# Feeling Good-Cognitive Distortions associated with Depression



## bonniei (Jan 25, 2001)

I am reading the book Feeling Good by David Burns and he says thoughts give rise to feelings. All the therapists have been telling you to focus on your feelings and express them- they are all wrong apparently! He says if feelings have been brought about by cognitive distortions then it may not be productive to express them. He gives steps in the book for what todo if you have cognitive distortions. BTW a cognition is just a thought or perception.The cognitive distortions are as follows:"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 failure2)Overgeneralization: You see a single event as a never ending pattern of defeat3)Mental filter:You pick out a sinngle negative event and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that colors the entire beaker of water4)Disqualifying the positive: youu reject positive experiences by insisting they "don't count" for some reason or other. In this wayyou can maintain a belief that is contradicted by your daily experiences5) Jumping to Conclusions: You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusiona) Mind reading: You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you and don't bother to check this out The Fortune Teller error: you anticipate that things will turn out badly, and you feel convinced that your prediction is an already established fact6)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" (Parentheses mine: i feel guilty therefore I must have done something bad)8) Should statements: You try tomotivate yourself with shoulds and shouldn'ts, as if you had to be whipped and ppunished before you could be expecteed to do anything. "Musts" and "oughts" are also offenders. the emotional consequence is guilt. When you direvct should statements towards others, you feel anger, frustration and resentment9) Labeling and mislabeling: This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you match 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 loaded10) Personalization: You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event which infact you were not responnsible for."I have been practicing catching these thoughts fo the last couplre of days and substituting them with more rational ones as he does in the book and it really helped me improve my mood when I was feeling down. Someone criticized me in the Mp and called me confusing and I took it to heart and said I am always confusing. I thought I must be always confusing as a teacher too and soon I was down in the dumps. All the positive things people said on the thread (someone said I was brilliant) didn't count. Then I saw the distortions I was making-magnifying by saying I was always confusing and thought ok there have been a couple of times I may have confused the kids but I am not always confusing and felt better instantly. I also thought I wa disqualifying the positives and thought of all the positives people had said and that too lifted my mood. In the past I would have gone deeper into the dumps by focusin on the feelings and my husband would have had to talk me out of it.If anyone wants more info on these distortions I would be happy to share, Next time you get into the dumps come to this thread and maybe if you tell me about it I will be able to pinpoint the distortion you are making.


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## BQ (May 22, 2000)

Bonnie, He highlights some excellent points. And I see you doing some great work on your thinking, congrats! Changing my thinking wasn't and isn't easy for me. Some things are thought "habits" for me and can be a challenge to change. I will say my feelings can point me _to_ my thinking. So I think there is some value in paying attention to one's feelings. For me they can kind of lead the way. I would ask myself how I felt and then..... the critical thing.. "Why?" do I feel that way, and then I would start to pay attention to my thinking and begin to question it. So focusing entirely on my feelings and doing no more than that, wouldn't have gotten me very far. So I see his point. But feelings can lead the way for me and spark enlightenments.BQ


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## trbell (Nov 1, 2000)

Some very helpful information, bonniei. I do have to correct one thing though. In my experience most therapists don't dwell on feelings. Burns is a psychologist as are most CBT therapists and both DR. Bolen and I recommend our patients read Feeling Good (I think she recommended it at one point here when she was still coming) Your misperception about the way psychologists operate does help me though to understand why there is so much defensiveness about psychologists.Bada


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## bonniei (Jan 25, 2001)

Well put, BQ. Feelings pave the way for thoughts. yes I don't think feelings ought to be discounted but just feeling them doesn't get you beyond them.


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## Guest (Jul 25, 2003)

It might behoove some therapists to spend a little more time addressing feelings.


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