We all work with certain expectations and are therefore doomed to the fortune teller’s mistake. You’ve probably already thought that something would happen in a certain way or that you’d feel a certain way.
Besides, you’ve probably already made predictions about someone’s behavior, the truth is that we do it constantly, every day, every hour.
- We spend our lives making predictions about the future.
- Sometimes we are sure that some things will go wrong without even having a rational basis for it.
- And then the anguish appears.
- All because of the fortune teller’s mistake.
The soothsayer’s mistake is a type of cognitive distortion, a ‘thought error’, a ‘mental slip’ that we all end up having. In turn, cognitive distortions were widely analyzed in the context of cognitive behavioral psychotherapy, particularly in emotional-behavioral rational therapy. Let’s see what it’s all about.
Behavioral Emotional Rational Therapy (TREC) is a pioneer in many of its ideas and one of the leading cognitive behavioral therapies, the theoretical and conceptual basis of this type of therapy lies in cognitive psychology and behaviorism.
This type of therapy is a psychology school composed of several authors who share the use of a scientific methodology and some basic principles, some of these principles are:
The term cognitive behavioral is very generic and refers to therapies that incorporate both cognitive and behavioral techniques, are based on an empirical (observable) basis and require active patient involvement.
As we have said above, the fortune teller’s error is a cognitive distortion identified in the context of rational behavioral emotional therapy. There are other cognitive distortions, but in this article we will focus on this one.
According to TREC, when we commit these cognitive distortions, we distort reality, so we may feel sad or anxious.
Psychologist David Burns includes the mistake of soothsayer in another broader category of cognitive distortion: hasty conclusions. According to Burns, hasty conclusions occur when we draw conclusions that do not necessarily correspond to the facts.
These findings are usually the result of our brain’s tendency to save energy in information processing, or the haste of the context in which we are inserted to achieve that same information.
Two examples of hasty conclusions are the reading of thought and the fortune teller’s error. David Burns defines the fortune teller’s error as follows:
“It’s like facing a crystal ball that only brings sadness. You imagine that something bad is going to happen, and you take this prediction as an accomplished fact (when it isn’t). Imagine, for example, a high school librarian repeating the same phrase during his anxiety attacks: “I’m going to pass out, I’m going to go crazy. “
These assumptions were unrealistic because she had never fainted or “gone crazy. “And he didn’t even have serious symptoms that suggested an imminent and utter loss of control.
Another example: During a therapy session, a patient with acute depression explained why I was quitting his job: “I realized I would be depressed all my life. My anguish will continue, and I am absolutely convinced that this or any other. “other treatment is doomed to failure?
This negative prediction about his prognosis made him desperate. The improvements he made shortly after the start of therapy show how wrong his prophecy was.
Have we all jumped to conclusions to respond to what we have been asked to do or because we are running out of patience?And soon we realize the mistake we made. Now imagine you’re calling a friend, he’s not responding and he doesn’t. I don’t return the call after a while.
You’re sad to think your friend probably saw the call, but he had no interest in returning it. What is the cognitive distortion you’re getting involved in?The answer is: read the thoughts of others.
When you feel sad, you decide not to try to call or find out what happened. You say to yourself, “He’ll think I’m boring if I call again. Am I going to make a fool of myself?” negative predictions (guessing mistake), you avoid your friend and you feel humiliated.
Three weeks later you find out that your friend did not see the call, what is happening is that all this confusion only existed in your head, you have drawn some wrong conclusions and, in turn, you have made even more wrong inferences.
As we have just seen, the fortune teller’s mistake is to draw hasty conclusions about the facts without having a solid basis to support them. When we do this, we are victims of a distortion of thought that will certainly make us suffer.