Making the Internet My Accountability Partner

Featured Photo by Kaleb Nimz on Unsplash

Cognitive Distortions is the fancy term for when the lens we view the world through negatively alters the way we understand reality. An example we are all familiar with is when we see a friend who doesn’t appear happy to see us, or their responses to our attempts at conversation are shorter than normal. We may begin to question if that friend is mad at us or if we did something wrong. But on relaying the experience to someone else we get reminded that maybe that friend was having a bad day for other reasons. This is an example of personalization, assuming that things are about us even if we have no proof that they are.

When we are aware of our unhelpful lenses or thought patterns we can get closer to understanding the full reality of a situation and save ourselves so much emotional turmoil. So here is a nonexhaustive list of common cognitive distortions and reminders we can give ourselves when we fall into them.

Black and white thinking/all or nothing. Our brains love a shortcut and if we can remove nuance from our understanding and have a binary of right and wrong our brain doesn’t question it. So reminding ourselves to expand our understanding and find those shades of gray can slowly train our brain out of this fallacy.

Catastrophizing. When we worry that something might go wrong we can tend to expect the worst-case scenario no matter how improbable that scenario may be. This would be a good time to weigh the evidence for and against the chances of the catastrophe happening, which includes considering what other scenarios are more likely.

Too much or too little responsibility. These two are different sides of the same coin. Once again our brain is taking a shortcut and assuming we either have 100% complete control of a situation and so everything that goes wrong is our fault or that we have 0% control so why would we even bother? Again reality contains so much nuance and our best course of action involves reminding ourselves of what actually is within our control and focusing our energy there while accepting that which is outside of our control. 

I understand it is easier said than done combating these unhelpful patterns but the more we are aware of them the more chances we have to step in and find the reality of a situation and find our agency within it. Do any of these sound familiar to you, how do you navigate these unhelpful thoughts? Are there any that I left out that you would like to see more about?