Panic Disorder 411
Change Your Thinking And You'll Change Your Life
15 Styles of Distorted Thinking*
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1. Filtering: You take the negative details and magnify them,
while filtering out all positive aspects of a situation. A single
detail may be picked out, and the whole event becomes colored by
this detail. When you pull negative things out of context,
isolated from all the good experiences around you, you make them
larger and more awful than they really are.
2. Polarized Thinking: The hallmark of this distortion is an
insistence on dichotomous choices. Things are black or white,
good or bad. You tend to perceive everything at the extremes with
very little room for a middle ground. The greatest danger in
polarized thinking is its impact on how you judge yourself. For
example, you have to be perfect, or you're a failure.
3. Over-generalization: You come to a general conclusion based on
a single incident or piece of evidence. If something bad happens
once, you expect it to happen over and over again. Always and
never are cues that this style of thinking is being utilized.
This distortion can lead to a restricted life as you avoid future
failures based on the single incident or event.
4. Mind Reading: Without them saying so, you know what people are
feeling and why they act the way they do. In particular, you are
able to divine how people are feeling toward you. Mind reading
depends on a process called projection. You imagine that people
feel the same way you do and react to things the same way you do.
Therefore, you don't watch or listen carefully enough to notice
that they are actually different. Mind readers jump to
conclusions that are true for them without checking whether they
are true for the other person.
5. Catastrophizing: You expect disaster. You notice or hear about
a problem and start thinking in terms of what if. What if that
happens to me? What if tragedy strikes? There are no limits to a
really fertile catastrophic imagination. An underlying catalyst
for this style of thinking is that you do not trust in yourself
and your capacity to adapt to change.
6. Personalization: This is the tendency to relate everything
around you to yourself. For example, thinking that everything
people do or say is some kind of reaction to you. You also
compare yourself to others, trying to determine who's smarter,
better looking, etc. The underlying assumption is that your worth
is in question. You are, therefore, continually forced to test
your value as a person by measuring yourself against others. If
you come out better, you get a moment's relief. If you come up
short, you feel diminished. The basic thinking error is that you
interpret each experience, each conversation, each look as a clue
to your worth and value.
7. Control Fallacies: There are two ways you can distort your
sense of power and control. If you feel externally controlled,
you see yourself as helpless, a victim of fate. The fallacy of
internal control has you responsible for the pain and happiness
of everyone around you. Feeling externally controlled keeps you
stuck. You don't believe you can really affect the basic shape of
your life, let alone, make any difference in the world. The truth
of the matter is that we are constantly making decisions, and
that every decision affects our lives. On the other hand, the
fallacy of internal control leaves you exhausted as you attempt
to fill the needs of everyone around you and feel responsible in
doing so (and guilty when you cannot).
8. Fallacy of Fairness: You feel resentful because you think you
know what's fair, but other people won't agree with you. Fairness
is so conveniently defined, so temptingly self-serving that each
person gets locked into his or her own point of view. It is
tempting to make assumptions about how things would change if
people were only fair or really valued you. But the other person
hardly ever sees it that way, and you end up causing yourself a
lot of pain and an ever-growing resentment.
9. Blaming: You hold other people responsible for your pain, or
take the other tack and blame yourself for every problem. Blaming
often involves making someone else responsible for choices and
decisions that are actually our own responsibility. In blame
systems, you deny your right (and responsibility) to assert your
needs, say no, or go elsewhere for what you want.
10. Shoulds: You have a list of ironclad rules about how you and
other people should act. People who break the rules anger you,
and you feel guilty if you violate the rules. The rules are right
and indisputable and, as a result, you are often in the position
of judging and finding fault (in yourself and in others). Cue
words indicating the presence of this distortion are should,
ought, and must.
11. Emotional Reasoning: You believe that what you feel must be
true- automatically. If you feel stupid or boring, then you must
be stupid and boring. If you feel guilty, then you must have done
something wrong. The problem with emotional reasoning is that our
emotions interact and correlate with our thinking process.
Therefore, if you have distorted thoughts and beliefs, your
emotions will reflect these distortions.
12. Fallacy of Change: You expect that other people will change
to suit you if you just pressure or cajole them enough. You need
to change people because your hopes for happiness seem to depend
entirely on them. The truth is the only person you can really
control or have much hope of changing is yourself. The underlying
assumption of this thinking style is that your happiness depends
on the actions of others. Your happiness actually depends on the
thousands of large and small choices you make in your life.
13. Global Labeling: You generalize one or two qualities (in
yourself or others) into a negative global judgment. Global
labeling ignores all contrary evidence, creating a view of the
world that can be stereotyped and one-dimensional. Labeling
yourself can have a negative and insidious impact upon your
self-esteem; while labeling others can lead to snap- judgments,
relationship problems, and prejudice.
14. Being Right: You feel continually on trial to prove that your
opinions and actions are correct. Being wrong is unthinkable and
you will go to any length to demonstrate your rightness. Having
to be right often makes you hard of hearing. You aren't
interested in the possible veracity of a differing opinion, only
in defending your own. Being right becomes more important than an
honest and caring relationship.
15. Heaven's Reward Fallacy: You expect all your sacrifice and
self- denial to pay off as if there were someone keeping score.
You feel bitter when the reward doesn't come as expected. The
problem is that while you are always doing the right thing, if
your heart really isn't in it, you are physically and emotionally
depleting yourself.
*From Thoughts & Feelings by McKay, Davis, & Fanning. New
Harbinger, 1981. These styles of thinking (or cognitive
distortions) were gleaned from the work of several authors
including Albert Ellis, Aaron Beck, and David Burns, among
others.
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