10 Cognitive Distortions.

I came across some cognitive tools that have been helpful for me in the past in the book "The Feeling Good Handbook" by Dr. David D. Burns. The checklist of cognitive distortions have helped me in the past to bring awareness to distorted thinking and has allowed me to come up with alternative ways of thinking and perceiving stressful situations. I will memorize them all so that I can continue to apply them going forward. The 10 cognitive distortions are:

1. All or nothing thinking: You look a negative things in absolute, black-and-white categories.
2. Overgeneralization: You view a negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.
3. Mental filter: You dwell on the negatives and ignore the positives.
4. Discounting the positives: You insist that your accomplishments or positive qualities "don't count."
5. Jumping to conclusions: (A) Mind reading - you assume that people are reacting negatively to you when there's no definite evidence for this, (B) Fortune-telling - You arbitrarily predict that things will turn out badly.
6. Magnification or minimization: You blow things way up out of proportion or you shrink their importance inappropriately.
7. Emotional reasoning: You reason from how you feel: "I feel like an idiot, so I really must be one." Or "I don't feel like doing this, so I'll put it off."
8. "Should statements": You criticise yourself or other people with "shoulds" or "shouldn'ts." "Musts," "oughts," and "have tos" are similar offenders.
9. Labeling: You identify with your short comings. Instead of saying "I made a mistake," you tell yourself, "I'm a jerk," or "a fool," or "a looser."
10. Personalization and blame: You blame yourself for something you weren't entirely responsible for, or you blame other people and overlook ways that your own attitudes and behaviour might contribute to a problem.