The following is based on the sermon “David’s Inner Life” from the Life of David sermon series.
Much of our inner lives are reactions to our perceptions of the world. So we perceive things to be a particular way, we react to them, and that reaction affects what goes on inside of us. But here’s the problem: Our perceptions can be reality or unreality. The language that psychologists often use to talk about these perceptions based on unreality is “cognitive distortions.” Cognitive Distortions as Dr. John Grohol puts it, are “ways that our mind convinces us of something that isn’t really true.”
The following are common cognitive distortions people believe. (These lists were pulled directly from articles in Psychology Today and PsychCentral.) As you read through this list, which of these can you relate to? What truths about God do you need to remind yourself of in order to ground yourself in reality?
1. Filtering
A person engaging in filter (or “mental filtering) takes the negative details and magnifies those details while filtering out all positive aspects of a situation. For instance, a person may pick out a single, unpleasant detail and dwell on it exclusively so that their vision of reality becomes darkened or distorted. When a cognitive filter is applied, the person sees only the negative and ignores anything positive.
2. Polarized Thinking (or “Black and White” Thinking)
In polarized thinking, things are either “black-or-white” — all or nothing. We have to be perfect or we’re a complete and abject failure — there is no middle ground. A person with polarized thinking places people or situations in “either/or” categories, with no shades of gray or allowing for the complexity of most people and most situations. A person with black-and-white thinking sees things only in extremes.
3. Overgeneralization
In this cognitive distortion, a person comes to a general conclusion based on a single incident or a single piece of evidence. If something bad happens just once, they expect it to happen over and over again. A person may see a single, unpleasant event as part of a never-ending pattern of defeat.
For instance, if a student gets a poor grade on one paper in one semester, they conclude they are a horrible student and should quit school.
4. Jumping to Conclusions
Without individuals saying so, a person who jumps to conclusions knows what another person is feeling and thinking — and exactly why they act the way they do. In particular, a person is able to determine how others are feeling toward the person, as though they could read their mind. Jumping to conclusions can also manifest itself as fortune-telling, where a person believes their entire future is pre-ordained (whether it be in school, work, or romantic relationships).
For example, a person may conclude that someone is holding a grudge against them, but doesn’t actually bother to find out if they are correct. Another example involving fortune-telling is when a person may anticipate that things will turn out badly in their next relationship, and will feel convinced that their prediction is already an established fact, so why bother dating.
5. Catastrophizing
When a person engages in catastrophizing, they expect disaster to strike, no matter what. This is also referred to as magnifying, and can also come out in its opposite behavior, minimizing. In this distortion, a person hears about a problem and uses what-if questions (e.g., “What if tragedy strikes?” “What if it happens to me?”) to imagine the absolute worst occurring.
For example, a person might exaggerate the importance of insignificant events (such as their mistake, or someone else’s achievement). Or they may inappropriately shrink the magnitude of significant events until they appear tiny (for example, a person’s own desirable qualities or someone else’s imperfections).
With practice, you can learn to answer each of these cognitive distortions.
6. Personalization
Personalization is a distortion where a person believes that everything others do or say is some kind of direct, personal reaction to them. They literally take virtually everything personally, even when something is not meant in that way. A person who experiences this kind of thinking will also compare themselves to others, trying to determine who is smarter, better looking, etc.
A person engaging in personalization may also see themselves as the cause of some unhealthy external event that they were not responsible for. For example, “We were late to the dinner party and caused everyone to have a terrible time. If I had only pushed my husband to leave on time, this wouldn’t have happened.”
7. Control Fallacies
This distortion involves two different but related beliefs about being in complete control of every situation in a person’s life. In the first, if we feel externally controlled, we see ourselves as helpless a victim of fate. For example, “I can’t help it if the quality of the work is poor, my boss demanded I work overtime on it.”
The fallacy of internal control has us assuming responsibility for the pain and happiness of everyone around us. For example, “Why aren’t you happy? Is it because of something I did?”
8. Fallacy of Fairness
In the fallacy of fairness, a person feels resentful because they think that they know what is fair, but other people won’t agree with them. As our parents tell us when we’re growing up and something doesn’t go our way, “Life isn’t always fair.” People who go through life applying a measuring ruler against every situation judging its “fairness” will often feel resentful, angry, and even hopelessness because of it. Because life isn’t fair — things will not always work out in a person’s favor, even when they should.
9. Blaming
When a person engages in blaming, they hold other people responsible for their emotional pain. They may also take the opposite track and instead blame themselves for every problem — even those clearly outside their own control.
For example, “Stop making me feel bad about myself!” Nobody can “make” us feel any particular way — only we have control over our own emotions and emotional reactions.
10. Shoulds
Should statements (“I should pick up after myself more…”) appear as a list of ironclad rules about how every person should behave. People who break the rules make a person following these should statements angry. They also feel guilty when they violate their own rules. A person may often believe they are trying to motivate themselves with shoulds and shouldn’ts, as if they have to be punished before they can do anything.
For example, “I really should exercise. I shouldn’t be so lazy.” Musts and oughts are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When a person directs should statements toward others, they often feel anger, frustration, and resentment.
11. Emotional Reasoning
The distortion of emotional reasoning can be summed up by the statement, “If I feel that way, it must be true.” Whatever a person is feeling is believed to be true automatically and unconditionally. If a person feels stupid and boring, then they must be stupid and boring.
Emotions are extremely strong in people and can overrule our rational thoughts and reasoning. Emotional reasoning is when a person’s emotions take over our thinking entirely, blotting out all rationality and logic. The person who engages in emotional reasoning assumes that their unhealthy emotions reflect the way things really are — “I feel it, therefore it must be true.”
12. Fallacy of Change
In the fallacy of change, a person expects that other people will change to suit them if they just pressure or cajole them enough. A person needs to change people because their hopes for success and happiness seem to depend entirely on them.
This distortion is often found in thinking around relationships. For example, a girlfriend who tries to get her boyfriend to improve his appearance and manners, in the belief that this boyfriend is perfect in every other way and will make them happy if they only changed these few minor things.
13. Global Labeling
In global labeling (also referred to as mislabeling), a person generalizes one or two qualities into a negative global judgment about themselves or another person. This is an extreme form of overgeneralizing. Instead of describing an error in the context of a specific situation, a person will attach an unhealthy universal label to themselves or others.
For example, they may say, “I’m a loser” in a situation where they failed at a specific task. When someone else’s behavior rubs a person the wrong way — without bothering to understand any context around why — they may attach an unhealthy label to him, such as “He’s a real jerk.”
Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded. For example, instead of saying someone drops her children off at daycare every day, a person who is mislabeling might say that “She abandons her children to strangers.”
14. Always Being Right
When a person engages in this distortion, they are continually putting other people on trial to prove that their own opinions and actions are the absolute correct ones. To a person engaging in “always being right,” being wrong is unthinkable — they will go to any length to demonstrate their rightness.
For example, “I don’t care how badly arguing with me makes you feel, I’m going to win this argument no matter what because I’m right.” Being right often is more important than the feelings of others around a person who engages in this cognitive distortion, even loved ones.
15. Karma Fallacy
(In the article labeled as Heaven’s Reward Fallacy) A false belief that a person’s sacrifice and self-denial will eventually pay off, as if some global force is keeping score. This is a riff on the fallacy of fairness because in a fair world, the people who work the hardest will get the largest reward. A person who sacrifices and works hard but doesn’t experience the expected pay off will usually feel bitter when the reward doesn’t come.
16. Belief that self-criticism is an effective way to motivate yourself toward better future behavior
17. Recognizing feelings as causes of behavior, but not equally attending to how behavior influences thoughts and feelings
For example, you think, “When I have more energy, I’ll exercise” but not, “Exercising will give me more energy.”
18. All or nothing thinking
For example: "If I don’t always get As I’m a complete failure."
19. Basing future decisions on “sunk costs”
For example, investing more money in a business that is losing money because you’ve invested so much already.
20. Delusions
Holding a fixed, false belief, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
21. Assuming your current feelings will stay the same in the future
For example, “I feel unable to cope today; therefore, I will feel unable to cope tomorrow.”
22. Cognitive labeling
For example, mentally labeling your sister’s boyfriend as a “loser” and not being open to subsequent evidence suggesting he isn’t a loser.
23. The Halo Effect
For example, perceiving high calories foods as lower in calories if they’re accompanied by a salad.
24. Minimizing
For example, “Yes, I won an important award—but that still doesn’t really mean I’m accomplished in my field.”
25. Cognitive conformity
Seeing things the way people around you view them. Research has shown that this often happens at an unconscious level.
26. Blaming others
27. Falling victim to the “foot in the door” technique
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.
28. Falling victim to the “door in the face” technique
When someone makes an outlandish request first, then makes a smaller request, the initial outlandish request makes the smaller request seem more reasonable.
29. Focusing on the amount saved rather than the amount spent
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.
30. Overvaluing things because they're yours
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.
31. 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.
32. "I can't change my behavior" (or "I can't change my thinking style")
Instead of telling yourself "I can't," try asking yourself how you could shift your behavior (or thinking style) by just five percent.
33. Failure to consider alternative explanations
Coming up with one explanation for why something has happened and failing to consider alternative, more likely explanations.
34. 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.
35. Attributing strangers' behavior to their character and not considering situational/contextual factors
36. Failure to consider opportunity cost
For example, spending an hour doing a low ROI task and thinking, "It's only an hour" and not considering the lost potential of spending that hour doing a high ROI task.
37. Assumed similarity
The tendency to assume other people hold similar attitudes to your own.
38. In-group bias
The tendency to trust and value people who are like you, or who are in your circle, more than people from different backgrounds.
39. "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!
40. The tendency to underestimate how long tasks will take
41. The belief that worry and overthinking will lead to problem-solving insights
In fact, overthinking tends to impair problem-solving ability and can lead to avoidance coping.
42. Biased implicit attitudes
Psychologists use a test called the implicit association test to measure attitudes that people subconsciously hold. Results show that people subconsciously associate "fat" with "lazy," for instance.
It's useful to be mindful that you may subconsciously hold biased attitudes; then, you can consciously correct for them.
43. The peak-end rule
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.
44. The tendency to prefer familiar things
Familiarity breeds liking, which is part of why people are loyal to certain brands and may pay inflated prices for them instead of switching.
45. The belief you can multi-task
When you're "multitasking," you're actually task- (and attention-) shifting. Trying to focus on more than one goal at a time is self-sabotage.
46. Failure to recognize the cognitive benefits of restorative activities and those that increase positive emotions
For example, seeing humor or breaks as a "waste of time."
47. Positively biased predictions
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.
48. Cheating on your goals based on positive behaviors you plan to do later
For example, overeating today if you expect you'll be starting a diet next week. Often, the planned positive behaviors don't happen.