Cognitive Distortions

Front 1

All or Nothing Thinking

Back 1

-you see yourself in black and white categories

-if your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure

Front 2

Overgeneralization

Back 2

You see a single negative event as a never ending pattern of defeat

Front 3

Mental Filter

Back 3

-you pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively, so that your vision of reality becomes darkened

Front 4

Disqualifying the Positive

Back 4

You reject positive experiences by insisting they "don't count" for some reason or another

Front 5

Jumping to Conclusions

Back 5

You make a negative interpretation even tho there are no definite facts that support your conclusion

*Mind reading - conclude someone is reacting negatively to you and don't bother to check it out

*Fortune teller - anticipate that things will turn out badly and are convinced your prediction is an established fact

Front 6

Magnification

Back 6

-aka catastrophizing/minimization

-exagerate the importance of things or innapropriately shrink things until they appear tiny

Front 7

Emotional Reasoning

Back 7

You assume that negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are

-"I think, therefore it must be true"

Front 8

Should Statements

Back 8

You try to motivate yourself with should and shouldn'ts, as if you have to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything

-must and oughts are also offenders

-the emotional consequence is guilt

-when directing should Statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration and resentment

Front 9

Labeling and Misleading

Back 9

This is an extreme form of generalization

-instead of describong your error you attach a negative label to yourself such as "I'm dumb" or directed towards others

-describing an event with emotional language

Front 10

Personalization

Back 10

You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event which, in fact, you were not primarily responsible for