In everyday life, we all feel that we have some sort of psychological superpowers that we can use to detect other people’s behaviors or thoughts. But, it is just our mind’s distortions that play tricks on us and make us believe that we are superhumans.
When we have anxiety or depression, our minds start making up irrational thoughts that can play havoc in our lives. We may think that we are using our mental superpowers to do good for ourselves, but ultimately we are losing out on a lot of things.
Says psychologist Alf Lokkertsen on mental distortions in humans,
As humans, we like to think that we apply pure logic and control many outcomes in life. But we are often guilty of cognitive distortions. These are thought patterns that are not based on reality or facts. They are a distortion of reality.
Some of the cognitive distortions that we face in everyday life
Here are some of the common cognitive distortions that affect our thinking and make us delusional as well.
Mind Reading
Oftentimes, we feel that we have awesome mind-reading powers that can help us detect exactly what the other person is thinking or what their behavior is towards us.
Negative Focus
This happens with many of us throughout our lives. We all leave out the positive things in life and instead focus on what are the negative events that are happening around us.
Catastrophising
This is when we think that all of the world’s worst things will happen to us at some point in time and that they will happen.
Should-Thinking
This is another harmful thought process wherein we want others to behave as they should and what we have perceived for them.
Emotional Reasoning
Finally, the emotions we feel during our life form the picture for us that that’s how the world works in reality as well. This thought process prevents us from opening up to new possibilities and points of view.
Thus, this is how we go about dealing with various cognitive distortions in our day-to-day lives. It’s high time that we stop doing these and instead focus on being better for ourselves.
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