Distorted Thinking
Chapter 5, Cognitive Distortions, Page 70: *
"1. Overgeneralization. From one isolated event you make a general, universal rule. If you fail once, you'll always fail.
2. Global labeling. You automatically use pejorative label to describe yourself, rather than accurately describing your qualities.
3. Filtering. You selectively pay attention to the negative and disregard the positive.
4. Polarized thinking. You lump things into absolute, black-and-white categories, with no middle ground. You have to be perfect or you're worthless.
5. Self-blame. You consistently blame yourself for things that may not really be your fault.
6. Personalization. You assume that everything has something to do with you, and you negatively compare yourself to everyone else.
7. Mind reading. You assume that others don't like you, are angry with you, don't care about you, and so on, without any real evidence that your assumptions are correct.
8. Control fallacies. You either feel that you have total responsibility for everybody and everything, or feel that you have no control, that you're a helpless victim.
9. Emotional reasoning. You assume that things are the way you feel about them."
*All of this text is from Self-Esteem: A proven program of cognitive techniques for assessing, improving & maintaining your self-esteem (3rd Ed.) by Matthew McKay, PH.D. and Patrick Fanning.