You see things in black-and-white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.

You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.

You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors the entire beaker of water.

You reject positive experiences by insisting they “don’t count” for some reason or other. In this way, you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences.

a. MIND READING – You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you and you don’t bother to check this out.
b. THE FORTUNE TELLER ERROR – You anticipate that things will turn out badly and you feel convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact.

You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your goof-up or someone else’s achievement), or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other person’s imperfections). This is also called the “Binocular Trick.”

This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself – “I’m a loser.” When someone else’s behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to them – “He’s a goddamn louse.” Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally charged.

You see yourself as a cause of some negative external event which in fact you were not primarily responsible for.

(Adapted from R. Leahy – Cognitive Therapy: Basic Principles & Applications, 1996, AMICT, NY)