ISSUE #15 cont'd -- Information about

COGNITIVE DISTORTIONS

Many of you may be familiar with the concept of “cognitive distortion” type of thinking that can trigger or certainly make depression worse.  A lot of “experts” in the field believe that what we think is responsible for our depression and someone, I’m not sure who, developed a list of different types of thoughts we have that can cause or make our depression worse.

I thought I might post one a week as a reminder of how we might be feeding our depressive-type feelings. I sometimes suffer depression and I know I am guilty of some of these kind of thoughts. It’s good to be reminded and certainly helps as a way of checking and reminding ourselves that there is another way and that, most of all, there is hope. We can change the way we feel by changing the way we think.

So here’s number one.  

#1.  All-or-Nothing Thinking

Here is where we tend to evaluate our qualities in very black-or-white terms and nothing in between. Back in 1990 I was attending BCIT. I studied hard for an exam and got a mark much lower than I had expected. At that moment, I believed myself a total failure and I was going nowhere in life. I was doomed. From that moment I spiralled down into despair and headed down a dark path indeed for many years.

All-or-nothing thinking is about perfectionism. I must be perfect and anything less is just not good enough. It means I am a loser. From there we fear any mistake we make, any slight “imperfection” in our abilities or our personality will lead us to believe ourself inadequate and worthless. Oh what a dangerous road!

However, life is just not like that. It is rarely one way or the other completely. No one of us is absolutely brilliant or stupid. No one of us is totally beautiful or ugly. Our house is never perfectly clean.

When we set ourselves up with these expectations it’s no wonder we get depressed. We will never meet up with all, or most of them. We’ve got to find a way to accept exactly who we are and we don’t have to be perfect. We will most likely be accepted by others  for exactly who we are.