Concepts
Health psychology/Cognitive distortions · CBT distortion
Disqualifying the positive
What it means
Rejecting positive experiences by insisting they "don’t count", maintaining a negative belief against the evidence.
Worked example
"They only said well done to be nice."
In the exam
Complimented on her presentation, a doctor immediately thinks "they were just being polite, it doesn’t really count."
What settles it
Disqualifying the positive nullifies good evidence. Mental filter simply ignores it by focusing on the negative.
Classically confused with
Mental filter
Source: Burns; CBT