'Irrational Ways of Thinking' is adapted from "Feeling Good" by Dr. David Burns

This was the first handout that my therapist gave me to help me recognize unhealthy thought patterns.

This is the essence of rational self analysis - First analyze thought patterns for ways in which they contribute to your feelings. Second, pick out the irrationalities in thoughts. Third, dispute the irrational thoughts and substitute rational ones. To help in the identification of irrational thinking, below are some examples of irrational thinking patterns and the feeling which result.

IRRATIONAL WAYS OF THINKING

1. All or Nothing Thinking. You see things in black and white categories (no gray). If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.

2. Overgeneralization. You see a single negative event as a pattern of defeat.

3. Mental Filter. You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively, so that your vision of reality becomes darkened, like a drop of ink that discolors an entire glass of water.

4. Disqualifying the Positive. You reject positive experiences by insisting they "don't count" for some reason of another. In this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experience.

5. Jumping to Conclusions. You make a negative interpretation, even though there are NOT definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion.

6. Mind Reading. You arbitrarily decide that someone is reaction negatively to you, but you don't bother to check this out with them.

7. The Fortune Teller Error. You anticipate that things will turn out badly, and you feel convinced that your prediction is an already established fact.

8. Magnification. (catastrophizing) or Minimizing. You over experience the importance of things or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny. Such as your own goof up, someone else's achievement, your own qualifications or other person's imperfections.

9. Should Statements. You try to motivate yourself with "shoulds" and "shouldn'ts" as if you have to be whipped before you will do anything. "Must" and "oughts" are also offenders. The emotional consequence is quilt. When you direct "should" statements towards others, you feel frustration, anger and resentment if they don't meet your expectations.

10. Labeling and Mislabeling. You attach negative labels to yourself. "I'm a loser". Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded.

11. Personalization. You see yourself as that cause of some negative event for which, in fact, you are not primarily responsible.