Automatic Thoughts: What Are They And How Do They Control Us?
Surely the phrase “I feel like I live on autopilot” is familiar to you, either because you heard someone say it or because you repeat it yourself. In fact, it is a very common habit. Today’s lifestyle is fast-paced, monotonous and repetitive, causing most people to only notice a small percentage of all the activities they do on a daily basis. Our brain, and specifically our memory, has a great capacity to record repeated behaviors and can manage so that we need less attention and concentration to carry them out.
For example: The first time we drive, our attention is maximum on the vehicle, the steering wheel, the speeds, the mirrors and the road, but after a period of practice less concentration is needed, the movements do not require greater effort due to that are stored in the wonderful storehouse of memory. Something similar happens with automatic thoughts
As we adopt a habit, our nervous system internalizes it. This type of recording is carried out even at the neuronal level
When someone pinches us, for example, the neurons immediately communicate and send information from the axon of one to the dendrite of another, producing a connection through synapses, which sends a message of pain that causes the reaction to the stimulus, that sensation. It is immediately recorded and if someone pinches us again with the same intensity it is likely that we will not react in the same way. The reason? The information perceived is not new and does not surprise the neurons; it would be necessary to change the stimulus or intensify it to provoke a reaction again.
The same thing happens with everyday life and with the experiences that we repeat every day, where we immerse ourselves in automatic movements and behaviors
Now, these behaviors are not only those that are carried out or come from the outside, such as walking, driving a vehicle or receiving a strong stimulus on our skin, but we also have behaviors inside us. They are the thoughts.
In fact, according to the theories of Cognitive Psychology, a large part of external actions and emotions depend on thoughts. And, like our physical behavior, thoughts also become automatic
automatic thoughts
Is the existence of these thoughts really a problem? It is for that person who begins to feel bad in different areas of their life; personal, work or family and begins to suffer symptoms of sadness, anxiety, worries or any other factor causing physical, social or emotional imbalance, also understanding that the individual, on many occasions, does not even know why he or she feels this way.
Automatic thinking is repeated many times and has great influence on emotions, causing what is called cognitive rumination and its content is generally loaded with a negative perception of the individual. This information lasts only a few seconds but has great power
Have you noticed how any object looks after a mouse eats it little by little? Next thing you know, there’s a big hole! So that’s it mental rumination , little by little it creates a mark and from repeating itself so much a hole begins to form. If you don’t catch the “mouse” the situation can get out of hand.
Thoughts as simple as “I’m no good” are enough to develop a behavior of avoiding any activity that is considered useful because an irrational belief has already been created and the memory has recorded it so many times that many experiences will cause it to be activated.
How to identify and manage them?
There are many techniques to identify and manage automatic thoughts, and whether they work or not will depend on each person’s capabilities, but The first thing that is always recommended is to seek help from a Psychology professional Going to therapy is a beautiful path that will lead you to question many things and identify the traps that you set for yourself.
But beyond these types of services, there are tools that can be practiced at home and are very useful. One of them is self-registration. This technique is one of the most used in cognitive-behavioral therapy and requires a lot of commitment and discipline. It consists of recording your own behaviors (thoughts) and keeping track of them. It seems easy, right? The truth is that it requires a great level of concentration, precisely so that what is automatic stops being so.
As mentioned before, many emotions are caused by distorted ideas, for this reason self-recording consists of identifying the thoughts causing psychological discomfort, searching the mind those beliefs that trigger negative symptoms This is hard and exhausting work, but it works, and when you realize those automatic thoughts and their content you understand how absurd and untrue they can be.
Another way to get rid of some of these cognitive ruminations is to consciously insert positive thoughts that can counteract the negative ones. The difficult thing about this is that saying “nice” things to yourself is overrated, because since these types of self-affirmations are not registered in memory, it causes difficulties in remembering them and thinking about them.
One way to solve this can be seen in the experiment of WG Johnson (1971), in which he helped a 17-year-old student to increase the rate of positive self-affirmations She instructed him to imagine positive thoughts every time she went to the bathroom. Did it work? Wow yes! At the end of this experiment the student had noticeably increased positive thoughts and negative thoughts had almost disappeared. The reason for this success? Johnson relied on the principle formulated by David Premack (1959) that dictates that a behavior that has a low probability of occurring (positive thoughts) can increase if it is combined with a behavior that has a high probability of occurring (going to the bathroom).
The human mind is a beautiful world mysterious and extremely interesting, fully understanding it is still a long way off but despite this remember, you are not always reacting to the outside world, sometimes, you are the one who creates your own reactions.
Author: David Custodio Hernández, Clinical psychologist.
