Checklist of Cognitive Distortions

1. All-or-nothing thinking: You look at things in absolute, black-and-white categories.
2. Over generalization: You view a negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.
3. Mental filter: You dwell on the negatives and ignore the positives.
4. Discounting the positives: You insist that your accomplishments or positive qualities don't count.
5. Jumping to conclusions:
1. Mind-reading - you arbitrarily assume that people are reactive negatively to you;
2. Fortune-telling - you arbitrarily predict that things will turn out badly.
6. Magnifications or minimization: You blow things  way out of proportion or you shrink their importance.
7. Emotional reasoning: You reason from how you feel: "I feel like an idiot, so I must be one."
8. Should statements: You criticize yourself or other people with "shoulds," "shouldn'ts," "musts," "oughts," and "have tos."
9. Labeling: Instead of saying "I made a mistake," you tell yourself, "I'm a jerk" or "a loser."
10. Personalization and blame:
1. You blame yourself for something you weren't entirely responsible for/
2. You blame other people and overlook ways that you contributed to a problem.

*David D. Burns, MS. Revised 1992