Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

Mental Filter

Those who engage in mental filtering focus on a single negative aspect of something in their lives, despite many positives about the same thing. For example: A writer has just finished a short story and submitted it to their friends to get their opinion. Most of the reviews are positive except for one that is mildly critical. The writer dwells exclusively on the negative review, completely forgetting about all the positive reviews.

Discounting the positive

While people with emotional problems are quick to jump on the negative, they just as easily discount the positive experiences, by saying that they do not count for one reason or another..."someone else could have done a better job"...or "I just got lucky this time"...

Jumping to conclusions

This distortion involves coming to a conclusion without any facts to support it. It is a kind of knee jerk reaction that is not wholely based in reality. You may have just had an interview for a job and done an excellent job and yet tell yourself..."I am never going to get that job", even though the interview went very well which would seem to indicate just the opposite.

Magnification

This involves exaggerating your faults and shortcomings and minimizing the importance of your good qualities. Those who engage in this type of distortion will see their faults as insurmountable barriers to happiness and fail to see the importance of what they do well.

Emotional Reasoning

This distortion involves translating negative emotions into a perceived reality. In other words a person thinks because they feel a certain way then those feelings reflect the way things really are. For example: a person may find themselves anxious and afraid of going for a job interview and thus conclude that interviews really are something to be afraid of.

Should statements

"shoulds", "musts", "have tos" and "oughts" all fall under this category. People will tell themselves that things "should" turn out the way they expect them to be. This approach rarely works when applied to the self or to others and leads to feelings of guilt, anger and frustration.

Labelling

An extreme form of all or nothing thinking, labelling involves attaching a negative label to yourself or others. Examples might be "i'm a fool!", "I'm a loser!", "I'm a failure", or similar labels may be attached to others that you deal with. These are just useless abstractions, attaching labels to a person's character instead of their thinking or behaviour. It can lead to feelings of frustration, anger, anxiety and low self esteem and when applied to others can make effective communication impossible.

Page 1 2 3
Next
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Please Like & Share this article Now! Takes like Two Seconds. Thank You!

Addthis Sharing network below.

To top of page