Fortune Telling

A brief introduction to cognitive distortions

Cognitive distortions, cognitive biases, or ‘unhelpful thinking styles’ are characteristic ways in which our thoughts can become biased (Beck, 1963). As conscious beings we are always interpreting the world around us, trying to make sense of what is happening. Sometimes our brains take ‘short cuts’ and we think things that are not completely accurate, and different cognitive short cuts result in different kinds of bias or distortions in our thinking. Sometimes we might jump to the worst possible conclusion (“this rough patch of skin is cancer!”), at other times we might blame ourselves for things that are not our fault (“If I hadn’t made him angry he wouldn’t have hit me”), and at other times we might rely on intuition and jump to conclusions (“I know that they all hate me even though they’re being nice”).

Different cognitive biases are associated with different clinical presentations. For

Many people struggle with fortune telling, and it sounds as though it might also be relevant to you. Would you be willing to explore it with me?

Clinicians might begin by providing psychoeducation about fortune telling and automatic thoughts more generally. Consider sharing some of these important details:

• Automatic thoughts spring up spontaneously in our minds, usually in the form of words or images.
• They are often on the ‘sidelines’ of our awareness. With practice, we can become more aware of them. It is a bit like a theatre – we can bring our automatic thoughts ‘centre stage’.
• Automatic thoughts are not always accurate: just because you think something, it doesn’t make it true.
• Automatic thoughts are often inaccurate in characteristic ways. One common type of bias in automatic thoughts is ‘fortune telling’: we sometimes make predictions based on little or no evidence. Fortune telling can be negative (predicting that negative things will happen)

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