Most of us to some degree struggle with distorting reality, seeing our world with a lens that reflects more of a cloudy mirror of the past (and all our hurts, traumas, disappointments etc) and this can often distort our reality in the present and/or anticipate the same negative outcome by distorting how we perceive the future.
These "negative" thoughts can create all kinds of self-fulfilling prophecies of painful perceptions of reality that appear familiar to us. When these distortions dominate our way of thinking, this will lead to depression, anxiety and addiction as "beliefs become biology" effect our emotions, perceptions, attitude, behaviour etc.
There is something you can do about these pesky personal demons, you can begin to challenge your thinking!
Research shows that engaging in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) or taking
prescribed medications (i.e. anti-depressants, anti-anxiety meds) will BOTH work on the basal ganglia of your brain (i.e. the area in your brain that controls motor control and learning).
In other words psychotherapy and engaging in the act of challenging your distorted thoughts will change your brain’s neural pathways.
Here is Part 1 of the Cognitive Distortions List
Share and do these with a loved one:
All or Nothing Thinking
-Seeing everything as black or white, right or
wrong. If your performance falls short of
perfection, you see yourself as a total failure.
Using words such as “always” or “never” in
your self-talk or vocabulary is all or nothing.
-Overgeneralization
You see a single negative event as a neverending
pattern of defeat.
-Disqualifying the positive
Insisting that positive experiences don’t count
-Jumping to Conclusions:
Arriving at negative interpretations of events
without evidence to support the conclusions
-Mind Reading:
Randomly concluding that someone is
reacting negatively without investigating. ie “I
KNOW my boss gave me that strange look
because they KNOW that I was playing poker
late last night”
-Fortune Telling:
Anticipating negative outcomes then acting as
though they are already established fact. This
is also known as “negative outcome
expectancy”. ie “What’s the point in even
trying for that audition, there’s no way I’ll get the
part"
Any of these sound familiar to you?
In an upcoming blog I'll share more of the
most common distortion and what you can do about them
Best of health and warmest regards, Paul Radkowski
info@liferecoveryprogram.com
http://www.liferecoveryprogram.com/
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