One Red Hot Country Mama!

Psychological theorists say we all have an internal critic that is eternally cutting us down and damaging our self-esteem. For example, you may be throwing a softball, then suddenly and without warning, the thought pops into your head: “you’ll never throw it straight – you suck!” Ball-sport analogies work for me here since I am not skilled at them, but insert your own example about something that you feel insecure about.

Some of the main tools of the critic are cognitive distortions. These are habits of thought that interpret reality in an unreal way. They are based on emotional rather than rational processes and can separate you from living in the real world. I have discussed these on this blog before, but I find the McKay and Fanning distortions more accurate than other versions widely available on the web. 

1.    Overgeneralization
“Overgeneralizations create a shrinking universe in which more and more absolute laws make life more and more confining. It is a universe in which the scientific method is turned upside-down. Instead of observing all available data, formulating a law that explains all the data, then testing the law, you take one fact or event, make a general rule out of it and never test the rule.”*

You can tell you are using overgeneralizations when you use words like: never, always, every, none, no one, nobody, everybody and everyone. It is when you use absolutes and totally close the door to possibility. Examples are “I am always late.” or “He never says sorry.”

2.    Global Labeling
“Global labeling is the application of stereotyped labels to whole classes of people, things, behaviors and experiences. People who practice global labeling live in a universe populated by stock characters who act out unrealistic melodramas. Global labelers with low self-esteem often cast themselves in the role of the villain or the simpleton.”

You are global labeling if the messages are negative clichés about your appearance, performance, intelligence, relationships and so on. “My love life is a mess.” “My degree is a worthless piece of paper.”  “All of my efforts to improve are futile grasping at straws.”

3.    Filtering
“When you filter reality, you see your universe as through a glass darkly. You can see and hear only certain things. Like a voice-activated tape recorder, your attention is awakened only by particular kinds of stimuli: examples of loss, rejection and so on. You selectively abstract certain facts from reality and pay attention to them, ignoring all the rest. You have blind spots that obscure evidence of your own worth.”

You can suspect filtering when you are repeating the same scene over and over again and use words like: loss, gone, burnt, dangerous, unfair and stupid. If you were at a 3-hour party and can only remember the 15 minutes where you spilled wine on someone – that is filtering.

4.    Polarized Thinking
“If you habitually indulge in polarized thinking, you live in a black-and-white universe, with no colors or shades of gray. You divide all your actions and experiences into either/or dichotomies according to absolute standards. You judge yourself as either a saint or a sinner, a good guy or a bad guy, a success or failure, a hero or a villain, a noble or a bastard.”

You can catch yourself doing polarized thinking by listening to either/or messages: “I am either going to win the scholarship or completely blow my future.” “If you can’t be funny and ‘on’ then you are a bore”

5.    Self-Blame
“Self-blame is a distorted thinking style that has you blaming yourself for everything, whether you are actually at fault or not. In the self-blaming universe, you are at the center of a universe of bad things, and they’re all your fault.”

The easiest way to spot self-blame is incessant apologizing. Your partner doesn’t want to see the movie you prefer so you apologize. The clerk at the post office says you don’t have enough postage and you say, “God, I’m so stupid, I’m sorry”.

6.    Personalization
“In a personalized universe, you are the universe. Every atom in it is somehow related to you. All events, properly decoded, seem to have something to do with you. Unfortunately, there is very little power or of being in control of these events. It feels more like you are under pressure, under siege, or under observation by everyone around you.”

Personalization is a difficult one to catch. One way is to notice your reactions to people complaining. If someone at the office is complaining about the staplers never being returned to the proper spot, do you assume that it has something to do with you? That is personalization.

7.     Mind Reading
“Mind reading is a distorted thinking style which assumes that everyone in the universe is just like you. This is an easy mistake to make, since it’s based on the phenomenon of projection – you assume that others feel the way you do, basing your assumption on a belief in a commonality of human nature and experience that may or may not actually exist”.

You can see mind-reading when you are testing your assumptions: “I just had a strong hunch.” “I just know.” “It’s my intuition.” “I’m sensitive to these things.” These statements show that you are just jumping to conclusions without real evidence.

8.      Control Fallacies
“Control fallacies either put you in charge of the whole universe or put everyone but you in charge. The distorted thinking style of overcontrol gives you a false feeling of omnipotence. You struggle to control every aspect of every situation.”

You are using the overcontrol fallacy when you say things like “I’ve got to make them listen.” “He has to say yes.” Or “I’ll make sure she gets here on time.”

“The distorted thinking style of undercontrol takes control away from you. You put yourself on the fringes of every situation, unable to influence others. Of the two fallacies, undercontrol is worst for self-esteem.”

9.    Emotional Reasoning
“An emotional universe is chaotic, governed by changeable feelings instead of rational laws. The distortion in this thinking style is to avoid or discount your thinking all together. You rely instead on emotions to interpret reality and direction action.”

You are using emotional reasoning if you “are what you feel”. So – if you feel useless, you are useless. If you feel ugly you are ugly etc.

So – these are the 9 cognitive distortions. The McKay and Fanning go on to give tools on how to combat them. In general, awareness of these and using rationality to combat them is an excellent start. I find that that learning these cognitive distortions not only helped clarify my own thinking, but it also helps me see errors in arguments coming from my friends, loved-ones and colleagues. Enjoy.

*All quotes are from p. 62-68 in Self Esteem by Matthew McKay and Patrick Fanning

** Permission to use quotes requested of New Harbinger Publications on Aug 19, 2007.