Cognitive Distortion | Hacker News Reader

Cognitive Distortion

en.wikipedia.org

55 pointsptwobrussell29 comments

The funnest thing about these is how quietly and slowly they creep on. It may start with putting off a few things but then one day you realize you haven't showered because you feel like you don't have enough time for it.

Sidenote: that's why behavioral studies never ask "How often do you run" but instead "When was the last time you ran?", or even better "Describe the last time you X". People are terrible at assessing their general performance, but great at recalling semi-specific events.

I was under the impression I was the only one. Now I know other people think “great at recalling semi-specific events”.

“Describe the last time you X” This makes me think of transderivational search, a simplistic definition is “thinking”.

«The funnest thing about these is how quietly and slowly they creep on.» Same goes for a lot of thing. «Describe the first time you were racist».

Sorry for the obligatory, somewhat self-serving post. Our startup, Pacifica (http://thinkpacifica.com), focuses on a few tools that help people identify these cognitive distortions. Specifically, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy defines a cycle relating how your thoughts affect your feelings, behaviors, and physical wellbeing (as a fully connected bidirectional graph). Understanding how your thoughts are distorted can better prepare you for the next time they crop up, helping you step outside this cycle. In many cases CBT has been shown to be as effective as psychiatric drugs in the short term, and even more effective in the long term as it helps people focus on the source of their anxieties. We're trying to take these same tools, proven in clinical practices all over the world, and apply them to a much broader audience.

I should have been clear: I don't know the OP. I was surprised to see this on HN today.

> Understanding how your thoughts are distorted can better prepare you

The trouble is that anyone with profound issues no longer has the capacity for extreme metacognition.

You're right. We are not a substitute for therapy in cases like this. Pacifica works very well for people with mild to moderate anxiety, but in the more extreme cases (e.g. OCD, PTSD), it is necessary to be working with a professional. But a lot of people experience anxiety on a daily basis while maintaing a capability for self analysis.

It's [worse|better] than that, they have improved cognition capacity.

Put the problem the other way around and you will have a wonderful project. Just saying.

Extreme metacognition, like getting yourself out-of-trouble? Given anybody in front of problem tailored for them to fail, they will fail. How much people are not good citizen? More or less than crazy people? Both kind of people harm themselfs. We call only one “crazy”. We call crazy people “crazy” because we don't know how to let them be back and explain in plain text what's harming them.

People study crazy people not only because it's “easy” to extract knowledge and models, but because it's the “good thing”.

“Crazy” is a term you probably don't want to use when referring to mental health and/or patients/sufferers.

Great to see a startup in the mental health sphere. There are a lot of people who could really use the tools that CBT provides. Best of luck to you guys!

FYI, you've got a merge conflict marker hanging out in your privacy policy :)

<<<<<<< HEAD:web/src/main/resources/com/pacifica/web/views/privacy.ftl We use this information solely [...]

Ha, thanks for that. I'll get it fixed.

What I learned from CBT is that some thoughts are like factories, they produce negative emotions (anxiety, depression, anger, etc). Unless these thoughts are corrected, they will continue to produce negative emotions and these negative emotions will continue to sabotage our life.

In turn, a negative emotion can be a thought factory, thus making a vicious circle. Distorted thought -> negative emotion -> more distorted thoughts. This cycle can be broken by rectifying the distorted thoughts (with cognitive restructuring) or by calming emotions (for example, with meditation or medication).

The topic is also covered pretty well in the book "Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy" by David D. Burns. I think it helps to recognize or understand some of these behaviors when there's someone in your life that has these kind of thoughts.

Don't be put off by the stigma of the self-help section. The main value of the book is a collection of clinically-tested exercises for breaking bad habits, collecting accurate data about your mental state and systematically disentangling reality from cognitive distortion.

If I had my way this book would be compulsory high-school reading.

I was shocked when I saw this on people suffering from anorexia nervosa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anorexia_nervosa).

They have an obviously unhealthly thin figure (weighting as low as 35kg), and when they see themselves on the mirror, they affirm they are fat.

That's interesting. The opposite effect is quite common as well: there were numerous recent cases in the news where overweight people would consider themselves beautiful and normal. Some of them even coined the term "fat shaming" for the people who are trying to tell them the truth!

I'm assuming this is snark, and you know full well that body acceptance is not the same thing as body dysmorphic disorder. Not nice.

It isn't, the problem is where does the one end and the other one start.

Most people have different opinions about what is a healthy body, even health professionals.

What is "beautiful" that fat people aren't allowed to consider themselves such?

Those who gripe about such things have their own cognitive distortion... they have ingrained behaviors to value physical attractiveness (and fitness) beyond any utility it might provide them.

Are you going to hate the fat girl's personality so much that you can't stand her? Probably not.

(Apologies for being crude) Is her pussy going to feel like sandpaper on your dick? Probably not.

You mistreat such people because you're afraid that if you were to become involved with them, your social status would decline. But the only reason humans care about that is because of mating prospects.

Your truths are subjective, and self-harming.

Fitness and fatness have a subjective relationship with beauty, but there is an objective relationship between extremes in weight (from over- or under-eating) and health. While the exact relationship is a little different for each of us, eating too much or too little is unhealthy for everyone.

Which is why this notion that weight can only be criticized or celebrated in the context of beauty is nonsense. You can be both beautiful and deeply unhealthy. And that's what weight really is, a health issue. Hijacking genuine conversations about health and turning them into philosophical conversations about beauty is intellectually dishonest. It's easy to dismiss subjective opinions about beauty. It's difficult to address society-wide failures with weight management.

If we eradicated behaviors like starving and binging, issues of unhealthy beauty standards would nearly evaporate. That's the kind of social goal we should all be working to accomplish.

There are also many more whose weight is in the normal range, but their "setpoint" is such that they consider themselves too skinny or too fat.

There is another related condition which is anorexia nervous sans willpower. Without the willpower to not eat then the condition is not lethal, but it does come with all the same mental anguish to the sufferer.

I recently finished a Partial Hospitalization Program that taught techniques to battle distorted/irrational thinking. In the past I would just rely on my medication but this time I had to meet the meds half way. Without Cognitive Behavioral Therapy I would be in serious trouble (or dead). If someone here knows anyone who is suffering from a mental illness; this therapy could really help them get back on their feet.

I was said, it isn't for everybody, but what is?

I can't remember where I read this but it reminds me of the quote "You've only ever experienced on thing; your own mind".

The Pali Canon is the first source of quotes like this though.

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