Cognitive Distortions are a manifestation of human negative bias in daily life.

We, sometimes
unknowingly, create patterns of irrational and inaccurate thoughts and beliefs that affect the way we
view the world around us. They tend to be subtle but have major effects on our lives which often put us
at risk for psychological damage and complications such as depression and anxiety.

The main contributors of research in cognitive distortions are Aaron Beck and David Burns. Aaron Beck
developed the foundation of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) after noticing a common factor in many
of his patients with depression, distorted thinking patterns. He devised CBT based on the idea that
changing these thought patterns could improve their symptoms. David Burns followed Beck and wrote
his book “Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy” which focuses on the identification, correction, and
replacement of distorted thought patterns.

The Most Common Cognitive Distortions + Examples from Lebanon’s Situation:

1. All or Nothing Thinking/Polarized Thinking is seen when an individual cannot, and often does
not want, to see anything except the extremes. There is no middle ground for them.
e.g. The Lebanese Forces, a political party believes that their party’s ideology is the correct and
ideal way of thinking without any alternative. There is no middle ground for them. It is their
policy and what they believe in or nothing.

2. Overgeneralization occurs when an individual uses one example or incident and makes it a
general pattern or rule. This leads them to have negative thought patterns that apply to all
situations from one similar instance which had negative results.
e.g. When The Tayyar, members of a political party seen one member of another party such as
The Lebanese Debate doing something unethical, they directly assume the whole party is
corrupt.

3. Mental Filter is seen when an individual focuses on the negative aspects and completely ignores
all positive aspects.
e.g. Members of one political party often see only the negative actions of the other parties and
refuse to acknowledge any of the good actions or decisions that party has made. Furthermore,
in this revolution many of the The tayyar got offended of the slang words that the protestors
were using to associate it with the Tayyar and thus they deemed all of their actions as
unimportant.

4. Disqualifying the Positive is similar to the Mental Filter except that the individual recognizes the
positive but then rejects them to focus on the negative.
e.g. This is when members acknowledge one good thing from an opposing party but then refuse
to change their negative opinion about it.

5. Jumping to Conclusions-Mind Reading is when an individual believes they know what other
people are thinking and usually attribute other people’s emotions to negative ideas about
themselves.
e.g. Sometimes belonging to a political party can lead to hatred between people. Someone who
displays the mind reading cognitive distortion would believe that something as simple as a smile
smaller than expected is because the other person thinks negatively about them. Such as, the
 Lebanese Forces believing that every action that is taken Gebran Bassil is there to harm them
and the country even though it is false.

6. Jumping to Conclusions-Fortune Telling is when an individual thinks they know what will
happen in the future and even though they do not have any hard evidence, they take their
predictions as solid truth.
e.g. The Lebanese Forces led by Samir Gaegae believe that with this revolution we will come
back to the ages of road blockage and taking money to let people pass while other rational
people want a new government and others don’t really know what they want in the revolution
has their own other think we will go back to the way we were and both sides of the argument
are convinced they know exactly what will happen.

7. Magnification/Catastrophizing or Minimization occurs when an individual either exaggerates or

minimizes the importance of events. Usually they exaggerate negative events and minimize
positive ones.
e.g. The Lebanese Forces believe that the revolution will focus on the negative effects of it such
as the near collapse of the economy and downgrade the victories such as the resignation of the
prime minister Hariri as they want the president to fall.

8. Emotional Reasoning is when an individual uses their own emotions as general facts.
e.g. Followers of the Lebanese Forces are brainwashed by their political leaders and as such will
take their own positive emotions toward the leader and their own negative emotions toward all
the others as facts that their preferred leader is good and the other are bad and undeserving of
power.

9. Should Statements occur when the individual tends to create “should” or statements of what
one must do. It essentially a way of holding unrealistic expectations to the self and others.
e.g. Students in the revolution say that everyone should join the protests. They say that
everyone should boycott the university’s opening. They hold negative and unrealistic
expectations of those who do not wish participate and those who have different opinions on
how this should go.

10. Labeling and Mislabeling is similar to overgeneralizing, but instead this one instance gives the
person a title and assigns their worth based on one instance.
e.g. For example, the “Mabsoota” woman who was given the title of “stupid” by one moment in
the protests. No one really knew her, but suddenly she was made an icon of ignorance and the
subject of plenty of cyber-bullying and harassment because she portrayed her true emotions
towards the president and The Tayyar.

11. Personalization occurs when a person relates everything to themselves and even though they
may not even have a part in the situation, will believe they are the one at fault.
e.g. A lot of the protestors are holding this idea that if they do not protest, they will be the
reason Lebanon does not thrive again because they believe that protesting will resolve all of our
problems that have accumulated over 30 years in one night.
 12. Control Fallacies are seen when a person either believes they have no control or total control
over a situation.
e.g. Total control is seen in the protestors who think nothing can stop them, not even the army,
and that they now have the power to push the government to do what they want. No control is
seen in the people who do not participate at all because they believe they have no influence
over the situation and that their presence of absence does not change anything because they do
not have any control.
13. Fallacy or Fairness is when one assumes that the world is fair and feels more negativity than
others when the world does not prove to be perfectly fair.
e.g. The people who thought that the government would actually resign immediately and return
all the money thought the world is fair when it is actually not and were disappointed and angry
when they did not.

14. Fallacy of Change is when one expects others to change if we pressure them enough and that
our happiness is dependent on that person changing.
e.g. This is exactly what is happening with the government right now. People think that if they
pressure them enough to resign, they will. They think their happiness is dependent on the
government officials resigning, but in fact they are just carrying out orders of their beloved
political party.

15. Always Being Right occurs when the individual believes that they are always right. They cannot
admit they are wrong nor can they accept other sides of stories.
e.g. The government officials believe they are right in their decision and refuse to accept what
the people think. Each party within the government also believes it was right in its own
decisions, and all the others are wrong.

16. Heaven’s Reward Fallacy is often seen when one believes that all their hardships are supposed
to lead to some form of positive pay off or reward.
e.g. The revolutionaries think that they struggles for the past two weeks will be rewarded with a
new government even though we know that this isn’t true and half of them are getting paid to
revolt.

Common Correction Methods:

1. Unhelpful Thinking Styles is a series of handouts used to identify the type of cognitive distortion
you are subject to.
2. CBT Thought Record is a type of therapy for cognitive distortion which requires that you
describe the situation in which you had negative emotions. Then you must rate how strong the
feeling was from 0 (not at all) to 100 (very strong). Then you must write down the negative
thought and any images or feelings associated with it. The write down facts that either support
or disprove the validity and accuracy of the thought. Then you must create a new thought to
replace the negative one using the evidence against the negative thought. Then you rate the
emotion you felt again on the same scale. You should feel a decrease in intensity.
3. Decatastrophizing is a tool used to give yourself a soothing talk when you are worried about
something that probably won’t happen.