Ten Forms of Twisted Thinking

By Dr. David Burns

from The Feeling Good Handbook (Plume Publishers, 1999)

The following is paraphrased from The Feeling Good Handbook by Dr. David Burns:

1. ALL-OR-NOTHING THINKING: You see things in black and white categories. If your performance falls short of perfection, you see yourself as a total failure.
2. OVERGENERALIZATION: You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.
3. MENTAL FILTER; You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively, so that your vision of all reality become darkened.
4. DISCOUNTING THE POSITIVE: You reject positive experiences by insisting they “don’t count.”
5. JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS: You interpret things negatively even though there are no facts to support your conclusion.
6. MAGNIFICATION: You exaggerate the importance of your problems or you minimize the importance of your desirable qualities.
7. EMOTIONAL REASONING: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: ‘I feel it, therefore it must be true.”
8. SHOULD STATEMENTS: You tell yourself that things should be the way you expected them to be.
9. LABELING: This is an extreme form of all-or-nothing thinking. Instead saying “I made a mistake,” you label yourself “I’m a loser.”
10. PERSONALIZATION: You hold yourself personally responsible for an event that isn’t entirely under your control.
     

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