A cognitive restructuring technique to help you kill the ANTs …

by 0 Comments

A foundational truth to human behavior is this: Our thoughts create our emotions, and the combination of our thoughts and emotions creates our behavior.

So, if you want or need to change either your emotions or your behavior, you must change your thinking.

Counseling clients at Scott Free Clinic are educated about multiple ways to challenge their thinking in order to change their irrational thoughts to more rational (accurate, honest, truthful) thoughts; this process of challenging your irrational thoughts is called “cognitive restructuring.” As those thoughts change, the emotions and behaviors will change in alignment with the thinking.

I’m currently working on my certification as a Brain Health Professional with Amen Clinics through Amen University (Scott Free Clinic will be adding Brain Health Coaching as a seventh core service later this year!), and I like a cognitive restructuring technique Dr. Daniel Amen uses with his clients and teaches in his Brain Health Professional program.

Human begins experience tens of thousands of thoughts every day, most of which we’re not aware of. The problem with that is a majority of these thoughts are irrational, or what are also referred to as “automatic negative thoughts.” As a learning tool with his clients, Dr. Amen refers to these Automatic Negative Thoughts as “ANTs” and warns his clients of allowing an “ANT infestation.” To guard against that, Amen teaches his clients that they need to “kill the ANTS” and they need an “ANTeater.”

The “ANTeater” Dr. Amen teaches widely is learning to ask four questions, originally develop by Byron Katie, to challenge your irrational thoughts. Here’s the process, and the four questions Dr. Amen teaches as one cognitive restructuring technique:

Whenever you feel sad, mad, nervous, etc., write down the ANT (automatic negative thought) in your head so you can evaluate it by asking yourself these four questions:

1. Is it true?

2. Can I absolutely know it is true?

3. How do I feel when I believe this thought?

4. Who would I be without this thought?

Then turn around the original thought to be the opposite of what you had written down and see if this is actually truer than the original thought.

I think this cognitive restructuring technique can be very effective, so we’ll be adding it to the educational work we do at Scott Free Clinic.

Whenever you have ANTS crawling around in your head, try this technique, it might be just the anteater you need.

Scotty