Categories of Distorted Automatic Thoughts: A Guide for Patients

[perrytheplat]

I recently made the big decision to enter therapy for social anxiety disorder. I've only been through 2 sessions but so far so good. I was given this worksheet on recognizing the different types of automatic thoughts and thought I would share with you guys. I decided to go down the list and check off everyone that I have ... and I have all of them!    It makes sense to me that someone with super negative automatic thinking has trouble socializing.

 

Categories of Distorted Automatic Thoughts: A Guide for Patients

 

1. Mind Reading: You assume that you know what people think without having sufficient evidence of their thoughts. "He thinks I'm a loser."

 

2. Fortune Telling: You predict the future negatively: Things will get worse, or there is danger ahead. "I'll fail that exam," or "I won't get this job."

 

3. Catastrophizing: You don't believe that what has happened or will happen will be so awful and unbearable that you won't be able to stand it. "It would be terrible if I failed."

 

4. Labeling: You assign global negative traits to yourself and others. "I'm undesirable," or "He's a rotten person."

 

5. Discounting Positives: You claim that the positive things you or others do are trivial. "That's what wives are supposed to do - so it doesn't count when she's nice to me," or "Those successes were easy so they don't matter."

 

6. Negative Filtering: You focus almost exclusively on the negatives and seldom notice the positives. "Look at all of the other people who don't like me." 

 

7. Overgeneralizing: You perceive a global pattern of negatives on the basis of a single incident. "This generally happens to me. I seem to fail at a lot of things."

 

8. Dichotomous Thinking: You view events or people in all-or-nothing terms. "I get rejected by everyone," or "It was a complete waste of time."

 

9. Shoulds: You interpret events in terms of how things should be, rather than simply focusing on what is. "I should do well. If I don't then I'm a failure."

 

10. Personalizing: You attribute a disproportionate amount of the blame to yourself for negative events, and you fail to see that certain events are also caused by others. "The marriage ended because I failed."

 

11. Blaming: You focus on the other person as the source of your negative feelings, and you refuse to take responsibility for changing yourself. "She's to blame for the way I feel now," or "My parents caused all my problems." 

 

12. Unfair Comparisons: You interpret events in terms of standards that are unrealistic - for example, you focus primarily on others who do better than you and find yourself inferior in the comparison. "She's more successful than I am," or "Others did better than I did on the test."

 

13. Regret Orientation: You focus on the idea that you could have done better in the past, rather on what you can do better now. "I could have had a better job if I had tried," or "I shouldn't have said that."

 

14. What If?: You keep asking a series of questions about "what if" something happens, and you fail to be satisfied with any of the answers. "Yeah, but what if I get anxious?" or "What if I can't catch my breath?"

 

15. Emotional Reasoning: You let your feelings guide your interpretation of reality. " I feel depressed; therefore, my marriage is not working out."

 

16. Inability to Disconfirm: You reject any evidence or arguments that might contradict your negative thoughts. For example, when you have the thought "I'm unlovable," you reject as irrelevant any evidence that people like you. Consequently, your thought cannot be refuted. "That's not the real issue. There are deepr problems. There are other factors."

 

17. Judgmental Focus: You view yourself, others, and events in terms of evaluations as good-bad or superior-inferior, rather than simply describing, accepting, or understanding. You are continually measuring yourself and others according to arbitrary standards, and finding that you and others fall short. You are focused on the judgments of others as well as your own judgments of yourself. "I didn't perform well in college," or "If I take up tennis, I won't do well," or "Look how successful she is. I'm not successful."

 

The goal is to be able to challenge these types of automatic negative thoughts when they come up with questions like the ones below:

 

1. Is there substantial evidence for my thought?

 

2. Is there evidence contrary to my thought?

 

3. Am I attempting to interpret this situation without all the evidence?

 

4. What would a friend think about this situation?

 

5. If I look at the situation positively, how is it different?

 

6. Will this matter a year from now? How about five years from now?

 

Any questions, comments, or thoughts are welcome 

[Jot]

To sum all of those 17 instances up...think rationally. I personally cannot see any deeper than this.

 

I am curious if social anxiety could exist given that one has 100% beliefs that correspond to reality.

[perrytheplat]

That's an interesting question. But I think that more likely than not ... At least for me none of these things may be 100% true. Using a handful of examples as a sample to prove something 100% true is not a good way to think or at least where my mind takes them is to unhealthy extremes.

[Jot]

That's an interesting question. But I think that more likely than not ... At least for me none of these things may be 100% true. Using a handful of examples as a sample to prove something 100% true is not a good way to think or at least where my mind takes them is to unhealthy extremes.

1.I dont see how this answered the question...

 

2.I don't understand what you mean by 100% true...are you saying for example that just because you don't catastrophize all the time, only on certain ocassions this would mean it is not 100% for you? Is the premise of this list of distorted patterns of thinking that you need to think like that all the time? In order for you to be considered that you have that problem?

 

3.What would something 20% true look like to you?

[perrytheplat]

1.I dont see how this answered the question...

 

2.I don't understand what you mean by 100% true...are you saying for example that just because you don't catastrophize all the time, only on certain ocassions this would mean it is not 100% for you? Is the premise of this list of distorted patterns of thinking that you need to think like that all the time? In order for you to be considered that you have that problem?

 

3.What would something 20% true look like to you?

 

Thanks for your responses Ferssitar. I'm not sure how to answer your question about whether or not social anxiety could exist if their beliefs 100% correspond with reality. That's definitely an interesting question. Do you have any insight on that that you would like to share?

 

To answer your second question ... I mean that I take something relatively tiny and make it something relatively huge ... taking things to extremes that are unhealthy and self defeating through negative self talk. 100%  would be an absolute truth and 0% would be absolutely false. Does that make sense?

 

Let me give you an example:

 

"Wow this thing didn't work out for me. Nothing ever works out for me. Remember that time I was nice to this person ... and they treated me like crap. Remember that other person that treated me like crap? I always treat people well and they treat me like crap. Everyone treats me like crap. Remember that time I worked super hard and my boss didn't recognize me and just kept on piling on work. Remember those two times my coworker was riding me harder than anyone else in the office even though I knew I was doing my best. I can't take this crap anymore. Nothing ever works for me. Nothing ever will work for me. There's no point in trying if the result is always going to be the same."

 

Do you see there how I would be taking it as absolute true that nothing ever works for me and how the super negative self talk is being used to reinforce the idea that things will never change. My mind will point to several instances where something didn't work for me as proof that things will continue not working for me. It negates all of the instances that something DID work for me. So it's not absolutely true, yet it is not absolutely false. That is the point that I'm getting at. I need to understand that and I it's hard for me when my mind automatically self attacks and ignores any evidence to the contrary.

 

In regard to your last question ... that's a good one ... I don't know that the actual percentage matters so much as the fact that most of the self attacking that my mind engages in and the conclusions that it comes to are not based in reality ... they are based on selective memory used to reinforce the original thought that nothing ever works for me.

[Jot]

Thanks for your responses Ferssitar. I'm not sure how to answer your question about whether or not social anxiety could exist if their beliefs 100% correspond with reality. That's definitely an interesting question. Do you have any insight on that that you would like to share?

 

I first thought of this when I heard Stefan say that low self-esteem is due to people thinking false things about themselves and about the other people. I think that someone who has a healthy amount of self-esteem cannot be socially anxious. I think that social anxiety can only develop in people with low self-esteem so if it is the case that low self esteem is caused by having irrational beliefs in regards to oneself and the others than I think this should also apply to social anxiety as well. But I do no have any strong arguments for this so this is why I asked.

 

I would appreciate if you asked your therapist this to see what he/she thinks. 

 

To answer your second question ... I mean that I take something relatively tiny and make it something relatively huge ... taking things to extremes that are unhealthy and self defeating through negative self talk. 100%  would be an absolute truth and 0% would be absolutely false. Does that make sense?

 

Now I am sure that you meant what I initially thought but since you are not very rigorous with your word usage this can lead to a lot of confusions.

 

First off, things like "absolute truth" or "absolute falsehood" or "100% true" or "20% true" etc. are all pleonasms/redundancies. They are illogical constructions. To say that something can be "20% true" for example would be to deny logic. Propositions can only be true or false. 

 

 

Let me give you an example:

 

"Wow this thing didn't work out for me. Nothing ever works out for me. Remember that time I was nice to this person ... and they treated me like crap. Remember that other person that treated me like crap? I always treat people well and they treat me like crap. Everyone treats me like crap. Remember that time I worked super hard and my boss didn't recognize me and just kept on piling on work. Remember those two times my coworker was riding me harder than anyone else in the office even though I knew I was doing my best. I can't take this crap anymore. Nothing ever works for me. Nothing ever will work for me. There's no point in trying if the result is always going to be the same."

 

All those "nothing ever works out for me", "I always treat people well and they treat me like crap" etc. are false and you know it. They are a way in which you beat yourself up and cause your self esteem to drop even further.

 

But everything we ever do has secondary gains (benefits) so there is a reason behind you doing this. To me this kind of train of self-attaching thoughts is a defense mechanism against bullies and toxic people. This has its origins in childhood, back then I am guessing that this was a good strategy for you to protect yourself from even more attacks from other people by attacking yourself. When you attack yourself you have control over it, you know that your life is not in danger when you do it but you never know this if someone else does it to you. Bullies and toxic people generally love it when they see you beat yourself up which gives them less incentive to attack you as much. In a way you are doing their job for them. If you were to stop doing that as a child when you are exposed to this kind of people and be happy and not judge/like yourself then those people would attack you a lot more viciously in order to satisfy their sadistic desires...but for you this would have been more dangerous since their attacks would have been more relentless so self-attack was a good strategy at that time to gain some control over the environment. Whenever you cannot control your environment you control/manage yourself. 

 

This is my theory at least.

 

Do you see there how I would be taking it as absolute true that nothing ever works for me and how the super negative self talk is being used to reinforce the idea that things will never change.

 

I see how you would do that but as I said above to make/think those statements is to be illogical/irrational.

 

My mind will point to several instances where something didn't work for me as proof that things will continue not working for me. It negates all of the instances that something DID work for me. [...] I need to understand that and I it's hard for me when my mind automatically self attacks and ignores any evidence to the contrary.

 

Please pay very close attention to what I am going to say. I struggled a lot with this but as soon as you accept what I am going to say the instances of you doing this might reduce dramatically without you needing any more insight or therapy for this.

 

Your mind will not point you to several instances of anything, it wont negate anything, your mind does not automatically self-attack and ignores evidence. It is YOU that does that. You have agency over that not "your mind". Your mind is not something that does what it wants without you having any say in that, it cannot do things on its own (I am talking about you conscious mind). You CHOOSE what you say to yourself and the way in which you self-attack.

 

You choose to indulge and further remember and attack yourself for similar instances that happened in the past when something bad happened to you. Granted, I am not saying that you do not have a platform built for this since you had to do it so many times in the past. I know that it is harder for you not do to indulge in this once something bad happened but you can CHOOSE in that moment not to.

 

The only things that you cannot really have control over is your emotions in that moment. And that is actually very good for you and everyone. Painful emotions are exactly like physical wounds, they inform you that there is something that you need to take care of. They are great portals to self-inquiry if you listen to them carefully and do not attack yourself because of them.

 

When something bad happens to you this triggers in you emotions like shame/humiliation/anxiety/sorrow etc..what you did till now I hope is you would start attacking yourself and further put yourself down and cause you to feel even worse. Like this example: "Wow this thing didn't work out for me. Nothing...etc" What you could have done instead is to notice what emotions you felt in that moment. I am guessing that there is a mix of several bad emotions but say that is anxiety for a moment, then ask yourself why would you feel anxiety in that moment, look into your past and track the roots then you can talk to the therapist about this.

 

So it's not absolutely true, yet it is not absolutely false. That is the point that I'm getting at.

 

No, it is either true or false. It cannot be both.

[perrytheplat]

 

Thanks for your responses Ferssitar. I'm not sure how to answer your question about whether or not social anxiety could exist if their beliefs 100% correspond with reality. That's definitely an interesting question. Do you have any insight on that that you would like to share?

 

I first thought of this when I heard Stefan say that low self-esteem is due to people thinking false things about themselves and about the other people. I think that someone who has a healthy amount of self-esteem cannot be socially anxious. I think that social anxiety can only develop in people with low self-esteem so if it is the case that low self esteem is caused by having irrational beliefs in regards to oneself and the others than I think this should also apply to social anxiety as well. But I do no have any strong arguments for this so this is why I asked.

 

I would appreciate if you asked your therapist this to see what he/she thinks. 

 

To answer your second question ... I mean that I take something relatively tiny and make it something relatively huge ... taking things to extremes that are unhealthy and self defeating through negative self talk. 100%  would be an absolute truth and 0% would be absolutely false. Does that make sense?

 

Now I am sure that you meant what I initially thought but since you are not very rigorous with your word usage this can lead to a lot of confusions.

 

First off, things like "absolute truth" or "absolute falsehood" or "100% true" or "20% true" etc. are all pleonasms/redundancies. They are illogical constructions. To say that something can be "20% true" for example would be to deny logic. Propositions can only be true or false. 

 

 

Let me give you an example:

 

"Wow this thing didn't work out for me. Nothing ever works out for me. Remember that time I was nice to this person ... and they treated me like crap. Remember that other person that treated me like crap? I always treat people well and they treat me like crap. Everyone treats me like crap. Remember that time I worked super hard and my boss didn't recognize me and just kept on piling on work. Remember those two times my coworker was riding me harder than anyone else in the office even though I knew I was doing my best. I can't take this crap anymore. Nothing ever works for me. Nothing ever will work for me. There's no point in trying if the result is always going to be the same."

 

All those "nothing ever works out for me", "I always treat people well and they treat me like crap" etc. are false and you know it. They are a way in which you beat yourself up and cause your self esteem to drop even further.

 

But everything we ever do has secondary gains (benefits) so there is a reason behind you doing this. To me this kind of train of self-attaching thoughts is a defense mechanism against bullies and toxic people. This has its origins in childhood, back then I am guessing that this was a good strategy for you to protect yourself from even more attacks from other people by attacking yourself. When you attack yourself you have control over it, you know that your life is not in danger when you do it but you never know this if someone else does it to you. Bullies and toxic people generally love it when they see you beat yourself up which gives them less incentive to attack you as much. In a way you are doing their job for them. If you were to stop doing that as a child when you are exposed to this kind of people and be happy and not judge/like yourself then those people would attack you a lot more viciously in order to satisfy their sadistic desires...but for you this would have been more dangerous since their attacks would have been more relentless so self-attack was a good strategy at that time to gain some control over the environment. Whenever you cannot control your environment you control/manage yourself. 

 

This is my theory at least.

 

Do you see there how I would be taking it as absolute true that nothing ever works for me and how the super negative self talk is being used to reinforce the idea that things will never change.

 

I see how you would do that but as I said above to make/think those statements is to be illogical/irrational.

 

My mind will point to several instances where something didn't work for me as proof that things will continue not working for me. It negates all of the instances that something DID work for me. [...] I need to understand that and I it's hard for me when my mind automatically self attacks and ignores any evidence to the contrary.

 

Please pay very close attention to what I am going to say. I struggled a lot with this but as soon as you accept what I am going to say the instances of you doing this might reduce dramatically without you needing any more insight or therapy for this.

 

Your mind will not point you to several instances of anything, it wont negate anything, your mind does not automatically self-attack and ignores evidence. It is YOU that does that. You have agency over that not "your mind". Your mind is not something that does what it wants without you having any say in that, it cannot do things on its own (I am talking about you conscious mind). You CHOOSE what you say to yourself and the way in which you self-attack.

 

You choose to indulge and further remember and attack yourself for similar instances that happened in the past when something bad happened to you. Granted, I am not saying that you do not have a platform built for this since you had to do it so many times in the past. I know that it is harder for you not do to indulge in this once something bad happened but you can CHOOSE in that moment not to.

 

The only things that you cannot really have control over is your emotions in that moment. And that is actually very good for you and everyone. Painful emotions are exactly like physical wounds, they inform you that there is something that you need to take care of. They are great portals to self-inquiry if you listen to them carefully and do not attack yourself because of them.

 

When something bad happens to you this triggers in you emotions like shame/humiliation/anxiety/sorrow etc..what you did till now I hope is you would start attacking yourself and further put yourself down and cause you to feel even worse. Like this example: "Wow this thing didn't work out for me. Nothing...etc" What you could have done instead is to notice what emotions you felt in that moment. I am guessing that there is a mix of several bad emotions but say that is anxiety for a moment, then ask yourself why would you feel anxiety in that moment, look into your past and track the roots then you can talk to the therapist about this.

 

So it's not absolutely true, yet it is not absolutely false. That is the point that I'm getting at.

 

No, it is either true or false. It cannot be both.

 

thanks the for the very detailed reply. I agree with much of what you have said. That's why I'm in CBT, because the automatic thoughts are self-attacking, illogical, and irrational. They aren't absolute truths.

 

I am having a bit of trouble wrapping my mind around the final thing you said about absolute truth or falsity. But I think i'm moving in the right direction. If I'm a kind person 100% of the time and I choose not to be kind to someone who shows me that they don't deserve my kindness ... that does not make it false that I am a kind person. Can we go over a few of these if you don't mind? 

[Jot]

If I'm a kind person 100% of the time and I choose not to be kind to someone who shows me that they don't deserve my kindness ... that does not make it false that I am a kind person. Can we go over a few of these if you don't mind? 

 

When analyzing problems of this sort it is always important to have a clear definition of your terms. 

kindness = the quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate.

 

Now, if you are kind 100% of the time then even 1 example in which you were not kind to someone automatically disproves that you are kind 100% of the time. 

 

Also your argument is invalid because you equivocate "100% kind" with "kind (person)" - which means kind in general and in general means not 100%. 

 

I think the problem comes from you seeing 100% kindness as a virtue which prompts you to equivocate kind in general with always kind.

 

100% kindness is generally known as people pleaser syndrome which is a horrifically low self-esteem trait. No one should strive for such a thing. 

 

I would like to hear other examples.

[perrytheplat]

When analyzing problems of this sort it is always important to have a clear definition of your terms. 

kindness = the quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate.

 

Now, if you are kind 100% of the time then even 1 example in which you were not kind to someone automatically disproves that you are kind 100% of the time. 

 

Also your argument is invalid because you equivocate "100% kind" with "kind (person)" - which means kind in general and in general means not 100%. 

 

I think the problem comes from you seeing 100% kindness as a virtue which prompts you to equivocate kind in general with always kind.

 

100% kindness is generally known as people pleaser syndrome which is a horrifically low self-esteem trait. No one should strive for such a thing. 

 

I would like to hear other examples.

well that's what i'm getting at ... which brings us back to absolutes ... 

 

So if I list a bunch of qualities and I say these qualities make up who I am ... these positive traits ... and I have one instance where I am not kind to someone .... that negates the fact that I am that thing? So how can I ever have any positive qualities? That is mind boggling to me. Because that is what my mind is doing ... it's saying remember when a, b, and c happened ... so therefore you do not have this positive trait ... 

 

How can I identify any positive traits? I don't even know what to ask anymore ... let's stick with the example of kind for the time being so I can understand this.

[Jot]

well that's what i'm getting at ... which brings us back to absolutes ... 

 

So if I list a bunch of qualities and I say these qualities make up who I am ... these positive traits ... and I have one instance where I am not kind to someone .... that negates the fact that I am that thing? So how can I ever have any positive qualities? That is mind boggling to me. Because that is what my mind is doing ... it's saying remember when a, b, and c happened ... so therefore you do not have this positive trait ... 

 

How can I identify any positive traits? I don't even know what to ask anymore ... let's stick with the example of kind for the time being so I can understand this.

 

No one is kind, rational, sensible, empathetic, curious etc... (list any positive trait you can think of) 100% of the time, not even to the people who would deserve it. Even if you would dedicate your whole life to be absolutely kind/etc... and you will still fail. This is just an impossible standard for human beings. Did this never occur to you? Everyone who demands that you should be 100% of the time is either insane or stone evil. 

 

Why do you need to be kind with no exception? Why being kind the vast majority of the time to people who deserve it is not enough for you?

[perrytheplat]

I think this thread may have delved beyond the scope of the negative automatic thought process I was initially talking about. I'm going to start another thread about the positive trait exercise that I did and we can talk about it there

 

https://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/47713-positive-traits-worksheet-from-cbt-therapy/

 

Thanks for the great discussion Ferssitar. I think we've both come to the same conclusion.