Members, Heres a list of the most common types of cognitive distortions. Focus on the negative Overgeneralization All-or-none thinking Catastrophizing Disqualifying the positive Emotional reasoning Personalization Labeling Predicting the future Should statements Mind reading Focus on the negative When people are depressed they tend to pay a lot of attention to certain kinds of information and no attention to other kinds of information. Most importantly, when people are depressed they tend to pay more attention to information that confirms their negative thoughts than to information that challenges their negative thoughts. For example, people who are depressed would pay more attention to one person who doesnt have time to talk to them and less attention to the five people who stop to talk. Overgeneralization An overgeneralization error happens when people make general conclusions based on specific situations. For example, if somebody doesnt smile and say hello right away, a depressed person thinks they must be angry at me. Another example would be if a depressed person gets rejected, which sometimes happens in life, but thinks I always get rejected or I never get what I want. All-or-none thinking All-or-none thinking is also called black-and-white (dichotomous) thinking. In all-or-none thinking people see things as either all black or all white and do not see the in-between grey tones. Things are either all good or all bad with nothing in-between. Trying something leads to either success or failure. People are either good, strong, kind, reliable, successful or bad, weak, mean, unreliable or losers. Catastrophizing Catastrophic thinking happens when people have extreme views about what will happen in the future. Thoughts such as this is a disaster, Im doomed, its over, I cant survive this, Ill never get ahead or Ill always be alone are examples of catastrophic thoughts. Catastrophic thoughts may feel true because the emotions associated with these kinds of words are so strong, but theyre not. Disqualifying the positive Disqualifying the positive happens when people ignore positive information and evidence that doesnt confirm their negative thought. For example, when a depressed person thinks, I never get what I want