What Are Cognitive Distortions? 10 Types With Examples

What cognitive distortions are

Your boss reads your report in the meeting and says nothing. Objectively, that is all that happened: they read it and stayed quiet.

And yet a conclusion pops into your head: "they didn't like it."

Someone else in your place might think "they're probably busy," or "if something was wrong, they would have said so."

Three different readings of the same event, and none of them is the event itself.

That is what cognitive distortions are (also called thinking traps or thinking errors): thoughts like "they didn't like it" that show up in your head automatically and that you believe by default. They are automatic because you don't think them on purpose, and when they arrive you don't experience them as one possible reading of what happened. You experience them as what happened.

Telling the event apart from your reading of it matters, because when you mix the two up, your mood ends up depending on a story you told yourself.

This idea is the foundation of cognitive therapy: psychiatrist Aaron Beck described it in a 1963 paper on thinking in depression.

The 10 types of cognitive distortions, with examples

Below is the most widely used list of cognitive distortions, each with an example and a question to help you step back and challenge the thought.

All-or-nothing thinking

You only see two options with nothing in between: either it goes perfectly or it is a failure.

• Example: "The presentation had two mistakes, so it was a disaster," even though the rest went well.
• Ask yourself: Is there anything between zero and ten? What score would someone on the outside give it?

Overgeneralization

One isolated event becomes a rule that applies to everything, all the time. Words like "always" and "never" give it away.

• Example: "I argued with my sister over something silly today. I always ruin things when we get together," even though it's the first fight you two have had in months.
• Ask yourself: Really, always? Can I remember a time it didn't happen?

Mental filter

You hold on to one negative detail out of everything that happened and judge the rest by it.

• Example: "My birthday was a letdown" because two friends you were expecting didn't come, and you forget the afternoon you spent with the ones who did.
• Ask yourself: What else happened that day, besides that?

Disqualifying the positive

Achievements and compliments don't count: there is always an explanation that cancels them out. So nothing good that happens to you changes what you think of yourself.

• Example: "My partner says I'm a great cook, but only so I keep doing the cooking," while they go back for seconds.
• Ask yourself: If a friend told me this, would I tell them the compliment doesn't count?

Jumping to conclusions: mind reading and fortune telling

You reach a negative conclusion without enough evidence. It comes in two forms: you assume you know what another person thinks (mind reading) or what is going to happen (fortune telling).

• Example: "I posted a photo half an hour ago and none of my friends have liked it. They must think I look ridiculous," when it's the middle of the workday and most of them haven't even checked their phones.
• Ask yourself: What evidence do I have that they think that? Is there another explanation?

Catastrophizing

You assume the worst is going to happen and feel it as if it already has. This also covers blowing up what goes wrong and downplaying what goes right.

• Example: "My mom hasn't answered my calls in an hour. Something terrible must have happened," when she usually keeps it on silent.
• Ask yourself: What is the most likely explanation? And if the worst did happen, what would I do?

Emotional reasoning

You treat what you feel as proof of what's true: if you feel useless, you must be useless; if you feel something is going to go wrong, it will.

• Example: "I'm so overwhelmed by all this material that there's no way I can learn it," when the exam is still three weeks away.
• Ask yourself: Do I feel this or do I know it? What evidence is there, apart from how I feel right now?

"Should" statements

You set yourself rigid rules about what you should do, feel or achieve, and you hold other people to them too. When you fall short of what you "should" do, you feel guilty.

• Example: "I should go to the gym every day," and the week you go three times you feel awful, as if you hadn't gone at all.
• Ask yourself: Who made this rule? Would I demand this of someone I love?

Labeling

Instead of describing what you did, you define yourself by it. Not "I failed," but "I'm a failure." It is overgeneralizing, but about who you are.

• Example: "I'm so boring," after a dinner where you barely spoke, without counting all the times you have gone out and had a good time.
• Ask yourself: Is this something I did or something I am? How would I describe it with facts and no adjectives?

Personalization

You blame yourself for something that isn't only up to you, or you believe something is about you when it isn't.

• Example: "My dad has been in a bad mood since our talk yesterday. I must have said something that upset him," when the bad mood started before that talk.
• Ask yourself: How much of this is really up to me? What else could explain it?

Why some lists have more distortions and others fewer

The number of distortions changes from author to author because each author groups them in their own way. Beck's 1963 paper described the first of these negative thinking patterns, and psychiatrist David Burns, a student of his, sorted them into ten categories in his book Feeling Good. That is the most widely used list.

Other authors group them differently. Mind reading and fortune telling, for example, share a category in Burns's list and are split up in others. Some add categories of their own, like the control fallacy (believing everything depends on you, or that nothing does) or the fairness fallacy (measuring everything by what seems fair to you and getting upset when life isn't).

The traps they describe, though, are the same.

One situation, four different distortions

You text a friend to make plans for Saturday. Five hours later she still hasn't replied, even though you've seen her active since then. That is the only fact: she hasn't replied.

From that one fact, your mind can go down four roads:

• Mind reading: "She saw the message and isn't answering because she doesn't feel like seeing me." You assume you know what she thinks, and your only evidence is that she's been active.
• Catastrophizing: "She's getting tired of me and is going to stop making plans with me, like she did with other friends." One unanswered text becomes the beginning of the end of the friendship.
• Overgeneralization: "I always have to be the one who texts first. It never occurs to her." One particular Saturday becomes the rule for the whole friendship.
• Personalization: "She's not answering because of what I said at dinner the other night. I embarrassed her in front of everyone." Her silence becomes your fault.

Four thoughts, four distortions, and none has more evidence than the others. Notice, too, that they overlap: the second thought also reads her mind ("she's getting tired of me").

You don't need to get the exact name right. It is enough to notice that each one is an interpretation. The fact is still one unanswered text, much smaller than it seemed.

When a negative thought is not a distortion

A negative thought is not a distortion just because it is negative. Sometimes it is simply true: if you failed three of your six exams, "this semester isn't going well" describes what is happening, and it is useful, because it pushes you to change something. Calling that a distortion would be swapping reality for comfort.

An automatic thought is a distortion when it claims more than the facts do. These signs give it away:

• Absolute words ("always," "never," "everything," "nobody") applied to one specific event.
• Conclusions about what another person thinks or feels, without checking.
• Predictions treated as certain about something that hasn't happened yet.
• An "I am" where an "I did" would be enough.

The point of all this is not positive thinking. It is accurate thinking: what you think should fit what happened, no more and no less. Sometimes the accurate version of a thought is still negative ("I failed three exams and I need to change the way I study"), and that is fine: a negative thought backed by facts tells you what to change.

What research says about cognitive distortions

Distortions also show up in what people write. One study compared what people who said they had been diagnosed with depression wrote on social media with what a random sample of users wrote. The first group used more sentences with distorted thinking.

The striking part is that the difference wasn't explained by the topics they talked about, their tone or how often they used the first person. Distortions live less in what you say than in how you say it.

A meta-analysis of 45 trials, covering 3,382 adults with depression in total, compared three treatments: cognitive restructuring (the technique of catching and questioning distorted thoughts), behavioral activation and full cognitive behavioral therapy. All three worked equally well, and all three worked better than both usual care and a waitlist.

In other words, working on thoughts alone, with a therapist, did as well as full therapy for adults with depression. Those results come from face-to-face therapy with a professional, and they don't show that keeping a thought record on your own cures anything.

How to catch your cognitive distortions in writing

In your head, an automatic thought feels like a fact: it shows up, shifts your mood and makes way for the next one without ever being asked for evidence. On paper, the same thought holds still, and a thought that holds still can be examined. That is why it pays to do this in writing and not in your head.

The thought record is the classic way to do it, and it follows these steps:

• Situation. Describe the event in one sentence, with no interpretation. "My boss read the report and said nothing," not "my boss is unhappy with me."
• Emotion. Give it a specific name and an intensity from 0 to 10. Anxiety, 7. Sadness, 4.
• Automatic thought. The exact words that went through your head, not the reasoned version you would build later. "They're going to think I'm not up to the job."
• Distortion. Which of the traps above does it look most like? If you are torn between two, pick one: this isn't a test.
• Evidence for and against. Which facts support the thought and which don't. The evidence against is exactly what the mental filter and disqualifying the positive make you overlook.
• Alternative thought. Not nicer: more accurate. One that takes all the facts into account, including the ones you had missed.

A complete example, with a client:

• Situation: I sent a proposal to a client and they replied, "We'll take a look."
• Emotion: Anxiety, 8.
• Automatic thought: "They didn't like it. I'm going to lose this client."
• Distortion: mind reading and fortune telling.
• Evidence for: the reply is short and doesn't commit to anything.
• Evidence against: they replied in less than an hour, and with the last two proposals they took weeks to decide.
• Alternative thought: "The reply is shorter than I'd like, but they answered right away, and they also took their time with the last two proposals. Nothing suggests they are going to turn it down."

The first three fields are the same ones you would fill out in an emotional journal (situation, emotion and thought). What you add here is reviewing that thought, which is where the distortion shows up.

If you would rather have the structure ready on your phone, a therapy journal app like MindLogs walks you through each entry in seven steps. When you finish, the app points out the thinking trap that may be behind the thought you wrote and suggests a reflection to help you see it from another angle. Your entries are encrypted on your own phone.

Conclusion

Cognitive distortions are the thoughts that arrive without being invited, give what happened a worse reading than it deserves and, in the moment, feel true. Everyone has them.

The goal is for what you think to fit what happened, even when that is still negative. And it is easier in writing: in your head the thought feels like a fact; on paper it holds still and you can review it.

Keep in mind that this helps you understand yourself better, but it is not a treatment. If what you feel keeps overwhelming you, talk to a mental health professional.

Frequently asked questions

What are the 10 cognitive distortions?

The ten most widely used cognitive distortions are all-or-nothing thinking, overgeneralization, mental filter, disqualifying the positive, jumping to conclusions (mind reading and fortune telling), catastrophizing, emotional reasoning, "should" statements, labeling and personalization. Psychiatrist David Burns, a student of Aaron Beck, laid them out in his book *Feeling Good*.

What is the difference between a cognitive distortion and a negative thought?

A negative thought can simply be true: if you failed three of your six exams, "this semester isn't going well" is an accurate description of what is happening. A cognitive distortion is a thought that claims more than the facts do: turning one event into a rule, assuming you know what someone else thinks or expecting disaster for no reason. The difference is whether what happened actually backs up what you think.

Are cognitive distortions and thinking traps the same thing?

Yes, they are two names for the same thing. "Cognitive distortion" is the technical term, which comes from cognitive therapy, and "thinking trap" or "thinking error" is the everyday way to say it.

Can you get rid of negative thoughts?

Getting rid of them is not the goal. What you can do is catch them, name the distortion inside them and check them against what actually happened, until you land on a version that fits the facts. If what you feel keeps overwhelming you, talk to a mental health professional as well.

What is the difference between a cognitive distortion and a cognitive bias?

A cognitive bias is a mental shortcut that affects how you decide or judge anything, such as paying more attention to what confirms what you already believe. A cognitive distortion affects how you interpret what happens to you, to other people and to your future, and it feeds emotional distress. A bias makes you decide worse; a distortion makes you feel worse than the situation calls for.