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Worksheet for Reducing Automatic Negative Thoughts
1. Date and Time: ________________________
2. The complete automatic thought:
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3. On a scale from 0 to 100, how much do you feel line #2 to be correct? _______
4. List 3 or more facts that support line #2:
____________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________
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5. List 3 or more facts that do not support line #2:
____________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________
6. Write out a neutral way of looking at things that takes the facts into account:
____________________________________________________________________
7. On a scale from 0 to 100, how much do you feel line #2 to be correct? _______
8. Say line #6 out loud
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There are a number of anxiety conditions in which a person is burdened with unwelcome negative thoughts that keep comming up. Attempts to simply "stop thinking" about these distorted thoughts can be frustrating when they fail to work. Often, such thoughts are distorted in some way that does not fully match-up with reality, making the thoughts worse. For example, a person might have the automatic thought, "My work quality is horrible, and I'm going to be fired for it."
Click on this link for a list of types of Distorted Thinking.
Whenever an unwanted negative thought comes back, you can pull out a sheet of paper and write in the following information, step by step. In this way, you interupt the flow of the negative thought and add in corrections. With many repeats, you can start to reduce how often and how badly the negative thoughts come, and build in an "automatic balanced thought" that is less distressing.
This worksheet is a type of "Cognitive Therapy" that works through repetition to retrain the automatic thoughts you may have and bring your thoughts back under your own control. Be aware that this type of exercise is expected to be emotionally challenging, and results do not start right away. If you can be doing this exercise while anxious and upset by your automatic negative thought, so much the better. The higher levels of adrenaline that are present with anxiety work to enhance the effect. This is partly why our memories of times that we were very scared or anxious tend to be stronger.
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