ISSUE #71: Friday Oct 7, 2011 - Cognitive Distortions



Photo: Caer Weber

Time for the last of the cognitive distortions. Those things we do and tell ourselves, thinking we are dealing with the truth but we are really dealing with our emotions, and most often they are feelings that are not pleasant. In a way, they are defense mechanisms but they don’t work very well. In fact, they end up making us feel worse about things instead of better.

This final one is

#10 Personalization

Very simply, this is when we think we caused a negative outcome to an event that is actually external to ourself. For example, a child fails a test at school and the mother thinks it’s her fault and therefore she is a bad mother. It’s possible that she affected her child in some way but it’s also very possible that the child simply didn’t feel like studying or just had a hard time with that subject. Some of us do this though ... we “carry the whole world on our shoulders” and feel that somehow we have caused all the bad things to happen. We end up feeling terrible guilty and thus go spiralling down into depression.

So that’s all ten of them. In conclusion, when we become depressed or are already depressed we may be having thoughts that are really distorted thoughts. They are not based on the real truth or the actual facts. Then why do they seem so true and right?

Because we make the mistake of thinking

that our feelings are facts.

However, very often our feelings come from our thoughts. I think I’m guilty of something so I feel guilty then the next thought comes – well if I feel guilty then I must be guilty. In my opinion, I think these very negative thoughts and feelings are from “conditioning” as a child. If we were told we were bad or that something was our fault, even when it wasn’t really, we have no choice but to believe it at the time. Unfortunately, it often sticks and even though we are grown up, mature adults now, those old thoughts and feelings don’t go away. They are still stored in us and we still believe them. We have not learned how to dig in deep and discover where they came from and to see that they may or may not have been true at the time but they are not necessarily true now. We don’t question our thoughts.

Yesterday I had a particularly bad day. Something didn’t go right and I thought it was useless and hopeless. It seemed so clear to me that it would never go right, that I would never get what I wanted and that was it. Game over. Fortunately, through some wonderful supportive people, and through really thinking about the situation I realized it was not at all a hopeless situation. Rather, it was something I had to figure out and problem solve. That was all. It wasn’t the end of the world. But my thoughts at first were so distorted that I simply sat and cried and felt so miserable. I couldn’t see what the real picture was.

It’s a tough one. Probably most people get caught in these old ways of thinking and they seem so absolutely real and based on truth at the time and they send us reeling into the most terrible feelings about ourself and often about the world. It’s what leads many people into suicidal thinking and for some, eventually, suicide. It is the belief that something is not solvable. But most of the time it probably is. It requires some extra work, some extra thinking, maybe talking to other people to help us solve the problem or at least get a more accurate perspective on things. And even if we come to a final conclusion that it is just not doable, we may be able to find a way to accept the situation and move on to other things. In that way we might grow.

So watch out for those thoughts when you are most upset, most anxious, most depressed. Your thinking may simply be distorted. Talking to someone else may be the best thing. Hang in there. It really isn’t the end of the world. Not yet anyway.

Photo: Caer Weber