Think of a more balanced and realistic thought to take the place of the distortion. When you have a distorted thought, ask yourself “is this accurate?” If a friend said this about himself, what would you say? You would probably offer a counter-argument.Ĭhallenge yourself in the same way. The next step is to write down the negative thought or cognitive distortion and challenge it. Evernote has lots of templates that you can use, or you can make your own. To make things easier, you could use try using a note-taking app like Evernote. Keeping track of them is very important so that you can later challenge them. Take note of any cognitive distortions or similar ANTs and write them down. Pay particular attention to your thoughts. For more information about cognitive distortions, check out this blog post. So, how can you tell when you are experiencing ANTs? Learn to recognize cognitive distortions. However, they are often plausible enough that you believe them. Usually, these thoughts are distortions, meaning that they are not accurate. The very first step in dealing with automatic negative thoughts is to recognize them. 1: Recognize Negative or Distorted Thoughts Here is a step-by-step guide to challenging automatic negative thoughts. The good news is that with consistent practice, you can challenge and replace ANTs with thought patterns that are more adaptive.
These thoughts can trigger depression and anxiety and keep you from focusing on what’s important. The problem with these types of ideas is that they often involve cognitive distortions that are punishing emotionally. That is why they are called automatic negative thoughts (ANTs). They are quite common and usually occur without much thought. Have you ever thought about how much time you spend replaying negative events in the past, focusing on parts of your life that you don’t like or worrying about the future? These types of thoughts are called automatic negative thoughts.
#Automatic negative thoughts how to#
In this blog post, you’ll learn how to challenge these automatic negative beliefs. The last blog post covered cognitive distortions and how these can hold you back.
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