[Paleopsych] REBT cognitive distortions

[Michael Christopher]

Can't remember what book this was from, something on
REBT (Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy)...These are
"Cognitive distortions as disempowering thinking
patterns": 

1. Over-generalizing: jumping to conclusions on little
evidence or without facts
2. All-or-nothing thinking: Polarizing at extremes.
Black and white thinking. Either-or thinking that
posits options as two-valued choices
3. Labeling: Name-calling that uses
over-generalizations which allow one to dismiss
something via the label, or to not make important
distinctions, or that classifies a phenomenon in such
a way that we do not engage in good reality-testing
4. Blaming: Thinking in an accusatory style,
transferring blame, guilt, and responsibility for a
problem to someone or something else.
5. Mind-reading: Projecting thoughts, feelings,
intuitions onto others without checking out one's
guesses with the person, over-trusting one's
"intuitions" and not granting others the right to have
the last word about their internal thoughts, feelings,
intentions, etc.
6. Prophesying: Projecting negative outcomes onto the
future without seeing alternatives or possible ways to
proactively intervene, usually a future pacing of
fatalistic and negative outcomes.
7. Emotionalizing: Using one's emotions for filtering
information. 
8. Personalizing: Perceiving circumstances, especially
the actions of others, as specifically targeted toward
oneself in a personal way, perceiving the world
through ego-centric filters that whatever happens
relates to, speaks about, or references oneself.
9. Awfulizing: Imagining the worst possible scenario
and then amplifying it with a non-referencing word,
"awful" as in, "This is awful!" 
10. Should-ing: Putting pressure on oneself (and
others) to conform to "divine" rules about the world
and life, then expressing such in statements that
involve "should" and "must". 
11. Filtering: Over-focusing on one facet of something
to the exclusion of everything else so that one
develops a tunnel-vision perspective and can see only
"one thing". Typically, people use this thinking style
to filter out positive facets, thereby leaving a
negative perception.
12. Can't-ing: Imposing linguistic and semantic limits
on oneself and others from a "mode of impossibility"
and expressing this using the "can't" word.

Anyone who can find one of the above that isn't a
constant feature in the current election cycle gets a
cookie.



		
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