About Us Contact Us
David Burns’ “Daily Mood Log”
Step 4: Identifying Cognitive Distortions
Introduction
There are 5 steps to the Daily mood log:
On this page we’ll focus on identifying the cognitive distortions in the
automatic negative thoughts (ANTS) you identified in Step 3.
We’ll
describe ten different distortions that are commonly used by cognitive
behavioral therapists. Any one ANT will likely contain at least one,
maybe several – and don’t be surprised if some of your ANTS contain as
many as all 10 distortions!
Preparation
As we suggested with each of the previous three steps, it will be helpful
to take a moment to “remember to breathe” – that is, to relax, take a
few slow deep breaths, and be calmly mindful of what you’re feeling. As
you begin to identify the distortions in your ANTS, if you notice
yourself starting to tense up, see if you can pause for a moment to
breathe and let go of the tension.
You may even start to notice a
new crop of automatic negative thoughts arising as you work your way
through this exercise: “I can’t do this.” “I’ve never been good at this
stuff.” “Some people may find this kind of thing helpful, but my
problems are different.”
If you do start to notice an ANT . . . or two .
. . or ten, see if you can breathe calmly as you observe the thoughts
from the “hub” of your wheel of awareness, keeping some sense of
connection to your “core” of calm, ease, and contentment.
Remember Your Brain
It will also be helpful to remind yourself once again that it’s not the
event that’s causing your suffering, it’s the story your upstairs brain
is telling you – under the influence of the desires, fears, and biases
of your downstairs (emotional and instinctive) brain. Your downstairs
brain doesn’t much care about a constructive or reasonable view of the
situation. It’s interested in assuring your survival (that is, survival
of your body and your personality), in gaining greater pleasure,
avoiding pain, maintaining the relationships you depend on, and in
general, having more control over your life, circumstances, and other
people.
In this step of the Mood Log, you’ll be using your
upstairs brain to identify the distortions generated by your downstairs
brain. This will help to free your upstairs brain from their influence,
enabling it to see more clearly and accurately.
As your MPFC
and heart intelligence become more well-developed, they will naturally
help to modify the survival instincts of your downstairs brain,
tempering them with core qualities such as compassion, wisdom,
tranquility, and generosity.
Ten Cognitive Distortions
The following is David Burns’ list of ten basic cognitive distortions.
It’s kind of remarkable that most automatic thoughts seem to fit into at
least one of these categories. It seems that even in our distortions,
we’re more alike than we tend to realize.
It’s possible,
however, that you may come up with an ANT that defies these categories –
in which case, do your best to figure out what it is about the thought
that’s inaccurate or irrational. And feel free to make up your own
distortion categories.
Without further ado, here they are:
|
1. All-or-Nothing Thinking:
|
|
|
|
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.”
|
|
|
|
|
2. Overgeneralization:
|
|
|
|
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).”
|
|
|
|
|
3. Mental Filter:
|
|
|
|
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.”
|
|
|
|
|
4. Discounting the Positive:
|
|
|
|
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.”
|
|
|
|
|
5. Jumping to Conclusions (this often takes two forms):
|
|
|
|
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.
|
|
|
|
|
6. Magnification / Minimization:
|
|
|
|
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.
|
|
|
|
|
7. Emotional Reasoning:
|
|
|
|
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.”
|
|
|
|
|
8. "Should” Statements:
|
|
|
|
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.
|
|
|
|
|
9. Negative Labeling:
|
|
|
|
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.
|
|
|
|
|
10. Personalization / Blame:
|
|
|
|
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.”
|
|
|
|
Now you can go through each of the automatic negative thoughts
you identified in Step 3 and figure out which distortions they contain.
When you’ve completed this step, you’re ready to go on to the last step where you’ll use all the work you’ve done so far to transform your negative distorted thinking into thinking that is more realistic and constructive. This has the potential to powerfully transform the way you experience your life.