Table 1.

Ten Cognitive Distortions [1]

Cognitive Distortion	Example
All-or-nothing thinking	A difficult surgery leads to negative thoughts such as “I am a lousy surgeon.”
Overgeneralization	You tell yourself you never do a good fracture reduction surgery.
Mental filter	You only focus on the negative, ignoring the positives of a certain outcome.
Discounting the positives	You are preoccupied on the one errant screw in an otherwise superb fracture reduction
Jumping to conclusions	You assume people think negatively of your abilities or you predict events will turn out poorly.
Magnification or minimization	A life event is either blown out of proportion or is completely pointless.
Emotional reasoning	“I have no confidence in my abilities. I must be a terrible surgeon.”
“Should” statements	“Should” statements such as, “I should be a department head by now.” can lead to guilt, frustration, or unnecessary pressure and stress.
Labeling	You base your identity on one minor error.
Personalization and blame	You feel the weight of an organization’s error or you blame others for your own mistake.