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Since thoughts are merely interpretations of events, why not choose more helpful interpretations? Why not choose interpretations that would make us feel good about ourselves and others rather than bring us down and cause us to blame and disconnect from our loved ones?

So the next time you catch yourself having a cognitive distortion, you may find it helpful to ask yourself: what are the facts?

Pretend that you are a lawyer (or a scientist) when you’re challenging your thoughts. The best lawyers and scientists generally don’t use feelings or opinions to win their argument – they stick to the facts (the evidence). Facts are those things, behaviours and events that you can see on a video screen.

For example, if you catch yourself thinking that you are a bad...

Think of the negative thinking patterns that we have been talking about like weeds. Leave them alone or give them too much food and they are likely to take over, set deep roots and crowd out the flowers or positive thoughts. The longer you let them run wild, the harder it will be to get rid of them and the worse the state of your garden.

Over the last few weeks we have been, in a sense, examining the landscape of our garden and surveying the weeds. We have examined them, discovered the species that are growing roots in our garden and learnt about how they operate.

It is now time to start taking action to clear our garden of weeds so that the flowers may flourish.

Ready? (Or are you really really in love with the weeds? ;)

All of us engage in such thinking patterns from time to time and the more we begin to recognize them, the less hold they will have on us. This is how we can stop letting these thoughts control us and get back in charge.

Before we discuss some more ways we can combat these thinking patterns, here is a list of distortions that we talked about. You can click here to review any or all of them.

1. All or nothing thinking/polarized thinking [DW#488]
2. Overgeneralizations [DW#489]
3. Labeling [DW#490]
4. Catastrophizing [DW#491]
   1. Decatastrophizing [DW#492]
5. Minimization [DW#493]
6. Emotional reasoning [DW#494]
7. Shoulding yourself [DW#495]
8. Jumping to conclusions – mind reading [DW#496]
9. Jumping to conclusions – fortune telling [DW#497]
10. Personalization [DW#498]
11. Blaming...

All of us experience pain in our lives. Pain is what happens when an event or situation outside our control causes us distress. For example, we get a headache, our car breaks down, someone betrays our trust, we lose our job. All of these are events that cause pain.

Events such as these are the first darts that life throws at us.

The second darts are how we respond to these events, what we think about them and what we tell ourselves.

If our car breaks down for example, this would be the first dart.

Some examples of second darts are if we tell ourselves:

The reality of the situation is this: we cannot do anything about the fact our car...

I should be a better mother
My children should be more grateful

Here is the problem with shoulds and musts:

Shoulds that are directed against ourselves lead to guilt and frustration. They almost never lead to motivating ourselves to do better.

Shoulds and musts that are directed against other people or the world in general lead to anger and frustration. When people do not follow the unwritten rules for life that we have, we start giving them mental tickets and minus points. And that generally does NOT lead to any change or improvement in them or in our relationship with them.

Are you ready to quit shoulding and musting? Start by recognizing how many times you say these words out aloud or in your head. 

For example:

I feel that you never listen to me, therefore it must be true.

I feel that my boss is out to get me, therefore it must be true.

I feel that my children are throwing tantrums just to embarrass me therefore they must be really sneaky children.

In order to counteract this type of thinking, we need to recognize that when we are having a bad day or are emotionally triggered, it is most likely preventing us from thinking clearly.

By the way: It is NOT a good idea to make decisions when we are thinking and feeling...

Today let’s look at Black-and-White Thinking which is sometimes also called Polarized Thinking.

He is a terrible person

My sister is so beautiful and I’m so ugly.

This option is great and the other one is awful.

When we think in this way, we are unable or unwilling to see shades of grey or a middle ground. Things are either good or bad, right or wrong. In other words, we only see the extremes of the situation.Nothing is okay or good enough or somewhere in the middle – it is either fantastic or awful, we are either perfect or we are a total failure.

There is lots of evidence in psychology around how cognitive distortions correlate to symptoms of depression and anxiety. The renowned psychiatrist, researcher and best selling author David Burns goes one step further. He says:

"I suspect you will find that a great many of your negative feelings are in fact based on such thinking errors."

So negative emotions, including depression and anxiety, go hand in hand with distorted thinking. If we are frequently suffering from negative emotions, it would be very useful to look at our thinking patterns and see if we can recognize the link between particular thoughts and emotions and then work to change them.

When distorted thoughts show up in relationships, they have a huge potential to cause harm. Imagine your spouse suggests that you go out for dinner. If you have a habit of negatively...

When our brains make assumptions and conclusions which are not true, we call them "Cognitive Distortions".

Cognitive distortions are exactly what the name implies: distortions in our cognition or thinking. Put another way, cognitive distortions are biased perspectives we take on ourselves and the world around us. They are irrational thoughts and beliefs that we unknowingly reinforce over time by thinking them again and again AND assuming that they are true.

These patterns and systems of thought are often very subtle and therefore hard to recognize because they are form so much of our habitual thinking patterns.

This is also why they can be so damaging because we cannot shift what we don’t...

1)   Intention.

2)   Learn about distorted thought patterns

3)   Recognize distorted thinking

4)   Replace with helpful thinking

...