Cognitive Distortions: How our signals get crossed

Our brains are great at feeding us information. They tell us what things are going on in our environment, what changes have occurred, what to look out for, etc. In a world so entirely full of information and stimuli, our brains basically act as a filter, processing information in a way that doesn’t get us overwhelmed, but still offers us enough context to stay safe and aware in our environments. Our brains even make interpretations about the world around us, giving names and descriptions to a world that doesn’t automatically come with labels. 

The brain is truly miraculous, it was fashioned in such a smart way that we can not only view and understand the world, but have our understanding of the world be tailored and designed specifically for us, based on our experiences and personal environment. Our brains are able to process thousands of different thoughts every single day, our brains are basically working as our own personal computer, sifting through all the information we receive to provide us with our own evaluations of the world. 

With how many thoughts go through our head every single day and with how different our own internal thoughts can be from everyone else around us, it begs the question: can our brains ever get it wrong? Well… yes.

While our brains serve an incredibly important role in allowing us to function in our environments and while they generally do an excellent job of it, brains are not perfect, and they can sometimes make mistakes in how they understand and interpret the world around us. When this happens it is known as a “cognitive distortion”. 

Cognitive distortions are basically, when our brains take in some information and then interpret it in an exaggerated or totally distorted way. It’s like if your car had an alert that you were low on gas when you still had over half a tank left, or if your phone told you it had a full battery and then immediately died. It’s when our signals get crossed and the evaluation and the situation are in a total mismatch.

Some examples of cognitive distortions can be things like “catastrophizing”, where a person always expects the worst-case-scenario to happen. Other examples of common distortions can be “mind reading” where we assume what another person is thinking or “all-or-nothing thinking” where a person has a black and white view of the world and believes that things must exist in absolutes. Usually, there is at least some truth to what the person is interpreting; but cognitive distortions take that truth too far and twist it into something that just doesn’t exist in reality. However, that element of truth is the reason that cognitive distortions can be difficult to identify when one is experiencing them.

The good news is: there are ways to challenge and change our cognitive distortions to be more of a reflection of reality. Certain therapies and restructuring techniques work really well in treating these distortions and can help a person interact with and interpret their environment in a more effective way. The first step to uncrossing our cognitive signals is to acknowledge that they are all twisted up. Knowing what cognitive distortions are and being able to pinpoint what specific distortions we are experiencing can be a huge first step in improving the way we see the world.