Cognitive Distortions Worksheet PDF and List of 12 Examples

This cognitive distortions worksheet set is written for your client and built to print: a list of 12 common cognitive distortions with a one-line definition, an example and a question to ask for each, then three worksheets that build on each other. "Spot the distortion" practices on invented thoughts, "Catch it in your week" logs the client's own, and "Rewrite it" works one thought through to a fairer version. Print this page or save it as a PDF, and you have a cognitive distortions worksheet PDF you can hand over in session.

After the worksheets comes the part for you: where the idea comes from (Aaron Beck's research and David Burns's popular names), the answer key, how to teach distortions with the cognitive triangle and thought records, a worked example from one client's week, the cautions that matter most (accurate thoughts, trauma, racism and other oppression, risk), and how to write it up in a progress note.

Every client and every example thought in this article is invented. Any resemblance to a real person is a coincidence.

How to print this page or save it as a PDF

The list: 12 common cognitive distortions

Thinking traps: 12 cognitive distortions, in plain words

Everyone's mind takes shortcuts. When you're stressed, tired, low or anxious, some shortcuts turn into habits that make things feel worse than they are. CBT calls these habits cognitive distortions; this sheet calls them thinking traps. Naming one doesn't mean your thought is silly or that you're doing something wrong. It gives you a moment to check the thought before you believe it.

A thought can fit more than one trap, and some thoughts aren't traps at all: they're simply true. Each trap below has a line on when it isn't one.

1All-or-nothing thinking

Sorting things into two boxes, perfect or a total failure, with nothing in between. Also called black-and-white or polarized thinking.

2Overgeneralizing

Treating one event as a rule for every time, often with the words "always," "never," "everyone" or "nobody."

3Mental filter

Picking out the one bad detail and letting it color the whole picture, the way one drop of ink tints a glass of water.

4Discounting the positive

Noticing good things, then deciding they don't count: luck, a fluke, or people just being nice.

5Mind reading

Deciding you know what someone else is thinking, usually something bad about you, without asking or having clear signs.

6Fortune telling

Predicting that things will go badly and treating the prediction as a fact.

7Catastrophizing

Jumping from a problem to the worst possible outcome, often in a chain, and assuming you won't be able to cope with it.

8Emotional reasoning

Treating a feeling as proof: "I feel it, so it must be true."

9Should statements

Holding yourself or other people to strict rules ("should," "must," "have to") and feeling guilty, ashamed or angry when the rules are broken.

10Labeling

Summing up a whole person, yourself or someone else, with one harsh word after a single action.

11Personalization

Taking the blame, or all of it, for something that had many causes, many of them outside your control.

12Blaming

The mirror image of personalization: putting all the responsibility on other people or circumstances, so there's nothing you can change.

Worksheet 1: Spot the distortion

Practice on someone else's thoughts first

It's easier to spot thinking traps in someone else's words. Read each thought below. Write the trap you think it fits, using the list. Some fit more than one. Some may not be traps at all: write "true" for those. There are no wrong answers here; you'll go through them with your therapist.

1. "I forgot to send one email, so the whole week was a waste."

2. "My date canceled. Nobody ever wants to see me twice."

3. "Everyone laughed at my speech except my uncle, so it went badly."

4. "My supervisor praised my report, but she has to say that."

5. "He hasn't texted back. He must think I'm annoying."

6. "I'm going to fail the exam, so why bother studying?"

7. "If I mess up this presentation, I'll lose my job, then my apartment."

8. "I feel guilty, so I must have done something wrong."

9. "I should be able to handle this without anyone's help."

10. "I burned dinner again. I'm useless."

11. "The team lost because I missed one pass."

12. "I'm unhappy because my partner never plans anything."

13. "My car failed inspection, and I can't pay for the repair until next month."

14. "I'm nervous about the flight, so something bad is going to happen."

Now pick the one that sounds most like you:

Worksheet 2: Catch it in your week

Noticing your own thinking traps

Use this sheet when your mood changes: you suddenly feel worse, more worried, more upset or more on edge. As soon as you can, ask yourself, "What just went through my mind?" Write it down the way you thought it. Then look at the list and see whether it fits a trap. If you're not sure, write "not sure." If it's simply true, write "true." Two or three moments in a week is plenty.

Moment 1

Moment 2

Moment 3

At the end of the week

Bring the sheet to your next session even if you only filled in one moment. A half-finished sheet still tells your therapist something useful.

Worksheet 3: Rewrite it

Checking one thought and finding a fairer one

Pick one thought from "Catch it in your week," ideally the one that stung most. Do this sheet when the feeling has calmed down a little, the same day or the next. The goal isn't a happy thought. It's a fair one: a thought that fits all the facts and that you can believe.

Step 1. The thought

Step 2. The trap

Step 3. The facts

Facts are things anyone in the room could have seen or heard. Feelings and guesses about what others think don't count as facts here.

Step 4. True, partly true, or a trap?

Step 5. A fairer thought

Write a thought that keeps the true parts and adds the facts the trap left out. Joining the two halves with "and" often works better than "but."

Step 6. After

Feelings don't have to drop to zero for this to work. A drop of a few points, or a thought you believe a little less, is a good result.

If you feel unsafe, or have thoughts of hurting yourself or someone else, call or text 988 (the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline in the US) or call 911.

The idea of cognitive distortions comes from Aaron T. Beck's work, and many of the names on this list were made popular by David D. Burns in Feeling Good (1980). The descriptions, examples and worksheets are in TranqBay's own words. End of the worksheets. The rest of this page is for therapists.

Where cognitive distortions come from: Beck, Burns and the lists since

The idea started with Aaron T. Beck. In "Thinking and Depression" (1963), he described patterns of distorted thinking he saw in the reports of depressed patients (Beck, 1963). That paper named five: arbitrary inference, selective abstraction, overgeneralization, magnification and minimization, and inexact labeling. The treatment manual he wrote with John Rush, Brian Shaw and Gary Emery, Cognitive Therapy of Depression (1979), added personalization and absolutistic, dichotomous thinking.

David D. Burns, who studied with Beck, gave the patterns the plain names most clients know in his self-help book Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy (1980; feelinggood.com). Many handouts are built on his list of ten. We haven't reproduced it: the list above is our own wording, and we've split or added a few to make 12. If you want Burns's own descriptions, use his book.

How the names line up:

Longer lists exist. A widely shared list of 15 by John Grohol adds control fallacies, the fallacy of fairness, the fallacy of change, always being right and heaven's reward. Other writers add comparison, hindsight bias or thought-action fusion. There's no official list, and no list is more correct than another. What matters is a short set of names the client recognizes in their own thinking.

What a cognitive distortion is, and what it isn't

The American Psychological Association describes CBT as usually including efforts to change thinking patterns, such as "learning to recognize one's distortions in thinking that are creating problems, and then to reevaluate them in light of reality" (APA). Note the two halves. Recognizing is the worksheet. Reevaluating in light of reality is the clinical work, and reality sometimes confirms the thought.

Is there evidence behind the idea?

Cognitive distortions are a working concept in CBT more than a measured diagnosis. There's some outside support for the link with depression: a 2021 study of social media posts found that people who said they had a diagnosis of depression used language with more markers of distorted thinking than a random sample of users, and the difference wasn't explained by topic, sentiment or the use of first-person pronouns (Bathina et al., 2021). That shows an association, not that naming distortions treats anything. CBT as a whole is one of the treatments the APA's guideline recommends for adults with depression (APA); the list is one tool inside it.

Answer key for "Spot the distortion"

Go through the answers with the client rather than handing them over. Disagreement is useful: ask why they chose what they did. Several items fit more than one trap, and that's normal.

How therapists teach cognitive distortions

Handing over a list of 12 traps in the first session rarely works. Clients either can't remember any of them, or they start using the names to criticize themselves ("I'm catastrophizing again, I'm hopeless"). Teach the list in stages, starting from the client's own thoughts.

1Start with the cognitive triangle

Before the client can spot a distortion, they need to see that thoughts drive feelings and behavior. Use a recent moment from their week and map it: what happened, what they thought, what they felt and what they did. Our cognitive triangle worksheet does this in one page. When a thought on the triangle clearly drives a strong feeling, that's your first chance to say, "Thoughts like this one have a name."

2Catch thoughts before naming them

For a week or two, the job is catching thoughts, not judging them. A 3-column record of the situation, feelings and thoughts is enough. Our CBT thought record page has a printable 3-column and 7-column version. Worksheet 2 above, "Catch it in your week," is a shorter cousin that adds one line for the trap; use it once the client can already catch thoughts.

3Introduce two or three names, not twelve

Look at what the client brings back. Most people lean on a few patterns: a perfectionist client may show all-or-nothing thinking and should statements; an anxious client, fortune telling and catastrophizing; a depressed client, labeling, discounting the positive and the mental filter. Teach those first. Give the full list as a reference, and circle the ones that are theirs.

Worksheet 1, "Spot the distortion," is a good bridge. Invented thoughts are easier to look at than your own, and talking about why item 13 isn't a trap teaches the most important lesson early.

4Ask, don't tell

"You're catastrophizing" is a diagnosis delivered by the therapist. "Does this thought remind you of anything on the list?" lets the client find it. The second is slower in the room and faster everywhere else. Our Socratic questioning examples sort 100 questions by purpose, including evidence and alternatives questions that fit Step 3 of Worksheet 3.

A short invented exchange, session 3 of CBT for depression:

The therapist didn't name the trap or argue with the label. The client named it, and the facts came from the client.

5Move from naming to rewriting

Naming a trap can loosen a thought, but it doesn't replace testing it. Once the client can spot their usual traps, move to Worksheet 3, "Rewrite it," or a full 7-column thought record. Do the first one together in session, aloud, before it goes home. A fairer thought should keep the true parts; if the client rates their new thought under about half, it isn't theirs yet, so go back to the facts.

For predictions (fortune telling, catastrophizing), a behavioral experiment often tests the thought better than paper does: make the call, ask the question, go to the event, and compare what happened with the prediction.

6Fade the worksheet

Over later sessions, move from paper to a phone note, then to the client asking themselves the question for their main trap when a mood shifts. Near the end of treatment, ask which traps and which questions helped most, and write them on a single card for the future.

How often, and how much

Agree the amount with the client: two or three moments a week on Worksheet 2, and one careful Worksheet 3, is usually plenty. Review whatever comes back near the start of the next session. A half-done sheet reviewed with interest teaches more than a perfect one that nobody reads.

A worked example: one client's week

Invented client: Lorena, 47, a hospital unit clerk, in her fourth session of CBT for depression by video. She learned the cognitive triangle in session 1 and kept a 3-column record for two weeks. In session 3, she did "Spot the distortion" with her therapist and circled labeling, the mental filter and should statements as "mine." Here is what she brought back on "Catch it in your week."

Moment 1

Moment 2

Moment 3

End of the week

What the therapist sees, and does in session 4:

Lorena's Worksheet 3, completed together in session:

Step 1. The thought

Step 2. The trap

Step 3. The facts

Step 4. True, partly true, or a trap?

Step 5. A fairer thought

Step 6. After

Why this works:

When a thought isn't a distortion: cautions

A distortions list is a tool for checking thoughts, not a way to decide in advance that the client's thinking is wrong. These cautions matter more than any single technique on this page.

Negative thoughts can be accurate

A thought can be upsetting and true. The rent is late, the diagnosis is real, the relationship is over, the boss is hostile. Checking for a distortion means looking at the facts, and sometimes the facts back the client. Then the work is problem-solving, support, advocacy, grief or acceptance, not a fairer thought.

Research on "depressive realism" is a useful reminder that low mood doesn't automatically make thinking less accurate. In an early set of experiments, depressed students' judgments of how much their actions controlled an outcome were "surprisingly accurate," while nondepressed students often overestimated their control (Alloy and Abramson, 1979). A later meta-analysis of 75 studies found only a small overall effect, with both depressed and nondepressed people showing a positive bias, larger in the nondepressed (Moore and Fresco, 2012). The practical lesson cuts both ways: a negative thought isn't wrong because the client is depressed, and isn't right because it's negative. Check each one.

Signs you may be treating an accurate thought as a distortion:

Trauma

Trauma changes what people expect of the world, often for good reason. The VA's National Center for PTSD puts it this way: "You may believe you are to blame for what happened or that the world is a dangerous place" (VA National Center for PTSD). Some of those beliefs keep PTSD going and are worth examining. But vigilance kept many clients safe, and some still need it.

Racism, discrimination and other oppression

For clients who face racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism or other discrimination, many thoughts that look like mind reading or fortune telling on paper are reasonable expectations built from experience. Ilan Meyer's minority stress model, developed for lesbian, gay and bisexual people, lists "expectations of rejection" among the stress processes that come from a social environment made hostile by stigma, prejudice and discrimination (Meyer, 2003). Calling those expectations distortions can repeat the harm the client came in with.

Pamela Hays, who set out ten steps for culturally competent CBT practice (Hays, 2009), describes an approach that includes "validation of the client's experiences of oppression," "recognition of and, whenever possible, action to change oppressive (e.g. racist, sexist, heterosexist) environments before trying to change a person's thoughts about the situation," and "questioning the helpfulness of thoughts rather than their rationality or validity (because the latter are culture-dependent)" (APA, Culturally Responsive CBT in Practice).

In practice:

A short invented example: Andre, 34, a software tester, is the only Black engineer on his team. After a release goes wrong, he writes, "They're going to assume it was me." His therapist doesn't circle mind reading. She asks what has happened before (twice, his work was questioned first and the cause turned out to be elsewhere), validates that pattern, and then asks which part of the thought helps him (it reminds him to keep clear records) and which part costs him (he lies awake rehearsing a defense). The work becomes keeping his records and choosing a colleague to talk to, not convincing him his expectation is wrong.

Culture, faith and values

What counts as a reasonable "should," a fair conclusion or a healthy amount of responsibility varies with culture, family and faith. "I should take care of my parents" may be a core value, not a rigid rule. Hays's approach includes "acceptance of core cultural beliefs" (APA). Ask what a thought means to the client before you test it, and work with the parts that hurt them, not the parts they hold dear.

Risk comes first

Some thoughts on a distortions worksheet are warning signs. "Everyone would be better off without me" may look like emotional reasoning or labeling, but it is a risk statement first. Ask directly about thoughts of suicide, assess, and plan for safety before any cognitive work. Our safety plan template is a printable starting point.

Words that land as blame

"Distortion" can sound like "you're irrational." Many therapists say "thinking traps," "thinking habits" or "unhelpful thinking styles" instead, and stress that everyone's mind does this, especially under stress. Watch for clients who turn the list into another weapon: "I'm catastrophizing, I can't even think properly." Name that pattern gently (it's labeling) and slow down.

Adapting the worksheets for teens and children

Common mistakes when teaching cognitive distortions

How to note cognitive distortions in a progress note

Write what the client did and what changed, not a label for the client. "Client is catastrophizing" reads as a trait. "Client identified catastrophizing in the thought 'If I lose the shift, I'll lose the apartment' and rated belief 80/100" records a skill and a measure.

What to record:

A BIRP note for Lorena's session 4 (invented):

Phrases that work in any format:

Do you keep the client's worksheets? Many therapists look at them in session and let the client keep the sheet. HIPAA defines psychotherapy notes as a mental health professional's own notes about a session, kept separate from the rest of the record (45 CFR 164.501). A worksheet the client filled in isn't one of those, so if you keep a copy, treat it as part of the clinical record under your setting's records policy and your state's rules. Our guide to psychotherapy notes vs progress notes explains the difference.

For more wording, the progress notes cheat sheet lists CBT intervention terms and client response words by section. To see the same session in other formats, compare our BIRP note examples and DAP notes examples. If your treatment plan has a goal about self-critical thinking, the treatment plan template shows how to word a measurable objective for it.

How this works in TranqBay

TranqBay is practice software for therapists in private practice: a practice website, online booking, video sessions and session notes in one place. Here is where a cognitive distortions worksheet fits.

practice.tranqbay.health shows a therapist adding a short section to her website about how she works with anxiety, then a client booking a consultation, so you can see where your own description of CBT would sit before you set anything up.

Frequently asked questions about cognitive distortions

Before your next session

Print the list and "Spot the distortion" for a client who is just starting CBT, and "Catch it in your week" for one who can already catch thoughts. Circle the two or three traps that are theirs, do one entry together in session before anything goes home, and keep at least one true thought in every practice set.

If you also want booking, video sessions and session notes in one place, see how TranqBay works for private practice: you can look at a practice website design and the booking page your clients would use. If you're deciding whether to join, this page explains how joining TranqBay works. More printable worksheets and guides are on the For therapists blog.

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