What Is The Relationship Between Cognitive Distortions And Depression?
Surely you have heard more than once the phrase “your worst enemy is yourself”, a popular saying that reminds us of the power we ourselves have to boycott or harm ourselves, often unconsciously.
In psychology, this phenomenon of unconscious “self-sabotage” can occur in many ways and its consequences can be of different severity for people’s mental health.
Cognitive distortions They promote negative thoughts, beliefs or ideas about oneself that can cause psychological alterations of all kinds, including depression.
Below we will briefly see a definition of cognitive distortions and a brief explanation about them. its relationship with the onset and maintenance of depression in people.
In the field of psychology, cognitive distortions are erroneous and maladaptive thinking schemes or ways of thinking that harm the people who maintain them in their daily lives.
More specifically, cognitive distortions must be understood as misinterpretations of the reality that surrounds us with which we draw erroneous conclusions about ourselves or our way of acting that directly affect our mental health.
These errors in the processing of reality can be very diverse and motivated by multiple causes, generating very negative consequences in the person who commits them and causing all types of psychological alterations.
Depression is one of the most common mental health disorders and is caused in part by cognitive distortions, since the person systematically develops in his mind a series of negative thoughts and conceptions about his life that progressively undermine his psychological health and plunge him into a permanent state of negativity, pessimism. and suffering.
Psychological professionals can help us overcome dysfunctional cognitive distortions through a process known as cognitive restructuring, which consists of identifying those maladaptive thought patterns or beliefs that the person has and helping them change them to more positive and adaptive ones through training in all types of psychological techniques and strategies.
How do cognitive distortions contribute to the maintenance of depression?
Cognitive distortions play a fundamental role in the appearance of serious psychological disorders such as depression. Below we will see how they develop, maintain or reinforce this psychological disorder in people.
1. They reinforce a pessimistic framework of interpretation
Cognitive distortions lead us to reinforce a very pessimistic framework of interpretation of how the world works and also about ourselves our actions and daily performance in any area of life.
This pessimistic interpretation of the world around us extends to every action we take daily, to every personal experience, decision or thought, which can end up generating a depressive disorder.
Pessimism causes the person to constantly think that everything will go wrong, that every job or project they undertake will be a job or that each of their social relationships will fail.
2. Reinforces our feeling of guilt
A common consequence of cognitive distortions is personalization, a psychological phenomenon that leads people to blame themselves for everything bad that happens to them in life, even though they have no responsibility for it.
This thinking model is due to a deficient analysis of reality and is related to the appearance of cases of depression, since the person tends to blame or take responsibility for everything that goes wrong in their life.
3. It makes us believe that we don’t deserve to be happy
Believing that we do not deserve happiness in life and that our destiny is to be alone and miserable is a negative way of conceiving the world that is constructed by a cognitive distortion.
This type of pessimistic thinking contributes to establishing a vicious circle in which the person feels increasingly sad and distressed and their thoughts are progressively more pessimistic and depressive.
4. It leads us to think that we cannot establish relationships with anyone
Through cognitive distortions we can also convince ourselves that we will never be able to have meaningful emotional relationships with anyone, whether friendship or love, a phenomenon known as overgeneralization.
This happens when we have had a heartbreak or a breakup with our partner and we generalize this specific situation to the point of considering that this is how things will always go in love. In the long run, it promotes the person’s progressive isolation from the world considering that no one will want to be with her, and that she feels increasingly unhappy and miserable.
5. It makes us focus our attention on the negative
Selective abstraction or filtering is a psychological phenomenon linked to cognitive distortions and consisting of focusing only on the negative aspects of a situation, without taking into account the positive aspects.
We can consider, for example, the case of a student who fails a certain exam and manages to pass the rest. This person will give more importance to the failed exam than to the approved ones, which It will generate a great feeling of discomfort and suffering.
This partial thinking model in which much more preponderance is given to the negative that may have happened to us without paying attention to all the positive things in life is also related to the development of cases of depression.
6. Promotes polarized thinking
Polarized thinking consists of conceiving the outside world based on extreme assessments and without intermediate nuances.
This means that the person who makes the slightest mistake in a job will think that he is useless and that it has been of no use; or that when arguing with your partner you will reach conclusions such as “this relationship will not work” or “we are always arguing.”
