Your brain is lying to you 🧠😌
Your brain will go to great lengths to keep you safe. The good news: once we learn how to identify our cognitive distortions, we can work on challenging them and changing our mindset.
You give a presentation at work and know you nailed it. You prepared for weeks so not only did you know your stuff, but the presentation came off really natural – as if you were speaking directly to friends. Everyone came up to you afterwards to congratulate you on a job well done, including your exacting manager.
After listing off the many things she loved, your manager suggests adapting one section of the presentation because it was “confusing and unclear.”
Immediately, your mind latches on to this feedback, convincing you that the whole presentation was a disaster and that you can’t get anything right.
You think to yourself, “That presentation sucked, I should have known that it wouldn’t work. I’m such a failure.”
This is an example of all or nothing thinking — a cognitive distortion that encourages you to look at your experiences in a negative light and ignore your accomplishments. Despite the praise you received, your mind latches to the most cynical and defeating aspects of your experience, reinforcing feelings of inferiority and insecurity.
Why do we struggle with distorted thinking?
Cognitive distortions are a common feature of mental health conditions like anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and PTSD. But anyone can struggle with distorted thinking from time to time. Whether you have a mental health diagnosis, these inaccurate, faulty thought patterns make us feel awful about ourselves.
Often we’re not even really aware that we’re struggling with distorted thinking. These thought patterns have become so automatic that we’re unable to recognitive them as untrue thoughts; instead, we believe that they are our truth.
But there’s another reason why we adhere to distorted thinking: it keeps us safe. I know what you’re thinking: how does thinking I’m a good-for-nothing failure keep me safe when this thought makes me feel really bad about myself?
Your brain’s job is survival, not happiness, and often it will encourage meaning-making based on this goal. So although it can hurt when you think of yourself as a failure, this thought can also be comforting in the moment — especially if you’ve experienced trauma. Labeling yourself as a failure can help you feel like you’re taking control. If you already believe the worst about yourself, then no one can hurt you. And if you internalize the idea that you’re not good enough, you might avoid trying again, which prevents you from experiencing any future failures.
Cognitive distortions also provide us with clarity. Our brain doesn’t like mixed messages, so even if the message we’re receiving is negative and unkind, it removes the uncomfortability of sitting in uncertainty.
In the case of the presentation, focusing on what you “got wrong” or any areas of improvement can also make you feel more motivated in the short-term. People who are perfectionistic and high-achieving in particular may use their shortcomings as fuel, however, because their motivation to change is driven by shame, not self-compassion, this approach leads to burnout.
How to identify cognitive distortions
Although we may have gotten used to this habitual distorted way of thinking, we can recognize these harmful thoughts as they come up and release the hold they have on us.
Think of it as if your brain is looking into a funhouse mirror. The mirror is showing you a distorted view of yourself, but once you’re able to label this mirror as inaccurate, you’re not as troubled by the inaccurate version of you it’s reflecting.
In addition to disqualifying the negative, there are at least 9 other cognitive distortions, according to MedicalNewsToday. They are as follows:
Labeling: categorizing yourself or someone else in an entirely negative way, usually after experiencing a disappointing event, i.e. thinking you’re a bad person or unreliable because you canceled on a friend after previously committing to plans once
Mental filtering: a thought pattern that focuses on the negative aspects of an experience, i.e. throwing a party that nearly everyone loved, but focusing on the guest who said they didn’t like your music
Emotional reasoning: letting your emotions dictate your perception of an event and disregarding the facts of the situation, i.e. feeling stupid even though you’ve been frequently acknowledged for your intelligence
Mind-reading: assuming other people have negative thoughts about you, even though they have not expressed anything alluding to this, i.e. thinking someone doesn’t like you because they’re in a bad mood and weren’t friendly to you
Catastrophizing: Predicting negative outcomes, despite having little to no evidence that these outcomes will come to pass, i.e. thinking if you fail a school exam, your future is over
Overgeneralizing: believing that one negative event means all future events will be negative, i.e. I got rejected from this company once; I’ll always get rejected from every job
“Should” statements: imposing unrealistic standards on yourself or others, i.e. I should have always be successful/never make mistakes
All-or-nothing thinking: thinking that you, others, or a situation is either all good or all bad or all positive or all negative and not allowing space for any nuance or complexity. This can also show up in the goals we set for ourselves (i.e. I must go to the gym every single day otherwise it’s not worth it to go at all).
How to address these distortions
Labeling these thoughts works. Recently, a client told me that they were finding our work together really helpful, and my mind immediately went, “They’re just saying that to be nice. That can’t be true. I’m still learning. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
This was me disqualifying the positive: brushing off the nice feedback as irrelevant and untrue. Because I was in the middle of writing about cognitive distortions, I was able to recognize the thought for what it was immediately.
Then I challenged it.
Just because I’m still learning doesn’t mean I can’t be helpful or that my work can’t have an impact. Moreover, what evidence did I have that the person was lying to me or giving me positive feedback just to be kind? None.
I can tell you firsthand that while it's difficult to address cognitive distortions, it’s even more difficult to take this distorted way of thinking at face value and let it convince you to stay small.
Cognitive distortions might feel like the truth, but they’re often just loud, familiar lies our brain tells to protect us from pain, disappointment, or uncertainty. The more we practice noticing them, the less control they have.
You are not your harshest thoughts.
You are not your worst moment.
And you are certainly not a failure because your brain has a tendency to filter out the good and cling to the bad.
You don’t have to believe everything you think.
Especially when what you think is keeping you from everything you deserve.