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ALL-OR-NOTHING-THINKING: You see things in
black-and-white categories. If your
performance falls short of perfect you see
yourself as a total failure.
-
OVERGENERALIZATION: You see a single
negative event as a never-ending pattern of
defeat.
-
MENTAL
FILTER: You pick out a single negative
detail and dwell on it exclusively so that
your vision of all reality becomes darkened,
like the drop of ink that discolors the
entire beaker of water.
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DISQUALIFYING
THE POSITIVE: You reject positive
experiences by insisting they "don't count"
for some reason or other. In this way you
can maintain a negative belief that is
contradicted by your everyday experiences.
-
JUMPING TO
CONCLUSIONS: You make a negative
interpretation even though there are no
definite facts that convincingly support
your conclusions.
-
Mind
Reading: You arbitrarily conclude that
someone is reacting negatively to you,
and you don't bother to check this out.
-
The
Fortune Teller Error: You anticipate
that things will turn out badly, and you
feel convinced that your prediction is
an already established fact.
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MAGNIFICATION
(CATASTROPHIZING) OR MINIMIZATION: You
exaggerate the importance of things (such as
your goof-up or someone else's achievement),
or you inappropriately shrink things until
they appear tiny (your own desirable
qualities or the other fellow's
imperfections). This is also called the
"binocular trick."
-
EMOTIONAL
REASONING: You assume that your negative
emotions necessarily reflect the way things
really are: "I feel it, therefore it must be
true."
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SHOULD
STATEMENTS: You try to motivate yourself
with shoulds and shouldn'ts, as if you had
to be whipped and punished before you could
be expected to do anything. "Musts" and "oughts"
are also offenders. The emotional
consequence is guilt. When you direct should
statements toward others, you feel anger,
frustration, and resentment.
-
LABELING AND
MISLABELING: This is an extreme form of
overgeneralization. Instead of describing
your error, you attach a negative label to
yourself: "I'm a loser." When someone else's
behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach
a negative label to him: "He's a goddam
louse." Mislabeling involves describing an
event with language that is highly colored
and emotionally loaded.
-
PERSONALIZATION: You see yourself as the
cause of some negative external event which
in fact you were not primarily responsible
for.