ANTS - Automatic Negative Thoughts

ANTs are cynical, gloomy and complaining causing depression and fatalistic attitude.

Realize that your thoughts are real:

You have a thought
Your brain releases chemicals
An electrical transmission goes across your brain
You become aware of what you're thinking

The importance of becoming conscious and intentional is vital to your growth as a human being.

Nine categories of ANTS:

1. Always/never thinking: thinking in words like always, never, no one, everyone, every time, everything
2. Focusing of the negative: seeing only the bad in a situation
3. Fortune-telling: predicting the worst possible outcome
4. Mind reading: believing that you know what others are thinking even thought they haven't told you
5. Thinking with your feelings: believing negative feelings without ever checking them out
6. Guilt beating: thinking in words like should, must, ought or have to
7. Labeling: attaching a negative label to yourself or to someone else
8. Personalizing: investing innocuous events with personal meaning
9. Blaming: blaming someone else for your own problem

Think about the ANTS at your picnic, your life. Write down some of the phrases or sentences, the messages you have given or heard that created difficulty for you. Look at the nine and choose the ones that you really need to notice. The ones that jump out at you.

The first way to catch them and correct them is to notice them and challenge them. Whenever a negative thought goes unchallenged, your mind believes it and your body reacts to it.

So,
1. notice it
2. write it down
And, the way to kill it is to talk back to it and to counter it:
3. talk back to it

Now take the next 10 minutes to notice, write and talk back. Make two columns on your paper and write the ANT in the first column and the response in the column next to it.

Diane Strausser, MSS, LISW, is the CEO of successful relationships studios, focusing on helping people build successful and lasting relationships at home and in the workplace. Call 614.241.4000 to receive your complimentary brochure or visit http://www.successfulrelationships.com.