Is it Really All in My Head? - Part III

Our thoughts are often based on our personal opinion and experiences and not necessarily grounded in fact. There is also a negative bias to our thoughts when we are low or anxious. This can lead to us jumping to conclusions or thinking the worst about situations without any evidence of these thoughts being true.

When challenging negative thoughts, we need to practice collecting evidence to see how accurate the thoughts really are. Factual evidence is much stronger than opinion, as there isn’t any element of doubt.

There are 3 Steps in Exterminating ANTs:

STEP 1: Catching ANTs (Thoughts)

Start by identifying a situation that has caused you to experience a strong negative emotion.

First, write details about that situation. It might not be the situation that caused the negative thoughts or emotions, but writing down details will help you remember better what was going on.

Then write down all the different emotions and thoughts you were experiencing. For each emotion, rate how strongly you felt it, 0 (barely felt it) to 100% (very strongly experienced it). For each thought rate how much you believe it, 0 (don’t believe it at all) to 100% (very strongly believe it).

Next, try and identify the “hot thought” in the situation. This thought is often rated the highest and most likely to be the cause of the negative emotion. It will have a rating of 60% or higher and match the negative emotion.

STEP 2: Looking for the Evidence

After catching your ANTs, the next stage is to challenge the ‘Hot Thought.’

Write down the evidence for and against the hot thought. You are looking just for facts, not opinions.

Think of this a little like being a prosecution and defense counsel in a court hearing. Evidence will be given from both sides to find the truth.

HERE ARE SOME CHALLENGING QUESTIONS YOU COULD ASK:

·      What’s the evidence against this thought?

·      If my friend or someone else was having this type of thought, what would I say to them?

·      If I wasn’t anxious or low, how would I look at the situation?

·      Is there any other way of looking at the situation?

·      What is certain about this situation?

·      Am I overgeneralizing?

·      Is this situation really in my control?

·      What advice would a therapist give me regarding this situation?

·      If I believe this thought to be 80% true, what is the 20% that suggests I don’t believe the thought to be completely true?

STEP 3: Finding an Evidence-Based Alternative Thought

Finally, you need to create a new alternative thought, based on the evidence created in Stage 2. This is not about creating a positive thought, rather, it is about creating a more balanced thought which takes into consideration both sides of the evidence.

To create an evidence-based thought, write a sentence to summarize the “evidence for” and another sentence to summarize the “evidence against” the hot thought. You can use words such as ‘or,’ ‘and’ or ‘but’ to link the evidence together to create the revised (balanced) thought. i.e., I failed this one job interview but I have got several jobs in the past I have gone for.

·      Rate belief in the new revised (balanced) thought.

·      Re-rate the original emotions in light of revised (balanced) thought.

How will thought-challenging help me?  To recognize and put into perspective our negative automatic thoughts (ANTs) in order to modify/RESTRUCTURE our thinking and reduce the intensity of our emotions.

— Tracy Lewis, Registered Mental Health Counselor Intern