Cognitive distortions
Familiar ways of interpreting events can narrow our view. The labels below help us pause and check for other explanations.
These labels can help notice familiar ways of interpreting events. A single thought says nothing about a diagnosis or a person's character; it is simply an invitation to gently check other explanations.
A catalogue of 14 common ways of interpreting events. Each distortion is not a diagnosis or a personality trait, but an invitation to gently check for other explanations.
All-or-nothing thinking
A situation is judged only in extreme categories, while partial results and shades in between go unnoticed.
Blaming
All responsibility for one's state or an outcome is assigned to another person, overlooking personal choices and circumstances.
Catastrophising
Possible difficulties rapidly expand into the worst scenario, while resources and alternatives are underestimated.
Discounting the positive
A positive experience is treated as luck, an insignificant detail or something that somehow does not count.
Emotional reasoning
A strong feeling is treated as direct proof that the situation truly is the way it feels.
Fortune telling
An unfavourable outcome is treated as already known even though the situation has not yet unfolded.
Labelling
A particular action or difficulty becomes a broad, fixed definition of a person.
Magnification and minimisation
The importance of something unpleasant is enlarged, while personal resources, successes or mitigating facts are made smaller.
Mind reading
An assumption about another person's thoughts or attitude is taken as fact without enough evidence.
Negative filtering
Attention stays fixed on an unpleasant detail while the rest of the available information fades into the background.
Overgeneralisation
One or a few events are turned into a broad rule about the future, oneself or other people.
Personalisation
Excessive responsibility is assigned to oneself for an event shaped by many factors.
Rigid should statements
Flexible wishes and guidelines become unconditional demands placed on oneself, other people or life.
Unfair comparison
One's vulnerable areas are compared with another person's strengths without accounting for different conditions, experience or cost.