It's been two weeks since I've been discharged from my last psych ward experience. In the time I've been out, I began volunteering at an animal shelter (next to the partial hospitalization program I'm participating in and go 2-3 times a week to walk dogs), been going to the gym 3-4 times a week, and learned how to crochet. (I'm currently attempting to make a pouch for my cell phone/keys etc)
Since participating in this extensive program (6 hours a day 5 days a week), I have been learning a lot about myself. From this learning experience, I've come to the conclusion that I must be either a therapist's dream or a therapist's nightmare. I say I'm a therapist's dream because of all the work I need to do, which leads to cha-ching ($$$) in the therapist's pocket. The only way I could be considered a therapist's nightmare is if they don't have patience. Which.. as a therapist you would hope they do have patience, however, not all therapists are good. (especially the one male therapist,“Dr. Larry” Brotzen, I saw when I was 20 years old who told me to wear a skirt next time I saw him for my appointment- not kidding. Turns out he was/is a fraud in all senses Fucking bastard only got 3 years. The fucker should have had his penis cut off -Okay- I'm not showing compassion right now....let me rephrase....The mother fucker piece of shit asshole should have had his penis cut off. Now...I think that's a huge improvement towards compassion)
Anyway...So- I've recently learned about the common 16 Cognitive Distortions (Some websites have it as 15...and this one has 50). Although we all have patterns of thinking, those who think with cognitive distortions perceive irrational or exaggerated thoughts as truth. While some people may experience a few of these 16 thought patterns from
time to time, all 16 make up my whole being...yay!
Many people may question- why people use/have distorted thinking? In my experience, I used distorted thoughts as a defense mechanism/coping skill, which is probably why I have so many of these cognitive distortions. I had created these thought patterns (probably subconsciously since I had no idea that my thoughts had labels) as a way to protect myself from feeling any amount of pain/hurt/feeling bad about myself. Some of this thinking, such as "polarized" and "should" as well as others were also used as ways to motivate me. While all of these helped with my coping at one point in time, what I failed to realize was that these thoughts were destroying my mind/me all in the process. Being an obsessive thinker also doesn't help..double whammy
So below, I've listed all 16 distorted thoughts. In the next blog I will explain how to fix this way of thinking.
Filtering:
Take negative details while filtering out all of the positive aspects and cause reality to become darkened or distorted. (See poems)
Polarized Thinking:
Also known as All or Nothing Thinking
This is known as the black and white thinking (no shades of gray). We are either perfect or a failure; In my case, I have the unrealistic expectation to be perfect, this only sets me up for constant failure.
Over-generalization:
Believing that something will always happen because it happened once.
Jumping to Conclusion:
Deciding how to respond to a situation without all of the information.
Jumping to conclusion includes mind reading and fortunetelling
Mind reading- inferring people's thoughts and assuming you know what they are thinking/why they are doing the things they do.
Fortune Telling: Predicting outcomes- usually negative.
Magnification and Minimizing
Minimizing: We see the positive/negative as not important or doesn't count and we will see big events as not meaning much. Minimizing includes using words such as oh it's no big deal, when in actuality it is; saying it's okay, when it clearly isn't.
Magnification: When we see the negative results of our actions as bigger than they
really are. This is also known as catastrophizing. Perfectionists are said to carry magnifying traits. For example when someone gets an A- on the paper and they make it seem as though they got an F.
Personalization:
Taking things too personally. We attribute personal responsibility to things outside of our control. We think that we are the cause for a lot of things that have gone awry. Another example of personalization would be comparing ourselves to others or believing that everything others do or say is a personal attack.
Control Fallacies:
We distort our sense of power and control. There are two parts to this: external control and internal control. In external control we see ourselves as helpless victims of fate. We feel stuck; we believe we have no control of our lives. With internal control we see ourselves as having responsibility for the pain and happiness of everyone around us. We carry the world on our shoulders.
Fallacy of Motives
We sacrifice for others and our reasoning for doing so is because we believe we will be rewarded by receiving recognition, appreciation, being liked, etc
Fallacy of Fairness
We feel resentful because we think we know what is fair, but other people won't agree with us. We tend to apply a "measuring ruler" against every situation judging it's fairness and get upset when we perceive situations as not being fair.
Fallacy of Change:
We expect other people to change to suit our needs because our emotions depend entirely on them.
Just ask any of my ex boyfriends
Blaming
We hold other people responsible for our pain or blame ourselves for every problem. We tend to deny our right to assert our needs, say no, or go with what we want due to this.
Shoulds
We have a list of unwavering rules and ideas of how we and others should act. We put a lot of emphasis on these rules and when they are broken by others we get angry and when we break our own rules we feel guilty.
We use the words should, shouldn't, must, and ought constantly and become very judgmental.
Some of us may use should/shouldn't as a motivating technique when in reality we are punishing themselves before we can do anything.
Emotional Reasoning:
We believe that our feelings must be true and our feelings interact and correlate with our thinking process. So..when we have distorted thoughts our emotions will reflect these distortions. For example if we feel stupid, then we must be stupid.
Global Labeling:
We view the world as one-dimensional.
It's constant labeling and judging of self and others.
Always be right:
I don't really need to explain this one. The only thing worth mentioning here is that when we have to be right, we become hard of hearing because we are only interested in defending our own opinion and fail to listen to what is being said.
Heaven's Reward Fallacy
We expect our doing of the "right thing" will pay off, even when our hearts aren't into it. We think as though someone is keeping score for our doing right all of the time. We aren't fully honest with ourselves in this case.
Thank you for reading!
Just a few tidbits for those trivia geeks out there. Aaron Beck was the founder of this theory and David Burns came up with the labels for each distortion. A lot of the information listed above is from 15 Cognitive Distortions by
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