What to Do Now—journaling Automatic Thoughts

If our thoughts and feelings are causing us trouble, making us miserable, or causing us to act out in ways we don’t want to, how can we get a better picture of this cycle and learn how to change it? Our thoughts are going on continuously, creating our emotions, and we rarely stop to really think about what they mean. If we take stock of the situations that have caused us problems throughout the day, though, we can often recognize what we were thinking at the time. At first this will take a bit of effort, but once we realize the negative thoughts that we’re having habitually, we can create a new habit of recognizing them almost as soon as they pop up.

Keeping a journal of our automatic thoughts—the thoughts that cause our feelings in any given situation—can help us to see them more consciously. Not everyone can carry a journal around with them and write down automatic thoughts as soon as they arise, but this isn’t necessary. At the end of the day, look back over the situations in which you felt anxious, sad, angry, or uncomfortable. Write down exactly what was happening. Use as many details as possible. As you do this, try to remember what your thoughts were at the time. It helps if you keep it in present tense. Were you thinking along the lines of one of the cognitive distortions? Were you thinking negative things about yourself or the people around you? Were you thinking negatively about the events that were going on at the time? Here’s a sample of what an entry might look like:

I am at work and I start to feel anxious. One minute I’m working on an upcoming project, and the next minute I’m so distracted by worry that I can’t even think about what I’m supposed to be doing. It seemed to come out of nowhere. I’m in my cubicle, typing, and my boss walks by and looks at me before moving on. Why did he look at me like that? Does he think that I’m not working hard enough? Does he think that I’m not going to get the project done on time? Is he trying to see if I was taking care of personal business while I am working? I hope he doesn’t think that I’m not a hard worker.

This is a simplified view of the process. Here we can see what the person was thinking when the anxiety hit them. They were thinking that their boss thinks that they don’t do a good job. This automatic assessment of the simple act of the boss stopping to glance in their direction while walking past causes anxiety, although the person doesn’t even seem to relate the thought and the feeling at the time. Journaling our automatic thoughts in this way can help us to eventually get to the underlying negative core beliefs. After going through this process several times, we can start to make the connection between what we’re thinking and the resulting emotions. Once we’re better at recognizing negative automatic thoughts as soon as they occur, we can learn ways of coping with them, and this will reduce the effect they have on our feelings and actions at any given moment.