Cognitive distortions are a defense mechanism is a mental process that we use to protect ourselves from some aspect of our lives or ourselves. We perceive this aspect to be an unpleasant, uncomfortable or threatening to us. These cognitive distortions are defense mechanisms that are triggered automatically. The person is not always aware when he/she is using a cognitive distortion. Using cognitive distortions as defense mechanisms is a normal, healthy way to protect ourselves emotionally. It does, however become unhealthy when we use only a couple of defenses repetitively to deal with stress. This is often seen in dysfunctional families.
Cognitive Distortions/Defenses
Give an example of when you or someone you know has used this defense or distortion.
| Advice giving/Fixing | Offering your thoughts, feelings, or opinions to another group member. This is your attempt to take care of someone else’s life. It is an attempt to take control of someone else and is based on the belief that you know the right way to live his/her life. |
| Catastrophizing | You predict disastrous results if certain events do not either continue or develop. |
| Comparing | If you use someone else’s feelings as the base, you will find that your feelings are greater or less than theirs. In any case, your focus is no longer on the feeling that you have1 but on the differences between your feelings and another’s. |
| Complying | Here you agree with anything that anyone might say to you with the hope that they will move on and leave you alone |
| Denying | This is an attempt to refuse responsibility for a feeling or action even when the facts show that you are responsible. Simply put, denying is lying. |
| Explaining | Telling why you feel a particular way rather than simply accepting the feeling. We limit the amount of time we feel uncomfortable by moving the focus to why we feel uncomfortable. |
| Externalization | You blame other people and overlook ways that your own attitudes and behavior might contribute to a problem |
| Humor | Laughing or poking fun when you feel uncomfortable. This defense changes the focus of attention from a feeling tQ an entertaining joke. You also feel pretty good about yourself when you are able to make other people laugh. This defense feeds our need to have power over others too. |
| Ignorance | This is an attempt to play stupid. You simply answer every Question with “I don’t know.” “What was the Question?” |
| Inferencing | You jump to conclusions based on insufficient or contradictory evidence by 1. Mind-reading – you assume that people are reacting negatively to you when there is no definite evidence for this 2. Fortune telling – you arbitrarily predict that things will turn out badly. |
| Intellectualizing | Dealing with situations only on the level of the mind. It is an attempt to NOT feel anything. Here all your power to control is focused on yourself. |
| Internalization | You blame yourself for something for which you weren’t entirely responsible. |
| Intimidating/Attacking | Bullying or name-calling when feelings are uncomfortable. You try to take power over someone and the locus of attention is moved to their weakness and the strength of your body or your mouth. |
| Justifying | This is an attempt to prove that you or another person has a right to act in a certain manner. This is the basic “everybody does it”type of excuse. Since this defense hooks into the weaknesses and destructive behaviors of others it will tend to take your actions and feelings out of the focus of confrontation. |
| Labeling | You identify with your shortcomings. Instead of saying I made a mistake”, you tell yourself ” “I’m a jerk… a fool. a loser”. |
| Magnification or Minimization | You blow things way up out of proportion or you shrink their importance inappropriately. Here you try to make your thoughts, feelings, or opinions less or more important than they really are . |
| Negativism | Dwell on the negative and ignore the positive. You have hopeless expectations, or pessimistic predictions based on selective attention to negative events in the past or present, rather than verifiable data. |
| Overgeneralization | You view a negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat. |
| Questioning | Here you attempt to change the focus of attention from an uncomfortable feeling to anything else by asking Questions. ‘Why are you asking me’, ‘Why don’t you pick on somebody else for awhile. An attempt to change the subject to something easier to deal with. |
| Projecting/Blaming | Here you are trying to push the responsibility for your feelings or actions on other people or events. Someone made you do it: “You make me angry.” |
| Rationalization | Explaining the feeling away. If you use this defense you may be able to present some very good reasons for the way that you feel |
| Rescuing | This is an attempt to take the focus off another group member by using one of your own defenses. |
| Shoulding | You criticize yourself or other people with ‘shoulds’ or ‘shouldn’ts’, ‘musts’, ‘oughts’, ‘have to’, etc. |
| Silence | Simply the refusal to speak. Here you believe that if you don t reply everyone will leave you alone. Notice again that too is an attempt to take power over those who surround you. |
| Splitting | You think “all or nothing”; You look at things in absolutes, black and white categories |
| Threatening | Saying that you will do something undesirable if an issue or feeling is further pursued. “You don’t want to get me angry.” “l will kill you!'” |
| Withdrawing | This is an attempt to remove yourself from a difficult situation by leaving, looking away, day-dreaming,or silence. |