The Mind Distortions


1- Tunnel vision
Example: ‘I expect it’ll be another boring party’. It is being stuck in a mental groove.
In particular you look for that which confirms your fear or prejudice, remember it
from the past and expect it in the future. You ignore other points of view or the
possibility of alternative solutions.
2- Awfulizing
Example: ‘I can’t bear going on these awful buses’. This attitude is saying that it’s
unacceptable if things aren’t as you would prefer them to be. You take the negative
aspect of a situation and magnify it. To handle this, recognize when you use words
like terrible, awful, disgusting, etc. and in particular the phrase ‘I can’t stand it’.
Examine their rationality.
3-Black & White Thinking
Example: ‘You’re either for me or against me’. Things are black or white, wonderful
or terrible, a great success or a total failure, brilliantly clever or really stupid, a
certainty or a complete mystery, friend or enemy, love or hate - there is no middle
ground, no room for improvement, no room for mistakes. Judgments on self and
others swing from one emotional extreme to another and are easily triggered. It is
important to remember that human beings are just too complex to be reduced to
dichotomous judgments, and that all qualities fall somewhere along a continuum,
containing elements of either extreme.
4- Generalization
Example: ‘I’ll never be any good at tennis’ after one poor game. In this distortion
you make a broad, generalized conclusion, often couched in the form of absolute
statements, based on a single piece of evidence. If something bad happens once, you
expect it to happen over and over again. If someone shows evidence of a negative
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trait, this is picked up on and exaggerated into a global judgment. This inevitably
leads to a more and more restricted life and your view of the world becomes
stereotyped. Cue words that indicate you may be over-generalizing are: all, every,
none, never, always, everybody and nobody. To become more flexible use words
such as: may, sometimes and often, and be particularly sensitive to absolute
statements about the future, such as ‘No one will ever love me’, because they may
become self-fulfilling prophecies.
5-Assumption
Example: ‘Nothing can change the way I feel’. Making an assumption, presupposes
knowledge that you do not have. Assumptions are often popular beliefs that have
been adopted without examining their basis in fact, such as ‘I’m over the hill now
that I’m forty’. Making decisions based on assumptions may lead to disaster, as when
an executive assumes that a new product will sell well, having made no market
research. Often, taking things for granted causes people to be blind to possible
solutions - assuming no-one can help them, a couple’s marriage may go on the rocks,
when they could seek counseling. Question: what leads you to believe this? Why do
it this way? Who says? What alternatives are there? What would happen if you did?
What would happen if you didn’t?
As a practical matter, all of us must proceed with the business of living by relying on
‘maps’ of the world which we have taken on trust and which we have not tested and
often cannot test. To supplement personal experience, we absorb a constant stream of
reports, descriptions, judgments, inferences and assumptions coming from a
multitude of sources. From this abundance of stored information, you piece together
a mental ‘model’ of the world and its workings that literally becomes your world
view. However, people do vary considerably in the extent of their misinformation
and in the degree to which they actively seek out new information, take opportunities
to correct or update their mental models, and expose themselves to new experiences.
6-Projection
Example: ‘I know he doesn’t like me’. Making false assumptions about what other
people think depends on a process called projection. It is like mind-reading - putting
words into peoples’ mouths. You imagine that people feel the same way you do and
react to things the same way. If you get angry when someone is late, you assume that
another will feel the same way about you or others, in that situation. If you don’t like
yourself, you assume others also think that way. The answer is not to jump to
conclusions about what other people think and feel.
7- Negative thinking
Example: ‘We haven’t seen each other for two days - I think the relationship is
falling apart’. You read a newspaper article about some misfortune and wonder if
that could happen to you. Predicting negative consequences is a defense, to protect
oneself from disappointment by expecting the worst. Consider, what are the realistic
odds of that happening?
8- Self-consciousness
Example: ‘Quite a few people here seem smarter than I am’. This is the introverted
tendency to relate everything around you to yourself, to think people must be judging
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you, or to think that everything they do or say is a reaction to something about you. It
is the habit of continually comparing yourself to other people, based on the
underlying assumption is that your worth is questionable. You are therefore
continually forced to test your value as a person by measuring yourself against
others. If you come out better you have a moment’s relief; if you come up short, you
feel diminished. Your worth doesn’t depend on being better than others, so why start
the comparison gamble?
9- Blame
Example: ‘It’s your fault we’re in debt’. If you see yourself as externally controlled,
you see yourself as helpless, a victim of fate or ‘the system’. You don’t believe you
can really affect the basic shape of your life, let alone make any difference in the
world, so you try and manipulate others to take care of your interests. Someone else
is to blame and is responsible for your pain, your loss, your failure. The truth is that
we are constantly making decisions and every decision affects and steers our lives. It
is your responsibility to assert your needs, to say no or go elsewhere for what you
want. In some way we are responsible for nearly everything that happens to us,
including our distress and unhappiness. Taking responsibility means accepting the
consequences of your own choices. Ask yourself: ‘What choices have I made that
resulted in this situation? What decisions can I now make to change it?’
The opposite distortion is also very common - the fallacy that makes you responsible
for the pain or happiness of everyone around you. You carry the world on your
shoulders. You have to right all wrongs, fill every need and balm each hurt; if you
don’t you feel guilty and turn the blame on yourself. Blaming yourself means
labeling yourself inadequate if things go wrong. With this viewpoint you are very
easily manipulated. The key to overcoming this fallacy is to recognize that each
person is responsible for himself - taking responsibility doesn’t imply that you are
also responsible for what happens to others. Remember, part of respecting others
includes respecting their ability to overcome or accept their own pains, make their
own decisions and be in control of their own lives.
10-Unfairness
Example: ‘It’s not fair, he should take me out more often’. The consideration of
unfairness results from resentment that the other person does not want or prefer the
same as you, or that events do not turn out in your favor. The person gets locked into
his or her own point of view, with a feeling of ever-growing resentment. Be honest
with yourself and the other person. Say what you want or prefer, without getting
involved in the fallacy of unfairness: that people and situations shouldn’t be the way
they are.
11-Emotional reasoning
Example: ‘I feel depressed, life must be pointless’. You believe that what you feel
must be true - automatically. If you feel stupid then you must lack intelligence. If you
feel guilty then you must have done something wrong. If you feel angry, someone
must have taken advantage of you. However, there is nothing automatically true
about what you feel - your feelings can lie to you, they can be based on
misconceptions. If your feelings are based on distorted thoughts, then they won’t
have any validity. So be skeptical about your feelings and examine them as you
would a used car.
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12- Manipulation
Example: ‘If we had sex more often, I’d be more affectionate’. The only person you
can really control or have much hope of changing is yourself. When you pressure
people to change, you are forcing them to be different for your own benefit.
Strategies for manipulating others include blaming, demanding, withholding and
trading - in order to make the other feel obliged. The usual result is that the other
person feels attacked or pushed around and resists changing at all, or feels resentful if
they do. The underlying fallacy of this thinking style is that your happiness depends
on controlling the behavior of others. In fact your happiness depends on the many
thousands of large and small decisions you make during your life.
13- Shoulds
Example: ‘You should never ask people personal questions’. In this distortion, you
operate from a list of inflexible rules about how you and other people should act. The
rules are right and indisputable. Any particular deviation from your particular values
or standards is bad. As a result you are often in the position of judging and finding
fault. People irritate you, they don’t act properly or think correctly. They have
unacceptable traits, habits and opinions that make them hard to tolerate. They should
know the rules and they should follow them. Of course, the answer is to focus on
each person’s uniqueness: his or her particular needs, limitations, fears and pleasures,
and consequently different values. Personal values are just that - personal.
You are also making yourself suffer with shoulds, oughts and musts (or their
negatives). You feel compelled to do something or be a certain way and feel guilty if
you don’t, but you never bother to ask objectively if it really makes sense. Some
people beat themselves up constantly for being incompetent, insensitive, stupid, too
emotional, etc. They are always ready to be wrong. The psychiatrist Karen Horney
called this the ‘tyranny of the shoulds.
14- Got to be right
Example: ‘I’ve been doing this longer than you, so I know what I’m talking about’.
In this distortion you are usually on the defensive, needing to prove to yourself and
others that your views, assumptions and actions are all correct. You never make
mistakes! If you’ve got to be right, you don’t listen. You can’t afford to - listening
might reveal that you are wrong sometimes. Your opinions rarely change because if
the facts don’t fit what you already believe you ignore them. This makes you lonely,
because being right seems more important than an honest, caring relationship.
The key to overcoming being right, is active listening - making sure you really
understand what’s been said to you, to appreciate the other’s point of view and what
you can learn from it, which is effort better spent than in devising rebuttals and
attacks. Remember that other people believe what they are saying as strongly as you
do, and there is not always just the one right answer.
15-. Heaven’s reward
Example: ‘I worked and raised these kids and look what thanks I get’. This distorted
thinking style accepts pain and unhappiness because ‘those who do good are
rewarded in the end’. You expect all your sacrifice and self-denial to pay off, as if
there was someone keeping score. You feel hostile and bitter when the reward
doesn’t come. In reality the reward is now. Your relationship, your progress toward
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your goals, and the care you give to those you love, should be intrinsically
rewarding. If not, you need to rearrange your activities to provide some here-andnow
reward, dropping or sharing the activities that chronically drain you - Heaven is
a long way off and you can get very tired waiting.
The best way to practice identifying Thought Distortions in everyday life, is to take
particular notice of one of the distortions for one day, and notice whenever it is used
- by others or by yourself!
Frequently, several Distortions are combined in a statement, or a statement fits into
several categories of Distortion. These are commonly Rationalizations - i.e.
seemingly plausible explanations, excuses or justifications, which in fact are ignoring
or fudging the real issue. For example. “I don’t need to work hard on this job because
no one else will,” is an assumption, a generalization, negative thinking, tunnel vision,
projection, and so on.