When couples argue, they generally can not agree about the facts of what occurred. Furthermore, our mind tricks us based on what we believe, believe, and feel.

If you suffer from depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, or perfectionism, your thinking can skew your senses. Cognitive distortions reflect faulty thinking, frequently stemming from insecurity and low-self-esteem. Negative filters distort reality and can create stressful emotions. Thoughts awaken feelings, which in turn activate more negative thoughts, creating a negative feedback loop.

Being able to determine cognitive distortions builds our capacity to be mindful.

1. Negative filtering

2. Magnification

3. Labeling

4. Personalization

5.

6. Negative projections

7. Overgeneralizing

Self-Criticism

Self-criticism is the most pernicious feature of codependency and low self-esteem. It can make you feel guilty, faulty, and insufficient. Negative self-talk robs you of happiness, make you unhappy, and may result in depression and illness. It contributes to negative filtering, which itself can be regarded as a cognitive distortion. Self-criticism creates to other distortions, such as magnification and tagging, when you call yourself an idiot, a failure or a jerk.

Shame underlies harmful or chronic self-criticism and triggers many cognitive distortions. You may find fault with your ideas, deeds, words, and look, and perceive events and yourself in a negative way that nobody else would. Some beautiful and successful folks see themselves as unattractive, fair, or failures, and can’t be persuaded otherwise.

Magnification

Magnification is when we exaggerate our flaws or responsibilities. We can also inflate negative projections and possible risks. It’s also referred to as catastrophizing, because we are”making mountains out of molehills” or”blowing things out of proportion.” The inherent assumption is that we won’t have the ability to handle what is going to happen. It is driven by insecurity and nervousness and escalates them. Another distortion is minimization, once we downplay the significance of our attributes, abilities, and positive ideas, feelings, and events, like compliments. We might magnify somebody else’s appearances or skills, while decreasing our own. If you are in a group discussing, you may think everyone’s pitch was better than your own. Stop comparing.

Personalization

It is when we take personal responsibility for things over which we don’t have any control. We may also blame ourselves if anything bad happens and take the blame for things that happen to others – even if it is conducive to their actions! We can wind up constantly feeling guilty or like a victim. If you are plagued with guilt, it might be an indication of toxic shame. Take steps to examine and free yourself of guilt.

Do you believe in absolutes? You’re the very best or the worst, right or wrong, good or bad. When you say never or always, it is a clue that you might be thinking in absolutes. If something goes wrong, we feel defeated. Why bother? “If I can not do my whole workout, there is no point to work out whatsoever.” There is no gray and no flexibility.

Life isn’t a dichotomy. What applies in one case might not be suitable in another. An all-or-nothing attitude can enable you to overdo or overlook opportunities to enhance and gradually reach your goals–how the tortoise beat the hare. Exercising for ten minutes or just some muscle groups has large health benefits, compared to doing nothing. There are health risks to overdoing, also. If you believe you need to do everybody’s job, work overtime, rather than ask for help, you will be drained, resentful, and finally, ill.

Self-criticism and shame create anticipation of rejection and failing. Perfectionists also distort reality by imagining negative events or adverse outcomes are more likely to happen than positive ones. This creates tremendous worry about failing, making mistakes, and being judged. The future looms as a dangerous threat, instead of a safe arena to explore and revel in our lives. We might be projecting the unsafe home environment from our youth and living like it were happening today. We will need to recruit a loving parent within us to shine the light of awareness on our fears and reassure ourselves that we are not powerless, have options, and that there is nothing to fear.

Overgeneralizing

Overgeneralizations are statements or opinions which go beyond the truth or are wider than specific instances. We might form a belief based on little evidence or just 1 example. We can jump from”Mary does not like me,” to”Nobody likes me,” or”I am not likable.” When we generalize about a group of individuals or sex, it’s usually untrue. By way of instance, to say”Men are better at math than girls,” is untrue because most women are better at mathematics than many guys are. When we use the words,”all” or”none,””always” or”never,” we likely are making an overgeneralization, based on black believing. “I have not met anyone dating online,” so,”I never,” or”You can not meet anyone through internet dating.”

Perfectionists tend to overgeneralize by making international, negative attributions about themselves and about their negative projections. If we spill our water at a dinner party, it is not only an embarrassing accident, we are mortified, and sure we made a clumsy fool of ourselves. We go one step further with a drawback, projection and overgeneralize to imagine that everybody believes the same, will not like us, and will not invite us .