How Do I Handle Automatic Negative Thoughts (ANTS)?

Summary: You can handle automatic negative thoughts – those annoying ANTS – by applying simple and effective techniques from cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).

Key Points:

You Can Change Your Internal Scripts

One core skill people with mental health disorders can benefit from practicing – and mastering – is the ability to transform unhelpful, unwanted negative thoughts into helpful, positive, and productive thoughts.

The techniques we refer to above – cognitive restructuring and cognitive reframing – are core components of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). This mode of psychotherapy focuses on helping patients understand the connections between their thoughts and beliefs, their emotions, and their behavior.

In most cases, people with mental health disorders develop automatic thoughts in response to things that happen in their lives. These thoughts can become problematic when people assume these thoughts represent reality. Not only their reality, but they assume these thoughts reflect the world as it is. However, this is not necessarily the case.

Automatic negative thoughts – called ANTS – can develop over time, and change from reality-based ideas and observations to habitual patterns or assumptions divorced from reality, and become ingrained beliefs. When this happens, they become cognitive distortions, which are a primary source of problems associated with the mental health disorders we mention above, including depression (MDD), anxiety (GAD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Recognizing and Resolving Cognitive Distortions

Here’s how the two-step process to handle automatic negative thoughts works. If you have difficulty applying these techniques yourself, we encourage you to seek the support of an experienced CBT therapist.

Addressing Your Self-Talk With CBT Techniques

Step 1: Cognitive restructuring.

In this step, you identify the automatic negative thought or thoughts, then challenge the thought or thoughts with dispassionate, non-emotional logic and objectivity. In most cases, you learn that ANTs are based on emotional reactions, interpretations, or misunderstandings of your circumstances or situation. Think of this step as a reality check. Once you finish your reality check, you can move on to the next step.

Step 2: Cognitive reframing.

In this step, you change our perspective, using the information you learn during your reality check. You can now take a new, healthy, and productive point of view that’s free from cognitive distortion and based in reality as it actually is, rather than as you think or feel it may be, based on your personal history or immediate, subjective impressions and/or reactions to your circumstances.

Once you restructure and reframe, you can restate the automatic negative thought as a positive, productive, and helpful thought.

We’ll help with that in the next section.

Empower Yourself: Reclaim Your Thoughts

Here’s a helpful three-step process – with non-therapy sounding language – to help you restate your thoughts after cognitive restructuring and reframing.

How to Restate/Reframe ANTS: Be Your Own Thought Police

1. Catch the ANT Red-Handed

Here’s an important tell, like a tell in poker: whenever you have a thought that’s all or nothing – i.e. I can never get anything right – or black and white – i.e. nothing good ever happens to me – it’s almost guaranteed to be a cognitive distortion. Check those thoughts against reality, because there’s very little possibility thoughts like that are actually true.

2. Name It: “J’Accuse!”

You can name it by saying it out loud or by writing it down. Both methods can work. In most cases, when you hear an all or nothing or black and white thoughts said out loud, or see it written down in black and white, it’s easier to understand that it may be the result of a cognitive distortion or a false belief.

3. Put it on Trial

Take that ANT – for instance, I can never get everything right – and then gather evidence for or against it, and judge for yourself whether it’s true. The thing about all or nothings or black and whites is that they’re relatively easy to disprove. You just need one counterfactual, and the reality of the thought breaks down.

Here’s how you deal with this ANT:

I can never get anything right.

Think for a moment. Have you ever done anything right? We guarantee you’ve done things right in the past, and will do more things right in the future. We’re not being flippant: this technique works. Recall things you’ve done right – literally anything – and use the fact that you can do things right to reframe the thought to something more like this:

“Well, I made a mistake, but I’ll do better next time.”

That process may seem simple and trivial. It is relatively simple, but it’s a mistake to think simple things are always trivial. And please don’t misunderstand our police metaphor: use it to name and evaluate your thoughts in a lighthearted, fun, role-playing manner. As you can see, you don’t put your thoughts in jail once you expose them with evidence from your reality check, but rather, you rehabilitate them and change them into thoughts that help rather than thoughts that harm.

This process works well, because the thoughts we carry in our heads – the ANTS – often look far different when we reality check them. In fact, they often look silly, make us laugh, and give us the fresh perspective we need to improve our mood, our outlook, and create the positive momentum we need to face ANTS in the future and effectively manage the symptoms of mental health disorders such as depression, anxiety, and others.

 

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