The Handmade Lamp

≈ 6 min

Read the monologue below. Identify (a) the single cognitive distortion driving the speaker's reasoning, and (b) the exact phrase in the text that signals it. This is a puzzle about thinking patterns — the speaker is a fictional, invented character, not a real person, and nothing here is clinical advice.

The scene

A handmade lamp posted to a woodworking forum

In the differential

Personalisation
Mind-reading
Overgeneralisation
Emotional reasoning
No distortion — a reasonable reaction

Play today’s Distortion.

This case first aired on July 29, 2026. A fresh distortion runs every morning — same rules, five minutes, one solution.

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