Cognitive Distortions (Taylor's Version)
Cognitive distortions explained via Taylor Swift lyrics
Hi (No) Wonder-ers,
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is an evidence-based psychosocial intervention focusing on the interplay between our emotions, thoughts, and actions. When patients notice adverse changes of emotion and thought, they take objective note of the event leading up to it and articulate their immediate automatic thought and its accompanying emotion. Then the patient identifies any cognitive distortions causing a discrepancy between the patient’s thought and the objective reality, thereby exacerbating the adverse thought and accompanying emotion. Patients are then challenged to use objective observations to formulate a more helpful alternative thought that causes a less weighty emotion, which in turn can help improve our actions. Thus, the essence of CBT is identifying cognitive distortions and addressing them to help our thoughts, feelings, and actions serve us better.
If you clicked the link, you may have astutely noted that there are 12 of them. But some websites break it down into 13 of them.
13.
The official lucky of number of one Taylor Alison Swift (born December 13, 1989).
Let's have some fun and see if we can use her lyrics to help explain these cognitive distortions:
All-Or-Nothing Thinking: The chorus of "Down Bad" says “Fuck it if I can’t have us.” Or if you'd like to keep it G-rated, you can go with "Blank Space" and “So it’s going to be forever, or it’s going to go down in flames.”
Catastrophizing: "Anti-Hero" is the song that really made a Swiftie out of me, and tuned me in to Taylor Swift's lyrical greatness. So I'll refer to it several times here. When she says “I should not be left to my own devices/they come with prices and vices/I end up in crisis," the leap from "left to my own devices" to "ending up in crisis" reflects the process by which we catastrophize by predicting our own worst-case scenarios in a way that's rarely based on objective observations.
Discounting the Positive: In "champagne problems" she tells of would-be in-laws that lament “She would have made such a lovely bride, what a shame she’s fucked in the head.” In doing so, the would-be in-laws discount whatever positives came of her involvement in their lives.
Emotional Reasoning: "Anti-Hero" again. Emotional reasoning involves feeling a certain way when the actual observable data suggest otherwise. Such as when she sings “Sometimes I feel like everybody is a sexy baby/and I’m a monster on the hill.” Taylor is tall at 5'11" but "monster on the hill" is the kind of stretch that'll pull a hammy.
Labeling: In "Albatross," she describes malevolent onlookers labeling her as an "albatross" (“She’s the albatross”) and a source of danger for a potential love interest. Also, in "Mr. Perfectly Fine" she refers to an ex-lover by descriptors of him (e.g. “Mr. Perfectly Fine," "Mr. Always Wins," "Mr. Casually Cruel”).
Magnification/Minimization: In "My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys," she appears to rationalize a currently dysfunctional relationship dynamic by emphasizing/magnifying the past “But you should have seen him when he first got me" before going to her chorus of "My boy only breaks his favorite toys.”
(PS. This also touches upon the highly problematic "he's picking on you because he likes you" trope that misled a generation of women into thinking love and abuse are supposed to look similar.)
Mental Filter/Selective Abstraction: In "ME!" she goes from “I know that I went psycho on the phone" to "I never leave well enough alone" as if a sweeping conclusion about oneself can be gleaned from a single episode of telephonic venting.
Mindreading: "Anti-Hero" again. “It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me. At teatime, everybody agrees.” She doesn't have a good way of knowing for sure whether everybody actually agrees that she's the problem.
Overgeneralization: In "This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things" she echoes that popular parents-of-young-children-refrain: “This is why we can’t have nice things... because you break them, I had to take them away." Said in response to one instance of nice-thing-breaking, this amounts to an overgeneralization.
Personalization: In "ME!" collaborating artist Brendan Brie (PANIC! at the Disco) starts his verse with “You know I tend to make it about me.” This amounts to a cognitive distortion when the event in question may have any number of causes that have nothing to do with us as individuals, but we automatically take it personally and make it about us.
Should Statements: Even generationally talented, influential musicians are not immune to "should-ing" all over themselves. In "marjorie" she laments not having learned more from an influential, recently-lost loved one: “I should’ve asked you questions, I should’ve asked you how to be… should’ve kept every grocery store receipt.” She does stop should-ing, however, and acknowledges her loved one's continued presence in her life.
Tunnel Vision: Sometimes we focus so acutely that it's difficult to see the big picture, or even be fully present in the moment. She describes this in "this is me trying" with “It’s hard to be anywhere these days when all I want is you.”
Well that's all 13 cognitive distortions, folks. I hope that I've helped improve your understanding of them, or at least heightened your appreciation of Taylor Swift's lyrical gift. If I achieved neither... well, there's always next week.
Long Live,
Merrit