Name that distorted cognition (thought/perception)

[The Albatross]

Mental Filter, All or nothing thinking, and Over-generalization mopped up the floor with me this afternoon and I ended up giving myself a migraine.

 

[Deleted member 12723]

I have been all over the place in my head today. Name it I had it. I am more calm now and doing so much better.

 

[ms spock]

I managed my distorted thinking personalisation, all or nothing thinking and mind reading thinking and didn't buy in to the shame and humiliation - instead of avoiding people I have been stepping up to the plate. So that has taken guts and I am so glad that I have done it!

 

[ms spock]

I think it is good to define these things for ourselves. I'm so glad that we [sufferers due to trauma] can take a theory from psychology or wherever and use it to better understand what has happened to the way we think/feel/act. Thank you Ms Spock for explaining what it means to you :tup:.

You are most welcome! I will come back from time to time to refine it I think.

I don't expect that other children could have prevented their abuse, so why would I have thought I could have prevented my own? Why hate who I am now, and who I was as a child, when I was developing, and it was not my job to ensure my own safety, especially at such a young age?

I am so stuck in this one @rainy_daze. When I pull that apart bit by bit I will stop being so dissociated and I will be more here - it is taking me a lot of time to get there.

Sometimes it is easy to take on the blame, shame and guilt of being abused, when it is in fact the abuser that should own those feelings. Also the thoughts, because it is unfair to have matured into adulthood having been cognitively stunted due to the actions of others.

And there are cognitive distortions - taking on other people's responsibilities e.g. Personalisation! And having the need to mind read and fortune tell in order to protect themselves.

Now I have read the Piaget and others definition again, I can see how sometimes I will go back to being stuck in a certain developmental stage, due to when the abuse was occurring.
]

I need to read Piaget - I have read about what Piaget is meant to have said but I didn't read the book when I got it out of the library and I would like to do that. I am so stuck developmentally - it is so embarrassing at times. I am stuck at the oral stage - I eat as comfort and to mange the day, because I am bored or having nothing to do or when I am overwhelmed and have bit emotions.

I understand all too well that engaging in magical thinking as an adult simply wastes so much time. It is not living presently, but finding a way to numb feelings through fantasies of what life could be.

If I can put this in the original elven - I might put this as number twelve - it is such a big one - I am here for hours every day! It is an improvement on just simply persecuting yourself (I hope!)

:hug: thank you for the honest thread @Ms Spock and adding magical thinking to the list, it has been an eye opener for me.

I am not an honest person @rainy_daze I was groomed for a lying. I am trying to break this down and I am finding it hard as it is in every area of my life.

I'm no expert of course, but trying to ground the issue with some logic perhaps? My T often said in therapy I was intellectualising a lot

Rational thinking is something my psychiatrist regularly suggests for me!

[Just a thought: Maybe removing confusion and working on cognitive distortions is a way to make life less painful or easier to cope with, either when having to face the past or for living in the present moment]

I hope so @rainy_daze

 

[ms spock]

UPDATED DISTORTED COGNITIONS

I have a lot of distorted cognitions (thoughts/perceptions) and I thought writing out our thinking and then naming those distorted cognitions could be fun and educational as well.

The 12 primary cognitive distortions (according to Vulcan Logic) are:

1. All or nothing thinking -- You see things in black and white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.
2. Over-generalization -- You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.
3. Mental filter -- You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it so exclusively that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that colors the entire beaker of water.
4. Disqualifying the positive -- You reject positive experiences by insisting they "don't count" for some reason or other. In this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences.
5. Jumping to conclusions -- You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion. (Involves mind-reading and fortune-telling.)
6. Magnification and minimization -- You exaggerate the importance of things, or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny.
7. Emotional reasoning -- You assume that your emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are, as in "I feel it, therefore it must be true."
8. Should statements -- You try to motivate yourself with "should" and "should not," as if you have to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything.
9. Labeling and mislabeling -- This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself.
10. Personalization -- You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event which, in fact, you were not primarily responsible for.

Add Ons:
No 11. Magical thinking is a distorted cognition as well. It is a big one for Developmental Trauma/Complex Trauma from childhood abuse. Well it is for me anyway.

12. Another form of magical thinking as an adult simply fills up so much time. It is an avoidance strategy. It is not living presently, but finding a way to numb feelings through fantasies of what life could be.

 

[ms spock]

I have a cognitive distortion that if I don't eat I will die or go crazy from my emotions. I am not sure which one it fits into? Any ideas?

 

[The Albatross]

Sounds like magnification to me.

 

[Deleted member 12723]

Ms. Spock, it sounds like a false belief that needs to be replaced with a true, and factual belief.

 

[scout86]

The first part of that is actually true. If you don't eat (at all) you WILL die. Maybe there's an element of black & white thinking? I'm not sure exactly what you're thinking. "If I don't eat RIGHT NOW"? or "If I don't eat all the time"? Something else?

 

[ms spock]

@scout86 right now and all the time - I did not realise that was part of the belief.

 

[scout86]

Could there be an element of magical thinking involved? You believe that eating can prevent things, or affect things, that it can't actually control?

 

[ms spock]

I am not really sure @scout86.

It has something to do with the feeling that it is a fact that if I don't eat heaps and constantly that I will miss out on love and care, and that overwhelming emotions will arise that I will die from or suffer terribly from. It feels like if I give up the eating that there is nothing to buffer me from the world. That I won't survive. It is very little thinking. A very small person's perspective in one way I think, but I am not sure, but the resistance to giving up the continual eating is like it is a life threatening thing to do.

Yes magical thinking is involved now that I think more of it. Thanks.