The authors provided a world view and pathologized those who didn't follow that world view.
"However, studies that compared CBT to other active treatments, such as psychodynamic treatment, problem-solving therapy, and interpersonal psychotherapy, found mixed results. Specifically, meta-analyses found CBT to be equally effective in comparison to other psychological treatments"
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3584580/#!po=0....
Just being with one for a while will show you that bias very quickly when you hear about how every random person they passed on the street secretly hates them or thinks they're ugly or somehow did something that relates to their biggest insecurity.
It's true that I can't prove the world doesn't secretly hate them, but my own experience of literally never thinking about the random strangers I walk past informs my belief that this likely has more to do with the person's insecurity than the reality of what's going on in those people's minds.
It's kind of logical for the entire bad-faith exercise involved in this article and the comments defending it. The whole thing is putting elaborate psycho-trappings on the "boomer" complaint of "you kids just too sensitive these days" (but just said about to things you consider fine).
I claimed that depression often leads to catastrophizing, not that catastrophizing is somehow exclusive to depression.
So the "clear fallacy" here is reading a comment about how A sometimes implies B, then attacking the notion that B implies A, despite there being no logical connection between the two propositions.
Then the listener discarded the explanation and inserted their own worst-case explanation instead.
Inserting the worst-case explanation as the certain explanation is the cognitive distortion the paper is talking about.
The point isn’t that ill intent is impossible.
The point is that it’s a mistake to be certain about the worst interpretation in the face of uncertainty.