What Are Automatic Thoughts?

When learning about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, you are likely to hear about the concept of automatic thoughts. Keep reading to learn more about what automatic thoughts are, how they can be harmful, and how to challenge or change them.

What is an Automatic Thought?

Our minds are constantly flowing with thoughts. Sometimes we are intentionally thinking about something (like a task at hand, something that we have to do, or about something that we’ve recently experienced). Other thoughts appear suddenly and without any effort from ourselves. Have you ever been doing something and suddenly a thought pops in your head? These are automatic thoughts.

Automatic thoughts are often influenced by our view of ourselves, others, and the world. Moreover, there is an interactive relationship between our thoughts, feelings, and actions. You can learn more about this concept (called the cognitive triangle) in this blog.

How Can Automatic Thoughts Be Harmful?

We all experience automatic thoughts, they are a natural part of being a human. However, automatic thoughts can sometimes get out of control and impact our mood, actions, or ability to function. Our automatic thoughts pop into our minds, and we often believe them as being totally true. However, these thoughts can often be irrational, unhelpful, or just downright incorrect. When we believe our automatic thoughts without any consideration for their accuracy, they can quickly take over our mental space.

For example, we may text a friend and not receive a response right away. The automatic thoughts pop into our head saying, “She must not even like me. She’s totally ignoring me right now, I know it. She’ll never text me back. I’m such a loser, why would I even have texted her in the first place??”

If we believe these thoughts, we’ll probably end up feeling pretty bad about ourself. We will likely also end up feeling anxious, hurt, embarrassed, or frustrated at our friend for not texting us back. We will feel like they really are ignoring us or intentionally trying to hurt our feelings. These thoughts will also likely influence our behaviors as well. We may avoid running into this friend or refuse to text them again.

Many times when we’re feeling overwhelmed by negative emotions, our automatic thoughts are running rampant. We can quickly believe these thoughts, causing us to feel unworthy, unloved, unimportant, or totally isolated from everyone around us.

How to We Move Past Automatic Thoughts?

As humans, we all experience automatic thoughts. Simply experiencing an automatic thought isn’t inherently bad, it’s normal! However, we can run into a lot of distress when automatic thoughts go unchallenged and take over our mental space. The key is to build awareness over our automatic thoughts and then work to challenge, and subsequently change, our automatic thoughts.

The first step is building awareness. If we are unaware of the automatic thoughts that we experience, or we view them as totally accurate, there isn’t much we can do to change them. Doing things like using a thought recorder or checking in with ourselves throughout the day to take note of our thoughts can be helpful to get started. Begin by writing these thoughts down. It may feel strange at first, but writing down our automatic thoughts can help us to see them more clearly, identify themes within our automatic thoughts, and determine how rational or irrational they are.
Once you have gained awareness of your automatic thoughts, you can begin to challenge them by presenting an alternative, more rational thought. For the earlier example, one of the automatic thoughts was, “She MUST be ignoring me!” A more rational thought would be, “She has been really busy lately, she will probably text me back when she gets a chance.” This thought is much more likely to help us feel more calm and less distressed about not receiving an immediate response.
We eventually want to adopt these more rational thoughts. This comes with time and practice of thought awareness and developing alternative thoughts. Again, this is not to prevent a negative automatic thought from ever occurring again. Rather, it is to help us to quickly recognize, challenge, and change our thoughts to gain control over our mental space and to feel less stressed, anxious, depressed, angry, or self-conscious.

Need Extra Support?

Working with automatic thoughts can be difficult. We will be directly confronting our maladaptive thought patterns, which can lead to quite a bit of anxiety or unease. Moreover, it can be difficult to get started with building awareness of automatic thoughts or being able to identify what is an irrational thought versus a rational thought. Working with a therapist can be deeply beneficial in helping support you through the process, providing you with education and information, and working with you to develop more neutral and beneficial thoughts. Reach out to us today with any questions you have or to get connected with a therapist!