Most Common Cognitive Distortions in Adults
Some negative thought patterns in adults are far more common than others. While dozens of cognitive distortions exist, most people tend to rely on a handful of common thinking errors that repeat automatically and without a second thought.
Recognizing the most common cognitive distortions in adults can help you spot them faster in your own thinking patterns, making challenging negative thoughts easier and more effective.
Sometimes, detecting and challenging cognitive distortions can be difficult to do by yourself. This is where a mental health professional can step in, providing clarity and guidance on how to overcome these thinking errors.
This page can help you better understand and detect common cognitive distortions by exploring:
- The most common cognitive distortions for adults
- The potential connections between catastrophizing, anxiety, and depression
- Patterns around personalization and self-blame
- How to better identify cognitive distortions in your daily life
- When to seek help for your thinking patterns
The Most Common Cognitive Distortions
Cognitive distortions, which are systematic patterns of thinking that twist reality in inaccurate ways, can cause you to consistently misinterpret yourself and the world around you.
Occasional negative thoughts often reflect genuine problems, but these ongoing negative thinking patterns can lead to conclusions that act as fuel for anxiety, depression, and distress.1
Therapists and researchers have been able to identify many distinct distortions, although most people tend to exhibit a core group, depending on several factors. Some of the most common cognitive distortions experienced by adults include the following:2
All-or-Nothing Thinking:
Viewing situations in extreme, black-and-white categories with no middle ground. For example, If I don’t succeed, then I’m a complete failure.
Always Being Right:
Feeling the need to prove your opinions are correct at any cost, prioritizing this over others. For example, I don’t care how it makes you feel – I know I’m right.
Blaming Behavior:
Making others responsible for your problems – or blaming yourself for things out of your control. For example, It’s my ex’s fault I’m like this, or It’s my fault everything falls apart.
Catastrophizing:
Always expecting the worst possible outcome, magnifying the importance of negative events. For example, If I make a mistake, everyone will know I can’t do it.
Control Fallacies:
Feeling responsible for others’ happiness or feeling helpless about your circumstances. For example, It’s my job to make my family happy, or I can’t do anything about my life.
Discounting the Positive:
Dismissing any good experiences as a fluke. For example, I did well, but that doesn’t count because it was easy.
Emotional Reasoning:
Believing that negative feelings are always reflective of reality. For example, I’m anxious, so something bad is about to happen.
The Fallacy of Change:
Expecting other people to change for your needs, staking your happiness on the feeling. For example, If my partner were more affectionate, then I’d finally be happy with my life.
The Fallacy of Fairness:
Judging your circumstances as unfair when they don’t turn out how you wanted. For example, Why did they get promoted? I work just as hard as they do.
Fortune Telling:
Predicting negative outcomes with certainty. For example, I know this isn’t going to work out, so why bother?
Labeling:
Attaching negative labels to yourself or others based on single events. For example, I forgot I had an appointment, I’m such an idiot.
Magnification and Minimization:
Exaggerating negative aspects or downplaying positive ones. For example, If they’re not coming, the party is ruined, or Anyone could have done what I did for the project.
Mental Filtering:
Focusing on negative details and excluding any positive aspects. For example, Sure everyone was nice to me, but I don’t think your new partner liked me very much.
Mind Reading:
Thinking you know what others think. For example, They didn’t smile back, so they must think I’m annoying.
Overgeneralization:
Drawing broad, far-reaching conclusions from limited evidence. For example, I didn’t get the job, so I’ll just be unemployed forever.
Personalization:
Taking too much responsibility for events you couldn’t control. For example, They seemed upset – it must have been something I did.
“Should” Statements:
Making up inflexible rules about how you or others should act. For example, People should always be nice, no matter what.
The Connections Between Cognitive Distortions and Mental Health
Negative thinking patterns in adults can contribute to and be a result of several mental health conditions. This results in an ongoing loop where distorted thinking worsens your mental health and well-being, which then makes negative thinking stronger and more convincing.3
For example, catastrophizing, anxiety, and depression can all be interconnected. People experiencing anxiety disorders often catastrophize about future events, predicting disasters that, in reality, rarely come to pass.
Harboring such a constant expectation of doom can activate your body’s stress response over and over, maintaining chronic anxiety even when no actual threat exists.
Furthermore, overgeneralization and negative thinking can be commonly seen in depressive disorders. For instance, someone experiencing a rejection can decide that nobody wants them, reinforcing the hopelessness often seen in depression.
Mental filtering in adults is also common to both depression and anxiety. Anxious people often filter their world for threats, dismissing safety cues even when they don’t mean to. Likewise, depressed people often filter for evidence of their failures and unintentionally downplay any achievements, creating a selection bias that supports distorted beliefs.
The Relationship Between Personalization and Self-Blame
Personalization and self-blame involve taking on too much responsibility for events that are genuinely beyond your control. It’s not necessarily your fault if someone cancels plans or if a party wasn’t any fun — but sometimes it’s easy to believe you caused an issue that caused it.
While it’s healthy to take accountability for your actions (and also represents personal growth and maturity), it’s also possible to assign yourself far too much blame. Outcomes are ultimately often complex and involve others’ choices and outside influences.
Both personalization and self-blame can increase feelings of guilt and shame – experiences that can lead to stress and emotional struggles. They can also prevent problem-solving activities, as they misidentify the causes of any action. If you think you caused something you didn’t, then you can’t address the real factors that were involved.4
How to Better Identify Cognitive Distortions in Your Daily Life
Identifying cognitive distortions and negative thinking patterns in your daily life is a skill, and one that can become easier with practice. Most thinking errors happen automatically, so catching them requires paying more attention to your internal processes.
Notice Your Emotional Shifts
Strong emotional reactions can be ripe for distorted thinking. If you suddenly feel anxious, angry, or depressed, pause and ask yourself what thought just came before the feeling. Writing down these thoughts can help you slow things down and examine your reactions more objectively.
Keep an Ear Out for Extreme Language
All-or-nothing thinking and catastrophizing usually come about with “absolute” words. Notice when you think things like always, never, everyone, no one, and so on. These extremes can usually reflect some level of distorted thinking.
Along those same lines, words like should, must, or have to can be a clue regarding riding thinking. They might not be leaving room for your experience or circumstances out of your control.
Question Your Assumptions
Mind-reading and fortune-telling can feel very convincing, as they seem to give you certainty. Challenge these assumptions by asking yourself how you know the thought to be true, as identifying distortions usually requires noting the difference between evidence and interpretations.
Track Your Patterns Over Time
Try keeping a brief thought log for a week, taking note of situations that tend to trigger strong reactions and the thoughts that preceded them. You might start to notice some patterns emerging, and recognizing your personal distortions can help you prepare for difficult situations and challenge your thinking errors.
Find Professional Support For Cognitive Distortions at Mission Connection
Identifying your personal cognitive distortions is an important step, but working to restructure harmful thought patterns and working on any underlying mental health conditions might need professional support.
Mission Connection has a wealth of experience helping people recover from a wide array of mental health disorders and challenges. So we can work with you to improve your ability to thrive and the quality of your relationships.
Our programs combine the best in evidence-based care and holistic treatment to help you recognize and change thinking errors and develop healthier coping strategies for your day-to-day life. We accept most major insurance plans, and our admissions team can assist you with understanding your benefits.
Contact us today to discuss how our programs can help you break free from negative thought patterns.
Frequently Asked Questions About Common Cognitive Distortions in Adults
If you suspect that you’re regularly dealing with inaccurate thoughts, you may still have some persisting questions about why they happen and how to challenge them. This is why we’ve provided the following answers to FAQs on the topic – to provide as much clarity and hope as possible.
What’s the Most Common Cognitive Distortion?
The answer to this question truly depends on the person and their unique makeup. For example, people with social anxiety frequently use mind-reading, whereas those with depression tend toward overgeneralization and negative thinking. Most people use several cognitive distortions, many of which tend to reinforce one another.
No matter your experience, cognitive distortions are patterns that can be improved with the right level of support and care. Contact Mission Connection today to see how we can help.
Can You Have Cognitive Distortions Without Even Realizing It?
Yes, cognitive distortions in adults can be automatic and feel like the objective truth. They can arrive so quickly that you register the resulting emotion far more than the initiating thought, making identification a challenge without practice or external feedback.
What’s more, many thinking pattern errors begin in childhood or as a result of mental health conditions, being reinforced for years. Learning more about them and exploring evidence-based care, such as CBT for thinking errors, can help you catch them more easily.
How Can I Break These Habits?
Breaking common thinking errors is a matter of practice. Learn more about recognizing your common thinking patterns, taking note of where you were and what you were thinking about when they occurred. It can be helpful to keep a thought record to create more awareness of the patterns you use most frequently.
Work on challenging negative thoughts, treating them as hypotheses instead of pure facts. Ask yourself what evidence supports and contradicts these thoughts, keeping an open mind for alternative explanations.
Working with a trained clinician can speed up this process, helping you catch distortions you might otherwise miss and teaching you new coping strategies to overcome them.
References
- Milgram, S., & Bethesda. (n.d.). Becoming a Resilient Scientist SERIES Workbook II: Understanding Cognitive Distortions & Imposter Fears. https://gs.emory.edu/_includes/documents/sections/professional-development/nih/rtp_unit-2-workbook.pdf
- Boyes, A. (2013). 50 Common Cognitive Distortions. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-practice/201301/50-common-cognitive-distortions
- Prabakar, A. D. (2024). The Power of Thought: The Role of Psychological Attentiveness and Emotional Support in Patient Trajectories. The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, 97(3), 335–347. https://doi.org/10.59249/cptg1770
- Tilghman-Osborne, C., Cole, D. A., Felton, J. W., & Ciesla, J. A. (2008). Relation of Guilt, Shame, Behavioral and Characterological Self-Blame to Depressive Symptoms in Adolescents Over Time. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 27(8), 809–842. https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.2008.27.8.809