Cognitive distortion


A cognitive distortion is an exaggerated or irrational thought pattern involved in the onset and perpetuation of psychopathological states, especially those more influenced by psychosocial factors, such as depression and anxiety. Psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck laid the groundwork for the study of these distortions, and his student David D. Burns continued research on the topic. In his book Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy, Burns described personal and professional anecdotes related to cognitive distortions and their elimination.
Cognitive distortions are thoughts that cause individuals to perceive reality inaccurately. According to Beck's cognitive model, a negative outlook on reality, sometimes called negative schemas, is a factor in symptoms of emotional dysfunction and poorer subjective well-being. Specifically, negative thinking patterns reinforce negative emotions and thoughts. During difficult circumstances, these distorted thoughts can contribute to an overall negative outlook on the world and a depressive or anxious mental state. According to hopelessness theory and Beck's theory, the meaning or interpretation that people give to their experience importantly influences whether they will become depressed and whether they will suffer severe, repeated, or long-duration episodes of depression.
Challenging and changing cognitive distortions is a key element of cognitive behavioral therapy.

Definition

Cognitive comes from the Medieval Latin cognitīvus, equivalent to Latin cognit known. Distortion means the act of twisting or altering something out of its true, natural, or original state.

History

In 1957 Albert Ellis, though he did not know it yet, would aid cognitive therapy in correcting Cognitive Distortions and indirectly helping David Burns in writing The Feeling Good Handbook. Ellis created what he called the ABC Technique of rational beliefs. The ABC stand for Activating Event, beliefs that are irrational and the consequences that come from the belief. Ellis wanted to prove that the activating event is not what caused the emotional behavior or the consequences, but the beliefs and how the person irrationally perceive the events that aids the consequences. With this model Ellis attempted to use Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy with his patients, in order to help them "reframe" or reinterpret the experience in a more rational manner. In this model Ellis explains it all for his clients, while Beck helps his clients figure this out on their own. Beck first started to notice these automatic distorted thought processes when practicing psychoanalysis while his patients followed the rule of saying anything that comes to mind. Aaron realized that his patients had irrational fears, thoughts, and perceptions that were automatic. Beck began noticing his automatic thought processes that he knew his patients had but did not report. Most of the time the thoughts were biased against themselves and very erroneous.
Beck believed that the negative schemas developed and manifested themselves in the perspective and behavior. The distorted thought processes lead to focusing on degrading the self, amplifying minor external setbacks, experiences other's harmless comments as ill-intended, while simultaneously seeing self as inferior. Inevitably cognitions are reflected in their behavior with a reduce desire to care for self, to seek pleasure and give up. These exaggerated perceptions due to cognition feel real and accurate because the schemas after being reinforced through the behavior tend to become automatic and do not allow time for reflection. This cycle is also known as Beck's Cognitive Triad, focused on the theory that the person's negative schema applied to the self, the future, and the environment.
In 1972, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and cognitive therapy scholar Aaron T. Beck published Depression: Causes and Treatment. He was dissatisfied with the conventional Freudian treatment of depression, because there was no empirical evidence for the success of Freudian psychoanalysis. Beck's book provided a comprehensive and empirically supported theoretical model for depression—its potential causes, symptoms, and treatments. In Chapter 2, titled "Symptomatology of Depression", he described "cognitive manifestations" of depression, including low self-evaluation, negative expectations, self-blame and self-criticism, indecisiveness, and distortion of the body image.
When Burns published Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy, it made Aaron T. Beck's approach to distorted thinking widely known and popularized. Burns sold over 4 million copies of the book in the United States alone. It was a book commonly "prescribed" for patients who have cognitive distortions that have led to depression. Beck approved of the book, saying that it would help others alter their depressed moods by simplifying the extensive study and research that had taken place since shortly after Beck had started as a student and practitioner of psychoanalytic psychiatry. Nine years later The Feeling Good Handbook was published, which was also built on Beck's work and includes a list of ten specific cognitive distortions that will be discussed throughout this article.

Main types

The cognitive distortions listed below are categories of automatic thinking, and are to be distinguished from logical fallacies.

All-or-nothing thinking

This is also referred to as “Splitting," “Black-and-White Thinking," and "Polarized Thinking." Someone with the All-or-Nothing Thinking distortion looks at life in black and white categories. Either they are a success or a failure; either they are good or bad; there is no in-between. According to one article, “Because there is always someone who is willing to criticize, this tends to collapse into a tendency for polarized people to view themselves as a total failure. Polarized thinkers have difficulty with the notion of being ‘good enough’ or a partial success."
This example captures the polarized nature of this distortion--the person believes they are totally inadequate if they fall short of perfection.
In order to combat this distortion, Burns suggests thinking of the world in terms of shades of gray. Rather than viewing herself as a complete failure for eating a spoonful of ice cream, the girl in the example could still recognize her overall effort to diet as at least a partial success.
This distortion is commonly found in perfectionists.

Overgeneralizing

Making hasty generalizations from insufficient evidence. Seeing a “single negative event” as a “never-ending pattern of defeat." Drawing a very broad conclusion from a single incident or a single piece of evidence. Even if something bad happens only once, it is expected to happen over and over again.
One suggestion to combat this distortion is to “Examine the Evidence” by performing an accurate analysis of one’s situation. This aids in avoiding exaggerating one’s circumstances.

Filtering

Filtering distortions occur when an individual dwells only on the negative details of a situation and filters out the positive aspects.
The Feeling Good Handbook notes that filtering is like a “drop of ink that discolors a beaker of water." One suggestion to combat filtering is a cost-benefit analysis. A person with this distortion may want to sit down and assess whether filtering out the positive and focusing on the negative is helping or hurting them in the long run.

Disqualifying the positive

Disqualifying the positive refers to rejecting positive experiences by insisting they "don't count" for some reason or other. Negative belief is maintained despite contradiction by everyday experiences. Disqualifying the positive may be the most common fallacy in the cognitive distortion range; it is often analyzed with "always being right", a type of distortion where a person is in an all-or-nothing self-judgment. People in this situation show signs of depression.
Reaching preliminary conclusions with little evidence. Two specific subtypes are identified:
One way to combat this distortion is to ask, “If this is true, does it say more about me or them?”

Magnification and minimization

Giving proportionally greater weight to a perceived failure, weakness or threat, or lesser weight to a perceived success, strength or opportunity, so that the weight differs from that assigned by others, such as "making a mountain out of a molehill". In depressed clients, often the positive characteristics of other people are exaggerated and their negative characteristics are understated.
In the emotional reasoning distortion, it is assumed that feelings expose the true nature of things and experience reality as a reflection of emotionally linked thoughts; something is believed true solely based on a feeling.
was included by Albert Ellis in his rational emotive behavior therapy, an early form of CBT; he termed it "musturbation". Michael C. Graham called it "expecting the world to be different than it is". It can be seen as demanding particular achievements or behaviors regardless of the realistic circumstances of the situation.
A related cognitive distortion, also present in Ellis' REBT, is a tendency to "awfulize"; to say a future scenario will be awful, rather than to realistically appraise the various negative and positive characteristics of that scenario.
According to Burns, “must’ and “should” statements are negative because they cause the person to feel guilty and upset at themselves. Some people also direct this distortion at other people, which can cause feelings of anger and frustration when that other person does not do what they should have done. He also mentions how this type of thinking can lead to rebellious thoughts. In other words, trying to whip oneself into doing something with “shoulds” may cause one to desire just the opposite.

Personalization and blaming

Personalization is assigning personal blame disproportionate to the level of control a person realistically has in a given situation.
Blaming is the opposite of personalization. In the blaming distortion, the disproportionate level of blame is placed upon other people, rather than oneself. In this way, the person avoids taking personal responsibility, making way for a “victim mentality.”
In this cognitive distortion, being wrong is unthinkable. This distortion is characterized by actively trying to prove one's actions or thoughts to be correct, and sometimes prioritizing self-interest over the feelings of another person.. In this Cognitive Distortion, the facts that oneself has about their surroundings are always right while other people opinions and perspectives are wrongly seen

Fallacy of change

Relying on social control to obtain cooperative actions from another person The underlying assumption of this thinking style is that one's happiness depends on the actions of others. The fallacy of change also assumes that other people should change to suit one's own interests automatically and/or that it is fair to pressure them to change. It may be present in most abusive relationships in which partners' "visions" of each other are tied into the belief that happiness, love, trust, and perfection would just occur once they or the other person change aspects of their beings.

Fallacy of fairness

Fallacy of fairness is the belief that life should be fair. When life is perceived to be unfair, an angry emotional state is produced which may lead to attempts to correct the situation. There are few situations in which "universal justice" can be applied or excluded. Justice comes from the late Old English justice ‘administration of the law’, fairness and justice vary between culture, people, or country, it is seen that they need to be attributed in any situation.

Labeling and mislabeling

A form of overgeneralization; attributing a person's actions to his or her character instead of to an attribute. Rather than assuming the behaviour to be accidental or otherwise extrinsic, one assigns a label to someone or something that is based on the inferred character of that person or thing.

Cognitive restructuring

is a popular form of therapy used to identify and reject maladaptive cognitive distortions and is typically used with individuals diagnosed with depression. In CR, the therapist and client first examine a stressful event or situation reported by the client. For example, a depressed male college student who experiences difficulty in dating might believe that his "worthlessness" causes women to reject him. Together, therapist and client might then create a more realistic cognition, e.g., "It is within my control to ask girls on dates. However, even though there are some things I can do to influence their decisions, whether or not they say yes is largely out of my control. Thus, I am not responsible if they decline my invitation." CR therapies are designed to eliminate "automatic thoughts" that include clients' dysfunctional or negative views. According to Beck, doing so reduces feelings of worthlessness, anxiety, and anhedonia that are symptomatic of several forms of mental illness. CR is the main component of Beck's and Burns's cognitive behavioral therapy.

Narcissistic defense

Those diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder tend to view themselves as unrealistically superior and overemphasize their strengths but understate their weaknesses. As such, narcissists use exaggeration and minimization to defend against psychic pain.

Decatastrophizing

In cognitive therapy, decatastrophizing or decatastrophization is a cognitive restructuring technique that may be used to treat cognitive distortions, such as magnification and catastrophizing, commonly seen in psychological disorders like anxiety and psychosis. Major features of these disorders are the subjective report of being overwhelmed by life circumstances and the incapability of affecting them.
The goal of CR is to help the client change his or her perceptions to render the felt experience as less significant.

Criticism

Common criticisms of the diagnosis of cognitive distortion relate to epistemology and the theoretical basis. The implicit assumption behind the diagnosis is that the therapist is infallible and that only the world view of the therapist is correct. If the perceptions of the patient differ from those of the therapist, it may not be because of intellectual malfunctions but because the patient has different experiences. Critics claim that there is no evidence that patients suffering from e.g. depression have dysfunctional cognitive abilities. Actually, some depressed subjects appear to be “sadder but wiser”.