Name that distorted cognition (thought/perception)

[Chiqui]

@Ms Spock
Thank you very much, I am sure I will find It useful!!
Because of my trauma, I have to avoid Meditation and Mindfullnes and relaxing music. It triggers me automatically and I disasociated and go space out. But reading and writting it is great for me!

 

[ms spock]

Great you know what works for you @MariaY!

The Self Compassion Break is written out as an exercise on Kristin Neff's Self Compassion website. If you scroll down on this page you can see the writing exercises. Self-Compassion Exercises by Dr. Kristin Neff

 

[Chiqui]

Great you know what works for you @MariaY!

The Self Compassion Break is written ou...

 :joyful::happy:

 

[trying2movefwd]

My T provided me with a list today. I am certain that I am guilty of all distorted cognitions at one time or another. I am also going to try and challenge my distorted thoughts. The problem is sometimes they seem rational in that moment. How does one go from recognizing them after the fact to "stopping them in their tracks" so to speak? Like how do you begin to notice ohhh this is irrational in the moment as opposed to that was irrational?

 

[Chiqui]

My T provided me with a list today. I am certain that I am guilty of all distorted cognitions at...

If this can help somehow, I do a lot of self talk. I try to teach to myself when my perception is wrong and try to explain me why. As you said, they seem rational a lot of times. With repetition and contrast the thought with the fact or result, I want to believe I am moving on. But also true that sometimes I can't handle my respond. Something triggered me badly today and just broke into tears and went into a deep sadness. Very, very slowly, I have managed, with help from other person, to calm down and to realize what on earth was happenning. It has taken around 6 hours to readjust my mood, but still sad.
So, for me, it depends of many factors.

 

[ms spock]

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.

I am doing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9.

Practice @trying2movefwd practice, practice, practice, practice - writing in a journal or documenting your thinking as often as you can.

Maybe rephase "guilty" to another way of thinking because being guilty of distorted cognitions may not be the most helpful way of thinking about it. I engage in distorted cognitions and I am working on not doing them as much. I am once again rereading the David Burns book in order to learn more. The first time I read that book I had the same response as you - how will I ever learn how to tell when my thoughts are distorted? I remember being quite upset about not knowing about that. I am now learning more each day. Doing the DBT self help website is helpful in that it breaks a lot of it down. You will find your own way that works for you, which might not be the way it works for me.

 

[ms spock]

I feel like I can't do things - reality proves that this is a distorted thinking but it is strong within me. I really feel that this is fact and it is not fact but I keep rolling around in helplessness and hopelessness and then I do stuff but it takes immense effort.

I am getting very high marks and I still feel like I can't do the work - this is both irrational and distorted thinking!

I am doing Jumping to Conclusions. I am doing Emotional Reasoning. I am doing Disqualifying the Positive. I am also doing Magnification and Minimisation. I am probably doing Mislabelling as well.

 

[Chiqui]

I feel like I can't do things - reality proves that this is a distorted thinking but it is strong withi...

Thanks for sharing this. I discredit myself systematically, even if I have clear facts that say I have performed right. Go on, girl :tup:

 

[ms spock]

My thinking is at once irrational, not based on reality, distorted and a bit delusional - no one would kill or maim me even if I did make a mistake - but this feels like "common sense" to me - it is a visceral experience. I feels like gospel truth, it feels like a law of physics, it feels like science evidence based reality. It feels like a truth.

But it is not a truth - no matter how much my body and mind lie to me.

I have been here before - now it is "dispute the thought, dispute the thought, dispute the thought, make contact with reality, make contact with reality, make contact with reality, do what is scariest, do what is scariest, do what is scariest, challenge the distortion, challenge the distortion, challenge the distortion, challenge the distortion and then practice, practice, practice, practice until it becomes normalised".

 

[Chiqui]

My thinking is at once irrational, not based on reality, distorted and a bit delusional - no one would...

:tup::hug::)

 

[trying2movefwd]

I just did this with a worksheet my T gave me....my thought/belief is, " that no one cares about me, that I am intolerable, bothersome, a burden, and that "NO ONE" really cares about me and I must not be the good Mother that I thought I was....
My worksheet might use different wording for distorted cognitions, here we go...
Black and white thinking:no one,
Filtering: focus on negatives and ignore positives
Catastrophizing:
Mind reading: thinking others don't care about me as though that's their thoughts when it might not be so

Feelings as facts

Labeling

Unfair comparisons (Im a bad Mom because CPS was called that means I am right there with the horrible abusive parents. ..actually I never abused my kids. I took them out of abuse, i do not have chemical dependency issues at all, i simply struggle with depression and struggle to take care of my self and home at times. I still have my children, i love them more than anything on this earth!
Another source says inability to disconform: I reject that their are people who care about me.
Judgement focused :

 

[ms spock]

Overgeneralisation!