marg wrote:Wade, wikipedia describes cognitive distortions essentially as faulty reasoning. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_distortion I'd like you to go to RFM and find a post which illustrates "cognitive distortion" on there.
by the way, I can see how you have cognitive distortion. I'm very serious. You seem to treat the entire board of RFM posters as if they are one poster. And you interpret criticisms of the church as anger. I think it likely you blow out of proportion individual posts, by interpreting them as having the same importance you place on them. But keep in mind that your interpretation of posts there is skewed by the importance and relevancy to your life that you place on them. The post to the poster may be quite insignificant in their daily lives.
Here is a list it gives:
List
Related links are suggested in parentheses.
All-or-nothing thinking - Thinking of things in absolute terms, like "always", "every" or "never". Few aspects of human behavior are so absolute. (See false dilemma.)
Overgeneralization - Taking isolated cases and using them to make wide generalizations. (See hasty generalization.)
Mental filter - Focusing exclusively on certain, usually negative or upsetting, aspects of something while ignoring the rest, like a tiny imperfection in a piece of clothing. (See misleading vividness.)
Disqualifying the positive - Continually "shooting down" positive experiences for arbitrary, ad hoc reasons. (See special pleading.)
Jumping to conclusions - Assuming something negative where there is no evidence to support it. Two specific subtypes are also identified:
Mind reading - Assuming the intentions of others.
Fortune telling - Predicting that things will turn out badly. (See slippery slope.)
Magnification and Minimization - Exaggerating negatives and understating positives. Often the positive characteristics of other people are exaggerated and negatives understated. There is one subtype of magnification:
Catastrophizing - Focusing on the worst possible outcome, however unlikely, or thinking that a situation is unbearable or impossible when it is really just uncomfortable.
Emotional reasoning - Making decisions and arguments based on how you feel rather than objective reality. (See appeal to consequences.)
Making should statements - Concentrating on what you think "should" or ought to be rather than the actual situation you are faced with, or having rigid rules which you think should always apply no matter what the circumstances are. (See wishful thinking.)
Labelling - Related to overgeneralization, explaining by naming. Rather than describing the specific behavior, you assign a label to someone or yourself that puts them in absolute and unalterable terms.
Personalization (or attribution) - Assuming you or others directly caused things when that may not have been the case. (See illusion of control.) When applied to others this is an example of blame.
I am grateful that you posted this, Marg. Aside from your personal commentary, it may be very enlightening and useful to the discussion at hand.
Thanks, -Wade Englund-