David Burns wrote a book called Feeling Good which uses CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) to list 10 types of mental distortions that are worth examining.
What all distortions share is they substitute an idea for reality.
1. All or Nothing Thinking
All or Nothing Thinking attempts to put things into one of two buckets Good/Bad, White/Black, Right/Wrong, Heavenly/Evil, Up/Down.
Reality is a mixture of lots of categories, never just two categories.
2. Overgeneralization
Is a mental tendency to see a pattern and infer a future result. If I failed at doing something twice, I could infer more attempts will end in failure. If this person said something mean to me before I could infer they are going to say something mean in the future.
Overgeneralization tries to predict the future.
3. Mental Filter
Our minds have evolved to pay special attention to negative outcomes, because in earlier times they could have killed us. Mental filter wants to focus solely on the negative outcomes until they are all we see.
Mental Filter focuses us on the negatives.
4. Discounting the Positives
Close to Mental Filter is Discounting the Positives. The difference is if something positive does happen, it gets discounted to zero and doesn’t count. No amount of success is ever enough, it was luck.
Discounting the Positives turns positives into negatives.
5. Jumping to Conclusions
There are two ways we can jump to conclusions:
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Mind Reading - Assuming what others are thinking, especially assuming negative thoughts.
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Fortune Telling - Assuming stuff is going to go badly, especially with no evidence.
Jumping to Conclusions assumes the worst vs letting reality play itself out.
6. Magnification or Minimization
Magnification is making something much worse than it is and Minimization is making something far less important.
Magnification and Minimization distort reality to fit our internal biases.
7. Emotional Reasoning
Emotions aren’t thoughts and thoughts aren’t emotions. This isn’t the easiest thing to disentangle. Ideally we live from a place that integrates both thoughts and feelings so one or the other isn’t ruling our lives.
Sadness is a feeling which tells us we’ve lost something.
Anger is a feeling which tells us about a transgression.
Feeling sadness doesn’t mean we will be lonely forever, it’s just sadness. Feeling anger doesn’t mean we are a monster, we are just angry.
Emotional Reasoning, substitutes an emotion for our whole being. Emotions are part of us, they aren’t all of us.
8. Should Statements
Shoulds are essentially views, the way the world ought to be. Shoulds always come with judgement, and judgement like the should is an overlay of reality, it isn’t reality.
I should be this way, this should be that way, reality should be this way, this shouldn’t happen, this must happen, etc.
Shoulds lead to endless self-criticism, a voice which is never content, always asking for more. Shoulds can lead us to judge ourselves much more harshly then we’d judge a friend, a family member, or even a stranger.
Should Statements reject the world as it is and substitute in a view of how things should be.
9. Labeling
Calling someone an idiot is dismissive, suddenly what they are saying isn’t relevant anymore. Similar titles are loser, fool, and stupid. There are endless labels. Be exceptionally careful with labels, even positive ones.
Labeling solidifies reality so we don’t have to understand its complexity.
10. Personalization and Blame
Stuff beyond our control happens, but to personalize blame, someone must be responsible. Finding fault even for morally neutral choices makes blame where there wasn’t any. Sometimes we are responsible, and we blame others. Sometimes others are responsible, and we blame ourselves.
Personalization and Blame seek to assign cause and morality to everything.