How Contradiction Can Generate Mental Disorder

“Many mental disorders are a result of perceived contradictions between reality and a perfectionist demand. The conflict between such premises feels threatening to the client leading to linguistic expression of the threatening feeling using language with a strong negative valence (‘This is awful.’ ‘I am worthless.’) The latter negative conceptualization serves to sustain and amplify the negative feeling and to generate further feelings of powerlessness, which is then expressed in further disempowering language (‘I can’t’).”