In addition to changing cognition, we also need to establish social status. Freud said that the more sociable and loving a person is, the healthier his spirit will be. So you should socialize more, because this is a shortcut for you, but the process of taking this shortcut is more painful. Usually, we are convinced of the ideas that appear in our brains. After all, if we don't trust our brains, what else can we trust? Generally speaking, this is a good thing-the brain reminds us of danger, stays away from harm and helps us solve problems in daily life.
However, sometimes you need to think twice about the information presented in your brain. This is not that the brain deliberately deceives us, but over time, some wrong or useless connections have been formed in the brain. It is easy for people's brains to form wrong connections. The brain tends to establish connections between ideas, opinions, actions and results, whether they are really related or not, which can often explain our prejudice against things.
This tendency to establish relationships without real relationships is a common problem to explain the research results: suppose two variables are related, and one variable affects the occurrence of the other variable. Students majoring in psychology and social sciences should know that "relevance and causality are two different concepts".
In research, it is easy to have coincidences or more complicated relationships and make wrong or simplified assumptions; For example, in the absence of real connection, we can easily connect two events or ideas. For example, in psychotherapy, it may not be the treatment method but the treatment relationship or placebo effect that affects the treatment effect. This kind of mistake is called "cognitive distortion" if it involves personal thoughts and beliefs. Details: how to deal with dysfunctional thinking and false beliefs ▎ false beliefs of the mind.
What is cognitive distortion?
As the name implies, cognitive distortion: individual's cognition is distorted. In other words, cognitive distortion refers to an individual's prejudice against himself and the world around him. As we grow older, we will constantly consolidate irrational and distorted thoughts and beliefs (irrational thoughts and beliefs) that appear in our minds. These distorted thinking patterns are often subtle-when they become your daily thinking, it is difficult for you to identify them accurately. This is why they are so harmful, because it is difficult for us to change the thinking patterns that we don't realize at all but need to change.
Cognitive distortion includes many forms, but they still have some common characteristics. All cognitive distortions are:
◆ Individuals tend to believe or think. ...
◆ Error or inaccuracy ....
◆ Affect individual mental health.
It is difficult for most individuals to admit that they may have fallen into a strange circle of distorted thinking. You may think, "I can't stick to any obviously wrong views or beliefs!" " "Although most people don't have this cognitive distortion in their daily lives, it seems that no one can completely get rid of it.
You may fall into several cognitive distortion traps at once; The difference between those individuals who occasionally fall into cognitive distortion and those who have been troubled for a long time lies in their ability to identify and correct these wrong thinking patterns. Like many skills and abilities in life, some people do better than others.
It is found that there is a positive correlation between cognitive distortion and depression, which means that if individuals have serious cognitive distortion, they are prone to depressive symptoms (Burns, Shaw,&; Crocker, 1987).
David Burns, a famous psychiatrist and researcher, said, "I guess you will find that many of your negative feelings are actually based on this wrong thinking."
False beliefs or cognitive distortions can easily cause or aggravate depressive symptoms. Whether cognitive distortion leads to depression or depression leads to cognitive distortion (the correlation between the two is not causal) is still inconclusive; But obviously, they are closely linked (details: ruminant thinking-a positive prediction of depression).
Most of our knowledge about cognitive distortion comes from two researchers who have done a lot of research in the frontier fields of psychiatry and psychotherapy: Aaron Beck and David Burns.