Are you suffering from cognitive distortions?
Distortions are mental traps that keep a person from enjoying a quality life. They are thoughts that are false and inaccurate and can cause severe psychological damage. When you act on your distorted thoughts; relationships fall apart, communication breaks down, productivity decreases and you suffer mentally.
Following are some cognitive distortions. Identify the ones you have.
1. Mind reading - you assume what other people are thinking about you.
2. Fortune-telling - you predict that things won't work out for you.
3. Personalization - you take everything happening around you personally and blame yourself for events that are beyond your control.
4. Overgeneralization - you make blanket statements about people and frequently use words such as “always”, “never”, “everyone”, “no one” in your statements.
5. Magnification - Making mountains out of a molehill. You make a big deal out of a trivial issue.
6. Black and white thinking - you believe that people or circumstances are either good or bad - there are no shades of grey.
7. Negative filter - you overlook the positives in the person or circumstance and focus only on the negatives.
8. Jumping to conclusions - You make predictions about people, their behaviour and circumstances around you with little or no evidence.
9. Minimization - You minimize or reduce the significance of important events.
10. Labelling - You are quick to assign labels to yourself and others.
Test your distortions - Distortions are a reflection of your core thoughts. Introspect and find out whether your thoughts are based on your feelings or facts. Avoid taking emotions as evidence for the truth. Identifying your distortion is the first step to rational thinking. Just because you're thinking it, doesn't make it a fact. Find evidence for your thoughts. Throw away assumptions and hold on to the facts.
Relationships and life become smoother when we silence distorted thoughts and become rational thinkers.
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