Learning to recognize, put a name to, and work with feelings; thought's partners

Anxiety/fear is not necessarily a thought distortion, those things "could" happen but by learning to stay present/in the "now" one can work to mitigate their likelihood. I'm a slob and don't clean so when I see the accumulated mess I worry I'll become an old lady, no friends, living in filth. That could happen if I don't take better care of myself now. The thoughts aren't distorted, just not very helpful, are out-of-sequence; I'm not at that place quite yet, where I'm either that old or that friendless and living in filth; I need to learn to switch and apply my thoughts to what I need to do now; right pew, wrong church service :-) That's an attention thing, not a distorted one.

We can't control what thoughts we have but we learn to control which we attend to, which we focus on. CBT and the distorted thought aspect is another way of working with that, trying to get rid of the ones that are "wrong" or of no use, quicker. Action follows thought and feeling and if you're thinking, "What's the use, I'm a loser" the action that follows that thought is not going to be very effective.

"Oh no, I'm going to become old, friendless, and lying in my own filth!" is not about the present moment so is not of much use; CBT could teach one to key in on the "mistake" of "going to become" which is future tense, instead of using "am" but sometimes, one wants to think about the future and plan for it like for school, career, etc. so having to distinguish between when it is "okay" to think future tense from when it is not, is a bit too tricky for "just" analyzing the thought.

"I'm a loser" on the other hand is never a useful/effective thought and is easily seen to be too broad; one cannot be always a loser, that's impossible, and "loser" is not defined, illustrated, or very concrete/to the point. CBT is good for being used to spot that kind of thought.