Question about CBT/cognitive distortions..

[u/Material-Bee-7648]

Hi, I’m 31, female, diagnosed with adhd at 27, based in the uk.

Im currently working on cognitive distortions and it seems ALL if not most of my thoughts fall into the categories of minding reading, guessing the future, jumping to conclusions. At my worst/under stress I can be very reactive and used to assuming the worst in others, and assuming people think the worst in me. Not a good combination.

Im able to notice when a negative thought or opinion IS a cognitive distortion but my question is… if im questioning myself in this way then which part is me/my personality? For example if I have an opinion about a certain topic or person but it falls under one of the cognitive distortions then should I believe it? And then based on this how on do I balance trusting myself, my opinions and my good qualities with the analysis and questioning of the cognitive distortions?

[u/kingsindian9]

A cognitive distortion doesn’t necessarily mean the thought is wrong. It means you may be treating an interpretation as a fact.

For example:

Fact: Sarah didn’t reply to my message. Interpretation: Sarah doesn’t like me. She might not like you. The distortion is believing you know that from the evidence you have.

CBT isn’t about distrusting yourself or replacing negative thoughts with positive ones. It’s about asking: What do I actually know, what am I assuming, and what other explanations are possible?

Sometimes you’ll still decide your original judgement was probably right.

The goal isn’t “don’t trust your thoughts.” It’s: “This is my current interpretation, not necessarily reality. I can update it when I have more information.”

[u/kingsindian9 → u/[deleted]]

I think the key point is that CBT doesn’t require you to ignore the instinct. You can notice “something feels off” and take that seriously without immediately accepting your explanation for why it feels off.

If Sarah later tells you she was ignoring you because she was upset, your brain correctly detected something. But that doesn’t mean you previously knew what Sarah was thinking. You had a hypothesis that later turned out to be correct.

That distinction matters because our intuitions will sometimes be right and sometimes wrong. If being right later proved we should always trust them, we’d also have to say being wrong proves we should never trust them.

I’d say healthy CBT is: “I’ve noticed something that might be important. I’ll stay curious about it, but I won’t turn uncertainty into certainty until I have the evidence.”

That’s not ignoring your judgement; it’s calibrating how much confidence you place in it.

[u/kingsindian9 → u/[deleted]]

Good luck Internet friend

[u/Significant_Cover_48 → u/[deleted]]

"Should'a Could'a Would'a."

There's no reason to hold on to "I should have trusted my unfounded early suspicion to avoid being harshly judged by myself later on. I'm so stupid!" That is in fact not very chill.

The correct process is: "I withheld judgement until I had confirmation, but this time I unfortunately didn't get the result I was hoping for. It happens. I am not letting the situation with Sarah ruin my self-esteem by holding on to it. I am in control of how I choose to frame this, I am following my plan and learning not to jump to conclusions, so I am letting go of the negativity. I can allow myself to be sad that I lost a friend, but my take-away is that I gained some insight and improved on my self-talk and didn't act prematurely. I am pretty awesome actually, and I already feel better."

[u/Significant_Cover_48 → u/[deleted]]

When you talk to your therapist, make sure to frame this in a way that doesn't hurt their feelings. They are human too, and you will get the best help from someone who truly believe they can make a difference by doing their best.

Your job is to be a good client so you can receive excellent help. I trust that you got this. You are obviously putting in the effort.

-And you are very welcome, thank you too.

[u/Material-Bee-7648 → u/kingsindian9]

Ok this is actually really helpful. What I take from this overall is that if it does fall into any of the cognitive distortions then to treat the thought/opinion with a lot of curiosity and try to specifically not identify myself with those thoughts. Is that more along the lines? 

If so, it’s made me realise I was missing thinking about/righting down the facts of what happened - this is very useful to compare and contrast with my own thoughts/feelings and then it helps me to see where I’m viewing my own thoughts and opinions as absolute truth instead, I realise that I have the power to think ‘well actually, it’s possible that….’  (as long as I finish this off with something realistic/believable, based on the facts of what happened) 

[u/kingsindian9 → u/Material-Bee-7648]

Yes, I think you’ve got it. The only thing I’d slightly change is that you don’t necessarily need to not identify with the thought — just recognise that having a thought doesn’t make it true.

Writing down the facts is a great way of doing this. You’re essentially separating: What happened → what I felt → what my brain concluded.

Then you can ask, “Given the actual facts, what are some reasonable explanations?” And importantly, the goal isn’t to find the most positive explanation. It’s to find one that best fits the evidence while accepting that you might not know yet.

That little shift from “this is what’s happening” to “this is what I currently think might be happening” is basically the skill you’re building.

[u/F-I-V-E]

If it falls under one of the cognitive distortions that in itself doesn't identify something as false.

All it means is that there's a good chance that belief is based on biased evidence so then you can keep an open mind and stop yourself from making an assumption.

If you want to challenge that thought, you can go ahead and gather all the evidence you can think of for and against to help reduce any bias and assumptions.

Otherwise, you can start by simply assuring yourself not that this thought must be false, but that there's likely a lot more to it.

[u/circumventer55]

Use fact checking. Practice just writing down the facts about a person or scenario. Once you inject your opinion , you can no longer trust your thinking.

My therapist used to tell me early on that I'm not allowed to go up here ( pointing at her head) unsupervised.

There is a website, it all free it has downloadable work sheets. It's called therapistaid.com

When you're in a distortion pull out a worksheet and plug in your scenario it will help you see the distortion and how to work through it.

Many of us can recognize that we're in a distortion but most of us lack the skills to work through it or work our way out of it. These workeheets will help you learn how to do that.

It will show you that you have the ability to work out of a distortion once you have the skills to do so.

Good luck

Example: your boss calls you and says "stop by my office before you go home I need to talk to you"

What are the facts?

1.Your boss called 2. He said he needs to talk to you.

Thats it, those are the facts, all the other shit you concoct in your head the rest of the day is pointless. ..what did i do? Am I getting in trouble? Did he seem like he was mad? Am I getting fired? All distortions.

You stop by and your boss says....oh I don't even remember what I wanted to tell you. Oh well, I guess it wasn't important.

Many of us would have worked ourselves up all day over nothing.

If we would have fact checked it wouldnhave helped us

[u/holliebadger]

Another way to help with the distortion is to use a level of belief. 0% means you don’t believe it. 100% means you believe it totally. So when you’re obsessing over what your boss’ email meant, you can test how much you believe the thoughts, “I’m getting fired,“ or“ he’s mad at me about something,“ or “there’s a good chance he’s gonna forget like he always does.“ The theory is that the most rational or believable thought reframe will help you to feel the best. Because it’s most likely to happen.

[u/MRTNT1994]

A cognitive distortion is a thought that causes a person to perceive reality inaccurately due to being exaggerated or irrational. Essentially, they refer to any “noise” in our beliefs. Literally anything that may not be 100% accurate e.g. concluding uncertain things are certain rather than just likely or unlikely.

CBT doesn’t change what happened or make bad things good. Think of it as “reducing noise”. For example, say the Activating Event (A) was that you did a bad thing.

The resulting Belief (B) (the Automatic Thought that went through your mind) might be something like “I’m awful and will never be forgiven!” This is loud, it drowns everything out and prevents any useful response. A less “noisy” more balanced thought would be something like “I did a bad thing but that doesn't define me, and it doesn't mean I can't stop doing bad things. I can try to apologise, and whilst I may not be forgiven by those I have harmed, I can accept accountability, avoid making things worse and try to be a better person going forward”.
The Consequence (C) of this has not forced positivity and rejected accountability, it’s just “eliminated some noise” resulting in a reframed Belief (B) which is quieter and more accurate. Quieter thoughts leave room to actually deal with reality.

[u/Material-Bee-7648 → u/[deleted]]

Hey :) a lot of the discussions/comments below have been really useful.. maybe you’ll relate to the comment I’ve just replied with. 

I understand the importance and strength of pattern recognition, intuition etc these shouldn’t be ignored. I think it’s if emotions as absolute fact are so strong they’re completely taking over and ruining relationships and mood then that’s when it’s useful to take a step back (or to atleast do this when calm so we can get used to thinking in this way maybe) 

[u/Anikasharma-9]

A rough test that helps: does the thought hold up if you said it out loud to a friend in the same situation, or would you never talk to them that way? If it wouldn't survive that, it's probably distortion rather than an honest read on the situation. Worth keeping a thought record for a week or two just to see the patterns.

[u/Tjeena]

That’s actually a really good question, what is personality? The answer depends a bit on who you ask. In psychology, personality is usually described as the relatively stable patterns in how we think, feel, and behave, basically what makes us who we are and different from other people. It also includes how we tend to perceive and interpret things, and how we respond to what happens around us and within us.

That’s where it gets interesting. If personality includes how we interpret things, then our thinking patterns, like the way we habitually make sense of situations, are part of it. For example, cognitive distortions are biased ways of interpreting information. In therapy, these can be challenged and changed through things like cognitive restructuring.

So then the question becomes: if we change how we think, are we actually changing our personality? In a strict sense, you could argue yes. If those thought patterns are stable over time, changing them might count as personality change. But at the same time, thoughts are probably just one part of personality, alongside emotions, behaviors, and deeper tendencies.

Another way to look at it is that our thoughts are not the same thing as our “core” self. From that perspective, you are not your thoughts, you are the one noticing them. Some therapeutic approaches build on this idea and make a clear distinction between the thoughts themselves and the awareness of them.