David Burns’ “Daily Mood Log”
Step 4: Identifying Cognitive Distortions

This is when you think in terms of absolutes.  It’s a function of the difficulty your emotional brain has in detecting shades of grey, making it inclined to see things as either black or white.

“This is a complete disaster.” “This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.” “I’m a total failure.”  These are all examples of this distortion.

If you’re a perfectionist, you’ll probably find that many of your ANTS contain this distortion – something along the lines of, “If I don’t do this perfectly, if it’s not the best I’ve ever done, it’s totally worthless.  And I’m totally worthless.” 

This is when you take one negative event and assume that it represents a long-term pattern.  Generally, ANTS characterized by overgeneralization contain words like “always” or “never.”  

An example would be when someone insults you and you think, “Nobody cares about me (all-or-nothing thinking).  Nobody ever did and nobody ever will  (overgeneralization).”

This is a thought that reflects a tendency to see the glass as “half-empty” – one that focuses only on the most negative aspect(s) of your event.

You may know someone who always manages to find the cloud for every silver lining. If you say, “Gee, it’s a nice day, isn’t it?” they’ll say, “Are you kidding? The stock market’s down, I missed my train, and besides, they say it might rain tonight.”

This is similar to the “Mental Filter.”  It’s when you reject anything positive by refusing to give it validity.  

For example, someone praises you and you think, “I know I’m not that good, they just don’t know me well enough.”  We knew an amateur golfer who was quite good at the game, but no matter how often he got a good score, he’d dismiss it with the thought, “This was just good luck, I won’t do that well again.”

Mind reading:
This is when you assume someone is thinking bad things about you even though you really have no idea what they’re thinking. You may remember the example we gave of someone taking a test who, without any evidence, assumed that the teacher was thinking how stupid he was.

Fortune telling:
This is when you assume something bad will happen in the future when you have no way of knowing that.  An example of this would be when you’re about to go on a blind date, and you’re convinced it’s going to be awful and that (s)he’s going to hate you.

Magnification:
Burns describes this as making a mountain out of a molehill.  An example of this would be someone performing a very difficult, very long piano piece who makes one mistake. The audience erupts in thunderous applause at the end, but the pianist feels like a failure because of the one mistake (s)he can’t stop thinking about.  
    
Minimization
This is the flip side of magnification.  In the above example, at the same time as the pianist was magnifying the one mistake, (s)he was also minimizing his or her overall excellent performance and the hugely positive audience response.

Most events have some combination of positive and negative aspects.  So these two distortions often work together to make us feel bad about whatever happened.

This is when you assume that because you feel something, it must be true.  What’s happening brain-wise with this distortion is that your emotional brain has hijacked your thinking brain.  Examples would include: “I feel bad, therefore I’m a worthless person.” “I feel frightened, therefore something bad is going to happen.” 

Cognitive Behavioral Therapist Albert Ellis refers to this as “shoulding” on ourselves.  The pianist in the above example felt terrible because, whether (s)he was aware of it or not, (s)he had the thought, “I shouldn’t have made that mistake”.  Perhaps you’ve accidentally said something rude and felt awful afterwards, because you had the thought, “I should always be nice.” 

Generally, when your “should” statement is about yourself, you tend to feel depressed, frustrated, or guilty. When your “should” statement is about someone else (“She shouldn’t have said that to him”), you’ll probably feel some combination of annoyed, resentful, self-righteous, and angry.

This is similar to all-or-nothing thinking. When we think of ourselves or someone else in terms of a particular label, we ignore everything about them except for that one thing. For example, when you have the thought, “He’s an insensitive person,” you’ve just reduced a complex person to one single characteristic.  When you have the thought, “I’m a loser,” you’re no longer a normal, complex person who succeeds at some things and fails at others.  You cease to be yourself and become a caricature of a loser.

Negative labeling is one of the most pervasive distortions – and one that’s easy to miss because, in the moment, the label seems to be justified.  It’s a distortion that leads to many negative emotions about ourselves and others.  And when we begin to notice it and let go of the label, it can not only free us from negative emotions, but also free us to be more insightful and creative.

Personalization is when you make something about you that wasn’t.  For example, your friend snaps at you about something trivial and you assume it’s because (s)he’s annoyed with you – when it was really just that (s)he’d had a rough day and was cranky.  

Another variation of personalization is when you blame yourself for something you had no control over.  For example, children often blame themselves when their parents get divorced.

Blaming is the opposite of personalization – it’s when you blame something or someone else for something that’s your responsibility.  An example could be refusing to take any responsibility for problems in a relationship, but instead always blaming the other person. Blaming is also a very common way to avoid taking responsibility for your own negative emotions: “If only so-and-so would do things differently, I would be happy.”