Examples of Irrational Thoughts/Cognitive Distortions:
These are common errors in thinking. And sometimes these distortions can cause us distress or other strong emotions.
Black and White Thinking: This is all or nothing thinking. For example, if you see yourself as failing at one thing, you think it makes you a failure at everything. "I didn't pass my driver's test. I can't ever do anything right."
Overgeneralization: This is where if one thing happens that is bad, you assume all things will be bad. For example, "I woke up late this morning. This day is doomed to be terrible."
Ignoring the Positive: You disqualify any positive and focus on the negative. Maybe you got an A on a test, but are disregarding that because you messed up somewhere else.
Jumping to Conclusions: You ignore facts in favour of your own interpretations. You may assume your friend hates you despite them inviting you to the movies the day before because they gave you a short response.
Mind Reading: This is making a conclusion about how someone else is feeling. "My friend hates me. I can tell."
Possibilities to Cope with Irrational Thoughts / Cognitive Distortions
Challenging Irrational Thoughts: Here’s a post I wrote about this.
You’ll likely find that most of these possibilities are very similar. One of the more common ways to deal with thoughts like the above is to use evidence and logic because it gives our brain something solid to use. Just telling ourselves that our thoughts aren’t real isn’t often helpful enough whereas evidence can help make it more convincing.
I’m going to include a couple other links I think may be helpful:
Emotional Permanence: Here’s a post on it. This one I think is important to understand because if we lack emotional permanence then it makes it that much easier to forget about anything other than the feelings in the current moment which make reinforce any negative thoughts.
Needing Reassurance: Sometimes our distorted thoughts lead us to second guessing our loved ones. Here’s a post about that, how to cope with it, and how to get reassurance in a healthy way if needed.
Some General Tips:
- Learn about the different types of irrational thinking and cognitive distortions. (I don’t have them all listed). Being able to recognize them can be helpful itself. I find when I’m able to realize it’s a cognitive distortion, I’m able to move beyond it easier.
- Keep a list of our accomplishments that you add to. This can be helpful in times we need reminders if we often have thoughts about us being a failure anytime we make a mistake.
- Keep screenshots of loved ones and/or lists of things they’ve done that make you feel cared for. This can be helpful if we often have doubting thoughts about loved ones as a result of our cognitive distortions.
- Think about what you’d tell a friend. If a friend failed a test, would I think they were a failure?
- Sit with the discomfort. Sometimes, we know a thought is irrational and all we can do is get through it. Telling myself “it’s an irrational thought. I can sit with it. I don’t need to act on it” can be helpful. Acting on my feelings to irrational thoughts often damages my relationships or has other negative effects. But as uncomfortable as the thoughts are, learning to just sit with them instead of acting on them prevents some negative consequences.
- Journaling. You can journal about your thoughts and feelings for a set amount of time a day and then mark the irrational thoughts. This can help us learn to recognize them when we’re having them.
- Focus on something else. Sometimes the thoughts are too distressing and the best thing we can do is distract ourselves. You could reach out to a friend, watch a favourite show, enjoy an activity, etc.
