5 Best Automatic Negative Thoughts
- 11 hours ago
- 6 min read
Scientifically reviewed by William Smith, Ph.D.
Key Insights
Challenging automatic negative thoughts is essential for developing a healthier mindset & improving emotional wellbeing.
Worksheets & exercises can aid in identifying & reframing these negative thoughts into positive alternatives.
Practicing these techniques regularly can enhance self-awareness & foster resilience.
Automatic thoughts are images, words, or other kinds of mental activity that pop into your head in response to a trigger.
These thoughts can seem mundane or unimportant, but they can, in fact, be extremely impactful. The types of automatic thoughts a person has can affect their health outcomes as well as their overall quality of life.
This article will cover what automatic thinking is and how it affects people’s lives, what automatic thoughts look like, and how to break the cycle of negativity with positive thoughts.
Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our five positive psychology tools for free. These science-based exercises will not only enhance your ability to understand and work with your emotions but will also give you the tools to foster the emotional intelligence of your clients, students, or employees.
What Is Automatic Thinking?
Automatic thinking refers to automatic thoughts that stem from beliefs people hold about themselves and the world (Soflau & David, 2017). Automatic thoughts can be considered “surface-level, non-volitional, stream-of-consciousness cognitions” that “can appear in the form of descriptions, inferences, or situation-specific evaluations” (Soflau & David, 2017).
As the name indicates, these automatic thoughts cannot be controlled by people directly, since they are reflexive reactions based on the beliefs people hold about themselves and the world. However, people can indirectly control these thoughts by challenging the beliefs that lead to them.
Relevant research into automatic thinking began with Aaron Beck’s research into how negative automatic thoughts affect the development of depression (Beck et al., 1979). Before long, researchers decided that positive automatic thoughts were also important to study, and particularly the relationship between both positive and negative automatic thoughts (Ingram & Wisnicki, 1988).
Studies have indicated that there are a variety of consequences of being disposed toward negative automatic thoughts rather than positive automatic thoughts.
In a study by Riley et al., their focus was on the relationship between automatic thoughts and depression in a research group of people living with HIV/AIDS. They found that in people with both depression and HIV/AIDS, negative automatic thoughts are associated with depressive symptoms, and vice versa (Riley et al., 2017).
In athletes, negative automatic thoughts can lead to burnout (Chang et al., 2017). Finally, in a sample of university students, negative automatic thoughts led to more mental health symptoms and decreased levels of self-esteem (Hicdurmaz et al., 2017).
Our Cognitive Bias: Construction of the Self-Concept
What Is Automatic Thinking? Self-concept refers to how people perceive themselves and their past experiences, their abilities, their prospects for the future, and any other aspects of the self.
Aaron Beck’s cognitive triad (discussed below) deals with self-concept and the construction of the self. The basic idea of how our self-concepts and cognitive biases affect our lives has to do with automatic thoughts.
For example, someone with a negative self-referential schema is more likely to take things personally, leading to automatic thoughts like “People are not talking to me because I am an unlikable person,” rather than exploring other possibilities (Disner et al., 2017). A negative self-referential schema can also lead to more severe symptoms of depression.
Most importantly, a negative self-concept can lead to an unending cycle of negative thoughts.
This is because people with negative self-referential schemas exhibit attentional biases. For example, when asked to decide whether an adjective describes themselves or not, people with depression are more likely than a control group to select negative adjectives (Disner et al., 2017).
Depressive people also show an attentional bias by being quicker than healthy the control group to endorse negative adjectives and quicker to reject positive adjectives (Disner et al., 2017).
In turn, being likelier to endorse negative adjectives is correlated with longer depressive episodes (as reported afterward), demonstrating the cycle of negativity.
Aaron Beck’s Cognitive Triad
According to psychiatrist Aaron Beck and colleagues,
“[the] cognitive triad consists of three major cognitive patterns that induce the patient to regard himself, his future, and his experiences in an idiosyncratic manner.”
(1979)
According to Beck’s cognitive triad, someone who is depressed will automatically have a negative view of themselves, their experiences (that is, the things that the world around them causes to happen to them), and their future. According to this model, “the other signs and symptoms of the depressive syndrome” are “consequences of the activation of the negative cognitive patterns” (Beck et al., 1979).
According to Beck, this is because a depressed person “tends to perceive his present, his future, and the outside world (the cognitive triad) in a negative way and consequently shows a biased interpretation of his experiences, negative expectancies as to the probable success of anything he undertakes, and a massive amount of self-criticism” (Beck et al., 1979).
In other words, people who are depressed have a negative view of themselves and their lives, and these negative views lead to further symptoms of depression.
These symptoms of depression often then lead people to have a negative view of themselves and their lives, creating a cycle of negativity.
50+ Examples of Positive and Negative Automatic Thoughts
automatic thoughts Aaron Beck's Cognitive TriadSo, how do automatic thoughts actually present themselves? Since automatic thinking research began with negative thoughts, we’ll start with negative automatic thoughts.
According to the Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire (ATQ-30) developed by Steven Hollon and Philip Kendall in 1980, some examples of negative automatic thoughts include:
“I feel like I’m up against the world.”
“I’m no good.”
“Why can’t I ever succeed?”
“No one understands me.”
“I’ve let people down.”
“I don’t think I can go on.”
“I wish I were a better person.”
“I’m so weak.”
“My life’s not going the way I want it to.”
“I’m so disappointed in myself.”
“Nothing feels good anymore.”
“I can’t stand this anymore.”
“I can’t get started.”
“What’s wrong with me?”
“I wish I were somewhere else.” “I can’t get things together.”
“I hate myself.”
“I’m worthless.”
“Wish I could just disappear.”
“What’s the matter with me?”
“I’m a loser.”
“My life is a mess.”
“I’m a failure.”
“I’ll never make it.”
“I feel so helpless.”
“Something has to change.”
“There must be something wrong with me.”
“My future is bleak.”
“It’s just not worth it.”
“I can’t finish anything.”
The revised version of the automatic thoughts questionnaire (ATQ-R) (Kendall et al., 1989), which is a measure still used as a basis for automatic thinking research (Koseki et al., 2013), lists the following positive items as additional examples of automatic thoughts (along with the 30 negative thoughts listed above):
“I’m proud of myself.”
“I feel fine.”
“No matter what happens, I know I’ll make it.”
“I can accomplish anything.”
“I feel good.” “I’m warm and comfortable.”
“I feel confident I can do anything I set my mind to.”
“I feel very happy.”
“This is super!”
“I’m luckier than most people.”
According to Rick Ingram and Kathy Wisnicki (1988), some more examples of positive automatic thoughts include:
“I am respected by my peers.”
“I have a good sense of humor.”
“My future looks bright.”
“I will be successful.”
“I’m fun to be with.”
“I am in a great mood.”
“There are many people who care about me.”
“I’m proud of my accomplishments.”
“I will finish what I start.”
“I have many good qualities.”
“I am comfortable with life.”
“I have a good way with others.”
“I am a lucky person.”
“I have friends who support me.”
“Life is exciting.” “I enjoy a challenge.”
“My social life is terrific.”
“There’s nothing to worry about.”
“I’m so relaxed.”
“My life is running smoothly.”
“I’m happy with the way I look.”
“I take good care of myself.”
“I deserve the best in life.”
“Bad days are rare.”
“I have many useful qualities.”
“There is no problem that is hopeless.”
“I won’t give up.”
“I state my opinions with confidence.”
“My life keeps getting better.”
“Today I’ve accomplished a lot.”
Cognitive Restructuring of Core Beliefs and Automatic Thoughts
Cognitive Restructuring Of Core Beliefs & Automatic ThoughtsPositive automatic thoughts can offset the negative effects of both negative automatic thoughts and stress in general.
For example, people with frequent positive automatic thoughts are likely to respond to stress by feeling that their lives are more meaningful, while people with infrequent positive automatic thoughts are likely to respond to stress by feeling that their lives are less meaningful (Boyraz & Lightsey, 2012).
Furthermore, higher levels of positive automatic thoughts are correlated with higher levels of happiness (Lightsey, 1994).
