Binge Eating Support

Cognitive Restructuring- Thinking through Cognitive Distortions

 

We all like to think that we are completely rational, but the truth is the brain is flexible when it comes to judgment and processing information. Distortions in thinking happen to everyone, but for many people with eating disorders, depression or a host of other conditions, this skewed reasoning is more common and it contributes to their disorder. Cognitive distortions are one of the ways your brain may be perpetuating your disordered eating.

Most people have no idea that their mind sometimes plays tricks on them. Since there are many irrational thoughts at the root of binge eating disorder and compulsive overeating, learning to identify when your mind is distorting reality is vital to your recovery. Once you’ve noticed all of these thoughts that so often run through your head unnoticed, you can evaluate them with a rational mind. Setting the record straight in your head helps you see more clearly what aspects of your life are troubling you.

 

• All-or-Nothing Thinking

All-or-Nothing Thinking is also known as “splitting” or black-and-white thinking. This sort of thinking makes a person’s view of a situation distorted and he will conclude that something is all good or all bad. Since most things in life aren’t 100% good or bad, making a habit of all-or-nothing thinking will often make you perceive a thought, emotion or situation incorrectly.

While everyone has all-or-nothing thinking sometimes, there are certain conditions where overuse of it is a feature. Eating disorders are one of them, as are depression, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder or narcissistic personality disorder.

Examples of all-or-nothing thinking:

Someone with binge eating disorder thinking “I can’t believe I ate all that chocolate. Why do I always go for the worst foods?” – This person believes that all foods are either good or bad.

“I just ate a cookie and blew my diet again. Now it doesn’t matter, since I messed up today already, so I may as well eat the rest of the box of cookies.” – This person thinks that her entire plan has been destroyed because she ate a single cookie. In her mind, her progress went from good to bad because of it.

• Magical Thinking

Human beings are wired to try to make sense of the world they live in. Sometimes they accomplish this by giving unrealistic or supernatural reasons as causes for things they do not understand.

Superstitions are good examples of magical thinking. There is, for instance, no proof that breaking a mirror will bring seven years of bad luck. Yet some people are convinced this is true.

A person could believe that if he never speaks of the sexual abuse he suffered as a child, it never really happened. A child could believe that if she wishes on a star, her lost teddy bear will magically reappear in her room. Someone could believe that a lucky talisman will make him pass his exam.

 

• Filtering

Filtering is when someone perceives only what she wants to perceive. This is usually done because the brain is trying to make reality fall in line with ideas you already believe. When we filter, we see what we want to see.

Filtering seems to be so ingrained in our minds that it happens without us noticing it most of the time. The trouble with that is that it makes it easy for you to find “proof” to support a belief that may not be true. An example of filtering might be: a woman whose mother always insisted that she was stupid might receive an outstanding performance review at work. Instead of feeling good for all of the praise she received from her boss, she feels sad because her boss made some minor suggestion that she do more training. Deep down, she feels she is stupid and her brain is looking for information to confirm that that belief is true.

Why in the world would somebody do that?! As strange as it sounds, people often cling to certain beliefs they’ve come to see as true, even if the effects of an untrue belief destroy their lives. Humans are creatures of habit; we naturally seek out the familiar because we’re used to it. The familiarity of a negative thought feels safer than the unknown, which could be worse than they could ever imagine.

Rejecting an untrue belief often has a domino effect. You don’t just change that one belief- most of the time, other beliefs will change, too. For example, if Bob worshipped the ground his father walked on when he was a boy and his father told him that he wasn’t “cut out for college”, he might deeply believe that is true. Changing his mind and deciding he is cut out for college would also mean accepting that his father was wrong about an important topic. Bob can’t conceive of his father ever being wrong about something like that, so he always filters his reality to confirm this belief.  

Disqualifying the Positive

When someone disqualifies the positive, she rationalizes why thoughts, events or feedback that disprove her false belief “don’t count”.

Example: Kim believes that she is obese based on the assessment of her ex-boyfriend. Whenever friend reassures her that her weight is normal, she rejects her statement out of hand. Kim reasons that her friend is only saying that to be nice, not because it’s really true.

 Jumping to Conclusions (subtypes: Mind Reading and Fortune Telling)

• Magnifying or Minimizing (subtype: Catastrophic Thinking)- making a mountain out of a molehill or playing down something

• Emotional Reasoning- when you think something is true because you feel that way.

• Should Statements

• Labeling or Mislabeling- broad overgeneralizations, when you take one bad incident as proof of something bigger, like saying “I’m so stupid” after you made a small mistake.

• Personalization- when you think that everything other people do is a direct reaction to you.

• External or Internal Control Fallacies- External Control Fallacies is where you see yourself as a helpless victim of fate.  Internal Control Fallacies are where you attribute some outside situation to be your fault or because of you.

• Fairness Fallacy- judging everything as fair or unfair.  Life isn’t always fair, so the person has negative feelings because things aren’t fair.

• Always Got to Be Right

Certain people make this cognitive distortion their favorite. Everyone has seen a person argue even though it’s obvious he was wrong. No matter the evidence that his opinion was incorrect, he insists it was not. This is because he wants to “win” the argument.

With this cognitive distortion, someone will argue over small, insignificant things just so she can be right about something. This sort of behavior usually has to do with control.

• Heaven’s Reward Fallacy- you think your hard work and depriving yourself will get you what you want, as though someone’s keeping score.  Then you’re bitter when you don’t get it.

• Fallacy of Change

The fallacy of change is when someone thinks if he just pushes or nags enough, he can make another person change. 

 

Wishful thinking- believing something because it is nice or comfortable instead of believing it because there is evidence for it or a rational explanation for it

• Projecting

 

 

Similar to Cognitive Distortions:

• Cognitive Bias- many different types. 

• Cognitive Dissonance- the discomfort caused by holding conflicting beliefs

• Defense Mechanism

• Destabilization- making someone doubt themselves

• Emotional memory- strongest memories are emotional ones