Sunshine in April

Are your automatic thoughts helping or hurting?

This is a revisit, or next steps, to my Automatic Thought Record: Building insight post which can help identify automatic thoughts. It contains a homework component completing your own ATR (automatic thought record) – yes, asking you to go back to school in a way to help process this content on a deeper level.

If you do that first, I’ll patiently wait here for you.

GREAT JOB! You rock!

If you’re just here to hang out and get some ideas on challenging unhelpful thought processes, you also rock! A quick and dirty version of the ATR is for you to think of events in your life and your automatic reactions to them.

Take one line of your automatic thought record (or just one of those automatic thoughts that jump into your head in reaction to an event) and let’s put it through a test. What was the event, what were your automatic thoughts, what were your feelings and how intense, what did you do in response to the event (words / actions) and what was the overall outcome? Hopefully, you have a list of them but pick one. Focus on that one thought and response to the event. We are going to the darker side here, so if you picked a thought that was happy and positive, pick again!

Using that, work through the following steps:

Step 1: You are 100% correct with your thought. Write down anything you can think of that supports how justified you were in your automatic mental reaction to the event. Whatever comes to mind – don’t overthink it, just write it down. What makes that thought valid? 

Step 2: NOPE! You are 100% incorrect with your thought. Write down anything you can think of that invalidates the thought. How is it wrong? What evidence negates it? Do you have any past experiences or even your own previous thoughts that were opposite of this thought? How would you challenge it if a loved one said this, but you totally disagreed?

Step 3: Look at the feelings, behaviors, and outcomes associated with the automatic thought from the event. How intense were those feelings? How effective was your behavior? Were you satisfied with the final outcome? After doing this, go back through and consider adding more info that validates your thought (Step 1) or shows your flawed your thinking may have been (Step 2).

Step 4: Go back to your automatic thought and final lists for steps 1 and 2. Say the thought out loud to hear how it sounds, then say each item on our 100% correct list, then your 100% incorrect list. Giving voice to each piece is important and adds a layer of reflection. First you thought it, then you wrote it down, now you’re saying it out loud.

As you are saying each item out loud, think about how much power it has over you and how much each piece guides your feelings, behaviors, and impacts your relationships. Consider not only your relationship with others (interpersonal), but also the relationship you have with yourself (intrapersonal). For example, how frequently are you having interpersonal conflicts with others, especially the people you interact with daily like workmates or housemates? And how frequently are you having intrapersonal conflict with yourself? Possibly creating additional stress that is keeping you stuck in a cycle of negative, unhelpful thinking.

Step 6: Decide how helpful the original automatic thought was and if you need to keep your list for step 2 somewhere visible as a reminder of how to negate the unhelpful thought next time it comes up. You’ve already done some great work in Step 2 (and possibly in Step 1) on how to challenge automatic thoughts that are not serving you well. Nice job!

• Below are other ways to battle automatic thoughts that lead to unhelpful behaviors and outcomes. These can be especially helpful when a thought becomes obsessive and won’t go away:
• Distract your brain with an activity, like a walk outside (nature can be quite healing), going for a drive, focusing on a project.
• I find searching for a funny meme to share with my humor after breast cancer group a great distraction. Using humor can be a great way to release endorphins (kind of like happy brain chemicals).
• Distract yourself with help from others, like calling or messaging one of your favorite people or reaching out to someone you haven’t interacted with in a while. Yes, you can be honest about where you are mentally to get the support you need. And consider sharing something great that happened recently or a positive memory.
• I sometimes combine the distractions with a phone call on a walk – that way, I’m getting outside, moving my body, and connecting with important people in my world.
• Another combo I love is singing and driving. Noone can tell me to stop the madness if I’m alone in my car jamming. You may even be entertainment for fellow road mates who look over and smile or laugh.
• Distract your brain with a word or phrase you keep repeating to overcome the obsessive thought: No (no no no no no…), Stop (stop stop stop stop), Yes (yes yes yes…). I can. I’ve got this. I am empowered. Wtf (I totally recommend the whole phrase).
• Distract yourself with a mental task like counting backwards from 1000 or saying your ABCs backwards. This can work with insomnia brain as well.
• A powerful distraction one of my graduate professors did was slamming a large book to the ground. That got everyone’s attention and I’ve done that when ruminating thoughts won’t let go. Pretty sure I peed my pants, so maybe go to the bathroom first.
• Last resort, or even first, physically tap your head and annoy yourself. You can do this alone or add your mantra (word or phrase from above).   

Note that if the event and subsequent thoughts have led to feelings of anger, stress, frustration, and/or depression, something or multiple things may not okay in your world. Anger is NOT a bad or negative emotion. It is simply a natural and normal human emotion that is worth paying attention to. Any of these emotions may be your brain and body’s way of telling you it’s time to make changes in your life. Maybe that change is choosing to respond differently, focusing on battling the negative thoughts, reminding yourself that you do not have control, or this situation is temporary even though your brain is saying it will never end, finding outlets to rid your body of the stress (cortisol) overload, and/or learning to love yourself AS YOU ARE.

If you’re not able to work through the issues, it may be time to think about professional intervention with a therapist. Sometimes therapy can be the biggest life gift you can give yourself. It has been for me.

Overall, the real message is that only YOU can make a difference. We cannot change other people. We cannot change events. We can have an impact by changing our thinking about and response to the events and people in our lives. We can make a difference by seeing how we contribute to the issues and intervene within ourselves for healthier outcomes.

Even if these steps feel awkward in the beginning – they likely will – keep trying the ones that give some relief, or you think may work. Change is not easy. Any attempt at change will require intentional consistent practice before it becomes second nature.

Don’t give up on you.

YOU ARE WORTHY!

Say it OUT LOUD:

I AM WORTHY!