Cognitive distortions
Cognitive distortions are systematically biased thinking patterns that skew a person's perception of reality — first identified by Aaron Beck and later expanded by David Burns. They are automatic, convincing, and dysfunctional: they generate negative emotions and maladaptive behaviors.
Key distortions include: all-or-nothing thinking (polarization), catastrophizing, overgeneralization (one negative event means 'always'), mental filtering (attending only to the negative), disqualifying the positive, mind reading (assuming what others think), fortune telling (predicting the worst), magnification/minimization, emotional reasoning ('I feel it, so it must be true'), personalization (taking responsibility for things outside one's control), and rigid 'shoulds.'
Identifying the specific distortion at play is the first step of cognitive restructuring in CBT.
💡 Practical example
'I made a mistake in the presentation, I'm incompetent' — overgeneralization plus all-or-nothing thinking. Cognitive restructuring asks: does one mistake make a person incompetent? What's the evidence? What would a more balanced perspective look like?
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