Jay Dixit
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Home » Psychology » Cognitive Distortions

All-Or-Nothing Think­ing: See­ing things in black and white cat­e­gories. May also be called per­fec­tion­ism.
e.g. “If I don’t do bet­ter than every­one else, I’ll be a total failure.”

Over­gen­er­al­iz­ing: See­ing a sin­gle neg­a­tive event as part of a com­pre­hen­sive and inter­minable pat­tern.
e.g. “Every­thing in my life is a mess and will never get bet­ter.”
e.g. “I never do any­thing right.”

Selec­tive Atten­tion: Iso­lat­ing and dwelling exclu­sively on a sin­gle neg­a­tive detail.
e.g. “My boss hated my report,” when in fact, your boss said the report was good over­all but that the con­clu­sion needed editing.

Dis­count­ing the Pos­i­tives: Over­look­ing pos­i­tive expe­ri­ences and see­ing them as not count­ing, allow­ing you to main­tain a neg­a­tive believe that is con­tra­dicted by every­day expe­ri­ences. Closely related to selec­tive attention.

Jump­ing to Con­clu­sions: Mak­ing a neg­a­tive inter­pre­ta­tion despite the absence of def­i­nite facts to sup­port the con­clu­sion. Two types:

Mind-Reading: Believ­ing some­one is react­ing neg­a­tively ot you with­out know­ing for sure or check­ing with the other per­son.
e.g. Assum­ing the rea­son some­one is ask­ing for more infor­ma­tion is that they doubt the truth of what you’re saying.

Fortune-Telling: Antic­i­pat­ing that things will turn out badly, and regard­ing the pre­dic­tion as an estab­lished fact.
e.g. “I know I’ll make a fool out of myself at the party and have a bad time, so I’d bet­ter not go.”

Per­son­al­iza­tion: See­ing one­self as the cause of some neg­a­tive exter­nal event for which one is not in fact pri­mar­ily respon­si­ble.
e.g. “That per­son must have left the room while I was speak­ing because I’m a bor­ing speaker.”

“Should” state­ments: Main­tain­ing exces­sive “shoulds,” “musts,” and “oughts,” imply­ing the need for guilt and pun­ish­ment when unful­filled.
e.g. “I should be able to work at top effi­ciency the entire day.”

Cat­a­stro­phiz­ing

http://psychcentral.com/lib/2007/what-is-catastrophizing/

http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=29134&w=10&cn=1

http://www.moodletter.com/Catastrophizing.html

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