Common Cognitive Distortions: A partial list from Leahy, Holland, and McGinn’s Treatment Plans and Interventions for Depression and Anxiety Disorders (2012)

From The Atlantic, september 2015 issue -
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/#Cognitive%20Disorders

1. Mind reading. You assume that you know what people think without having sufficient evidence of their thoughts. “He thinks I’m a loser.” 
2. Fortune-telling. You predict the future negatively: things will get worse, or there is danger ahead. “I’ll fail that exam,” or “I won’t get the job.” 
3. Catastrophizing.You believe that what has happened or will happen will be so awful and unbearable that you won’t be able to stand it. “It would be terrible if I failed.” 
4. Labeling. You assign global negative traits to yourself and others. “I’m undesirable,” or “He’s a rotten person.” 
5. Discounting positives. You claim that the positive things you or others do are trivial. “That’s what wives are supposed to do—so it doesn’t count when she’s nice to me,” or “Those successes were easy, so they don’t matter.” 
6. Negative filtering. You focus almost exclusively on the negatives and seldom notice the positives. “Look at all of the people who don’t like me.” 
7. Overgeneralizing. You perceive a global pattern of negatives on the basis of a single incident. “This generally happens to me. I seem to fail at a lot of things.” 
8. Dichotomous thinking. You view events or people in all-or-nothing terms. “I get rejected by everyone,” or “It was a complete waste of time.” 
9. Blaming. You focus on the other person as the source of your negative feelings, and you refuse to take responsibility for changing yourself. “She’s to blame for the way I feel now,” or “My parents caused all my problems.” 
10. What if? You keep asking a series of questions about “what if” something happens, and you fail to be satisfied with any of the answers. “Yeah, but what if I get anxious?,” or “What if I can’t catch my breath?” 
11. Emotional reasoning. You let your feelings guide your interpretation of reality. “I feel depressed; therefore, my marriage is not working out.” 
12. Inability to disconfirm. You reject any evidence or arguments that might contradict your negative thoughts. For example, when you have the thought I’m unlovable, you reject as irrelevant any evidence that people like you. Consequently, your thought cannot be refuted. “That’s not the real issue. There are deeper problems. There are other factors.”

If I make a promise to something that does not exist, something that never existed, it still does not exist.  I can have no accountability to a lie, not to a hollow and rotten emptiness, and yet - and yet.  Logically, i cannot keep a promise to something imaginary, but my little Jiminy Cricket has sung up hurricanes: My promise itself is real, even if torn away.  I did that.

It's your fault, says the cricket, You weren't perfect enough.  If I had been, or if I hadn't.  If i had only known.  If you had been better you would not have this.  Thing is, i can't tell if it is the run-of-the-mill, anxiety-depressive, gaslit-victim stuff, or if there's something to it.  If I hadn't done anything wrong, would he still be making such a riot?  Come on, self.  You can do this.  Analyze.

Pick your heart apart like a corrupted scab.

A day like any other,

an arbitrary period determined by the rotation and orbit of a nowhere planet on a boondock star, on the outer edge of an unimportant galaxy.  Et cetera.  I share my birthday with, on various years, an equinox, the International Day of Peace, the last day of summer or winter, and Yom Kippur; the independence of Belize and Malta; H.G. Wells, Stephen King, and Bill Murray; and the publication of The Hobbit and Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.  People believe in things.  The human mind can find circumstance or meaning in tea leaves, in coins or cards or the movements of birds.  I can have faith.  Und ich darf das, ich bin auch nur ein imperfektes Mensch.

I believe I am real.  I believe in the truth of my perception: that what I see and experience is real to me, that what I feel is real to me.  I can only know with certainty that i exist.  This is a starting point, if as well a historic echo.  I don't mind.  I believe there is an external Truth, but it is filtered through sense and electricity and I cannot touch It, i cannot get all the way there even with everything in the world to access, there will always be something bigger and smaller than the human mind can understand ... I am reading The Brothers Karamazov and the faith keeps hitting me.  Maybe together we can get closer.

My aunt wrote a book about Jesus.  My aunt is dead now but I want to call her and shake her and say, Aunt, your god loves you, don't you know this?  Wake up, and look around, and breathe - Your god adores you.  I have every confidence i have.  This is my experience of the world, the same way I can see fingerprints or clouds or trees, the same way I can taste an apple, i can know that love is real the same way I cannot smell the color blue or hear a banana.  Aunt, i never thought to say so before.  I'm sorry.