Distortion Practice: 053

Spot the cognitive distortions in your life

and

Jan 8

You can get better at revealing the cognitive distortions in your life with a little practice. Try identifying the distortions that are happening in this short story:

📖 Short story

Written by: Ewelina Ahmed, CBT Therapist, BABCP

You have recently started your business as a hairdresser. It was slow at first but you have been getting more and more clients over the last couple of months. A regular client has not been back for their usual haircut for a while and whist walking past another hair saloon you saw them there getting a haircut. You feel upset and think ‘I have lost her now and she will not be back to my saloon. If I have lost her then my others regular clients will eventually leave too. I will have no clients and will go out of business!’.

📜 Common distortions

👯‍ Generalizing: Assuming that because you experienced something in the past this must mean it will happen again. “A dog bit me when I was 5, therefore all dogs are dangerous and will bite me.”
☄️ Catastrophizing: Are you focused on the worst case scenario? Regardless of how likely it is.
🧠 Mind reading: Assuming what others think. “They probably think I'm an idiot.”
✨ Should statements: Pressuring yourself with things you should have done differently. “I should have eaten healthier today."
🌓 All or nothing thinking: Thinking in extremes. You are either a success or a failure. "She doesn't want to date me. I'll never find love.”
🕹️ Out of your control: Are you worrying about something out of your control?
🔮 Fortune telling: Assuming future events. “I just know that something is going to go wrong and I'm going to be late for my interview.”
🚫 Disqualifying the positive: Focusing only on the bad. “He said that I looked nice but he says that to everybody. He was just being polite."
🏷️ Labeling: Taking one characteristic of a person and applying it to the whole person. “I failed a test, so I'm a bad student.”
🔎 Magnifying the negative: Judging a situation entirely on the negative parts and not considering the positive parts. “I ate healthy this week, but I skipped the run I had planned.”
🎭 Emotional Reasoning: Assuming that just because it feels bad, it must be bad. Forgetting that our feelings are just a reaction to our thoughts. “I feel anxious so it must be scary!”
🪞 Comparing and despairing: Focusing only on the positive aspects in others and comparing ourselves negatively against them. ‘Their hair is so much better styled than mine, I look horrible in comparison’.

💡 Answers

I have lost her now and she will not be back to my saloon.

You are imagining what will happen in the future with this client. You are fortune telling. Unfortunately, we are not able to predict what might happen in the future. It could be true that they will never come back but she might not like this haircut and return back to you. As there is no way of predicting it, you are stressing yourself whist trying to do so. In addition, you are predicting a bad outcome which is what we often do when stressed but it doesn’t mean that you are right.

If I have lost her then my others regular clients will eventually leave too.

You are thinking that if this client went to a different saloon, this means that all your other clients will do the same. You are generalizing. Even if this client was to never come back this doesn’t mean at all that this is what your next client might do. Everybody is different and different people don’t tend to do the same things. It sounds like your business has been growing, take your time to acknowledge that you have clearly been doing a good job.

I will have no clients and will go out of business!’

You are imagining the worst that could happen. You are catastrophizing. All your clients disappearing at once and not being replaced sounds like an unlikely scenario, especially considering how your business has been growing. Despite that this is so unlikely you are choosing to focus on that scary outcome. Spending too much time thinking of this is likely to cause you anxiety and stress.