Checking Our Thoughts: Understanding Cognitive Distortions, by Nate Hill, AMFT

Therapy is often the place people go to when they want to change their emotions. They may want to stop feeling sadness after their parent has passed away. They may want to stop feeling angry or annoyed as often. They may want to stop feeling anxious because of a stressful job. As much as the human existence enables us to feel positive emotions, it also saddles us with uncomfortable and more difficult ones that we would like to feel less.

So how can we go about modifying our emotions? Many different things influence what emotions we feel, how long we feel them, and the impact they have on us. Our behaviors are one such influence on how we feel. Exercise, for example, can relieve stress and anxiety. Likewise, hugging a loved one can make us feel connected and understood. In addition to behaviors, our emotions can also influence what emotions we feel. This may sound confusing at first, but let’s think about it. All of us have some judgments about certain emotions. If we grew up in a house where we got in trouble for expressing anger, we might learn to feel shame whenever we feel anger. Similarly, if we have been feeling depressed for a significant amount of time, we might feel angry that we are still depressed.

Our emotions are certainly influenced by our behaviors and other emotions, and they are also influenced by our thoughts and beliefs. We might feel happy when we think someone likes us. We might feel disappointed when we think our roommates should clean up after themselves and they do not. We might feel stressed about money if we have been laid off and we do not believe we can land another job. That our thoughts and beliefs impact our emotions is no new idea, too. In Ancient Greece, the Stoic school of philosophy held that we become upset at things in our lives because of our interpretations of the upsetting things, not the things themselves. This line of thought is reflected in the widely circulated idea, today, that we can change how we feel by changing our perspective. If I change my thoughts by paying more attention to the silver linings, then I can be a happier person.

One of the aims of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is to change how we feel by changing our thoughts and beliefs. This often can take time because beliefs are no easy things to change, especially when we’ve held some of them for most of our lives! CBT especially likes to focus on beliefs we have about the world that are inaccurate, or do not correspond to how things actually are (many times, these “inaccurate” beliefs once served us well, but now lead to suffering). In fact, so many of us have the same sort of inaccurate beliefs that CBT has come up with the term “cognitive distortions” to describe them. Below are ten common cognitive distortions:

It is completely natural for us as humans to have cognitive distortions. Everyone has them, in part because they have helped humans to survive, in an evolutionary sense. But they also can contribute to suffering. To take the distortion of jumping to conclusions – we might be anxious or get easily annoyed because we believe we will bomb an upcoming job interview, when in reality, we may be very qualified. Let’s take personalization, the tenth on the list – we might feel bad about ourselves when we aren’t texted back by a close friend right away, when in reality, that friend may be taking a nap or otherwise away from their phone. In both these cases, inaccurate beliefs contribute to our distress.

The first step in decreasing cognitive distortions that may contribute to our unhappiness is to increase our awareness of them. It is often helpful for people to keep a list of common distortions on their phone or a notebook and put a check mark next to a distortion whenever they find themselves thinking that distortion. If you identify with some of the distortions above, I encourage you to try this! It may soon become apparent that many of the unpleasant emotions you might feel are caused or reinforced by cognitive distortions.

If the idea of cognitive distortions interests you, I encourage you to check out this site. Here, you can find techniques for becoming aware of your distortions and challenging them to reduce their power on you. There are also a multitude of other resources on cognitive distortions on the internet in case you want to read more about them.

Nate Hill is currently accepting new clients and can be reached at 619-272-6858 x715 or nate@anxietytraumatherapy.com