Cognitive Distortions: The Lies Depression Tells

Depression is a master manipulator. It spins negative stories and makes you think these tall tales are cold, hard facts. But they’re really cognitive distortions. “[N]ot only does the illness make our thoughts more negative, but it tends to make us see negative events as internal, stable and global,” said Lee H. Coleman, Ph.D., ABPP, a clinical psychologist and assistant director and director of training at the California Institute of Technology’s student counseling center. This includes everything from believing something is wrong with you when your friend cancels dinner to assuming bad things always happen to you to being convinced you’ll never feel better ever again. According to psychologist Deborah Serani, PsyD, depression’s top three distortions revolve around helplessness, hopelessness and poor problem solving. Depression diminishes functioning in the frontal lobe of the brain, home to goal-directed behavior, problem solving and reasoning, she said. Coleman often tells his patients that even though depression is classified as a mood disorder, the cognitive effects may be even more debilitating. Cognitive distortions can lead to self-destructive behavior and dangerous situations, such as not reaching out to others for support, not eating, skipping medication, drinking excessively, driving too fast and self-harming, said Serani, also author of the books Living with Depression and Depression and Your Child. One of her patients revealed that her son was so depr...
Source: Psych Central - Category: Psychiatry Authors: Tags: Depression Disorders Happiness Self-Esteem Self-Help Catastrophizing Cognition Cognitive Distortion Mood Disorder Negative Thoughts Problem Solving Recklessness Ruminating Seasonal Affective Disorder Self Harm Self Talk sel Source Type: news