Your brain is constantly interpreting, editing, and sometimes distorting reality through cognitive distortions—all without your permission.

When you understand how this happens in your nervous system, you can stop reacting from fear and start responding from clarity.

When Your Brain “Turns” on You

I once completed a large program evaluation for a nonprofit that showed the organization was doing extremely well overall, with about 80% of the findings highlighting success and about 20% pointing to needed system changes. The executive director sent back a very defensive email, insisting I change the evaluation to make the organization look better, focusing only on the few items that needed work and reading them as a judgment on his competence and goodness as a leader.

That defensive reaction is a cognitive distortion. When we’re caught in one, we literally cannot see the positives in front of us; we only see perceived threats to our worth, identity, or safety.

This is why I often start with the quote attributed to Stephen Hawking: “The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge.” As long as we mistake our distorted perception for truth, we can’t see ourselves, others, or situations accurately.

Your Survival Brain and the Illusion of Danger

We have about seven or eight core emotions, and at least five of them are negative and unpleasant because they’re designed to keep us alive. Fear, anger, disgust, shame, and sadness push us to notice danger, avoid pain, and respond quickly to potential threats.

The problem is that survival emotions are not always accurate. In a volatile, uncertain world, many of us spend more time in “this is not safe” mode than is warranted, and we misperceive neutral or mildly challenging situations as dangerous.

Under the surface, three key brain areas are involved:

• Amygdala: your survival alarm, constantly asking, “Is it safe or dangerous?” and triggering stress hormones and fast body reactions.
• Hippocampus: the memory librarian, pulling similar past experiences to explain what is happening now.
• Prefrontal cortex: the rational planner, responsible for perspective taking, inhibiting impulsive reactions, and making considered decisions.

Under strong emotion, the amygdala can overpower the prefrontal cortex, making it much more likely that your thinking will be distorted or biased.

We consciously use only about 10% of our available resources for decision-making. The other 90% is shaped by unacknowledged emotions and beliefs about success, failure, and worth that silently sabotage our clarity.

Everyone else can usually see that something is “off”—the anger, the blame, the procrastination—while we feel like we’re doing a good job hiding it. That’s the “mask” other people see even when we don’t.

Your Body’s 80% Vote: The Vagus Nerve and Bottom‑Up Processing

Here’s a crucial piece from Stephen Porges’ work and polyvagal-informed perspectives: about 80% of nervous system signals travel from the body up to the brain, and only about 20% travel from the brain down to the body.

Your vagus nerve branches from the base of your spine throughout your torso, constantly sending physiological information—heart rate, gut tension, breathing patterns—up to your brain, shaping your sense of safety or danger before you have a single conscious thought.

Unless you pay attention to that 80%—the sensations, impulses, and “felt sense” in your body—you will stay stuck in cognitive distortions. Your emotions and sensations are like a child tugging at your sleeve saying, “Look at me, look at me, look at me.” If you ignore them, they just pull harder.

Noticing and Acknowledging Emotions and Sensations

This is where bottom‑up processing begins. Instead of trying to think your way out of a feeling, you start by noticing what is happening in your body:

• “Right now I feel bad.”
• “I notice frustration at about a 6 out of 10.”
• “There’s tension in the back of my neck whenever I think about this project.”

You don’t need to fix anything; you just need to notice. The simple act of naming sensations and emotions starts to regulate your system, calms your nervous system, increases blood flow back into your brain, and opens the door to clearer perception.

Think of it as acknowledging the child: once you look and say, “Yes, I see you,” the tugging eases.

Acknowledging Defensiveness: The Evaluation Example

When I received that defensive email from the executive director about the evaluation, my first step was not to craft the perfect response. It was to notice my own defensiveness.

I told myself, “I’m feeling defensive right now. I just put 80 extra hours into this evaluation.” As I did that, I noticed a tightness in my throat—the sense that my voice and effort were not being heard.

That was my clue: this is not a good time to respond. I gave myself 24 hours before replying, which allowed my nervous system to settle.

Once I calmed down, I could see that the executive director was also feeling defensive because his sense of competence and the organization’s public image felt threatened. Beneath the defensiveness were other cognitive distortions: perfectionism and fear of “loss of face.”

I was then able to respond with both truth and reassurance: highlighting the many positive findings, comparing the evaluation to sunlight that shines on everything (the good, the bad, and the in‑between), and framing the 20% of system issues as an invitation to strengthen, not a judgment of failure.

Initially, I drafted an email and then ran it through an AI tool to check whether it sounded courteous or defensive. The feedback helped me soften a few phrases, and when I sent the revised message, the executive director replied with appreciation, calm, and recognition of the evaluation’s usefulness after rereading it.

This is what happens when we step out of distortion: the same data feels entirely different and we can respond appropriately, changing unnecessary misunderstandings into opportunities for connection instead.

Emotional Reasoning in Real Life: The Car Accident Story

Another powerful example of emotional reasoning came from a late-night pickup with my eldest daughter when she was in high school.

She had been performing in a play, and I was supposed to pick her up afterward. On the way, I was rear‑ended by another vehicle, my phone battery died, and I had to wait for the police. There was no way to contact her.

By the time I arrived—an hour late—she was furious and devastated. She got into the car angrily saying, “You don’t care! You left me in this awful place in the middle of the night. What kind of mother are you?”

Her emotion felt completely true to her: “I feel abandoned, therefore my mother doesn’t care.” That’s emotional reasoning.

I pointed to the back of the car and explained I’d been hit, had to wait for the police, and couldn’t reach her. As soon as she saw the evidence, her anger dissolved into concern: “Are you okay? Are we safe to drive home? What happens next?”

Her feelings had been real but not accurate. Her interpretation and mine were both wrong: she assumed I didn’t care, and I had been catastrophizing about her—imagining kidnapping, assault, assuming guilt and expecting permanent damage to our relationship. All of that was emotional reasoning, and all of it was wrong once real data came in.

This is why we cannot treat emotions or first thoughts as facts. They are signals to be acknowledged and explored, not verdicts on reality.

Three Steps to Reading Reality

To move from “my brain is lying to me” to “I can see what is actually happening,” you need to align three parts of yourself:

1. Acknowledge feelings and sensations (bottom‑up).
2. Question your beliefs about success and failure and ask what else you need to know (top down).
3. Name your typical cognitive distortion in this context and consider how you can feel safe enough to see what is there (cognitive distortion awareness).

For example, you might notice:

• “I’m feeling defensive right now; this is not a good time to decide.”
• “I say I’m ‘not a tech person,’ but I use multiple apps and platforms every day—maybe that belief isn’t accurate.”

As you do this, blood flow moves out of the “lizard brain” survival response and back into your prefrontal cortex, where you can think clearly and feel safer.

Common Cognitive Distortions (and a Mini Quiz)

There are about 18 recognized cognitive distortions, but the webinar focused on three core ones:

• All‑or‑nothing thinking: Seeing things in extremes—if it’s not perfect, it’s terrible.
  • Example: “If I don’t get this promotion, my career is over.”
• Jumping to conclusions: Assuming you know what others think or predicting negative outcomes without evidence.
  • Example: “They didn’t reply right away; they must be angry.”
• Emotional reasoning: Believing that because you feel something, it must be true.
  • Example: “I feel nervous, so I won’t be believable.”

We rarely see our own distortions clearly without training or feedback, just like we struggle to see our own culture while quickly spotting cultural issues in others.

Matching Exercise: Spot the Distortion

To get some practice recognizing cognitive distortions, try this quick exercise.
You can check your responses with the answers at the bottom of this article.

Cognitive distortions:

1. Emotional reasoning
2. Jumping to conclusions
3. All‑or‑none thinking

Match each scenario (A–C) with 1–3:

• A. “My colleague walked past me without saying hello. He’s clearly upset with me about something I did.”
• B. “I feel nervous about this client meeting, so I won’t be believable.”
• C. “If I don’t run this workshop perfectly, it means I’m a terrible facilitator and shouldn’t be doing this work at all.”

Even one “aha” around these patterns can show you how often your brain has been bending reality.

Bottom‑Up + Top‑Down: A Two‑Way Street

You need both bottom‑up and top‑down processing to see clearly.

Bottom‑Up: Start with the Body

• Notice what you’re feeling and sensing right now.
• Rate intensity (e.g., 3/10 frustration all week).
• Acknowledge tension, numbness, restlessness, or anxiety without trying to fix it.

This creates physiological safety, calms your nervous system, and brings more blood into the thinking parts of your brain.

Top‑Down: Then Question Your Thoughts

Once your system is more settled, you can:

• Ask, “Am I making an assumption? Where’s the evidence?”
• Start with the assumption that your assumptions are probably incorrect because they’re not based on real data.
• Clarify: What are the facts? What is actually known (e.g., “The project is delayed because equipment didn’t arrive yesterday”)?
• Identify your true margin of control: Who supports me? What tools or resources do I have? What can I actually influence here?

Most people either overestimate or underestimate their margin of control; getting it accurate reduces anxiety and increases effective action.

A Curt Email Example: Your Brain’s Story vs. Reality

Imagine you receive this email from a colleague:
“I expect the new project timeline today by noon.”

You know the agreed deadline is Friday, and it’s only Tuesday. Many people immediately feel their gut clench, anger jump into their throat, and defensiveness rise—but they don’t recognize these as signals; they just react.

Here’s what’s often happening:

• Amygdala: “This is an attack. It’s unreasonable. They’re disrespecting me.”
• Hippocampus: “Last time there was a surprise demand, someone got pushed out. I must be next on the restructuring list. They want to get rid of me.”

That’s your brain lying to you in the name of survival.

If you pause, notice your sensations, and question the story, you can discover a different reality: the colleague was rushed and confused the timelines of two projects, not attacking you.

This is very similar to the shift that happened for my daughter and me at the car accident scene and for the executive director after rereading the evaluation. Once nervous systems calmed and data was clear, relationships and perceptions repaired.

The STOP Method: A Simple In‑the‑Moment Tool

One practical method from the webinar is the STOP tool:

• S – Stop. Interrupt the spiral when you notice judgment, blame, criticism, or a sudden bad feeling.
• T – Take a breath. Gently bring attention to your breathing. Practise this daily—in the morning, at noon, and before bed—so it’s available under stress.
• O – Observe. Notice thoughts, emotions, body sensations, and the external situation. “Where am I? What’s actually happening? How much time do I have?”
• P – Perceive/Proceed. See beyond the “shadow” (distortion) to the “tree” (reality). Then proceed with an informed choice.

The “shadow vs. tree” image of a tree casting a shadow on a wall is powerful: if you base decisions on a shifting shadow on the wall, they will be wrong; if you look at the actual tree—what stage it’s in, where it stands—you can respond to reality as it is.

Bringing the Lie Detector to Your Brain

When you consistently:

• Acknowledge emotions and body sensations (bottom‑up).
• Recognize your favorite cognitive distortions (e.g., defensiveness when tired, “I must work all the time,” “If it’s not perfect, it’s a failure”).
• Use both body cues and cognitive questioning to align your perception, you reclaim your reality from survival mode.

One client, for example, discovered her distortion “I must work all the time” and learned to notice her feelings and sensations instead of blindly pushing through. She took back her weekends, negotiated her workload, gained respect, and felt newly optimistic about her career.

Another client, facing a serious complaint and a three‑hour interrogation by five lawyers, stayed calm, grounded, and composed by using bottom‑up and top‑down tools, leaving the meeting happy instead of shattered.

This is the power of understanding your nervous system and using it intentionally.