Thousands of words pass through the mind of every person during the day. These words form thoughts that are shaped on the past, the present moment or the future. As thoughts include cognitive processes developing on concrete and abstract realities, they reflect the way people perceive the facts in their lives. In other words, the thoughts developed as a result of the experiences experienced in this period are accepted by the mind as the basic thought structures, and these thought structures are automatically generalized against other events to be experienced. However, the thought structures, the foundations of which are laid in infancy and childhood, can also change as a result of some events and situations experienced in the later stages of life.
These changing thought structures are generalized by the mind and begin to emerge automatically in similar events and situations. These thoughts, which usually occur automatically, may be healthy thoughts or can be considered as thought distortions.
What are Cognitive Distortions?
While people's mindsets are sometimes based on reality, sometimes they can be quite far from reality. Because while the thoughts that are formed on a healthy ground are more realistic, the thought structures that have not developed properly for various reasons or that have been distorted as a result of negative experiences can also diverge from the truth. Thoughts that reflect the truth from these thought structures are called healthy thoughts.
Cognitive distortions are; These are the ways of thinking that usually develop automatically in people's minds in the face of events or situations, but do not fully and accurately reflect reality.
Cognitive distortions often cause negative and biased evaluations of events and situations. Cognitive distortions are thought structures that are used by everyone, albeit to a lesser extent. However, when the use of these mindsets intensifies, people; It can cause many psychological problems such as depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, anger control problems.
Cognitive Distortions (Dreams) These distortions of thought, which can be used by everyone in daily life, do not reflect reality correctly and cause a distorted and unhealthy perception of events, and which are frequently repeated by the mind, especially when it comes to psychological problems, are detailed by experts. It has been examined in this way and listed under 17 headings within the framework of certain thought patterns.
1. Meli Mal Thought Distortion (Necessity Thoughts):
In this thought distortion, there are a number of mental stereotypes about events and situations that people expect to be realized. It causes us to care more about what should happen rather than what events and situations are and how they are.
For example;
“My son should always be successful."
"A husband should always listen to his wife."
"I shouldn't be upset in such situations."
2. Mind Reading Thought Distortion:
Even though there is no realistic and sufficient evidence in mind reading thought distortion, it is believed that this idea is correct by speculating about other people's thoughts.
For example;
“He listens to what I say, but thinks that what I say is unimportant."
"Even though he says otherwise, I'm sure he has bad thoughts about me."
"When he sees me he turns his head, he thinks I'm uninteresting."
3. Negative Filter Thought Distortion:
When it comes to thought distortion, people remember more negative aspects of an event, situation, person, or past tense. Thus, by considering the negativities of the events more, they become inclined to enlarge these negativities in their minds.
For example;
“My life is full of misfortunes.''
“There is no positive side in this case.”
“Against me he always said bad things."
4. Personalization Distortion of Thought:
When it comes to personalization, although there is no evidence that some situations are related to the people themselves, they still get the idea that what is happening is all about themselves. rivers. When this distortion comes into play, people take the burden of the events themselves and ignore other factors.
For example;
"She looks pretty upset, I think I said something to annoy her."
"Our relationship didn't work out because I couldn't manage it."
"Our team He didn't get this project because I didn't have enough success."
5th Regret Thought Distortion:
In regret thought distortion, people in the past with their mature mental skills, emotions and experiences of the present present tense. they judge their immature behavior and decisions by experience. As a result of this judgment, they become self-critical. They look at their past lives by wishing.
For example;
“If I had my current mind, I would never have taken that job.”
“I wish I had never had a relationship with that person who didn't know my worth.”
"I wish I hadn't chosen this department at university. I made a very illogical choice that did not match my own interests and abilities."
6. Unfair Comparison Thought Distortion:
In unfair comparison thought distortion, people compare themselves to people who have more opportunities than them and who are more experienced than themselves. Considering that they are not at the same level with these people they compare themselves with, they constantly judge themselves on this issue. They see themselves as more unsuccessful or inadequate than those people.
For example;
"Look at how well she dresses and look at my clothes. I can't dress as tastefully as he does.” I don't have a social personality like them."
"No matter what I do, that person always gets high marks from me. I'm not as successful as he is."
7. Emotional Inference Thought Distortion:
In emotional inference and thought distortion, people believe that their own emotions and feelings reflect reality. They put aside reasoning and establish a tight connection between their feelings and reality.
For example;
“This is No one called me that day. That's why I feel like nobody loves me.
“I trust my feelings a lot. My feelings tell me this job isn't the right one for me."
"I have a bad feeling. So today is going to be very bad for me.”
8. Ignoring the Positive Thought Distortion:
In this distortion of thought, people think that positive events and situations are ordinary things that should happen, while trivializing them, they attach more importance to negative events and situations. They usually ignore all positive experiences because of the slightest negativity.
For example;
“Today it was my last turn at the bank. Such situations always happen to me.”
In the example above, the person ignores a positive situation such as getting his job done at the bank, and only remembers negative thoughts and feelings such as bad luck and boredom caused by taking the last place. Thus, by generalizing all these negative feelings and thoughts, the person remembers the whole process in the bank by ignoring the positive and focusing on the negative.
"I'm procrastinating my work again, I can't do anything on time anyway."
"The manager said he liked my job, but my office colleague showed me a few shortcomings. I'm always missing my work anyway.”
In examples like this, we can see that the person distorts the thought that the whole event consists of negativity by ignoring the positive aspects of events and focusing only on the negative aspects.
9. Fortune-telling Distortion of Thought:
In this distortion of thought, people make negative predictions about the future and believe that these predictions will come true. From time to time, these predictions reach the dimension of a prophecy and these distorted thoughts are perceived as situations that will come true.
For example;
"I studied hard for my exam tonight, but I'm sure I won't be able to complete any of the questions in the exam tomorrow."
"Although everything seems fine for now, this relationship with my boyfriend will not last long and we will break up. .
"The tests I had done by the doctor were clean, but I'm sure these viruses will infect me soon."
10. Thinking in Black and White (All or Nothing Thinking) Distortion of Thought:
In this case, people sharply evaluate events, situations or people and perceive the whole situation as good or bad. They ignore the in-between options.
For example;
“Once someone has wronged me, I will delete them completely.''
“Do this without mistakes or not at all.”
“ If I do not get 100 points from this exam, I will not be considered successful in this course.''
11. What Happens Thought Distortion:
This thought distortion is based on considering possible negative scenarios about any event or situation. When the imagination peculiar to humans comes into play, negative possibilities can be produced about every situation and the negative possibilities that can be produced can become quite resistant.
Although there is strong evidence that these negative possibilities may not materialise, the negative possibility may come up again in one's mind by combining with the imagination, and this distortion of thought usually manifests itself with a probability sentence that begins with the word "either".
For example;
“I went to the doctor today for my eye pain. Even though the doctor says there is nothing wrong with my eye, I can't be convinced. What if the doctor didn't understand, or if there was another defect in my eye?” What if I am completely alone in my old age?''
12. Labeling Distortion of Thought:
In labeling thought distortion, people can make definite judgments about various situations, people or events and interpret events under the influence of this biased labeling.
For example;
"Did you hear that Ms. Ayşe sends her child to school before she prepares breakfast, she is a very lazy mother." How selfish I am!” (Tagging yourself with the word selfish)
"We have a disgraceful relationship." (Tagging the situation by referring to the relationship)
13. Blaming Thought Distortion:
In this distortion of thought, people are confronted with negative events or situations.
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