stress

Cognitive Distortions
Loretta LaRoche
Stress Expert and Author

We often contribute to our feelings of stress and anxiety by not seeing things around us clearly; we get too emotionally attached to a certain way of thinking, or to what our history has been, and we distort reality. Just recognizing the pattern is one of the first steps to successfully managing stress. Do any of those examples of distorted thinking sound like you?

black-and-white thinking: There are no shades of gray, and no middle ground. You always head right for the extreme. You’re driving over a bridge and get into what appears to be the slowest line and you think, I never pick the right one!

rejecting the positive: You can’t accept it when good things happen to you. You give a great performance in a piano recital and think, Oh, I made a mistake in the third measure. Or you get a compliment on a job well done and simply rationalize, Anyone could have done it. And you really believe that.

overgeneralizations: You obsess over one negative thing and see it as evidence of a pattern of negativity. You lose a client and then believe: I can never make this business a success! I don’t have what it takes.

negative comparisons: You’re always looking at other people to discern the ways in which they’re better than you are.

victimization: No matter what the setback, you think it proves that you can never have a decent life, as in: I missed the bus? See-things like that always happen to me! Nothing ever goes my way.

name-calling: You tend to label yourself with negative thoughts at the drop of a hat. You spill a drop of soup in your lap and think, God, I’m such a disgusting slob. I should never go out in public.

being clairvoyant: You know that the outcome of any situation is going to be negative, so why bother? I’m never going to win that writing contest, so why should I go to the trouble of entering my story?

“shoulding” on yourself: No matter what the situation, you can always think about what you should have done, or should have said, instead of what really happened. It’s a form of blaming yourself for not always being perfect.