Automatic Negative Thoughts 1. Black-and-White Thinking – Thinking in words like always, never, no one, everyone, every time, everything, etc. 2. Focusing on the Negative – Filtering out the good, seeing only the bad in a situation, and magnifying it. 3. Fortune Telling – Predicting the worst possible outcome to a situation. “Doing your pain in advance”. 4. Mind Reading – Believing that you know what others are thinking and feeling, even though they haven’t told you. 5. Thinking With Your Feelings – Believing negative feelings without ever questioning them… “I feel it, so it must be true”. “If I feel stupid, I must be stupid.” 6. Should/Must Thinking – Thinking in words like should, must, ought, or have to… “Everyone should do things my way.” “I ought to be able to control my feelings better.” Don’t “should” on yourself! 7. Self-Labeling – Generalizing one or two qualities into a negative global judgment about you. You don’t achieve your goal for two weeks in a row and say to yourself, “I’m a failure”. 8. Personalizing – Investing innocuous events with personal meaning. Thinking that things other people do or say is some kind of a reaction toward you. 9. Blaming – Blaming someone else for your own pain/problems or go the other way and blame yourself for everyone else’s problems. 10. Over-Generalizing – Coming to a general conclusion based upon a single event or incident. Thinking that when one bad thing happens it is going to happen over and over again. 11. Catastrophizing – Expecting disaster, going through the entire negative “what if’s” in a situation. 12. Control Fallacies – If you feel externally controlled, you see yourself as a helpless victim of fate. If you feel internally controlled, you see yourself as responsible for the pain and happiness of everyone around you. 13. Fallacy of Fairness – You decide what is fair and feel resentful when other people don’t agree with you. 14. Fallacy of Change – You expect others to change to suit you if you could just pressure them enough. You need to change others because it seems that your hope for happiness depends entirely on them. =============================================== Testing for ANTs There are several methods of evaluating the quality of our beliefs to determine if they are useful to us. Irrational beliefs do not stand up to rational examination. Often only a few questions will be enough to identify a limiting or irrational belief. Below are some questions we can ask in order to identify limiting beliefs that we may want to challenge or dispute: FOUR Questions for Challenging Limiting beliefs 1. How do you KNOW this belief is true? 2. What are the present and future positive benefits of holding this belief? 3. What are the present and future negative consequences of holding this belief? 4. What does this belief say about you? Others? The world? FIVE Rational Questions for your thinking 1. Is my thinking here factual? 2. Will my thinking here best help me protect my life and health? 3. Will my thinking here best help me achieve my short-term and long-term goals? 4. Will my thinking here best help me avoid most undesirable conflicts with others? 5. Will my thinking here best help me feel the emotions I want to feel?