Sunt niște note de lectură dintr-un capitol al cărții Rewire Your Brain by John B. Arden. Cartea este scrisă pentru publicul larg și topește în diferite studii de caz ultimele cercetări în neuropsihologie cu terapii cognitive.

 If you are depressed, you probably get bogged down by cognitive traps, or beliefs that promote negative moods. These cognitive traps are distortions of reality. There are many cognitive distortions, too many to list extensively. Here are some common ones:

• Polarized thinking: black and white, all or nothing, good or bad, wonderful or rotten
• Overgeneralization: taking one unfortunate incident that occurred at work and jumping to conclusions about your entire life
• Personalization: interpreting every glance or comment made by someone as a negative reflection on you
• Mind reading: negatively assuming that you know what other people are thinking
• Shoulds and should nots: making rigid and inflexible rules that provide little flexibility to adapt to today’s complex social environment
• Catastrophizing: perceiving any event as a major catastrophe or a sign of one on the way (“Oh, no, a red light! I might as well not even go.”)
• Emotional reasoning: basing opinions on how you feel
• Pessimism: seeing a negative outcome for most events

By using what therapists call cognitive restructuring, you can train yourself to change the way you think.
There are several methods of thinking that can help you to resist negative thinking and moods and rewire your brain. These include the following:

• Thinking in shades of gray: This perspective counters blackand-white thinking. By considering all possibilities between the two extremes, you allow yourself to adjust to a reality between extremes.
• Context checking: Here you adjust your opinions and perceptions to the context of the situation rather than just going with a preset opinion.
• Optimism: You consider every situation as an opportunity.
• Detaching: You disconnect yourself from repetitive negative beliefs .
• Externalizing problems: When something unfortunate happens, consider it a problem rather than a reflection of your worth.