that
he felt was too humiliated to continue and canceled future recordings.

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