Cognitive Distortions in Adults: What Thinking Errors Are and How to Cope
Your thoughts shape just about everything you experience in the world. So when negative thought patterns become the automatic “go-to,” they can distort reality in ways that fuel anxiety, depression, and chronic stress.
These cognitive distortions are learned patterns that anyone can develop. Common distortions include all-or-nothing thinking, when everything feels either perfect or catastrophic, and overgeneralization, where single events take on a quality of universal truth.
Cognitive distortions – also known as “thinking errors” – can keep you in emotional pain, even when your circumstances improve. The good news is that evidence-based therapy can help identify and restructure unhelpful thinking patterns, improving your emotional regulation and putting a halt to ongoing ruminations.
A mental health professional can help you determine the right approach to therapy for your needs. This page can also help by working as a guide to better understanding cognitive distortions in adults and how to cope with them by exploring:
- Common cognitive distortions for adults
- How thinking errors can impact mental health
- Common mental health conditions that feature cognitive distortions
- How to cope with cognitive distortions, including where to get help
Understanding Cognitive Distortions in Adults
Cognitive distortions can best be described using something called the “cognitive triad.” This is a framework used to explain how negative thinking patterns can affect how you view yourself, the world, and the future.
For example, someone who’s experiencing depression might be struggling with thoughts of feeling worthless (self), that no one cares about them (world), and that things will never get better (future).1
These thoughts can continually reinforce one another. For instance, thoughts tend to generate emotions, which go on to influence behaviors that end up producing results that seem to confirm the original thoughts.1
This type of feedback loop can make distorted thinking feel accurate, even when it contradicts reality.
Next, we take a look at some of the most common cognitive distortions seen in adults.
Common Cognitive Distortions
Aaron Beck, one of the founders of cognitive-behavioral therapy, worked to identify specific patterns of distorted thinking that consistently appeared across anxiety disorders, depressive disorders, and other common mental health conditions.2
These thinking errors are reflective of shortcuts the brain can take when processing information, leading to inaccurate conclusions and long-lasting consternation. Identifying these cognitive distortions can become easier when you understand their common forms, with each following predictable patterns that twist your view of reality.
They can include:3
- All-or-nothing thinking: Placing your circumstances in black-and-white categories
- Catastrophizing: Coming to expect disaster and overly focusing on the importance of negative events
- Discounting the positive: Making light of positive events or quickly rejecting them as a fluke
- Emotional reasoning: Believing that negative feelings are totally reflective of reality
- Fortune telling: Predicting negative outcomes without any supporting facts
- Mental filtering: Focusing on the negatives and excluding any contradictory or positive information
- Mind reading: Assuming you know what others are thinking
- Overgeneralization: Drawing broad, sweeping conclusions from single events or limited evidence
- Personalization: Taking too much responsibility for events that were beyond your control
- “Should” statements: Imposing rigid, inflexible rules about how you (or others) should behave
How Cognitive Distortions Affect Mental Health
As referenced above, cognitive distortions tend to fall into a vicious cycle where distorted thoughts trigger anxious or depressed feelings, which in turn generate even more distorted interpretations. For example, thinking that something will be a disaster can influence your behavior – and that can then be taken as proof that the catastrophic prediction was correct.
These thinking errors can prevent you from accurately self-assessing yourself and your circumstances and negatively influence your problem-solving skills. For instance, someone who automatically discounts positive feedback can struggle with recognizing their actual strengths and acknowledging their progress, becoming self-fulfilling prophecies in the process.
Relationships can also quickly become strained under the weight of distorted thinking. Mind-reading and personalization can create false assumptions about what others think or intend, creating defensiveness and rigid patterns based on misinterpretations.
Simply put, the cumulative effect of unchecked cognitive distortions can leave you feeling stuck in patterns that feel inescapable.
Why Cognitive Distortions Feel So Convincing
Most cognitive distortions happen in a flash, but they can feel very convincing. You don’t consciously decide to catastrophize or overgeneralize – these thoughts appear fully formed, triggered so quickly that the resulting emotion often comes up before the thought even registers.
Your brain evolved to make quick judgments based on limited information, which can be extremely helpful in dangerous situations. However, these same mental shortcuts can also work to generate negative thought patterns in otherwise safe situations.4
What’s more, cognitive distortions can easily align with existing beliefs about yourself and the world. A person who thinks of themself as incompetent will likely be filtering every mistake they make and dismissing their successes without even realizing it. This confirmation bias can make identifying distortions without practice extremely difficult.
Common Mental Health Conditions Featuring Cognitive Distortions
Several mental health conditions can feature distortions and difficult thinking patterns. Recognizing when thinking errors occur can help you better understand your unique patterns and seek the appropriate treatment when necessary.
Mental health conditions that can feature common cognitive distortions include:5
- Anxiety disorders: Catastrophizing, fortune-telling, and mind-reading are all frequently seen as a part of anxious thinking patterns, with people tending to overestimate threats and underestimate their ability to deal with challenges.
- Borderline personality disorder (BPD): Several negative thinking patterns can be experienced by those diagnosed with BPD, including all-or-nothing thinking and catastrophizing about abandonment.
- Depressive and mood-based disorders: These mental health conditions can make people more prone to all-or-nothing thinking, mental filtering, and overgeneralization.
- Eating disorders: All-or-nothing thinking about both food and weight is common, such as discounting any positives about your appearance and creating rigid rules (“should” statements) that maintain disordered eating patterns.
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD): Catastrophizing and overestimating your responsibility are commonly seen in OCD, along with the belief that your thoughts equal actions – driving the compulsions intended to prevent imagined disasters.
- Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): Overgeneralized thought patterns can make people view all situations as being similar to the trauma they’ve experienced. Similarly, personalization can create excessive amounts of self-blame for events that were beyond their control.
- Social anxiety disorder: People struggling with social anxiety can quickly become preoccupied about others’ perceptions – and these perceptions can be heavily influenced by mind-reading and fortune-telling, filtering out any positive signs of acceptance.
Coping With Cognitive Distortions in Adults
Restructuring your negative thoughts means recognizing that they’re interpretations, not facts. They might feel convincing, but you can learn to catch and evaluate them more accurately with practice.
Notice the Distortion – And Give It a Name
Identifying cognitive distortions gets easier when you learn to recognize their patterns. If you’re feeling anxious, stressed, or depressed, ask yourself what thoughts just went through your mind. Write them down, if possible, and compare them to a list of thinking errors.
Simply naming the distortions you see can help to create distance between you and the thought.
Examine the Evidence
Once you’ve identified a distorted thought, treat it like something to be curious about, rather than a fact.
Ask yourself what evidence is in support of it, along with what evidence goes against it. This process can help to challenge overgeneralization and negative thinking by introducing a more balanced assessment of the circumstances at hand.
Use the “Friend Test”
Ask yourself how you’d respond if a dear friend said the same distorted thought to you. Would you tell them they’re right, or show them more compassion?
Most people find it much easier to be kind to others than to themselves. Applying that same kindness to your own thoughts – most of which are automatic and really just “rough drafts” – can challenge your own harsh self-appraisals.
Practice Reframing Your Thoughts
After identifying a distortion, try to reframe your thought into something kinder and more accurate. Everyone makes mistakes sometimes, and telling yourself that you’re nervous for a presentation is more accurate than telling yourself it will be a disaster. Writing these thoughts down and keeping a log of how you challenge them can also be helpful.
Professional Support Is Available at Mission Connection
Some people find identifying cognitive distortions and restructuring negative thoughts hard to manage on their own. If distortions are getting in your way more often than not – or are a function of another mental health condition, like depression or anxiety – then accessing quality professional support can make all the difference.
Mission Connection can help you address both negative thought patterns and any underlying conditions that maintain them with our holistic, evidence-based treatment. We specialize in cognitive-behavioral therapy to challenge and change thinking errors, helping identify your specific patterns and giving you the tools for healing.
If ruminations and distortions are preventing you from living your life to the fullest, contact our team today to talk about how our innovative treatment programs can help.
Frequently Asked Questions About Cognitive Distortions in Adults
If distorted thinking patterns are taking over your day-to-day life, it’s natural to have some ongoing concerns after the information in this article. This is why we’ve provided the following answers to FAQs we receive.
Can I Have Cognitive Distortions Without an Underlying Mental Health Disorder?
Definitely – cognitive distortions for adults can happen to anyone. We all experience challenges with our thoughts at times, especially when feeling tired, hungry, overwhelmed, or stressed.
While occasionally experiencing cognitive distortions is normal, having them be your default response to things can suggest a pattern requiring attention. Along the same lines, feeling sad or anxious at times is a universal experience. But being unable to work or go to school due to anxiety or depression might mean you’d benefit from finding treatment to help.
How Long Does it Take to Change Cognitive Distortions?
Changing negative thought patterns can look different for everyone. Some people might notice rapid improvement within a few weeks of starting therapy, whereas others might need consistent practice over several months to see results.
Most CBT-based work takes place over 12 to 16 sessions, with the skills learned in the process continuing to improve with practice after formal treatment has ended.
Are Cognitive Distortions Always the Same Thing as Negative Thinking?
Not always: you can think negatively about something accurately, such as someone losing their job and thinking about how hard it is, or their concerns over finances. Cognitive distortions, on the other hand, usually twist reality in predictable ways.
The goal of CBT therapy and mental health treatment isn’t to remove any negative thoughts from happening, but rather to help people think more accurately. This can mean sometimes acknowledging real difficulties without adding any distorted thinking patterns on top of it.
References
- American Psychological Association (n.d.). APA Dictionary of Psychology. Dictionary.apa.org. https://dictionary.apa.org/cognitive-triad
- Chand, S. P., Kuckel, D. P., & Huecker, M. R. (2023, May 23). Cognitive behavior therapy (CBT). National Library of Medicine; StatPearls Publishing. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK470241/
- Grinspoon, P. (2022, May 4). How to recognize and tame your cognitive distortions. Harvard Health; Harvard Health Publishing. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/how-to-recognize-and-tame-your-cognitive-distortions-202205042738
- Bojke, L., Soares, M., Claxton, K., et al. (2021). Reviewing the evidence: Heuristics and biases. In Developing a reference protocol for structured expert elicitation in health-care decision-making: A mixed-methods study (Health Technology Assessment No. 25.37). NIHR Journals Library. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK571047/
- Cleveland Clinic. (2025, August 19). What Are Cognitive Distortions? And How To Change Distorted Thinking. Cleveland Clinic. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/cognitive-distortions