During my last year of University I was introduced to a book
that dramatically changed the way I view and engage the world. It’s too
bad it wasn’t one of the assigned readings. Feeling Good – The New Mood Therapy by David D. Burns, M.D.
was an eye opener for a couple of reasons. The content of the book is
first rate. When you read it you are hit with that “of course this is
how it is” feeling that makes it very easy to understand. But the gem of
Dr. Burns’ book is the practical exercises he presents for you to do to
try and help you see the truth of what he is saying as it is manifested
within your behavior. It would be a good book without the exercises, it
is a life changing book because of them. Reading the book cover to
cover and doing the exercises will improve your life, even if you are
feeling good already.
As I worked my way through the book a strange feeling gripped me for
the first time. I became aware that I had never learned how to think or
how my brain works with information. As a psychology student I was
exposed to a lot of scientific evidence that documented the outcome of
thought processes. But we didn’t touch very much on our conscious
experience as it comes to how we create an understanding of the world. I
realized that we are born and as we mature we are schooled in language,
math, science, history, etc…. all things that will increase the
likelihood that we’ll be come productive members of society; the goal is
to produce tax payers who will find their role, procreate and raise
more tax payers. Very little of our socialization this has anything to
do with the individuals themselves, it is gear towards creating the
functioning parts that make up the whole.
Burns take on the task of illuminating the thought process as it
deals with the individuals. What I think is the best part of the book
are the sections devoted to cognitive distortions because I found myself
making a lot of these perceptual errors.
First off realize that what we think about the world is NOT
necessarily what is actually going on in the world. Our interpretation
of events is based on our past experience with the world. If we make the
right interpretation we will be fine, our world view will be in line
with reality. But if we make the wrong interpretation, we can run into
trouble. Take the actions of a young child who see fire for the first
time. They have no behavioral event inventory with fire, they have no
world view of it, and may decide that it is bright and warm like the sun
but not damaging to touch and choose to grab it. They end up getting
burned. It’s a valuable lesson for them because fire does burn you more
quickly than the sun does.
The child making the decision that the fire is just like the sun is a
cognitive distortion. It is an assumption they make that they believe
is true, but which isn’t. In the case of the fire, the outcome is fairly
obvious, a lesson that hurts. But with higher level things, the outcome
can be more insidious and damaging. If the child who sees his father
lighting the fire that eventually burned them creates a connection
between the fire and his father, he has made a damaging cognitive
distortion because it *may* impact the way the child views their father.
They could end up thinking that there father is capable of burning them
directly and withdraw from this parent in a protective reflex.
This example is fairly simplistic, but it is how the brain works.
It’s an effect pattern matching engine that looks for patterns that will
improve chances of survival.
Dr. Burns has a list of 10 cognitive distortions that he has observed people making:
- 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.
- Over generalization: You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.
- 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 discolors the
entire beaker of water.
- Disqualifying the positive:
You reject positive experiences by insisting they “don’t count” for some
reason or other. You maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by
your everyday experiences.
- Jumping to conclusions: You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion.
- Mind reading: You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you and don’t bother to check it out.
- The Fortune Teller Error: You anticipate that things will turn out badly and feel convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact.
- 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.”
- Emotional reasoning: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: “I feel it, therefore it must be true.”
- 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.
- Labeling and mislabeling:
This is an extreme form of over generalization. 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 damn louse.” Mislabeling involves describing an
event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded.
- Personalization: You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event for which, in fact, you were not primarily responsible.
