A distorted thought or cognitive distortion — and there are many — is an exaggerated pattern of thought that’s not based on factual evidence. It consequently leads you to view things more negatively than they really are in reality.

In other words, cognitive distortions are your thoughts convincing you to believe negative things about yourself, another person, and/or your world that are not necessarily true.

Our thoughts have a great impact on how we feel and how we behave. When you treat these negative thoughts as facts, you may see yourself and act in a way based on maladaptive assumptions.

Everyone falls into cognitive distortions. It’s part of the human experience to have a “story-telling mind”. Cognitive distortion happens particularly when we’re feeling down.

While normal, if you engage too frequently in negative thoughts, your mental health can suffer.

Additionally, cognitive distortions can reinforce negative or unhelpful beliefs about ourselves, others, or the world that we have internalized, shaping our perception of reality.

You can learn to identify cognitive distortions so that you’ll know when your mind is playing tricks on you. Then you can reframe and redirect your thoughts so that they have less of a negative impact on your mood and behaviors.

You may not have control over which thoughts enter your mind – most of us don’t, but all of us can control how we relate to the thoughts we have through mindful observation.

15 Common Cognitive Distortions and Examples of Each

Filtering

Mental filtering is draining all positives in a situation and, instead, dwelling on its negatives. Even if there are more positive aspects than negative in a situation or person, you focus on the negatives exclusively.

Example: You have a performance review at work with your boss. Overall, your boss had positive feedback, but pointed out an area that needs improvement. You feel miserable after this review and dwell on this one negative comment excessively.

Polarization

Also called “all-or-nothing thinking”. You think about yourself and/or the world in a “black and white” way, “it’s either or” without any grey areas or nuance. This way of thinking often leads to extreme standards or perfectionism, while also setting you up for “failure”. You miss the complexity of a situation or about people.

Example:

You decide to eat healthily. While you have stuck to that plan, you had pizza for lunch one day. You think that your goal to eat healthy is ruined now and you might as well give up.

Overgeneralization

When you think of an isolated event, and generalize it to all situations and patterns – this affects the way you can think about yourself, people, and the world. Signs you are overgeneralizing is when words like “everybody”, “nobody” or “never”, “always”, “everything”, or “nothing” are in your thoughts or in your speech.

Example: You interview for a new job and find out that you were not selected. You think “I’m never good enough. I’m worthless.”

Discounting the Positive

Even if you can think of the positives within a situation or person, you discount them as having no value.

Example: If someone pays you a compliment, you dismiss it as them “just being nice”.

Jumping to Conclusions

When one jumps to conclusions, they assume a negative outcome and then react to that false assumption as if it were true.

Example: Your partner does not respond to your last message and you assume they are ignoring you or mad at you. As a result, you become angry at them and react as such the next time you see them.

Catastrophizing

Related to jumping to conclusions, catastrophizing is assuming the very worst conclusion in every scenario, no matter how unlikely it is that it will happen.

Example: You are two minutes late to a meeting, and you think: “What if they fire me?”

Personalization

You believe you are responsible for an event or outcome that in reality, you had no control or influence over. This distortion often leads to a feeling of guilt.

Example: Your child hurts themself at a birthday party You blame yourself for allowing your child to go to that friend’s house.

Control Fallacies

You either feel responsible or in control of everything and everyone in your life, or you feel you have no control whatsoever over your life.

Example: You didn’t complete a project by its due date, and think “of course I couldn’t make the deadline! I’m getting overworked by my boss already and I’m constantly distracted by coworkers.”

Fallacy of Fairness

You measure every situation and behavior by a sense of fairness. When you find out others don’t assign the same value of fairness to a situation, this makes you resentful and offended. In other words, you believe you know better than others to what degree something is fair and become upset when others disagree with you. You need everything to be fair according to your own parameters, but fairness is rarely absolute and often self-serving.

Example: You become resentful when your partner refuses to sit and watch a movie with you, and think it’s only “fair” that they do that after you make dinner. Your partner, on the other hand, believes it’s only “fair” for them to go to the gym after a chaotic day at work so that they can decompress and enjoy spending time together afterward.

Blaming

Blaming refers to making other people responsible for how you feel. Even if someone engages in hurtful behavior, you are still in control of how you feel. The distortion comes from believing that others have more power over your life than you yourself do.

Example: Your friend makes a comment about your appearance and you say “you made me feel badly about myself”.

Shoulds

“Shoulds” are ironclad rules you give to yourself or others without regard for the nuances or specifics of a circumstance or situation. However, if circumstances change and you can’t do what you said you should do, you become self-deprecating, guilty, let down, or frustrated.

Example: You try golf for the first time and think to yourself “I should be better at this”.

Another example: “Everyone should like Taylor Swift”.

Emotional Reasoning

Believing that how you feel is a reflection of objective reality. You mistake your feelings about something as factual information about that thing.

Example: You go to an event and feel out of place, and think, “I don’t belong anywhere”.

Another example: You wake up to a cloudy day and think “I hate rainy days. Today is going to be a bad day.”

Fallacy of Change

You believe people should change their ways to suit your expectations or needs, especially after pressuring them to.

Example: You want your partner to stop spending time with their friends because you feel insecure that they don’t prioritize quality time together as much as you want them to. You tell them every time they leave to spend time with their friends that it isn’t okay with you and expect them to stay with you.

Global Labeling

This often happens when you judge yourself after one isolated event into an absolute. You judge an event or person without taking context into account. This leads to viewing a situation or person inaccurately. If you apply global labeling to yourself, it can lead to low self-esteem, insecurity, or anxiety.

Example: Your coworker accidentally spilled coffee onto your desk and you label them as “clumsy”.

Always Being Right

You view your own opinions as factual and trumps others’ opinions or feelings, and can view your opinions superior to facts. You’ll go to great lengths to prove you are right, causing friction in your relationships.

Example:

You quarrel with your child and say, “I’m the parent.” implying that makes you correct in every situation and invalidate your child’s opinion or feelings. Your child is visibly upset and you continue to argue to prove why you are right.

Conclusion

Most cognitive distortions and negative thinking can be reversed or reconstructed once you are aware of them. Most of us have cognitive distortions at times. Cognitive distortions do go hand in hand with mental illnesses, including personality disorders which make it difficult, but not impossible, to reframe them.

A helpful reminder is that it is often not events that make us upset but how we think about or interpret those events. We may not be able to control events, but we can control how we think and feel about them.