Question

Identify and briefly explain the 10 cognitive distortions enumerated by Burns.

Answer 1

1. All-or-nothing thinking : here one perceives everything to be either black or white categories.  for example, a recovering alcoholic may think that the one drink that they had has blown out the entire process of recovery and thus ill continue to drink since they had a slip up.

2. Overgeneralization : you see a single negative event to be a pattern of defeat that will be never ending

3. Mental filter: one thinks about only the negative pattern of events while ignoring the positive ones. example, Teddi had a series of bad events happen to her and now she thinks that only bad things happen to her and will ALWAYS happen to her

4. Discounting the positives: you think that your positive events or experiences do not count. example, Jim thinks that he got his college degree out of luck and it is useless

5. Jumping to conclusions: you interpret that only bad things will happen to you with no supporting evidence. example, fortune telling where you claim you will always run out of luck

6. Magnification or minimization: you minimize the importance of the positive and desirable qualities while exaggerating the negative ones and blowing it out of proportion

7. Emotional reasoning: you think that your negative emotions are a depiction of who you really are. example,i feel like an idiot and so i must be an idiot

8. “Should” statements : you remind yourself of the things that could have happened if you 'didn't do something or you shouldn't have done something'

9. Labeling: this is an extreme form of all or nothing where one will say things such as i made a mistake and thus i must be the biggest loser

10. Blame: you blame yourself for problems that you didn't have control over or you blame others for things by overlooking the mistakes that you have made