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NEGATIVE COGNITIVE DISTORTIONS 1. ALL OR NOTHING THINKING You see things in black and white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect you see yourself as a total failure. 2. OVERGENERALIZATION You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat. 3. MENTAL FILTER You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened like the drop of ink that discolours the entire beaker of water. 4.DISQUALIFYING THE POSITIVE You reject positive experiences by insisting that "they don't count" for some reason or other. In this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences. 5. JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly suppport your conclusion. You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you and you don't bother to check this out [mind-reading]. You anticipate that things will turn out badly and you feel convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact [the fortune teller error]. 6. MAGNIFICATION [CATASTROPHIZING] OR MINIMIZATION You exaggerate the importance of things [such as your goof-up or someone else's achievement] or you shrink things inappropriately until they appear tiny [your own desirable qualities or the other person's imperfections]. This is also called "the binocular trick". 7. EMOTIONAL REASONING You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are "I feel it therefore it must be true." 8. "SHOULD" STATEMENTS You try to motivate yourself with "shoulds" and "shouldn'ts", as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything ["Musts" and "oughts" are also offenders]. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct "should" statements toward others you feel anger, frustration, and resentment. 9. LABELING AND MISLABELING This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error you attach a negative label to yourself "I'm a loser". When someone else's behavior rubs you the wrong way you attach a negative label to him: "He's a goddam louse". Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly coloured and emotionally loaded. 10. PERSONALIZATION You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event which in fact you were not primarily responsible for. from Feeling Good - The New Mood Therapy by David D. Burns, M.D. published 1980 janet paterson 52 now / 41 dx / 37 onset po box 171, almonte, ontario, canada, K0A 1A0 a new voice: <http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Village/6263/> <mailto:[log in to unmask]>