Most people believe in cherished rules like this, but they result in misinterpretations, poor decision-making, lowered self-esteem and stressful emotions. They were
usually originally made at the end of a traumatic experience when they seemed to make sense, to be safe solutions to the survival-threatening situation. The decision is
repressed along with the memory of the event, but it resurfaces in automatic thinking. In other situations of course, it doesn’t make much sense.
To begin combating your distortions, you should recall a time when you were experiencing a painful emotion or were in the middle of some interpersonal conflict.
Firstly, identify the emotion you felt. Secondly, describe the situation. Consider: ‘What do I believe to be true about situations like this?’ What did you think about
during the event? Thirdly, identify the fallacy or distortion in the thinking. Finally, restructure your belief to take account of the uncovered distortion. The following
section will help you identify the sort of distortions and irrationalities that can so easily cause painful emotion.
15 types of distorted thinking
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. Awfulising
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, recognise 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. Judgements 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 judgements, and that all qualities fall somewhere along a continuum, containing elements of either extreme.
4. Generalisation
Example: ‘I’ll never be any good at tennis’ after one poor game. In this distortion you make a broad, generalised 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
trait, this is picked up on and exaggerated into a global judgement. 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-generalising 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
