August 27, 2024

Cognitive Distortions - Understanding And Challenging Negative Thoughts

Whether or not you regularly struggle with your mental health, you have likely experienced a cognitive distortion before. Cognitive distortions are exactly what they sound like – they are negative thoughts that spawn when your mind bends reality to create an unlikely, untrue, or implausible scenario that causes you more worry and concern than necessary.

Though cognitive distortions can feel scary and difficult to handle, it is possible to successfully work through them.

Why do people develop cognitive distortions?

There are a variety of reasons why a person might experience negative thoughts brought on by cognitive distortions.

• They are experiencing high levels of stress or anxiety about a certain area of their life.

If you are already feeling overwhelmed, anxious, or stressed, it can be easy to allow your thinking patterns to wander down a negative pathway. Worriers and anxious people tend to assume the worst and, when they are already leaning toward negative thinking, these thoughts can begin to multiply and spiral out of control.

• They maintain a negative attitude.

People with negative attitudes tend to experience a lot of cognitive distortions and negative thoughts. If you approach life with a generally negative attitude, it is natural that your thinking patterns would also follow suit.

• They have trauma.

Past traumatic experiences can cause a person to develop issues with cognitive distortions and negative thinking. After experiencing trauma, the brain can continue to focus on those bad experiences, leading to a cycle of negative and distorted thinking.

Why is it so hard to challenge negative thinking and cognitive distortions?

Like any habit or ritual, if you are pathologically used to thinking negatively and experiencing cognitive distortions, it can be difficult for you to exit this “norm” and think more positively or rationally. Even if the negative thinking is truly hurting and affecting you, if it is a pattern of behavior you are used to, then learning how to defy it in favor of something different can be difficult, but not impossible.

What are some strategies you can use to move past cognitive distortions?

If you are ready to end cognitive distortions and negative thoughts for good, consider implementing these basic strategies to get started.

• Train yourself to recognize when you are having negative thoughts.

If you’ve been a negative thinker for a long time, you may not even notice when you’re experiencing cognitive distortions or negative thinking because they feel very normal and natural to you! Practice noticing when these types of thoughts are happening. Be mindful of your thinking patterns and pay close attention to your thoughts and how they make you feel. You can’t get rid of a negative thinking habit without first being aware of it.

• Learn your triggers.

What causes your spiral of cognitive distortions or negative thinking to begin? Pay attention to what people, places, things, or events cause you to begin experiencing negative thinking. Being more aware of these specific triggers can help you better understand how to lessen the amount of negative thinking you experience. Moreover, this may mean you have to excise certain (toxic) people from your life.

• Actively replace negative thoughts with more positive ones.

When you notice yourself having a negative thought, make an effort to pause, consider the thought, and then replace it with something more positive or truthful. Negative thoughts are often borne of fear, anxiety, or stress – which is why they’re often cognitive distortions. They are usually quite “distorted” from reality, seeming much worse than they actually are. Practice noticing why these negative thoughts are distorted and then replacing them with something positive and more truthful or rooted in reality.

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If you liked this article, check out my Substack Newsletter on "Using Affirmations To Reprogram Your Mind" at: https://theunreliablemind.substack.com/p/using-affirmations-to-reprogram-your