Literary Pixie

Creating in reference with Therapist Aid; Dr. Burns; and Psychology Today

Below are a list of cognitive distortions, as well as some examples from my personal experiences.

Magnification and minimization

Definition: Exaggerating or minimizing the importance of events. You might believe your own achievements are unimportant or that your mistakes are excessively important.

Example: I made so many mistakes as a teacher, and most of the time when I did, I felt that I had done this huge, horrible thing and felt loads of shame and guilt around it, and that everyone was gossiping and didn’t respect me and thought I was a bad teacher and didn’t like me. I also felt this when I would fight back or express negative emotions or give other people negative feedback about how their behavior had affected me

Catastrophizing

Definition: Seeing on the worst possible outcomes of a situation

Example: When I made these mistakes, like I said above, I would go to – they think I’m a bad teacher and they are trying to get me to quit or transfer schools because they don’t like me or want to work with me/ I’ve had so many nightmares about this

Overgeneralization

Definition: Making broad interpretations from a single or few events

Example: My time teaching at Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman high has been a nightmare, all schools in LAUSD are like this! There are no good schools to teach at. Even private schools and charters are bad!

Magical thinking

Definition: the belief that thoughts, actions, or emotions influence unrelated situations

Example: The fires happened in January because when I started writing Burnt Out Bitch, I said I felt like a wildfire!

Personalization

Definition: The believe that you are responsible for events outside of your control, or taking something personally that may not be personal; seeing events as consequences of your actions when there are other possibilities

Example: They keep giving me four preps because they don’t like me and want me to quit teaching or transfer schools.

Jumping to conclusions

Definition: Interpreting the meaning of a situation with little or no evidence

Example: TBD

Mind reading

Definition: Interpreting the thoughts and beliefs of others without adequate evidence

Example: Ms. Argonaut thinks I don’t have what it takes to be a teacher.

Although in my situation, they literally basically said it – strongly insinuated it! and gave me constantly negative feedback, only negative feedback for three months as well as negative feedback from students and parents.

Ugh — is this what I message them about? Do I have adequate evidence? I do!!! But do I know? Did they say it outright? No, but that would be illegal. Therefore, all they can do is bully me and use passive aggressive tactics and coercive power. Right?!

Fortune telling

Definition: expectation that a situation will turn out badly without adequate evidence

Example: The person I’m dating is going to break up with me while I am going through a mental health crisis because that has happened in every single romantic relationship I’ve been in.

Emotional reasoning

Definition: The assumption that emotions reflect the way things really are

Example: I feel like a bad teacher so I am a bad teacher.

Disqualifying the facts

Definition: Recognizing only the negative or positive aspects of a situation while ignoring the other facts

“Should” statements

Definition: The belief that things should be a certain way, these can be self-directed (feelings of guilt, shame, depression, and worthlessness), other directed (feelings of anger and trigger interpersonal conflict), or word directed (feelings of frustration and entitlement)

Example: I should be a better teacher by now. She should be a better teacher by now. She has permanent status and four years of experience, she should be able to handle four curriculums by now. Colleagues should be professional and able to collaborate with each other and give each other feedback. Romantic partners should be able to be honest with each other and accept each other’s flaws and support the other in improving and becoming a better person. Teachers should not share about their mental health or personal lives with students.

All-or-nothing thinking

Definition: Thinking in absolutes such as “always”, “never,” or “every”

Example: I am always right!

Blame

Definition: You find fault with yourself or others

Example: I am struggling as a teacher because I am too sensitive to social stimuli and don’t have a think enough skin.

Underestimating coping ability

Definition: Underestimating your ability to cope with negative events

Example: I can’t handle this! This one – speaks to me a lot. My ex-boyfriend said that I’m like this. Something bad happens or I have an interpersonal conflict with a friend, colleague, partner, family-member, student – and it’s like I’ve never had one before, and I completely freak out and cry and try to end the relationship or move, when really I am strong and I doing what I need to take care of myself and living by my values, and that I will be able to cope and work through this conflict. I really need to work on my conflict resolution skills, and my confidence in this area.

Biased attention toward signs of social rejection and lack of attention to signs of social acceptance

Definition: For example, during social interactions, paying attention to someone yawning and assuming you’re boring them—but not paying the same degree of attention to other cues that suggest they are interested in what you’re saying (such as leaning toward you).

Example: When I stood up in front of class, one of my students would usually roll her eyes, which would make me feel super anxious – despite loads of other students rapt at attention and looking forward to hearing what I was going to say.

Thinking an absence of effusiveness means something is wrong

Definition: Believing an absence of a smiley face in an email means someone is mad at you.

Example: The person I was dating would send very short sentences with no emotion, which made me think that I had done something wrong or he wasn’t happy with our relationship.

Unrelenting standards

Definition: The belief that achieving unrelentingly high standards is necessary to avoid a catastrophe.

Example: If I don’t come to school with good sleep and all my food, and my plans ready, bad things will happen. Although honestly, this is true. I literally had a melt down yesterday because I got triggered and hadn’t had dinner yet. And working with living teenagers means they are going to trigger you any day and you have to be ready or you will lose control of yourself or the class and that’s when you get written up or you have to write kids up or talk to parents and get administrators involved, and then they end up gossiping about you and calling you a bad teacher.

I think unrelenting standards is a toxic cultural norm of education!!

Entitlement beliefs

Definition: Believing the same rules that apply to others should not apply to you.

Example:

Justification and moral licensing

Definition: Using past good behavior to justify making poor behaviors

Example:

Seeing a situation only from your own perspective

Definition:

Example:

Belief in a just world

Definition: Believing that the world is just and fair when it is not and getting upset, frustrated, when the world is not just and fair.

Example: I have been trying to get the two curriculums and year to develop my professional learning community before having the responsibility of being a teacher caused by COVID and being given an unfair workload my first two years of teaching, which has been causing me to burn out for the last three years, however, the world is not just and I am having to accept that the school district is not just and I have to accept that it is not just, and choose between having financial stability and risk the quality of my teaching, health, relationships, and reputation OR I can risk my financial stability to give myself what I believe I need in order to make teaching a sustainable, healthy and enjoyable life-long career for me.

Seeing a situation only from your own perspective

Definition: Pretty self-explanatory, but obviously we have limited perspectives and are often unreliable narrators with brains designed to maintain a positive self-perception of ourselves (as having a negative one is really unhealthy for us – I mean look at me! I have a negative one and I’m fucking miserable). At the same time, it can prevent us from being able to function successfully in reality and nurture healthy and loving relationships.

Example:

Belief that self-criticism is an effective way to motivate yourself toward better future behavior

Definition:

Example:

Recognizing feelings as causes of behavior, but not equally attending to how behavior influences thoughts and feelings

Definition:

Example:

Basing future decisions on “sunk costs”

Definition:

Example:

Delusions

Definition: Holding a fixed, false belief, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Example:

Assuming your current feelings will stay the same in the future

Definition:

Example:

Cognitive labeling

Definition:

Example: For example, mentally labeling your sister’s boyfriend as a “loser” and not being open to subsequent evidence suggesting he isn’t a loser.

The Halo effect

Definition: When you put something that is good for you and bad for you on the same plate, and thus like magic believe that the bad thing for you will have no effect

Example:

Cognitive Conformity

Definition: Seeing things the way people around you view them.

Example:

Falling victim to the “foot in the door” technique

Definition:

Example: When someone makes a small request to get a “Yes” answer, then follows up with a bigger request, people are more likely to agree to the big request than if only that request had been made.

Falling victim to the “door in the face” technique

Definition:

Example: When someone makes an outlandish request first, then makes a smaller request, the initial outlandish request makes the smaller request seem more reasonable.

Focusing on the amount saved rather than the amount spent

Definition:

Example:

For example, focusing on the amount of a discount rather than on whether you’d buy the item that day at the sale price if it wasn’t listed as on sale.

Overvaluing things because they’re yours

Definition:

Example:

For instance, perceiving your baby as more attractive or smart than they really are because they’re yours, or overestimating the price of your home when you put it on the market because you overestimate the added value of renovations you’ve made.

Failure to consider alternative explanations

Coming up with one explanation for why something has happened and failing to consider alternative, more likely explanations.

The self-serving bias

The self-serving bias is people’s tendency to attribute positive events to their own character but attribute negative events to external factors.

Attributing strangers’ behavior to their character and not considering situational/contextual factors

Definition:

Example:

Failure to consider opportunity cost

Assumed similarity

Definition:

Example:

In-group bias

Definition:

Example:

The tendency to trust and value people who are like you, or who are in your circle, more than people from different backgrounds.

“You don’t know what you don’t know”

Getting external feedback can help you become aware of things you didn’t even know that you didn’t know!

Definition:

Example:

The tendency to underestimate how long tasks will take

Definition:

Example:

The belief that worry and overthinking will lead to problem-solving insights

Definition:

Example:

In fact, overthinking tends to impair problem-solving ability and can lead to avoidance coping.

Biased implicit attitudes

Definition:

Example:

measure attitudes that people subconsciously hold

Here’s a quiz!

the peak-end rule

Definition:

Example:

The tendency to most strongly remember

• how you felt at the end of an experience
• how you felt at the moment of peak emotional intensity during the experience.

Biased memories can lead to biased future decision making.

The tendency to prefer familiar things

Definition:

Example:

The belief you can multi-task

Definition:

Example:

When you’re “multi-tasking,” you’re actually task- (and attention-) shifting. Trying to focus on more than one goal at a time is self-sabotage.

Failure to recognize the cognitive benefits of restorative activities and those that increase positive emotions

Definition:

Example:

For example, seeing humor or breaks as a “waste of time.”

Positively biased predictions

Definition:

Example:

For example, expecting that if you sign up for a one-year gym membership, you will go—even though this hasn’t been the case in the past.

Cheating on your goals based on positive behaviors you plan to do later

Definition:

Example:

For example, overeating today if you expect you’ll be starting a diet next week. Often, the planned positive behaviors don’t happen.

Repeating the same behavior and expecting different results (or thinking that doubling down on a failed strategy will start to produce positive results)

For example, expecting that if you nag more, your partner will change.

Definition:

Example:

“I can’t change my behavior” (or “I can’t change my thinking style”)

Definition:

Example:

Instead of telling yourself “I can’t,” try asking yourself how you could shift your behavior (or thinking style) by just five percent.