'Of course you will not die,' said the serpent; 'for God knows that, as soon as you eat it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God himself, knowing both good and evil' - Genesis 3:4

A list of Cognitive Distortions or Dysfuntional Thinking*

1. Shoulds
(the greatest lie of all - original sin)
2. Polarized (Dichotomous)Thinking
(or “Black and White” Thinking)
3. Over-generalization
4. Jumping to Conclusions
5. Catastrophizing
6. Personalization
7. Control Fallacies
8. Fallacy of Fairness
9. Blaming
10. Filtering
11. Emotional Reasoning
12. Fallacy of Change
13. Global Labeling
14. Always Being Right
15. Heaven’s Reward Fallacy
16. Fortune Telling
17. Discounting positives
18. Negative Filtering
19. "What if?"
20. Pre-judgement
21. Right versus Wrong
22. It's traditional
23. "I feel that"
Which is really, "I believe that."
24. Mind Reading
believing that one can tell what others are thinking
25. Schadenfreude (gloating)
26. Satan says, "Psst - I'm not here" - Dysfunctional Thinking Denial
There are too many of these to remember so: "What is the bottom line? Is there an easier way?"

You may notice as you go through this list that there is a lot of overlap between the various dysfuntional thoughts.  For example, one could have an overgeneralization and fortune telling in the same thought statement.  Do not worry about this, it is not important to be able to classify dysfunctional thoughts but only recognize a dysfunctional thought when you have one and be able to verify the thought as "True," "False" or "Don't Know." 

See the bottom line for the generalization.

"...and God answered, 'I am that I am.'" - Exodus 3:14
...and the prophet said, "It is as it is everywhere except one place."  The students responded, "Where is that?"  So he said to them, "Between your ears."

* references:
(Items 1 - 15 from the first two references and 16- 19 from the 3rd reference. The rest are from the 4th reference.)
Beck, A. T. (1976). Cognitive therapies and emotional disorders. New York: New American Library.
Burns, D. D. (1980). Feeling good: The new mood therapy. New York: New American Library.
Holland, J. F. and McGinn, Lata K. Treatment Plans and Interventions for Depression and Anxiety Disorders, The Guilford Press, NY (2012)
From the More to Life program created by Dr. Brad Brown and Dr. Roy Whitten.
Schadenfreude first put forward by Aristotle (ἐπιχαιρεκακία)
See the Dysfuntional Boxes on this web site for addtional information by Dr. John Hoover.