Distorting Reality...

This is very interesting...i was browsing online and trying to find out more about distorted thinking, other than what my mom has already educated me on. it is definitely been a struggle for me the past couple years.


Seven ways to get things wrong:

1. Black-and-white thinking

People often see things in extremes, with no middle ground, good or bad, success or failure, right against wrong, and so on. By doing this, they miss the reality that things rarely are one way or the other but usually somewhere in-between. In other words, there are shades of grey. Another name for this distortion is all-or-nothing thinking. It involves self-talk like:

• ‘If it’s not perfect, then it’s useless.’
• ‘If you don’t love me, then you must hate me.’
• ‘Either I succeed, or I’m a total failure.’
• ‘If I mess up this part, I may as well give up the whole thing.’

2. Filtering

If you tend to see all the things that are wrong but ignore the positives, then you are filtering. Here are some examples:

• ‘I can’t see anything good about my situation.’
• ‘I don’t have any good points.’
• ‘There’s no hope.’
• ‘All I get is pain.’

3. Overgeneralizing

People often build up one thing about themselves or their circumstances and end up thinking that it represents the whole situation or happens all the time, or is part of a never-ending pattern. For example:

• ‘Everything’s going wrong.’
• ‘Nothing I do ever turns out right.’
• ‘I’ll always be a failure.’
• ‘There’s no hope.’

4. Mind-Reading

There are various ways in which we can jump to a conclusion without enough evidence. One of these is mind-reading — making guesses about what other people are thinking:

• ‘She ignored me on purpose.’
• ‘You don’t really love me.’
• ‘They think I’m boring.’
• ‘You’re only saying that because

5. Fortune-Telling

Another way of jumping to a conclusion is to treat beliefs about the future as though they were realities rather than just predictions:

• ‘I’ll be depressed for ever.’
• ‘I’ll never get another job.’
• ‘Things can only get worse.’

6. Emotional Reasoning

Yet another way to leap to a conclusion is to tell yourself that because you feel a certain way, this is how it really is:

• ‘I feel like a failure, so I must be one.’
• ‘If I’m angry, you must have done something to make me so.’
• ‘I wouldn’t be worrying if there wasn’t something to worry about.’
• ‘Because I feel unattractive, I must be.’

7. Personalizing

You can also jump to a conclusion by thinking that something is directly connected with you:

• ‘Everyone is looking at me.’
• ‘That criticism was meant for me.’
• ‘It must have been me that made her feel bad.’
• ‘He didn’t return my greeting. What did I do?’

Distorted Thinking	Realistic Thinking
I’m a total failure.	I failed this time.
Everything’s wrong.	I’m facing some problems at present.
It’s got to be done perfectly or not at all.	I’d prefer to get it just right, but less than perfect will do.
This is totally wrong.	I disagree with some aspects of this.
She made me angry.	I don’t like what she did, but I made myself angry by the way I viewed it.
She did it because she hates me.	I don’t know why she did it. There’s more than one possible explanation.
Everyone will think I’m stupid.	Some people may be critical of me.
I’ll never be happy again.	Sure, things aren’t so good now. But how do I know what the future holds?
All I get is pain.	I get a lot of pain. But there are also some good things that happen — if I’d only be prepared to notice them.