Automatic Negative Thoughts: How They Cause Anxiety and How to Manage Them

Acronyms are typically highly irritating, highly political, and difficult to remember. However, the one acronym a person affected with social anxiety, or any other anxiety disorder should be aware of is ANTS: Automatic Negative Thoughts. In fact, the acronym is not even needed if one prefers the use of the previous phrase, however sometimes acronyms are better at grasping people's attention than the use of a descriptive phrase.

So, what is an automatic negative thought? This is the thought that begins to flood into a person's thinking as soon as the anxiety-provoking person or situation appears. People with anxiety disorders who make a silly and easily forgivable mistake such as bumping over a glass of water at a restaurant may have their minds completely flooded with thoughts such as, "I'm an idiot. I am so clumsy, and all the other people at the restaurant are looking and laughing at me," or, "Wow, it's amazing that anybody wants to be around me at all because I do such stupid things." These thoughts are there in a person's ahead before that person even realizes that he or she is anxious.

So, can a person do anything to counter this so that person does not encounter such horrendous anxiety over very small events? If so, how? The anxiety is so powerful and so sudden that it seems as though it would be impossible to reverse such a process! But, it can certainly be reversed!

It is very, very difficult for even the most experienced anxiety sufferer to cut off the thinking and come back to reality when such a situation occurs. In general, the Anxiety Support Network supports a preventative approach to treating anxiety, which is certainly difficult to prove, but based on experience seems to be the best way to treat anxiety. Preventative means that a person is engaging in regular exercise, dieting, counseling, talking to supportive friends, use of medication, and other anxiety-processing behaviors and techniques. The more one works to process anxiety, the less one experiences in the first place, and this means that automatic negative thoughts will cease entirely, or that they will be much weaker in terms of their effects on the anxiety sufferer's physiology. Employing one or many of these strategies can be very beneficial to the person in question.

However, even though preventative strategies can be very beneficial, they are not totally perfect and will not totally eliminate automatic negative thoughts. In this case a few strategies can be used that will help to cease the effects of the automatic negative thoughts. The first thing to know is that this anxiety, though difficult, will pass. Being confident and realizing that nothing is forever will help one to realize that this situation will pass, and when one's belief begins to change from "this is horrible and it will never end" to "this is tough but it will end," one's body follows in response. The body will begin to relax because the anxiety sufferer realizes that in fact everything will be okay.

The other strategy that can be useful is to counter the anxious thoughts with more realistic thoughts, and if one is having a trying time finding more realistic thoughts, the help of friends or family members can be enlisted. For example, if the social anxiety sufferer feels that everyone is "watching him or her," he or she could put his or her eyes up and look at everyone else. When one looks around, one realizes that most people in fact are not looking at him or her, but in fact those people are much more concerned with what they are doing in their own lives. Or, perhaps the general anxiety sufferer is worrying that the wheels of his or her car are going to fall off and that he or she is going to die in a car accident. Well, just how likely is that to happen? The answer is, not very. If the person is feeling particularly bothered, he or she can ask a friend or neighbor to inspect his or her wheels and ensure that they are in fact in good condition and will not fall off. For the anxious person, it is important to be grounded in reality and not some sort of silly anxious scenario, and when one thinks about it, many of the scenarios dreamt up by anxiety sufferers are very silly indeed! Good luck, and hopefully this article has helped the reader to understand what automatic negative thoughts are and how to effectively deal with them!