Types of Distorted Thinking

Filtering: focusing on and magnifying the negative details while ignoring (filtering out) the positive in a situation. A person will reject or minimize good experiences and insist they “don’t count.”

Polarized or all-or-nothing thinking: thinking at one extreme or the other, in black or white, good or bad categories. For example, if someone cooks a meal that isn’t perfect, they see themselves as a total failure, the worst extreme.

Overgeneralizing: making a general conclusion based on a single event or piece of evidence. If something bad happens, a person expects it to occur over and over again. They see a single negative event as permanent and often use the

words “always” and “never.”

Jumping to conclusions: expecting the worst, immediately interpreting something in a negative way without having many, if any facts. Thinking that everything people say or do is a reaction to them personally.

Mind reading: concluding that they know what others are feeling/thinking, why they act a certain way, or how they feel, without their saying so.

Fortune telling: believing they know how future events will turn out without much, if any supporting evidence.

Minimizing: discounting the positive aspects of themselves or their actions and insisting they “don’t count.”

Blaming: holding others responsible for their pain or alternatively, they assume total responsibility and blames themselves for an event out of their control.

Emotional reasoning: believing that what they feel must automatically be true. For example, if they feel bad about something, it means it won't benefit them / will cause harm.

Being right: being continually defensive and having to prove that their feelings, opinions, and actions are right. Being wrong is unthinkable.

Reward fallacy: expecting that all of their sacrifice and self-denial will pay off. And feeling bitter and resentful when it doesn’t happen.

Source: Adapted in part from David Burns, Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy (HarperCollins, 2009), table 3.1, 42–43.