Cognitive distortions can lead to major negativity issues.

What are cognitive distortions?

Cognitive distortions are thought patterns that cause people to view reality in inaccurate – mostly negative – ways. In effect, they are habitual errors in thinking which may lead people to usually interpret events that occur in a negative way. 

Like many other people, you may experience cognitive distortions from to time. However, if the thought patterns become a habit, it can lead to anxiety, deepen depression, and amongst other things, even cause relationship problems.

How do cognitive distortions develop?

These thought patterns develop when you struggle to cope with adverse life events. The longer these events take place, the more severe they become, and the more difficult they are to cope with it. The more you are stressed, the greater your desire for immediate survival, and you may adapt your thought patterns to ways like just accepting everything, to help you to cope. However, these thought patterns can very short-lived, and in the long run not at all useful to you.

Here is a list of some cognitive distorted thinking patterns which have been identified by researchers.

• Expecting the worst

Many people expect the worst results when they are faced with unknown events. Even normal every-day worries assume enormous proportions. Sometimes the origins of these thought patterns may be extreme pain or possible childhood trauma that has not been dealt with.

• Self-blame

You may be blaming yourself for circumstances that are not your fault, or not under your control, and actually has nothing to do with you at all. The guilt feelings lead to increased anxiety and depression.

•  A negative focus

 A very common distorted thought process is the tendency to ignore anything positive, and focus exclusively on negative reports and outcomes. Studies have suggested that this negativity can result in a very negative perspective of yourself and cause feelings of extreme hopelessness.

•  Disregarding the positive

 When you always disregard the positive, and something positive does occur, you may be inclined to write it off as a fluke or just pure luck. This distorted idea that positivity does not exist, can raise anxiety levels.

•  Emotions

We are emotional beings, and emotions play a huge part in our lives. Unfortunately, this includes emotional reasoning which causes a false belief that your emotions are the truth and that the way you feel about things is real, whether there is evidence or not. This is a major source of cognitive distortion which gives totally the wrong ideas about reality.    

Distorted thinking patterns can cause you much misery, lower your self-esteem, and destroy your confidence. But the good news is that these distorted thought patterns can be corrected and eliminated from your mind.

How cognitive distortions can be changed.

Extensive research by mental health experts has agreed that hypnosis, in conjunction with NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) is the best way to go. Hypnosis is able to access the subconscious mind and help you to identify wrong ideas and poor thinking patterns. NLP uses a specific set of tools and techniques to assist you in creating a completely new mindset that will enable you to move forward without baggage and negativity filling your mind.

Here is how hypnosis can help you:

• Teach you how to identify, interrupt, and change unhealthy thought patterns.

• Find the root cause of the anxiety and its co-morbid companion depression, and help you to overcome the anxiety-causing issues.

• Teach you how to make a mental shift to permanently move away from automatic thoughts such as I am so dumb, nobody likes me, I am bound to mess this up, the world is an awful place, and so on Infinitum!

 The negative labeling of yourself and your persona simply adds to your cognitive distortions issues, which will not go away on its own.

Hypnotherapy is a proven successful method to help you change your outlook on life, and move on with a new mindset.