Physical abuse contributes to the development of automatic negative thinking patterns. Under abusive situations in childhood, especially prolonged ones, children’s negative thoughts and thinking patterns may be constantly activated, leading to a disturbed and pessimistic view of themselves, their experience, and the world. High levels of self-criticism are associated with depression. Self-critical thinking refers to the internal dialogue that constantly and often harshly expresses anger and contempt towards oneself when one cannot achieve desired results. It is also associated with negative automatic thoughts. Maladaptive perfectionism is a mental trait that tends to demand flawless performance and observes deviances from such expectations as a threat to self-esteem. Neuroticism, a reflection of emotional instability and stress sensitivity, is also related to developing depressive symptoms and automatic negative thoughts. Personality traits are associated with depressive thinking. Life events, worries, and traumatic stressors, such as the death of a loved one, sickness, relationship turmoil, or separation, can aid in or trigger automatic negative thoughts. Social cognitive theory suggests that a person’s negative thought processing system is usually inactive however, stressful life events may activate this system, affecting one’s interpretations of events in life that can manifest as automatic negative thoughts and emotional pain. This refers to almost reflexively finding fault in oneself or another instead of discerning the problem through a neutral, investigative lens.Ĭauses and Risk Factors Automatic Negative Thoughts Within the context of automatic negative thoughts, this may look like, “I feel like a failure, so everyone must think I am one, and I guess I am one.” Self-blame or Other-blame Emotional ReasoningĮmotional reasoning refers to treating your feelings like facts and letting them guide you to make judgments about your state. Magnification is also referred to as catastrophizing. Magnification and minimization refer to either blowing things up or shrinking them out of proportion. These distortions can include mindreading, which assumes one knows what others are thinking without ample evidence, and fortune-telling, which involves making pessimistic and upsetting predictions for the future. Jumping to conclusions can mean prematurely coming to conclusions about ideas that could cause pain. I didn’t do anything particularly well.” Jumping to Conclusions Essentially, it discounts good things that happen to a person and often sounds like, “They’re just being nice. Disqualifying the Positiveĭisqualifying the positive means not applying the same weight to positive events as negative ones. It often manifests as pessimistic thinking. Mental filtering refers to picking specific (usually only negative) parts of an event and applying them universally. No one will ever accept me.” Mental Filtering For example, in the face of rejection, a person might think, “I am no good. Overgeneralization occurs when a person draws universal conclusions from single events. I am a total failure.” Overgeneralization Automatic thoughts that arise from this form of thinking, when a mistake is made might be, “I always mess everything up. 6 All-or-Nothing ThinkingĪll-or-nothing thinking refers to seeing the world in dichotomous, absolute, black-or-white terms. Some examples of automatic thoughts and their corresponding cognitive distortions as listed below. Types and Examples of Automatic Negative Thoughts David Burns’s 1980 best-selling book, Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy, massively popularized the concept of automatic negative thoughts and the cognitive distortions from which they arise. Beck suggested that “negative automatic thoughts, generated by dysfunctional beliefs, were the cause of depressive symptoms, and not vice versa.” 4 According to Beck, maladaptive self-schema, or dysfunctional mental, emotional, bodily, and attitudinal patterns developed in early life, affect a person at core levels, and dysfunctional patterns can become triggered due to adverse life events, leading to negative thoughts. Aaron Beck’s work on the cognitive theory of depression first emphasized the key role of negative thoughts on depression. After a person experiences a stressful event, the way that a person processes information may lead to the development of automatic negative thoughts. 1 Automatic thoughts are “predominantly automatic… involuntary and hard to inhibit.” 2 They are reflexive and often evade conscious control or scrutiny. According to the cognitive model of therapy, automatic negative thoughts are self-statements influenced by negative underlying core beliefs and include negative thoughts about oneself, perceived threats from others, and the future.
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