Do you tend to think the following negative thoughts, such as:
"I'm no good;" "Nobody likes me;" "Things will never get better;" and "I'm
worthless"? If you do this on a chronic basis, you will probably experience a
depressed mood. One of the assumptions of cognitive therapy is that what you
think determines what you feel.
Dr. David Burns offers four basic assumptions about Cognitive
Therapy:
1. Individuals Construct Their Own Reality. All humans are
actively involved in constructing their own realities, in which they actively
select, filter, and make interpretations of incoming sensory data.
2. You Feel the Way You Think.
Your feelings are created by
your thoughts and not the actual event or situation. In other words, all of
your experiences are interpreted by your brain and given a conscious meaning
before you have an emotional response.
3. Most Negative Feelings Come From Negative, Distorted
Thoughts.
Negative emotions such as depression, anxiety, guilt, shame, and
hopelessness are triggered by one or more negative and distorted
thoughts.
4. You Can Change the Way You Feel.
You can learn to be aware of
your distorted thinking patterns, and learn to change them to more realistic
and rational thoughts. As you make these thoughts modifications, you will
change your mood and feelings.
Dr. David Burns points out that there are ten basic thought distortions that lead
to depression and anxiety.
Cognitive therapy helps people to be aware of how their negative thoughts
include one or more of the following thought distortions:
10 Basic Thought Distortions
1. All-or-nothing thinking: You look at things in
absolute, black-and-white categories.
2. Overgeneralization: You view a negative event as a
never-ending pattern of defeat.
3. Mental Filter: You focus only on the
negatives.
4. Discounting the Positives: You insist that your
accomplishments or positive qualities "don't count."
5. Jumping to conclusions:
- Mind Reading: You assume that people are reacting negatively to you when there's no definite evidence
for this.
- Fortune-Telling: You arbitrarily predict that things will turn
out badly.
6. Magnification or minimization: You blow things way up
out of proportion or you shrink their importance inappropriately.
7. Emotional reasoning: You reason from how you feel: "I
feel like an idiot, so I really must be one." Or "I don't feel like doing
this, so I'll put it off."
8. "Should" statements: You criticize yourself or other
people with "shoulds" or "shouldn'ts." "Musts," "oughts," and "have tos" are
similar offenders.
9. Labeling: You identify with your shortcomings.
Instead of saying "I made a mistake," you tell yourself, "I'm a jerk," or "a
fool," or "a loser."
10. Personalization and blame: You blame yourself for
something you weren't entirely responsible for, or blame other people and
overlook ways that your own attitudes and behavior might contribute to a
problem.
Reference: Feeling Good: The New Mood
Therapy, Dr. David D. Burns. (See
the book: Feeling
Good)
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