5 Mental Distortions That Are Making Us Depressed
How to identify our misunderstandings about what is real and fake.
My mind runs on some sort of weird cycle. There are days or months when I am high vibing and totally content and then other days when I am lethargic, pessimistic, and depressed. The transition happens insanely quickly and seemingly out of nowhere. It's absolutely crazy to me that I can be great one day and then sad the next when no significant event has happened. Nothing had changed.
I didn’t understand myself until I began to really pay attention to my thoughts and then I stumbled upon “Feeling good — the new mood therapy” by David D. Burns, M.D. This book was a game-changer for me. It completely deepened my understanding of what was wrong with my thoughts. This wasn’t the common ‘think positive’ advice.
Dr. Burns is a renowned psychiatrist who has done extensive research on the power of how changing your thoughts can change your mood and eventually get you out of depression.
He sums it up like this:
“Every time you feel depressed about something, try to identify the corresponding negative thought you had just prior to and during the depression. Because these thoughts have actually created your bad mood, by learning to restructure them, you can change your mood.”
He posits what many other thought leaders like Eckhart Tolle have echoed — your life is a series of events and circumstances that can be positive, negative, and neutral. It is not the events themselves, but your interpretation of them that makes the difference. I have heard this stuff before but it was only until Dr. Burns listed the most common ways we twist reality into something far from the truth that it really struck me. I identify with many of them.
Five Distortions
Here are 5 of the 10 distortions that cause us deep and unnecessary distress according to Dr. Burns and some of my personal tips on how to work on it. I will discuss the next 5 in another post.
1. All-or-Nothing Thinking — seeing things as either black or white
What it is: This is when we think of things in black and white. It’s either success looks like a $200,000 career and a 4 bedroom house or you have failed. It is either your spouse displays the flavor of compassion you like or they have no compassion at all. If you don’t get an A on that course, you have failed. It always this or that. There is no middle ground, no gray areas when life is really lived in shades of gray. When we reach for white, and land on gray we end up feeling inadequate, unsuccessful, and worthless. These exaggerated and unrealistic black or white expectations are making us depressed.
How to work on it: I remind myself that life is not a linear path and its unfolding will most likely be different from what I imagine. I try as much as I can to let things flow, be open to newness and release unrealistic expectations of myself and others. This allows me to live in freedom and hope for the future.
2. Overgeneralization — what happened in the past will repeat
What it is: This is when you think because something happened in the past, it will happen again. So your business didn’t do well in the past so you don’t try other business ideas because you believe it won’t do well. Your past relationships didn’t work so you conclude you will never have the relationship you want. You believe that because you have applied for 40+ jobs and you haven’t got an offer that you are will never get your dream job. Sure, what happened in the past can have some bearing on the future particularly if it is pointing to something you need to work on but, there is no absolute correlation.
How to work on it: I remind myself that life does not conform to any mathematical equation that says that what happened in the past will happen again. There are so many reasons that we do and do not understand explaining why things happen. I try to focus on what I can control.
3. Mental Filter — you filter out the positive and focus on the negative
What it is: Your mind is acting as a sieve — it keeps the negative details and lets the positive details flow through. You forget the positive things and hyperfocus on the things you perceive as negative. This has been me. From the outside, my friends and family think my life is going just awesome but from my perspective, all I could see were things that I believe weren’t going as planned (all-or-nothing thinking again).
How to work on it: I take an inventory of what just happened, both the positive and the negative and I deliberately and selectively choose to focus on the positive. I am working on the structure of my mental sieve.
4. Disqualifying the Positive — you change the positive into negative
What it is: Unlike mental filters where you are selectively focusing on the negative, disqualifying the positive is when you actively take a positive experience and twist it into a negative one. Dr. Burns calls it ‘reverse alchemy’ — transforming golden joy into emotional lead. For example, someone gives you a compliment, and instead of acknowledging it and noticing it in yourself, you switch it to say that they were just giving the compliment because they want something. Maybe they were, or maybe they weren’t. You would never know so just take the compliment.
How to work on it: As with mental filters, I take an inventory of the situation list the positive and negative and see them exactly as they are without adding anything or twisting any layers. Then I try my best to only focus on the positive.
5. Jumping to Conclusions — your conclusion isn’t supported by facts
What it is: Your friend doesn’t reply to your message for days and you conclude that either you have said or done something wrong or that they don’t care about you anymore. In fact, you have no idea what is happening with your friend — you have no facts. Your partner hasn’t expressed the enthusiasm you expected about a gift you bought them. You believe that if they liked it then they would show it and be more emotive. In fact, your partner just displays emotion differently to you. You jumped to a conclusion.
How to work on it: Phew, this one has been the most difficult for me and I am constantly working on it. This is where I do some mental role-playing. I think of myself presenting my conclusions before a judge and the judge asking for the evidence to support my conclusion. If I am unable to provide any objective evidence then I know I jumped to a conclusion.
Tying it all together
The next time you feel in a slump, trackback to the thoughts that got you in this position. It may take some digging but once you pinpoint the thought then figure out whether it is fair or a distortion. If it is a distortion you have an opportunity to correct it. Just the act of correcting your thought can make a real tangible difference in your mood.
Thanks for reading!
Kim
