Austin Scholar #34: The Science of Cognitive Distortions (Or Twisty Thoughts)

& How I Made Myself Miserable By Thinking Twisty Thoughts

Hey, y'all!

You know when your teen gets frustrated when doing their homework and says "I'm never going to figure this out?"

There's absolutely a right way and a wrong way to respond to that.

And that statement might be (read: is probably) an indicator of a much deeper problem with how they see the world.

One that's likely crippling them–and one that you can help fix.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

This week from Austin Scholar...

1. Austin’s Anecdote: How I Made Myself Miserable By Thinking Twisty Thoughts

2. The Science of Cognitive Distortions (Or Twisty Thoughts)

3. Scholar’s Sources: The Best Resources for Understanding Twisty Thoughts

Write of Passage Cohort 9 launched on Wednesday, and I’m taking it again as a student. It’s really cool to be in the course after working for Write of Passage for a few months. I’ve gotten to see the incredible work that goes into creating each live session and the constant improvement that the company strives for.

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Austin’s Anecdote: How I Made Myself Miserable By Thinking Twisty Thoughts

I used to see the world in black and white.

Yes and no.

Best and worst.

It made perfect sense to me. The world needed to have order or everything was jumbled up and messy, and my OCD brain did not like jumbled up and messy things.

So, everything had to be binary. Everything went into categories, and those categories were how I made sense of the world.

Boxing up the world, the good versus the bad, happy versus sad, easy versus impossible, was simply addicting to me.

Unfortunately, this type of thinking applied to myself, too.

If I wasn’t the best, I was the worst.

If I didn’t have a bunch of friends, I had no friends.

If I wasn’t super smart, I was incredibly dumb.

Yeah, it wasn’t great.

Since it isn’t possible to be perfect at everything in my life, it got to the point where I was super unhappy with myself–because, as my logic went, if I wasn’t the best at something, I was the worst.

I didn’t want to try cool, new things because I knew I couldn’t be the best at them, which made me miss out on a lot of experiences.

I got really mad at people really easily, because if they didn’t tell me I did a good job (at making dinner, being a good friend, etc.), I assumed they were telling me I did a bad job. 

My brain cast a negative light on a lot of the good things in my life–simply because they weren’t perfect.

After my parents noticed these thought processes, they told me to read The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris.

Let me tell you: this book was absolutely ridiculous.

What do you mean “my thoughts aren’t facts?!”

“I am not my thoughts?” What kind of propaganda is that?

Page after page, The Happiness Trap kept giving me all of these reasons why my black-and-white mindset was hurting my life.

Why, even though I thought my mindset and my boxes were increasing order and decreasing anxiety in my life, it was actually doing the opposite.

I was making myself so much more anxious because of my sky-high expectations for myself and the world around me. I was constantly on edge because I had to make sure that I was the best or else I absolutely failed. Apparently, that’s not a great way to live your life. 

And even though I thought those high expectations were motivating me to do my best, they were actually making me give up because I didn’t want to fail.

It was an extraordinarily shocking realization for me–one that didn’t come easy.

I had many midnight battles in my brain and arguments with my own thoughts before I realized that my mindset wasn’t healthy.

And even after I accepted that I had to change something, rewiring my brain and thought processes took ages. I spent so long in black and white that I had to relearn the colors.

Red, yellow, and blue entered my world after weeks of defusing (detaching or unhooking from difficult or unhelpful thoughts–not as easy as it sounds).

I was reminded of orange, green, and purple after learning expansion (the technique for accepting your unpleasant feelings–takes a lot of practice).

And wow, was everyone’s world always this vibrant?

Taking apart my boxes and realizing that this world isn’t a black-and-white world has made me enjoy all of the different colors around me. My life is much happier now.

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The Science of Cognitive Distortions (Or Twisty Thoughts)

Later, I learned this “black and white” thinking I experienced has a fancy name: cognitive distortion.

Cognitive distortions are “exaggerated or irrational thought patterns.” 

But “cognitive distortions” and its definition sounds too fancy and scientific for such a common thing, so I’m just going to call them “twisty thoughts.”

Twisty thoughts are basically when your mind plays tricks on you and tries to convince you that how you’re feeling is 100% fact.

If you’re angry and frustrated, then the entire world is out to get you.

If you’re sad, then good things are just a precursor to bad ones.

Twisty thoughts essentially put distortion goggles on your mind.

Unfortunately, it can be super easy for teenagers to fall victim to twisty thoughts.

Here are some common twisty thoughts that you might recognize (from yourself or your teen):