Thoughts
What are automatic negative thoughts?
We are, in many ways, working against our hard wiring. Humans are innately designed to scan the environment for danger. This is why it is so easy to notice everything that is not going the way we would like in our lives. Automatic negative thought patterns often run in the background without any conscious effort on our part. This does not mean we are negative people, it simply means our system is doing its best to protect us, prioritizing survival over positivity.
When we tell our brain we are safe through both our words and our thoughts, we send a direct message to the prefrontal cortex letting it know there are no threats nearby.
Picture a control center in your brain with a small operator behind a large volume knob. Their job is to take in all incoming information and decide what is harmful and what is not. When you assure them there is no danger, they turn the pain volume down instead of cranking it up.
The tools in the rest of this module are designed to help you intercept unhelpful thoughts and replace them with ones that support calm, safety, and healing.
Common Types of Negative Thinking
All-or-Nothing Thinking: Seeing things in black-and-white; anything less than perfect feels like total failure.
Overgeneralization: Viewing one negative event as a never-ending pattern.
Mental Filter: Focusing only on a negative detail, darkening your whole outlook.
Disqualifying the Positive: Dismissing positive experiences so they “don’t count.”
Jumping to Conclusions: Making negative assumptions without solid evidence.
Mind Reading: Assuming others think badly of you.
Fortune Telling: Predicting things will go wrong as if it’s certain.
Magnification / Minimization: Exaggerating negatives or downplaying positives.
Emotional Reasoning: Believing negative feelings reflect reality.
Should Statements: Pressuring yourself or others with “should,” “must,” or “ought,” leading to guilt or frustration.
Labeling / Mislabeling: Attaching negative labels to yourself or others instead of describing behavior.
Personalization: Blaming yourself for events outside your control.