Cognitive distortion is a thinking pattern which is automatic, exaggerated and often inaccurate. We all experience it sometimes. However, habitual or chronic use of cognitive distortion can point at specific mental disorders and/or seriously damage our relationship with ourselves and others.
By adding cognitive distortions you can make your characters more realistic, point at their struggles and show a bit more of their inner world.
Let's see the 20 cognitive distortions your characters can hold!
1. Mind reading: I assume that I know what others think, even though I don’t have sufficient evidence for it.
Example: “He thinks I’m worthless.”
2. Fortune telling: I predict the future – that it will be worse or that some danger is awaiting me.
Example: “I’ll fail the exam,” or “I won’t get the job.”
3. Catastrophizing: I believe that what happened or what may happen is so horrible that I won’t be able to bear it.
Example: “I'll die if he doesn’t proposes to me.”
4 Labeling: I assign broad, general, negative labels to myself or others.
Example: “I’m disgusting,” or “He is disagreeable.”
5. Minimizing the positive: I claim that my positive achievements and successes, or those of others, are trivial.
Example: “The wives are supposed to be like that – it doesn’t count that she married me,” or “The future doesn’t matter.”
6. Negative filter: I focus almost exclusively on the negative aspects and hardly ever notice the positives.
Example: “It’s enough to look at me and everyone dislikes me.”
7. Overgeneralization: I see a general, broad pattern in single events.
Example: “Such things always happen to me,” or “Nothing ever works out for me.”
8. Dichotomous thinking: I perceive events only in black-and-white categories (all or nothing).
Example: “Everyone rejects me,” or “This was a complete waste of time.”
9. Overuse of imperatives: I interpret reality in terms of how it should be, without focusing on how it actually is.
Example: “I should be getting better results. If I don’t achieve them, it means I’m useless.”
10. Personalization: I take on an excessive amount of responsibility for negative events; I don’t see that some situations are caused by others.
Example: “My marriage failed because I let him down.”
11. Blaming: I consider others the main source of my negative experiences and I don’t take responsibility for making changes in myself.
Example: “It’s their fault that I feel so bad,” or “My parents ruined my life.”
12. Unfair comparisons: I interpret events by comparing myself mostly to people who are doing better, which makes me feel worse.
Example: “She achieves greater success,” or “Others did better on the exam.”
13. Regret focused on the past: I dwell on how something in the past could have been done better, instead of thinking about what I can do differently now.
Example: “I could have gotten this job if I had tried harder,” or “I shouldn’t have said that.”
14. What if” thinking: I keep asking myself endlessly, “What if?” something happens. No possible answer satisfies me.
Example: “Okay, but what if I start feeling bad again?” or “What if I can’t stop myself from panicking?”
15. Emotional reasoning: My feelings determine my interpretation of reality.
Example: “I’m depressed, so something must be wrong in my marriage.”
16. Inability to challenge thoughts: I reject all evidence and arguments that could undermine the validity of my negative thoughts.
Example: “You can’t love me,” while disregarding all proofs of affection. Or, “It doesn’t matter that I passed the test – there are more serious problems.”
17. Judging: I constantly evaluate myself and others in terms of arbitrary standards instead of just describing or understanding. I focus on others’ judgments and my own self-criticism.
Example: “I did poorly in college,” “Even if I start learning tennis, I’ll never succeed,” or “Just look at her success – I have none.”
18. Heaven’s reward fallacy: Believing that self-sacrifice, effort, or suffering will inevitably be rewarded, and feeling bitter when life doesn’t deliver that “reward.”
Example: “After everything I’ve done for others, I deserve to be happy, but life is unfair.”
19. Fallacy of change: Believing you can only be happy if others change their behavior to suit you.
Example: “If my partner would just stop doing that, then I could finally be happy"
20. Double standard: Holding yourself to harsher rules than others.
Example: "If she makes a mistake, it’s okay; if I do, it’s unforgivable.”
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