Hello everyone and welcome to therapy in a nutshell. I'm Emma McAdam, a licensed marriage and family

therapist, and this is the podcast where I condense mental health skills into bite-sized

nuggets of health. This episode is part two of our discussion on cognitive distortions.

If you haven't seen that one already, go back and watch part one where I cover 10 common cognitive distortions.

So just as a refresher, cognitive distortions happen when our thinking gets twisted or exaggerated.

But most of the time, we don't notice that we're thinking

this way. It often feels true, so we just go with it. But cognitive distortions make us feel more

sad, anxious, depressed, or ashamed, because we end up believing something that isn't necessarily

true or helpful. Learning to recognize the 10 common cognitive distortions is the first step

to gaining some power over cognitive distortions in your life. In this episode, you're going to learn

how to challenge and replace those distorted thoughts. You can change how you think so that you

can change how you feel.

But before we jump into that, we need to talk about the benefits of distorted thinking.

Everyone says be positive, but almost everyone spends some time thinking it negatively.

Why is that? Distorted thinking kind of screws us over in the long run, but we do it because in the short term it has some benefits.

So the first benefit of negative thinking is that it's comfortable. So have you ever heard someone say,

I'd rather expect to fail and be pleasantly surprised than expect to succeed and be disappointed?

Negative thinking is just another subtle way to attempt to avoid pain.

We seek to protect ourselves from disappointment by expecting the worst or by labeling

ourselves as broken.

So let me give you an example.

Let's start with the first cognitive distortion, all or nothing thinking.

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