Cognitive distortions
Cognitive distortions are habits of thinking that make a situation look worse, more certain or more personal than the facts support. They're common. Spotting one doesn't make the thought false, and it doesn't mean something is wrong with you.
Write down one thought from today and look at it step by step. Nothing you type leaves your device.
The moment
Just the facts, as a camera would record them.
If writing this out leaves you feeling worse, it's fine to stop and come back later, or to talk to someone you trust. If you're thinking about harming yourself, call or text 988 in the US, or see crisis resources.
Beck's patients, Burns' list
In the early 1960s the psychiatrist Aaron Beck noticed that his depressed patients' thoughts kept taking a few repeating shapes, such as expecting the worst or reading one event as a rule for everything.1 His student David Burns turned those shapes into the list of 10 most people know today, in his 1980 book Feeling Good.2
The list is a teaching tool. It doesn't describe illnesses.
The patterns overlap, so one anxious thought can fit three of them at once.
Why they're hard to notice
The feeling usually gets there first. Your stomach drops or your face gets hot, and only later can you put the thought into words, by which point it doesn't feel like a thought at all. It feels like a fact about the world.
Then comes an urge: to check your messages again, rehearse the conversation, avoid the person, or apologize before anyone has asked.
The 10 patterns, across one ordinary week
The examples below follow one person through a week of school runs, a family dinner, a gym class and one bad afternoon at work. They are examples, not quotes from real people.
All-or-nothing thinking
Two boxes only: perfect or a failure, all good or all bad. A single slip and the whole day lands in the bad box.
"I had two cookies after lunch. The diet's ruined, so I might as well order pizza."
Overgeneralization
One event becomes a rule, and "always" or "never" turns up in the sentence.
"My sister cancelled on me again. Nobody in this family ever makes time for me."
Mental filter
One bad detail gets all the attention, and the rest of the picture fades.
"Everyone loved the lasagna. All I can think about is my aunt saying it was a bit salty."
Disqualifying the positive
The good things get noticed, then explained away, so they never count.
"The instructor said my form had improved. She says that to everyone."
Jumping to conclusions
Deciding what something means without the facts. Burns split it in two: mind reading (assuming you know what someone thinks) and fortune telling (assuming you know how things will turn out).2
"The other parents went quiet when I walked up. They've been talking about me."
Catastrophizing
Leaping to the worst outcome and treating it as likely. Burns called this magnification, and paired it with shrinking your own strengths.2
"The furnace is making that noise again. It's going to give out, we'll have no heat all winter, and I can't afford a new one."
Emotional reasoning
Treating a feeling as proof: it feels true, so it must be.
"I feel like a terrible parent tonight, so I must be one."
Should statements
Rigid rules for yourself or others. Burns noticed they tend to bring guilt when aimed inward and frustration when aimed outward.2
"I should be able to keep the house tidy, work full time and still have energy left."
Labeling and mislabeling
One action turned into a judgment of the whole person.
"I sent the report to the wrong client. I'm such an idiot."
Personalization
Taking the blame for an outcome that other people and circumstances shaped too.
"My son didn't make the team. I should have practiced with him more. It's on me."
- Mind reading: She's upset with me about the weekend.
- Catastrophizing: Something's happened to Mom.
- Labeling: I'm a hopeless sister for not calling first.
- Emotional reasoning: I feel sick about it, so it must be bad news.
The text is the same in all four readings, and each reading brings its own feeling.
What the studies support, and what they don't
Naming a pattern is a good first step. It often won't settle the thought on its own, and what helps next depends on whether the thought is about the past, about you, or about something that hasn't happened yet.
Questioning a thought in therapy goes with feeling better, though nobody has shown it causes the change. Observers rated the first three sessions of cognitive therapy for 55 depressed adults, and symptoms were lower after sessions where the therapist asked more questions that helped the person examine their own thought.3 That measured the therapist's questions, over three sessions, and it was correlational.
Nor is it clear which technique does the work. A review of cognitive therapy for depression concluded that changes in thinking help symptoms improve however those changes happen, and that disputing distortions hasn't been shown to be the specific route.4
Worries about the future behave differently, because there are no facts yet to weigh. Checking them against what happens has early support: in a study of 29 people with generalized anxiety disorder, those who logged their worries and checked them later found most never came true, and those with more untrue worries improved more.5 The worry time page has the full study and a way to run the check yourself.
A test can also move a belief faster than a debate. A thought record and a behavioral experiment (trying something to see what happens) both lowered belief in a negative thought in a single session with 91 adults, and both beat the comparison group.6 Belief shifted sooner with the experiment, though, and spread further, to beliefs about other people.6
Five things to try with the next one
- Write the thought down in its own words. "I'm going to fail" looks different on a page than it feels in your head. The thought record above walks you through it.
- Step outside it. Imagine a friend telling you this thought about themselves, and notice what you'd say back. The research behind stepping back, and the questions that go with it, are on the Socratic questioning page.
- If it's a worry, write the feared outcome and a date to check. Then check, and keep the result.
- Give worries a set time. In one study of 53 people who worried a lot, a daily 30-minute worry time at a set time and place reduced worry more than the comparison group did over two weeks.7
- Ask what the thought would mean if it were true. Burns called this the vertical arrow, and it can lead to the belief underneath, such as "people will see I'm not good enough".8 The downward arrow page walks through it.
If the same patterns run your weeks
A therapist trained in CBT works on exactly this, and it's worth finding one if two or three of these patterns keep pulling you down.
Joyful is a journal, not therapy. It can help you practice between appointments, and it can't replace them.
Pick one pattern from the list that sounded familiar. Write down the last time it showed up, word for word, and what you were doing at the time.
Answer this with JoyQuestions people ask
What are the 10 (or 12, or 15) cognitive distortions?
The 10 most people use come from David Burns: all-or-nothing thinking, overgeneralization, mental filter, disqualifying the positive, jumping to conclusions, magnification and minimization, emotional reasoning, should statements, labeling and mislabeling, and personalization.2 Longer lists mostly add patterns rather than split these. Psych Central's list, for example, adds fallacies about control and fairness, blaming, and infallibility (needing to always be right).9
Do you have to get rid of them?
No. The first thought will keep coming. What changes with practice is how quickly you catch it and what you do next.
Are cognitive distortions a mental illness?
No. They are ordinary thinking habits. Beck first described them in people with depression.1
Is overthinking a cognitive distortion?
Not on Burns' list. Overthinking is repetitive thought, and distortions such as catastrophizing ride along inside it. Whether it helps or harms seems to depend on its kind: abstract "why did this happen" loops do worse than concrete "what happened, and what's the next step" thinking.10