Emotions & Cognitive Vulnerability

We are going to look at several types of cognitive distortions and the respective ways of dealing with these types of thoughts. Cognitive distortions are unrealistic perceptions and interpretations of what is happening around or inside us. This concept is characteristic for cognitive behavioral therapy. First you will look at the three types of cognitive distortions below. After examining them, your job will be to think of a situation where you felt overwhelming emotions and try to recognize and fix the cognitive distortions you were using before you started feeling the intense negative emotions.

1. All-Or-Nothing Thinking

This type of unrealistic thinking is very common and it's almost always present when we think about a certain event in a biased way. It refers to seeing things in extreme categories - "I am a loser", "I am bad at my job", "Everybody hates me." The truth about these statements is that everyone can find at least several arguments against the categories "loser", "bad at job", and "everyone hates me". Labels and derogatory names that perhaps you sometimes give yourself are never helpful and never true. So, whenever you are certain about some negative label that you've put on yourself, or some definitive and negative category, try to think about the objective arguments against your biased opinion.

2. Maximization Or Minimization

Maximization refers to taking the negative aspect of a certain situation and catastrophizing it, or blowing it out of proportion. This does not mean to undermine the situation or let some problematic aspects slide, but to simply be realistic about what the severity of the problem is, no more, no less. For example, if you think "I was so socially anxious at this party, I was sweating non-stop and I'm sure that everyone thinks I am weird." - then here you are probably using maximization of this negative aspect. The truth is, the other people at the party probably were busy with other things. Also, we always tend to focus on our self-perceived flaws even though other people most often don't notice them.

Minimization is the opposite case - when you are diminishing the importance of a positive aspect from a certain situation. "Yes, I got a promotion, but my colleagues still don't like me very much." Although this is undoubtedly a positive event, the person ruminates over another issue.

3. Overgeneralization

Overgeneralization refers to the assumption that if something bad happened once, then it will happen again and again. You had a fight with your partner - you assume that this will go on forever until you split; a college student gets one bad grade and she assumes that she is an unworthy student; you had a period where you were clinically depressed and you assume that it is inevitable that you will experience it again.

This is an unrealistic and distorted form of thinking. Over time you will get more effective in noticing the distortions in your thinking, thus you will be able to prevent the overwhelming emotions from reining.

Now that you got familiar with the types of distortions, think of a recent event where you were overwhelmed with intense negative emotions. Try to remember the situation and what you were thinking before the emotion process took place. Take your time. Use the worksheet and try to write down the train of thought you had.

Then, think about which of these three types of distortions applies to your case. At the end, write a rational, objective response based on the distortion you identified. Look at the examples below to get the idea.

Example