In 1980, the American psychotherapist David Burns published a book that has remained a standard of therapy ever since. Feeling good: The new mood therapy was an instant bestseller. The book details the relationship between thoughts and mood, offering research-based exercises to manage “automatic thoughts” and, as a result, your mood.
Burns identified ten common cognitive distortions, exaggerated and irrational thinking, which can negatively affect mood. They are extremely common, and identifying them in yourself can serve as the first step in changing them.
Take a look at the following list and see if any of these distortions are habits of yours.
1. ALL OR NOTHING THINKING: See things in black and white categories. If your performance is less than perfect, you see yourself as a complete failure.
2. OVERGENERALIZATION: You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.
3. MENTAL FILTER: You choose a single negative detail and focus exclusively on it so that your vision of all reality darkens, like the drop of ink that discolors the entire glass of water.
4. DISQUALIFY THE POSITIVE: Reject positive experiences by insisting that they “don’t count” for one reason or another. In this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your daily experiences.
5. JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS: You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definitive facts to convincingly support your conclusions.
has. Mind reading. You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you and don’t bother to check.
b. The fortune teller’s mistake You anticipate that things will go wrong and feel convinced that your prediction is an established fact.
6. MAGNIFYING (CATASTROPHIZING) OR MINIMIZING: You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your mistake or someone else’s achievement). Or you inappropriately shrink things until they seem tiny (your own desirable qualities or the imperfections of others). This is also called the “binocular trick.”
7. EMOTIONAL REASONING: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect how things really are: “I’m sorry, therefore it must be true.”
8. SHOULD STATEMENTS: You try to motivate yourself with shoulds and shouldn’ts, as if you had to be spanked and punished before you were expected to do anything. “Musts” and “Shoulds” are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment.
9. LABELING AND MISLABELING: This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your mistake, you put a negative label on yourself: “I’m a loser.” When another person’s behavior annoys you, you put a negative label on it: “He’s a fucking louse.” Mislabeling involves describing an event in highly colorful and emotionally charged language.
10. PERSONALIZATION: You see yourself as the cause of some negative event for which, in fact, you are not primarily responsible.
Cognitive distortions are characteristic of depression and anxiety. Adults with Asperger’s are especially vulnerable to adopting distorted thought patterns. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), a psychotherapy modality that aims to challenge and change distortions, is the most widely researched and common form of therapy used to help people with Asperger’s change the way they think about themselves. Often adults on the spectrum, when confronted with the illogical nature of some of these automatic thoughts, are eager to change them to a more reality-based perspective.
If you find yourself engaged in distorted thinking, you can start replacing the illogical thoughts with more accurate (and often forgiving!) thoughts right away. Remember, cognitive distortions that leave you holding the short end of the stick can seem like a form of perfectionism. But they can often keep you from enjoying life, feeling secure, and reaching your potential.