When it comes to mental health, "cognitive distortion" means the unfair ways people think about themselves or others. People use this word in a way that is related to cognitive behavioural therapy, which is where it came from.
There are a number of ways to lessen the effects of these automatic thought processes, which can make you feel and act badly.
This piece and its follow-ups try to show a methodical way to fix these errors by stopping them from happening automatically and replacing them with a more sensible, accurate, and broad view.
This article will look at the cognitive distortions that keep happening and bother us, which are the same ones I found in the last piece.
Here are a few examples of common cognitive distortions:
Seeing everything as black and white. Failed performance means that something did not work perfectly. This is what I call a lack of grey area. There needs to be a lot of grey area.
Being open to past problems as if they will keep happening. Accepting that bad things will always happen and that we can't get past them. It's possible to code it as a "self-fulfilling prophecy."
To become obsessed with one bad thing and see the whole situation as bad, like an ink drop falling into water. It's possible to code it as ink-water.
For whatever reason, thinking that results that are good are "not counting." In this way, you can make sure that only the bad results stay by ignoring the good ones that come from events. We can write "that doesn't count" in the code.
Going through the book from beginning to end. It is thought that the end will be the same as the beginning, whether it is good or negative. We don't care about the steps in between.
After fighting cognitive distortions, you will understand how they impact your life and develop strong muscles to resist the flood of negative thoughts that come into your life because of the errors these automatic thoughts cause.
In other articles, we've talked about how the fact that this fight will get rid of automatic thoughts doesn't mean that you will never feel bad feelings again. There is no feeling that is better than any other because they are all ours.
It's not only part of being human to feel all feelings, but it's also a sign of a healthy mind. For instance, it's normal and healthy to feel sad and angry when we lose a loved one.