Tim Arrigo breaks down five cognitive distortions: emotional reasoning, disqualifying the positive, mind reading, all-or-nothing thinking, and catastrophizing. He offers practical ways to manage them: objectify your thoughts, step back, and question automatic thoughts to reduce rumination and improve wellbeing.
5 types of cognitive distortions that are keeping you stuck. Cognitive distortions are a type of irrational thought pattern where you're seeing things as more negative than they actually are. These are normal, but when they happen too frequent or too often, they can put you in a negative state of mind, and that's going to cause negative emotions and negative behaviors that follow. Number 1 is emotional reasoning. This is when you allow your feelings to become facts. This is when you allow what you're feeling to become your reality. Number 2, disqualifying the positive. This is when you look at situations as the glass is half empty. You look at situations with good and bad aspects, but you only tend to focus on the bad aspects. Number 3, mind reading. This is when you make assumptions about what other people are thinking without having any evidence to support what you're believing. Number 4, all or nothing thinking, black or white thinking. This, this is right. You're either a success or you're a failure. You're either good at something or you're not. You're either a good person or you're unlovable. This is when you reduce something to extremes despite there being shades of gray. And number 5, catastrophizing, jumping to the worst case scenario in a situation. For example, let's say your wife comes home and isn't on time, doesn't come home on time, and you immediately go to the fact that maybe she got in a car crash or she's being unfaithful. Start to manage your mind, because once you manage your mind, you're going to learn that you're going to have a better life. Most of you, you, you, you get trapped in the cognitive distortions. And you're not realizing that you're having them. And your mind is just basically in cycles of rumination, right? Catastrophe— catastrophizing. You're just— you're in these cycles of cognitive distortions that you need to break out of. So first, start to objectify what you're thinking. Step back from your own subjective experience. You're not the thoughts. You're the thinker of the thoughts. You're the awareness behind the thoughts. Start to practice this. Start to think about what you're thinking about. Start to pay attention to where your mind is actually at. This is going to help you to zoom out from what you're thinking and start to question what you're thinking, like you're putting those thoughts on trial in a courtroom. Just because you're thinking it doesn't make it real. Just because you're thinking it doesn't make it true unless you believe it.
