Emotional reasoning is a cognitive distortion, or faulty pattern of thought, in which a person believes that his or her own emotional experience in response to a thought is evidence for the truthfulness of that thought (Burns, 1981, 40–41; Beck, 2021, 253). In a nutshell, emotional reasoning occurs when we think the following: I feel it’s true,…
All or nothing thinking (also known as black and white thinking)is a cognitive distortion that causes a person to see something as all good or all bad, with no in-between (Burns, 1981, 40–41; Beck, 2021, 253). This is one of the most common cognitive distortions, and also one of the most damaging. Examples of all…
Sir John Falstaff — he’s Shakespeare’s low-living, gluttonous, perpetually indebted senior citizen, who steals for a living, meets all outward criteria of alcohol dependency, and is called a coward by his closest friends the first time we meet him. This charge is only amplified when, a little later, he plays dead in battle and then…
The therapeutic alliance is the working relationship between client and therapist. According to a growing body of research, the therapeutic alliance may be the most important factor to a successful therapeutic outcome — more important, even, than the therapist’s theoretical orientation, or approach to therapy. So, what makes a therapeutic alliance successful? The key factor…
Jumping to conclusions is a cognitive distortion, or a faulty pattern of thought, in which a person makes unhelpful assumptions that are not supported by evidence (Burns, 1981, 40–41). These “jumps” are leaps into the unknown. Jumping to conclusions is a particularly common cognitive distortion because we all must draw conclusions based on partial or…
Blaming is a cognitive distortion, or a faulty thought pattern, that causes a person to wrongly assign the responsibility of a negative outcome either to oneself or another. This cognitive distortion occurs when one wrongly blames another for one’s own actions, or when one wrongly assumes responsibility for others’ actions. Examples of blaming others Often,…