Personalization

Personalization is a cognitive distortion that leads a person to believe they are the cause of external negative events over which they actually have no control or responsibility. It implies an illogical connection between external events and the self, generating disproportionate guilt and shame.

Beck (1979) described personalization as one of the typical cognitive distortions in depression. Examples include: a mother who sees her child getting bad grades and concludes 'I'm a terrible mother'; a worker whose department misses targets and thinks 'it's my fault, I didn't work hard enough'; a person who sees two people laughing and assumes they're laughing at them.

Personalization relates to excessive internal locus of control: the person attributes causal power they don't have. Paradoxically, although it appears as an act of self-demanding, personalization reflects a form of cognitive egocentrism — the implicit belief that one is so important that everything revolves around them.

In clinical practice, personalization is frequent in parents with depression (who attribute all children's problems to themselves), in trauma survivors (who blame themselves for the abuse suffered), and in people with obsessive traits (who feel excessive responsibility for preventing harm to others).

Cognitive therapy addresses personalization by helping the patient identify the distortion and examine evidence. Useful questions include: 'What other factors could have contributed to this outcome?', 'If another person were in your situation, would you blame them?', 'What realistic percentage of responsibility do you have for this outcome?'

It is important to distinguish pathological personalization from genuine responsibility. Accepting responsibility for one's own actions is healthy and necessary; personalization distorts this capacity by turning it into indiscriminate self-blame.