Cognitive Distortions: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Techniques 18/30

Cognitive Distortions: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Techniques 18/30

[Music] you know what’s funny about our mind 
it lies to us all the time our mind loves to convince us that circumstances are the cause of 
our emotions so for example you may think i’m sad because i didn’t get the job but here’s the thing 
it’s not the outside circumstances that make us sad or anxious it’s how we interpret them it’s 
how we think about them if i don’t get the job i might actually be feeling sad because i’m thinking 
oh i’m such a failure instead of thinking i don’t have the qualifications or i might be sad because 
i’m thinking this career will never work out instead of thinking i need to change 
my approach in the next interview or you might be sad because you’re thinking 
nothing good ever happens to me instead of i’ll try again soon when we get stuck in thought 
patterns that are distorted or untrue or unhelpful this can contribute to depression anxiety and 
other mental illness and distorted thinking makes us less successful in both our professional 
and our personal lives in this two-part skill first you’re going to learn about 10 common 
cognitive distortions these are ways that you think that make you feel anxious or depressed then 
in part two you’re going to learn what you can do about these cognitive distortions by changing how 
you think so you can change how you feel [Music] do you feel like you’re never good enough 
or do you put other people’s needs before your own to the point of getting burned out do 
you change the way you act or talk or look to please others but at the expense of your own 
happiness if this sounds like you you may be a perfectionist or people-pleaser perfectionism 
and people-pleasing can fuel a host of issues like depression anxiety eating disorders body 
image issues low self-esteem and relationship issues but you can learn practical skills to 
change how you think and break these habits in the online course overcoming perfectionism 
and people pleasing i’ve teamed up with dr carly lebaron who has 13 years of experience 
helping clients who struggle with these issues in her course there are five hours of instruction 
on overcoming perfectionism and people pleasing she’ll teach you how to let go of 
being everything for everyone else and how to be more real and happy you can 
really get back to your authentic self so go ahead and start learning today check out 
the link in the description to learn more cognitive distortions are ways that our mind 
convinces us of something that isn’t actually true but it feels true your thoughts twist 
reality and you start to feel like you’re bad or broken or deficient or you begin to see 
the world as dangerous or threatening or cruel but here’s the thing with cognitive distortions 
you don’t realize you’re doing it you think that the way you see things is reality it feels true 
when you think or when you talk through the lens of a cognitive distortion you sound rational and 
accurate to yourself and it’s habitual you’ve been thinking this way for so long that it just feels 
normal and natural to think this way so is there anything you can do about this you can change 
how you feel by changing how you think but the first step is to learn what cognitive distortions 
are and to notice that you’re using them when you can identify cognitive distortions you can also 
gain power over them so understanding cognitive distortions is the foundation of cognitive 
behavioral therapy this is one of the most common and very effective treatments for depression 
anxiety and other mental illnesses now during this episode i’m going to use the fictional character 
of james to explain how cognitive distortions work james is based on a couple of real clients but 
all mish-mashed together so for this example he’s a manager at a restaurant but he would 
really rather be a pilot he’s in his mid-20s he’s single he wishes he was married he grew up in 
an abusive home and his father and his stepfather are in prison so now he’s on his own and he’s 
trying to figure out how to live a good life okay so using that example let’s talk about the 
first cognitive distortion number one is all or nothing thinking all or nothing thinking is when 
you think if i can’t do it all perfectly or if i can’t fix it all at once i might as well not 
even bother you think that you’re either perfect or you’re a failure and this is common especially 
with performance so you may say something like i’m failing math when you’re getting a c or you 
think that if you can’t do it perfectly why try right it looks like if i ate one cookie 
then i’ve already failed at my diet so i might as well eat the entire box with james 
for example he knows that he should save money but he’s in so much debt that it seems pointless 
to try to get out he would say things like oh i’m in too deep so i might as well buy this 
fancy watch or the next big video game thinking this way usually makes you feel 
hopeless depressed and justified in giving up okay number two over generalizing if you 
over generalize you take one bad thing and you assume that everything will be awful after 
that so for example you may think things like i’m never gonna get a good job or people will 
always take advantage of me or i’m gonna mess up every relationship or you may say i have the 
worst luck in the entire world now with james he got rejected by a girl he went out with once 
and he says why does this always happen to me there aren’t any girls who could love me i’m 
always going to be alone over generalizing uses words like always and never and it exaggerates 
one bad situation and makes it feel worse all right number three black and white thinking 
so are you thinking in extremes do you only see the negative in a situation or in yourself with 
black and white thinking you may say something like i’m a complete failure or my parents are 
such idiots or you never listen to me or i’m the only one around here whoever gets things done 
right you can catch yourself doing this when you use extreme wording like always never completely 
terrible etc if you’re using words like that you are speaking in black and white now james works 
at a fast food restaurant right james thinks my boss is the biggest jerk ever she is so mean to 
me she doesn’t even know how to make the food i hate her and i hate my job it’s the worst job 
ever in the whole country and this makes him feel angry mistreated discouraged and victimized 
okay number four is mind reading mind reading is assuming that people don’t like you or 
assuming that you know how they feel about you you might say things like nobody likes me 
everyone is judging me my boss must think i’m incompetent in session james would sometimes 
say to me you must think i’m a terrible person mind reading makes you feel insecure anxious 
fearful and sometimes angry vindictive or upset but it’s not really based on reason okay number 
five is catastrophizing catastrophizing is all about assuming that your fears and your worries 
must be true you believe the worst case scenario in your head is the most likely outcome it’s what 
if thinking it’s imagining catastrophes it sounds like like this is never going to work i’m going to 
fail and make a complete fool of myself it sounds like oh she’s late it’s raining she must have 
crashed her car and she’s upside down in a ditch and with catastrophizing you assume that your 
prediction is fact james would say things like i’m never going to be successful i’m going to be 
stuck working fast food for the rest of my life now just to be clear these are his words not mine 
there is nothing wrong with honest labor i worked four years in a fast food company i worked in a 
treadmill factory i’ve worked manual labor for a good 10 years there’s nothing wrong with it 
and also remember james he’s in his early 20s and in a matter of a couple of years he could 
get a new job training a new career and he could change his entire future but catastrophizing 
made him feel like everything was hopeless catastrophizing makes you feel fearful anxious 
hopeless and it prevents real helpful action okay number six is emotional reasoning it’s thinking 
that your feelings accurately reflect reality so for example if you’re feeling stressed out 
about school you might think the teacher must be giving us too much homework or if you feel 
hurt you think the other person must be a jerk when you’re on your period you think oh i feel 
terrible so i must be a terrible person or here’s a really common one if you feel anxious in social 
situations you might think i must be an awkward person there’s a difference between feeling 
anxious and actually acting awkward another thing people might say is like i must be stupid i am 
stupid when they just feel stupid they feel dumb right james felt discouraged and worried about 
his future ability to succeed he felt hopeless so he decided to believe that it was hopeless that he 
would never be able to do much emotional reasoning basically takes any emotion and it makes it bigger 
okay number seven is labeling labeling is taking a behavior and turning it into an identity this 
is putting a name or label on something so instead of thinking you know he made a mistake you 
might label your neighbor as a complete idiot or you might think that because you’ve made mistakes 
that i’m a complete loser i’m broken i’m a failure or you might label others right he’s a complete 
jerk she’s a monster etc or if a kid makes a bad choice you might say oh they’re a bad kid etc when 
james wasn’t able to find a new job right away he started to say things like this he’d say oh 
i’m such a loser i’ll never be successful remember james was in his mid-20s he had his entire life 
to learn the skills he needed to be successful but he’s already labeled himself as broken and 
as a failure labeling is all about creating hopelessness if something is our identity then 
there’s nothing we can do about it we’re stuck right but the truth is we aren’t what we 
feel or do we all have an immense capacity to learn and to grow and to change and to improve and 
this is why cognitive distortions are so harmful they create a reality where change isn’t possible 
they make you feel trapped and hopeless when the reality is that with the right help or with the 
right skills or support or effort you can change your life you can live a good life okay number 
eight is mental filtering mental filtering is only seeing one side of a situation usually the 
negative you tend to filter out the positive so for example you ignore the good things your 
boss does and you feel constantly annoyed at him or you minimize all the good things that you 
do and you only dwell on your mistakes so you can see this um a lot with how women often take 
compliments right often they immediately downplay it by saying oh you’re so kind but if someone 
gives them criticism they take it to heart and they dwell on it and they worry about it for days 
james would often dwell on his failures especially with women and he would remember his mistakes over 
and over especially with one girl who he really liked and he would just keep thinking about what 
he did wrong and this led him to feeling like he was a really bad person when in actuality he was 
quite kind and he tried to make the people around him happy and that was just one relationship that 
didn’t work out mental filtering can make you feel like a bad person or it can make you more 
depressed or see the world more negatively on the other hand with some people mental filtering 
leads to defensiveness right highlighting their own virtues and putting other people down either 
way mental filtering distorts reality and harms us okay number nine is personalization it’s thinking 
that everything others do is about you so you think that if anything bad happens it’s your 
fault or if someone’s upset it’s because of you right you blame yourself for circumstances 
that are beyond your control um this is taking things personally right you you incorrectly might 
assume that you’ve been intentionally excluded or targeted so for example mom might think oh if my 
son misbehaves it must be because i’m a bad mother or when you take things personally you think 
oh if my if my boss yells at me it must be because i’m messing up or if the cashier is 
rude to me they must not be respecting me when in reality your boss might be yelling 
because they have poor management skills or maybe the cashier’s dog died that day right we don’t 
really know why people are acting the way they do but it’s false to assume that everything they do 
is about us this is a true story about one of my clients who i based this mishmash to james off 
of so one of my clients said this when he worked at the register taking orders when people came 
in and said i need three cheeseburgers three fries three drinks you know anytime they started 
off with the words i need he felt like they were being rude he would think in his head you don’t 
need cheeseburgers you want cheeseburgers and so this made him mad every time they did it which 
was like of course dozens of times a day right or if a customer came in and treated him badly 
he would take it personally he would think you know what did i ever do to you sometimes it made 
him mad sometimes it made him discouraged but he had a hard time seeing that sometimes you know 
customers are usually just dealing with their own stuff their own stress and it wasn’t about him 
taking things personally makes you feel guilty overwhelmed out of control burdened helpless and 
it can lead to depression and anxiety number 10 unreal ideal this is the plague of social 
media we look at others and we compare ourselves unfairly so comparisons to others will 
always let you down the unreal ideal sounds like susan seems to handle this job just fine 
how come i’m struggling or bob seems to have it all put together he’s got a perfect 
job perfect wife you know i’m such a loser james would compare himself to all his old high 
school friends especially the ones that he saw on social media he would tell me things like they 
were all married he would say they all graduated college they all served missions for their church 
they all had great jobs in his distorted thinking their lives were perfect and his life was the 
only mess comparing ourselves to others usually leaves us feeling like we’re never good enough 
like we’re an imposter we may feel shame or discouragement we may feel broken or like we 
have to constantly compete to be good enough so there you go those are 10 common cognitive 
distortions did you recognize any of them in your own life in the next section we’re going to 
learn how to challenge cognitive distortions but the first step is learning to notice when you do 
it when you learn to notice how you think then you can change it and it can be really hard to notice 
your own cognitive distortions so i encourage you to get another’s perspective use the chart in 
my course to ask a close friend family member or therapist to tell you which of these cognitive 
distortions you commonly use when you feel upset check yourself for distortions catch yourself 
when you say words like always or never or when you’re making assumptions identify it and say to 
yourself that’s black and white thinking or that’s mind reading in the next episode we’re going to 
work on the next steps which are you know explore challenge the thought and then choose which 
thoughts going to be most helpful for you when it comes to challenging distorted thinking basically 
it comes down to this don’t believe everything you think challenge your thoughts look for exceptions 
or evidence to the contrary now this is going to require you to be a little vulnerable but it will 
also open you up to joy when you learn to change the way you think you can change how you feel you 
can fight depression and anxiety and you can live a happier life this video is one skill from my 
30 skill course how to process your emotions where i teach 30 of the most essential skills for 
resolving depression anxiety and improving mental health emotion processing is an essential skill 
for working through intense emotions but most people have never been taught how to do it i’m 
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Cognitive distortions are thoughts that aren’t actually true but feel true. Your thoughts twist reality, and you start to feel like you’re bad, broken, or deficient. Or you begin to see the world as dangerous, threatening, or cruel.
But here’s the thing with cognitive distortions: you don’t realize you’re doing it. You think the way you see things is reality. It feels true. When you think or talk through the lens of a cognitive distortion, you sound rational and accurate to yourself. So is there anything you can do about this? Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can help you change how you feel by changing how you think.
The first step is to learn what cognitive distortions are and notice when you’re using them.

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Therapy in a Nutshell, LLC, and the information provided by Emma McAdam are solely intended for informational and entertainment purposes and are not a substitute for advice, diagnosis, or treatment regarding medical or mental health conditions. Although Emma McAdam is a licensed marriage and family therapist, the views expressed on this site or any related content should not be taken for medical or psychiatric advice. Always consult your physician before making any decisions related to your physical or mental health.

In therapy I use a combination of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Systems Theory, positive psychology, and a bio-psycho-social approach to treating mental illness and other challenges we all face in life. The ideas from my videos are frequently adapted from multiple sources. Many of them come from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, especially the work of Steven Hayes, Jason Luoma, and Russ Harris. The sections on stress and the mind-body connection derive from the work of Stephen Porges (the Polyvagal theory), Peter Levine (Somatic Experiencing) Francine Shapiro (EMDR), and Bessel Van Der Kolk. I also rely heavily on the work of the Arbinger institute for my overall understanding of our ability to choose our life’s direction.
And deeper than all of that, the Gospel of Jesus Christ orients my personal worldview and sense of security, peace, hope, and love https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/comeuntochrist/believe

If you are in crisis, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/ or 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or your local emergency services.
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