UNNECESSARY SUFFERING: NEGATIVE FEELINGS AND IRRATIONAL THOUGHTS

As the great psychiatrist David D Burns has established, most negative feelings originate from irrational and illogical thoughts. Depression, anxiety, guilt, despair, frustration and anger are caused by distorted thoughts. When we deny these thoughts, when we stop believing in them, we can change our way of feeling, by changing our way of thinking.

What are these Cognitive Distortions?

1. All or Nothing Thinking: To perceive things in an absolute way, in categories of White or Black, without shades of gray. All thought is polarized, extreme. Example: It is terrible or wonderful, it is strong or weak, absolutely.
2. Overgeneralization: When we believe or think that a negative event that has happened once, will happen many other times. The words that are often used are "Always" "never", "at no time", "all", "nobody", "none". For example, if I ended a loving relationship, "no one else will love me".
3. Mental filter: We concentrate on the negative aspects of a situation and ignore the rest that can be positive. For example, the anxious only perceives the threatening situations, the depressed perceive only the situations that suppose loss or abandonment, the people who feel anger, perceive only the situations that suppose injustices or grievances. The words most used in the speech are: "terrible", "horrible" "I can not stand it".
4. Discounting the positives: The belief that the positive aspects of oneself do not count, neither our achievements nor personal qualities.
5. Jumping to conclusions: The person interprets the facts without having evidence to validate that conclusion. They can be of two types. Mind reading: When the conclusion is reached without having evidence that others are reacting negatively towards oneself. Fortune-telling: When it is predicted that situations will end badly without any evidence. "It's useless, nothing will change, everything will be worse", or "I'll never feel better".
6. Magnification or minimization: When our defects or weaknesses are exaggerated, ignoring our strengths and virtues.
7. Emotional reasoning: We reason from our emotions, they are the criterion of truth or falsehood. "If I feel like a loser or an idiot, I am."
8. “Should ”statements or the tyranny of the "shoulds": When the person tells himself that things "should be" as we want them or expect them to be. It is the belief that ruthless criticism is fair, true and valuable. "I should not have made this mistake," "He should not have done that."
9. Labeling: Labeling others or oneself, usually disqualifying. "I did not just make a mistake, I'm a mistake, or an idiot, a fool, a loser or a failure", the same applies to others. An absolute form of negative valuation.
10. Personalization and shame: When you assume all the responsibility for something to which you have no control, generating feelings of guilt, shame and incompetence. In the same way, you can also assume the opposite position, when you blame others for all your problems, ignoring the role you play in their generation or maintenance.

It is important then to identify these distortions that produce unhealthy negative and positive emotions in order to debate the ideas and beliefs that underlie them in order to change the negative feelings that produce unnecessary suffering. Instead of cognitive distortions, it is desirable that there be a rational, realistic thought that belies those irrational beliefs and of which we are totally convinced that they are true.

References:
Burns, D. D. (1981). Feeling good: The new mood therapy. New York, N.Y: Penguin Books.