Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy (8 page)

I have prepared a simple self-assessment quiz to help you test and strengthen your understanding of the ten distortions. As you read each of the following brief vignettes, imagine you are the person who is being described. Circle one or more answers which indicate the distortions contained in the negative thoughts. I will explain the answer to the first question. The answer key to subsequent questions is given at the end of this chapter. But don’t look ahead! I’m
certain
you will be able to identify at least
one
distortion in the first question—and that will be a start!

Table 3–1
. Definitions of Cognitive Distortions

1. ALL-OR-NOTHING THINKING: You see things in black-and-white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.

2. OVERGENERALIZATION: You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.

3. MENTAL FILTER: You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that colors the entire beaker of water.

4. DISQUALIFYING THE POSITIVE: You reject positive experiences by insisting they “don’t count” for some reason or other. In this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences.

5. JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS: You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion.

6. MAGNIFICATION (CATASTROPHIZING) OR MINIMIZATION: You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your goof-up or someone else’s achievement), or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow’s imperfections). This is also called the “binocular trick.”

7. EMOTIONAL REASONING: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: “I feel it, therefore it must be true.”

8. SHOULD STATEMENTS: You try to motivate yourself with shoulds and shouldn’ts, as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything. “Musts” and “oughts” are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct should statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment.

9. LABELING AND MISLABELING: This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself: “I’m a
loser
.” When someone else’s behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him: “He’s a goddam louse.” Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded.

10. PERSONALIZATION: You see yourself as me cause of some negative external event which in fact you were not primarily responsible for.

1. You are a housewife, and your heart sinks when your husband has just complained disgruntledly that the roast beef was overdone. The following thought crosses your mind: “I’m a total failure. I can’t stand it! I
never
do
anything
right. I work like a slave and this is all the thanks I get! The jerk!” These thoughts cause you to feel sad and angry. Your distortions include one or more of the following:

a. all-or-nothing thinking;

b. overgeneralization;

c. magnification;

d. labeling;

e. all the above.

Now I will discuss the correct answers to this question so you can get some immediate feedback. Any answer(s) you might have circled was (were) correct. So if you circled
anything
, you were right! Here’s why. When you tell yourself, “I’m a
total
failure,” you engage in
all-or-nothing
thinking. Cut it out! The meat was a little dry, but that doesn’t make your entire life a total failure. When you think, “I
never
do
anything
right,” you are
over generalizing
. Never? Come on now! Not
anything
? When you tell yourself, “I can’t stand it,” you are
magnifying
the pain you are feeling. You’re blowing it way out of proportion because you
are
standing it, and if you
are
, you
can
. Your husband’s grumbling is not exactly what you like to hear, but it’s not
a reflection of your worth. Finally, when you proclaim, “I work like a slave and this is all the thanks I get! The jerk!” you are
labeling
both of you. He’s not
a jerk
, he’s just being irritable and insensitive. Jerky behavior exists, but jerks do not. Similarly, it’s silly to label yourself a
slave
. You’re just letting his moodiness sour your evening.

Okay, now let’s continue with the quiz.

2. You have just read the sentence in which I informed you that you would have to take this self-assessment quiz. Your heart suddenly sinks and you think, “Oh no, not other test! I always do lousy on tests. I’ll have to skip this section of the book. It makes me nervous, so it wouldn’t help anyway.” Your distortions include:

a. jumping to conclusions (fortune teller error);

b. overgeneralization;

c. all-or-nothing thinking;

d. personalization;

e. emotional reasoning.

3. You are a psychiatrist at the University of Pennsylvania. You are attempting to revise your manuscript on depression after meeting with your editor in New York. Although your editor seemed extremely enthusiastic, you notice you are feeling nervous and inadequate due to your thoughts, “They made a terrible mistake when they chose my book! I won’t be able to do a good job. I’ll never be able to make the book fresh, lively, and punchy. My writing is too drab, and my ideas aren’t good enough.” Your cognitive distortions include:

a. all-or-nothing thinking;

b. jumping to conclusions (negative prediction);

c. mental filter;

d. disqualifying the positive;

e. magnification.

4. You are lonely and you decide to attend a social affair for singles. Soon after you get there, you have the urge to leave because you feel anxious and defensive. The following thoughts run through your mind: “They probably aren’t very interesting people. Why torture myself? They’re just a bunch of losers. I can tell because I feel so bored. This party will be a drag.” Your errors involve:

a. labeling;

b. magnification;

c. jumping to conclusions (fortune teller error and mind reading);

d. emotional reasoning;

e. personalization.

5. You receive a layoff notice from your employer. You feel mad and frustrated. You think, “This proves the world is no damn good. I never get a break.” Your distortions include:

a. all-or-nothing thinking;

b. disqualifying the positive;

c. mental filter;

d. personalization;

e. should statement.

6. You are about to give a lecture and you notice that your heart is pounding. You feel tense and nervous because you think, “My God, I’ll probably forget what I’m supposed to say. My speech isn’t any good anyway. My mind will blank out. I’ll make a fool of myself.” Your thinking errors involve:

a. all-or-nothing thinking;

b. disqualifying the positive;

c. jumping to conclusions (fortune teller error);

d. minimization;

e. labeling.

7. Your date calls you at the last minute to cancel out because of illness. You feel angry and disappointed because you think, “I’m getting jilted. What did I do to foul things up?” Your thinking errors include:

a. all-or-nothing thinking;

b. should statements;

c. jumping to conclusions (mind reading);

d. personalization;

e. overgeneralization.

8. You have put off writing a report for work. Every night when you try to get down to it, the whole project seems so difficult that you watch TV instead. You begin to feel overwhelmed and guilty. You are thinking the following: “I’m so lazy I’ll never get this done. I just can’t do the darn thing. It would take forever. It won’t turn out right anyway.” Your thinking errors include:

a. jumping to conclusions (fortune teller error);

b. overgeneralization;

c. labeling;

d. magnification;

e. emotional reasoning.

9. You’ve read this entire book and after applying the methods for several weeks, you begin to feel better. Your BDC score went down from twenty-six (moderately depressed) to eleven (borderline depression). Then you suddenly begin to feel worse, and in three days your score has gone back up to twenty-eight. You feel disillusioned, hopeless, bitter, and desperate due to thinking, “I’m not gettinganywhere. These methods won’t help me after all. I should be well by now. That ‘improvement’ was a fluke. I was fooling myself when I thought I was feeling better. I’ll never get well.” Your cognitive distortions include:

a. disqualifying the positive;

b. should statement;

c. emotional reasoning;

d. all-or-nothing thinking;

e. jumping to conclusions (negative prediction).

10. You’ve been trying to diet. This weekend you’ve been nervous, and, since you didn’t have anything to do, you’ve been nibbling, nibbling. After your fourth piece of candy, you tell yourself, “I just can’t control myself. My dieting and jogging all week have gone down the drain. I must look like a balloon. I shouldn’t have eaten that. I can’t stand this. I’m going to pig out all weekend!” You begin to feel so guilty you push another handful of candy into your mouth in an abortive effort to feel better. Your distortions include:

a. all-or-nothing thinking;

b. mislabeling;

c. negative prediction;

d. should statement;

e. disqualifying the positive.

ANSWER KEY

    1. A B C D E

    2. A B C E

    3. A B D E

    4. A B C D

    5. A C

    6. A C D E

    7. C D

    8. A B C D E

    9. A B C D E

    10. A B C D E

At this point you may be asking yourself, “Okay. I understand that my depression results from my negative thoughts because my outlook on life changes enormously when my moods go up or down. But if my negative thoughts are so distorted, how do I continually get fooled? I can think
as clearly and realistically as the next person, so if what I am telling myself is irrational, why does it seem so right?”

Even though your depressing thoughts may be distorted, they nevertheless create a powerful illusion of truth. Let me expose the basis for the deception in blunt terms—your feelings are not facts! In fact, your feelings, per se, don’t even count—except as a mirror of the way you are thinking. If your perceptions make no sense, the feelings they create will be as absurd as the images reflected in the trick mirrors at an amusement park. But these abnormal emotions
feel
just as valid and realistic as the genuine feelings created by undistorted thoughts, so you automatically attribute truth to them. This is why depression is such a powerful form of mental black magic.

Once you invite depression through an “automatic” series of cognitive distortions, your feelings and actions will reinforce each other in a self-perpetuating vicious cycle. Because you
believe
whatever your depressed brain tells you, you find yourself feeling negative about almost everything. This reaction occurs in milliseconds, too quickly for you even to be aware of it. The negative emotion
feels
realistic and in turn lends an aura of credibility to the distorted thought which created it. The cycle goes on and on, and you are eventually trapped. The mental prison is an illusion, a hoax you have inadvertently created, but it
seems
real because it
feels
real.

What is the key to releasing yourself from your emotional prison? Simply this: Your thoughts create your emotions; therefore, your emotions cannot prove that your thoughts are accurate. Unpleasant feelings merely indicate that you are thinking something negative and believing it. Your emotions
follow
your thoughts just as surely as baby ducks follow their mother. But the fact that the baby ducks follow faithfully along doesn’t prove that the mother knows where she is going!

Let’s examine your equation, “I feel, therefore I am.” This attitude that emotions reflect a kind of self-evident, ultimate truth is not unique to depressed people. Most psychotherapists
today share the conviction that becoming more
aware
of your feelings and expressing them more openly represent emotional maturity. The implication is that your feelings represent a higher reality, a personal integrity, a truth beyond question.

My position is quite different. Your feelings, per se, are not necessarily special at all. In fact, to the extent that your negative emotions are based on mental distortions—as is all too often the case—they can hardly be viewed as desirable.