Cognitive Distortions and Their Role in Trauma, Addiction, and Relationships:

Overview: Viewing situations in extremes—either perfect or a total failure.

• How It Develops: Often rooted in high-pressure environments where success was the only acceptable outcome.

• Impact: Leads to fear of failure, chronic disappointment, and rigid self-criticism.

• Healing Focus: Practice recognizing nuance and embracing progress over perfection.

Overview: Making sweeping conclusions based on one negative event.

• How It Develops: Common in trauma survivors who learned to expect harm from repeated negative experiences.

• Impact: Reinforces hopelessness and the belief that nothing will change.

• Healing Focus: Identify exceptions, seek balanced evidence, and challenge absolutes.

Overview: Focusing solely on the negative while ignoring the positive.

• How It Develops: Originates in environments where praise or success was minimized or dismissed.

• Impact: Fuels low self-esteem, anxiety, and feelings of failure.

• Healing Focus: Practice gratitude journaling and evidence-based thinking.

Overview: Rejecting positive experiences or compliments as irrelevant or undeserved.

• How It Develops: Often tied to shame or a belief that worth is earned, not inherent.

• Impact: Blocks self-compassion and reinforces unworthiness.

• Healing Focus: Learn to receive and internalize positive feedback.

Overview: Assuming you know what others are thinking or what will happen.

• How It Develops: Develops in unstable or emotionally unsafe environments where anticipating threat felt necessary.

• Impact: Breeds anxiety, mistrust, and relationship conflict.

• Healing Focus: Pause to question assumptions and gather real data.

Overview: Expecting the worst-case scenario, no matter how unlikely.

• How It Develops: Common in individuals who have experienced unexpected trauma or sudden loss.

• Impact: Triggers chronic stress, fear-based decision-making, and paralysis.

• Healing Focus: Learn grounding techniques and probability-based thinking.

Overview: Believing something is true simply because it feels true.

• How It Develops: Emotional invalidation in childhood can blur the line between feelings and facts.

• Impact: Reinforces negative self-image and impulsive behaviors.

• Healing Focus: Separate emotional experience from objective truth.

Overview: Holding yourself or others to rigid, unrealistic standards.

• How It Develops: Often stems from environments of control, guilt, or perfectionism.

• Impact: Increases shame, self-judgment, and resentment.

• Healing Focus: Replace "should" with choices, values, and flexibility.

Overview: Assigning global, negative labels to yourself or others based on a single behavior.

• How It Develops: Develops in environments where identity was tied to performance or punishment.

• Impact: Limits self-worth and growth by reinforcing fixed identities.

• Healing Focus: Shift from labels to specific behaviors and reframe mistakes as learning opportunities.

Overview: Blaming yourself for events beyond your control or taking things too personally.

• How It Develops: Common in those who were made to feel responsible for others’ emotions or actions.

• Impact: Fuels guilt, shame, and over-functioning in relationships.

• Healing Focus: Clarify responsibility and practice self-compassion.