What are cognitive distortions?
All-or-nothing thinking, catastrophizing, mind reading... The systematic thinking errors the mind runs under emotional load — and why naming them works.
Cognitive distortions are the systematic thinking errors the mind runs, especially under emotional load: all-or-nothing thinking, catastrophizing, mind reading, discounting the positive, overgeneralization... Named within Beck's cognitive therapy, these patterns are not stupidity — they are shortcuts evolved for speed; under stress they harden into a lens.
The mechanism is familiar: one critical email arrives, and ten minutes later you are at "everyone thinks I'm incompetent." Two distortions fired at once — mind reading (attributing intent without evidence) and overgeneralization (a universal law from a single event). The feeling is real; the chain of inference that produced it is not.
The nuance: naming the distortion is not dismissing the feeling — it is reopening the question the feeling closed. "Everyone — or one person?" often changes the picture.
Related reading: [What is cognitive dissonance?](/library/en/what-is-cognitive-dissonance)
In Arkhetia this concept doesn't stay a definition — it meets you in your sessions, tied to a moment in your own story.
Reading about a pattern is one thing. Seeing where it runs your own life is another. Arkhetia works through these lenses — with you.
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