S3C2. Identifying Cognitive Distortions in Incest OCD

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Cognitive Distortions are thought patterns that may convince us of things that are not necessarily true or correct. Since our mental well-being depends on thoughts that cross our minds, these distortions can cause severe damage in the case of negative thought patterns. We may keep feeling that we are right in our assessment of the situation, make incorrect decisions, take incorrect actions, and end up making either ourselves, or others, or both, miserable.

Some Cognitive Distortions may impact us more than others, and sometimes more than one distortion may be present at the same time. Recognizing that you are a victim of these Cognitive Distortions may enable you to deal with the situation in a more rational way. It may be instrumental in helping you salvage your fragile or broken relationships, look at the world from a more accepting point of view, and lift your own sense of self-esteem.

Cognitive distortions are also very sneaky. They make their way into our lives and take over our thinking so insidiously that sometimes we do not even realize when we become the victims of these distortions until they are pointed out to us. More awareness and internalization of these distortions and modifying behavior through cognitive restructuring make our thinking more adaptive and speed up the recovery process. We shall touch upon nine Cognitive Distortions, recognizing them and learning how to counter them. Read, reread, and internalize them in such a manner that if you have a thought, your categorization should immediately kick in, and you can mindfully stop yourself from giving in to the distortion. Unless you know these well enough to explain them to a five-year-old, you don’t understand them well enough. So, read them again.

1. Filtering: Filtering refers to leaving out something—in this case, the positives in a situation. Similar to using a camera filter that allows light of a specific kind and filters out what is unneeded, Filtering refers to developing a blinkered view and leaving out what goes against your view. For example, whenever you get a sexually intrusive thought, you may particularly notice it, but when you don’t get one, even in the presence of your triggers, you may not acknowledge it or may not even realize that you haven’t gotten the obsessive thought. You may be Filtering out all the times you do not get a thought and may believe that you ALWAYS get the sexual thought, which causes you to become anxious.

2. Black or White Thinking: Nothing in life is ever fully black or fully white (except maybe mathematics). There are various shades of grey in between. All our situations, achievements, objectives, goals, and so on may fall somewhere on this spectrum. But if you are a victim of this distortion, you may sometimes fail to understand this. You may feel that you have to either be perfect, or you are a complete failure. There is no in-between. Thus, if your mind tells you that to be a good person you are allowed to have zero sexually intrusive thoughts about family, you may consider yourself a horrible person if you get a few stray ‘bad’ thoughts. Thus, you become a victim of this cognitive distortion.

3. Overgeneralization: Based on one bad experience in the past, if you decide that all similar situations in the future will also be equally bad, you may be a victim of the cognitive distortion of Overgeneralization. This may lead to disappointment and resentment and possible closing off of avenues that you could have otherwise explored. For example, if after a breakup you begin to believe that ‘it happens only with me—I never catch a good break,’ you may have fallen prey to Overgeneralization as well. You may not be open to the idea that your Overgeneralization is not true. Particularly in Incest OCD, based on one incident in the past where, as a child, you may have peeked to see your sibling changing; if you decide that you are a pervert, without considering your current view on the subject, you may be overgeneralizing too.

4. Jumping to Conclusions: When you end up making decisions without considering all possibilities or all variables, you may be a victim of the cognitive distortion called Jumping to Conclusions. There may not be sufficient evidence to prove the conclusion that you may have arrived at. This distortion often manifests itself in one of two types – Mind Reading or Fortune-Telling.

For example, if you think others are judging you for your ‘perversion,’ even if there is no evidence to support it, it would be an example of Mind Reading. If this makes you think that they will ostracize you and stop involving you, it would be an example of Fortune-Telling. Since these thoughts may lead to the question of whether you are a good person and determine your actions, it would be wise to challenge these negative thoughts.

5. Catastrophizing: Catastrophizing is taking a minor incident and blowing it out of proportion—imagining the worst possible outcome, where any number of possibilities may exist. For example, if getting these thoughts makes you feel that your crime will come to light, you will lose your job, your family will abandon you, and you would probably have to go to jail, you may be Catastrophizing. This may lead you to feel depressed about yourself.

6. Personalization: Personalization is when you think that you are totally or partially responsible for everything bad that happens around you, including acts of God. For example, if your child is feeling unwell, you may wonder if God is punishing you because you had sexual thoughts about your sibling. Your mind may reject the possibility that your child’s illness may be because of some bug they may have caught and may have nothing to do with you or your thoughts.

7. Control Fallacy: Control Fallacy refers to the distorted thinking related to control. It may manifest in two ways. You may have the feeling of being totally in control of (read, responsible for) situations around you or the feeling of not being in control at all. In OCD it manifests in the first way—that you are responsible for everything happening around you. You may disregard the importance of external factors in any event. For example, thinking that you (and only you) are responsible for an earthquake in your town because of your bad thoughts is a control fallacy. On the flip side, believing that you will inevitably act on your thoughts is also an example of this fallacy, because you think you have no control at all.

8. Shoulds: Also called ‘Rigid Rule Keeping’, this is a situation when we create rigid expectations about the way things should be. If things aren’t the way we want them to be, it affects us negatively. If we have these rules for ourselves, we get upset if we break any of them. When we create rules for ourselves and for others that do not have a basis in logic but stubbornness, we may end up miserable or angry when the rules are not followed. For example, if you believe that you should not get ANY sexually inappropriate thoughts about family, you are engaging in Rigid Rule Keeping. In Rigid Rule Keeping, we make use of the words ‘should,’ ‘must,’ ‘ought to,’ and ‘have to’ that constrain us and make us rigid. 

9. Emotional Reasoning: ‘I feel it; therefore, it must be true.’ When we are not able to separate fact from feeling and think that whatever we feel is actually true, like, if you feel that you really want to be sexually involved with your child, just because you have had such thoughts (brought about by your OCD), you may be allowing Emotional Reasoning to cloud your judgment. The FEELING in this case is that you want to be sexually involved with your child. The FACT is that you do not want to do what your OCD tells you. But you choose to let your feelings (and not the facts of the situation) decide the course of action.

As can be seen, sometimes multiple Cognitive Distortions work together to contort our worldview for us. We need to engage in a process called Cognitive Restructuring. If we stop to consider if the situation is really the way we think it is, we may find that it is not so. Simple questioning of the evidence for or against may help us arrive at a better perspective. Ask yourself some of the following questions:

  • Is what I am thinking true?
  • Can there be other explanations?
  • Is there concrete evidence in favor of it?
  • Is there concrete evidence against it?
  • Am I considering all available facts to arrive at this conclusion?
  • Am I leaving out my emotions before reaching this conclusion?

You may realize that just asking yourself these questions and reevaluating your beliefs may be enough to help you deal with your Cognitive Distortions and have a more rational outlook towards life. At some level, most people may be aware of some Cognitive Distortions at play in their lives, even if they can’t name them. They may still be unable to change themselves. For our own mental well-being, it is important to know about these distortions and make sure that they are properly identified, dealt with, and eliminated. Worksheet 3.2 has been provided to practice cognitive restructuring. Fill it in regularly as a way of restructuring your thinking as a habit, and you will find your cognition changing over a period of time.

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