Automatic Thoughts, Assumptions, and Core Beliefs
In This Chapter
- Identifying automatic thoughts
- Reframing your reactions
- The problem with jumping to conclusions
- Finding and changing your core beliefs
You interpret the world around you instantly, without any conscious effort. As you go through the day, thoughts pop into your mind, telling you how to feel and how to react. You probably don’t even realize this is happening because it occurs in a split second. Suppose you are at a party and run into an old friend. You feel happy and excited to see someone you know. Thoughts about times you spent together occur so quickly, you might not pay attention to them fully. You probably focus more on how you are feeling. You assume that seeing your friend made you feel happy, however it is your interpretation, your thoughts about the fun times you had together, that caused you to feel happy.
Your First Reaction
Remember, it isn’t the event itself, but how you interpret the event, that creates your emotions. The immediate thoughts you have, the ones that occur spontaneously and without your consent, are called automatic thoughts. They are not planned and you don’t spend time thinking them through. Often, you don’t even realize you had a thought. Your automatic thoughts are a reflection of how you see yourself, other people, and the world around you.
Automatic thoughts can be positive or negative, depending on how you view the situation. If you see someone you know but cannot recall her name, your automatic thoughts might be, “How do I know her? She looks so familiar but I can’t remember her name. I can still say hi…” or “I can’t think of that person’s name. I am so stupid; I blow everything.”
DEFINITION
Automatic thoughts are those thoughts that pop in your mind without consent. They are present with or without your awareness.
As you worked through the exercises in Chapter 2, you learned to separate your emotions from your immediate reaction—your automatic thoughts. You learned that these thoughts drive your emotions. Even though they happen in an instant, you can learn to listen to, label, and then dispute your automatic thoughts and therefore change how you see yourself, others, and the world around you.
Your Turn: Listening to Self-Talk
Close your eyes. Imagine a situation where you had a mildly negative reaction. Visualize the scenario in your mind. As you replay the scene, try to connect with the emotion and listen to what you are saying to yourself.
Jot down your thoughts.
This exercise helps you to develop the ability to connect to what you are telling yourself. As you continue to practice, you will be able to better tune in to your self-talk as a situation is unfolding rather than having to look back on it later.
STOP AND THINK
Metacognition refers to being aware of your thoughts. As you practice, you will learn to be more in tune with your automatic thoughts and become more metacognitive.
Negative Automatic Thoughts
Negative automatic thoughts are often a reflection of a poor self-image, a sour or vulnerable view of your environment, or a belief that a situation is going to turn out poorly. These types of thoughts usually lead to negative emotions such as anger, anxiety, sadness, or guilt.
Some examples of negative automatic thoughts:
- He isn’t interested in me. I’m so ugly. I will always be lonely.
- I don’t feel well. I must be sick. There is something wrong with me.
- I overslept. I’m so stupid. Now I’m going to get fired.
- Tom is in a bad mood today. It must be my fault.
- My boss criticizes me. He’s so arrogant. I can’t deal with him.
- This project is so hard. I’ll never get it done. I can’t do anything.
- This person is annoying me. All my relationships fail. This one will, too. I should just give up now.
- I know I’ll make a fool of myself when explaining this project to my co-workers.
- My friend was going through a hard time and I didn’t call her. I am a terrible friend; she probably won’t ever talk to me again.
- That salesperson was rude. I must have upset her.
- My husband asked me to do the laundry. Why is he on my case?
- My mother is calling. I wonder what she wants from me now.
When left to run rampant, your negative automatic thoughts impact your mood, self-esteem, and overall feelings of happiness. It is easier and more believable for you to think negatively about yourself than to think positively. These thoughts also tend to be self-fulfilling. If you tell yourself you are going to fail, chances are you will.
Changing Negative Self-Talk
Learning to listen to your automatic thoughts is the first step toward changing them and taking on a more positive view. Once you stop and hear what you are telling yourself, you can challenge the thought, come up with alternative thoughts, and decide which thought you want to keep.
Imagine you are in a store and the sales clerk is rude. You immediately assume you have done something to make the sales clerk annoyed, even though you aren’t sure what that could be. Instead, think about alternative explanations. You might think, “She seems very upset; maybe she is having a bad day. Maybe she doesn’t feel well. Maybe her boss just yelled at her. Maybe she had a fight with her spouse right before she came to work.” There are many different explanations that could explain why the clerk was abrupt with you—and none of them have anything to do with you. By changing the way you look at the situation, you change your reaction. Instead of acting defensively and getting irritated, you approach the clerk with a smile, trying to make her day a little more pleasant.
Automatic thoughts are often based on partial information. You don’t take time to analyze the thoughts that pop into your mind. Because they are based on your past experiences and beliefs, they are believable; therefore, you trust them as the truth. Even so, they can be distorted or wrong. For example, if after making a mistake you say to yourself, “I always do something wrong,” that would be untrue. It is impossible that you always do something wrong; there must have been times you have done something right. You filtered out those times, focusing only on the times you did something wrong.
In order to have a more balanced and positive perspective, you need to stop, pay attention to your thoughts, and dispute their validity, if necessary. One way to do that is to use your ABC chart.
In Chapter 2, we introduced the idea of problematic thinking patterns, assigning labels to your automatic thoughts and questions to ask yourself to dispute those thoughts. Now you are going to practice coming up with alternate ways of thinking. Use questions listed after each problematic thinking pattern in Chapter 2 to guide you thought this process. It is important to keep in mind that there are no right or wrong answers. The goal is to help you to feel and manage problematic situations better by changing unhealthy perspectives.
The following is an example of using a version of the ABC chart to aid you in challenging your immediate reaction:
In this example, your immediate reaction was to become angry and blame your husband. Based on the problematic thinking processes outlined in Chapter 2, look over the chart and see if you notice personalization and blame, labeling, overgeneralizing, and emotional reasoning in Column B. Notice the types of questions in Column D that can be used to combat these unhealthy thinking processes.
Once you have thought about the questions and challenged your immediate reaction, you may come up with different perspectives on the situation, such as:
- He is forgetful when it comes to social plans. I could have added our vacation to his work calendar so there wouldn’t be any work conflicts.
- I know he is going away on a business trip. Maybe he wants to make sure we spend some time together before he leaves.
- We all do things that are convenient for us sometimes. That does not make him a selfish person.
- We communicate well most of the time, on most issues. We need to work on how we can communicate better about our schedules so we both have all the information.
- He did not do this to upset me. On the contrary, he was trying to spend time with me, not hurt me.
When you first found out your husband changed the dates of your vacation without talking to you first, you were hurt and angry. But now, as you ask yourself questions to challenge that reaction, you see the situation differently. Your new conclusion might be: “My husband loves me and wants to spend time with me. We should sit down together to work out a plan so we can make the most of our time off work and spend time together.”
Your Turn: Questions to Ask Yourself
Over the next week, as soon as you notice a negative emotion (anger, anxiety, sadness), write down five questions you can ask yourself to challenge your thoughts.
Some examples of questions include the following:
- What emotion am I feeling?
- Where do I feel the emotion in my body?
- What was I thinking right before and when this feeling started?
- What am I afraid might happen?
- Can I imagine myself coping with that outcome?
- What is the self-talk I hear myself saying when I see myself managing the outcome?
When you accept your own ideas as true without actual proof, you make an assumption. You fail to ask for more information and don’t bother to look for evidence. If you act on your unhealthy thinking patterns without challenging them, it is likely you are making assumptions.
Some assumptions you make are correct; for example, your dog is standing by the door barking. You assume he needs to go outside. Sometimes, assumptions keep you safe; for example, you may be visiting a city you have never been to and assume it is not safe to walk through the streets by yourself.
However, sometimes assumptions can become limiting. For example, when you visit a city and don’t feel safe walking alone, you might assume that the only way to be safe is to stay inside your hotel. This limits your behavior. Instead, you could challenge your belief and come up with solutions, such as talking to the concierge about the surrounding area and what places would be safe for you to go alone, signing up for guided tours, or taking a taxi.
Some assumptions are unhelpful. Imagine you text your wife and she does not reply. You continue to text throughout the day and try calling her a few times. She doesn’t answer her phone and doesn’t text back. You make the assumption that she is ignoring you and are angry. When you get home, you see her phone still sitting on the kitchen table. You realize she hasn’t been ignoring you, she forgot her phone. You spent the day angry, assuming something based on partial information—you didn’t receive any texts—but without knowing all the facts.
When you make assumptions, you…
- Miss opportunities—you want to invite a friend to the movies but assume she will say no so you don’t bother asking.
- Make errors in judgments and decisions—you assume the person in front of you in line is a bad person because of the way he is dressed.
- Misunderstand others—you assume your friend doesn’t want to spend time with you because she didn’t call you back right away.
- Have a hard time making decisions—you imagine too many scenarios so you don’t make any choice.
Assumptions are stories you create to help you understand the people and the world around you. These stories often have nothing to do with reality. Assumptions add to your problems rather than creating a resolution. Sometimes you feel as if you need to make a decision right now and don’t bother to wait until all of the information becomes available. You jump to a conclusion based on only the information you have, which is usually not the whole story.
Your Turn: Turning Assumptions Around
There are six steps to turning assumptions around and reacting to the situation:
- Write down the situational facts you know.
- Write down the assumptions you are making.
- Identify your problematic thought processes.
- Write down any extraneous information you know.
- Determine the possible actions you can take.
- Select a response to the situation using on the facts you have.
The next time you find yourself making an assumption, stop and follow the steps. Doing this will insure you don’t act rashly based on partial information. Let’s look at an example.
Situation: You are expecting a call from your friend Cheryl about meeting after work for some dinner. She said she would call you this afternoon but it is almost time to leave work and she hasn’t called yet.
Step 1 Facts:
Cheryl said she would call this afternoon. It is almost time to leave work. She hasn’t called yet.
Step 2 Assumptions:
Cheryl is ignoring me.
Cheryl doesn’t want to have dinner with me.
Cheryl is still working on the project and doesn’t have time to go to dinner.
Step 3 Negative Thinking Patterns:
Fortune-telling—Making an error in reasoning without knowing all the information and filling in information you don’t know.
Step 4 Extraneous Facts:
She told me she has a lot of work these days. Her boss is a tyrant.
Step 5 Actions:
I can call or email Cheryl to see if she still wants to meet for dinner.
I can wait a little longer to see if she calls and if not, I can eat at home and meet her another night.
I can make plans with another friend and invite Cheryl to join us if she calls.
I will call another friend. If Cheryl does call, she can join us. I’ll keep my cell phone on.
STOP AND THINK
We usually assume people think just like we do, without giving them credit for having their own thoughts and ideas. In order to stop making assumptions, you must accept that others have the right to think in their own way. Your job is not to guess how they are thinking but to ask and listen carefully to the answer.
Tips for Eliminating Assumptions
Just as you need to “catch” the automatic thoughts and make a conscious effort to change them, you can listen to your self-talk and learn not to make assumptions.
Ask questions. When you find yourself making an assumption, ask questions to clarify what you think. Find out as much information about the situation or the person as you can.
Listen. In order to really listen to another person, you have to be willing to put aside your assumptions and focus on what they are saying. Be totally in the present moment; try repeating back their words instead of jumping in with your thoughts.
Give the benefit of the doubt. We often jump to conclusions about what someone else has done—and usually we first consider the negative. In a previous example, you might have jumped to the conclusion that your wife was intentionally ignoring when she didn’t answer your calls or text you back. If you gave her the benefit of the doubt, you would have waited until you could speak to her to find out what was going on.
Consider the past. You might ignore the positive aspects of the past and filter only the negative aspects that fit with your current view of the situation. For example, if your wife normally texts you back, why would she ignore you today? Look at the situation as a whole instead of a single incident.
GIVE IT A TRY
Think about a past experience where you based your reaction on what you assumed without gaining more information, or a time where you assumed a bad outcome before the situation played out, only to find out later you were wrong. Ask yourself: what one piece of information would I have wanted to know in order to make a better decision?
Resist stereotypes. Placing a label on someone is making an assumption about his or her character without finding out any information. Prejudice about ethnicity, religion, gender, or appearance is an assumption about a group of people.
Ask yourself if you are making a rational decision or jumping to a conclusion. Ask yourself if you have enough information to make a judgment or a decision, or if you need to gather additional information. Remember, no matter how long you have known someone, you can’t know what they are thinking; it is always better to give someone the respect of asking instead of jumping to a conclusion.
Your Turn: Uncovering Your Assumptions
Assumptions are based on unhelpful thinking processes, usually fortune-telling (making predictions without adequate information) or mind reading (believing you know what someone else is thinking). To discover when you most often jump to assumptions, complete the following sentence:
When I am feeling upset, I assume someone is…
- Going to reject me.
- Putting me in a vulnerable situation by…
- Going to say no to my request.
- Planning to criticize me by saying…
- Going to hurt me emotionally or cause me pain by…
- Angry with me.
Think back to a situation when you jumped to an assumption. Was one of these reasons behind the assumption? If so, which one? If not, what caused you to assume something?
Is there an assumption you still hold that is stopping you from moving forward or doing something? What is the reason behind the assumption?
Try using the steps in the previous exercise to work through your assumption and come to a different conclusion. Commit to acting based on information you know. Commit to asking definite questions to find out more information.
Core beliefs are those beliefs you hold strongly. They indicate how you see yourself and others and how you view the world. They are usually rigid and inflexible beliefs that developed in childhood or because of a significant life event. Negative core beliefs are often related to the following:
- I am not good enough.
- I am unlovable.
- I am bad.
- I am a defective human being.
- I am powerless.
- I am not safe.
Taking the time to analyze what you are thinking helps to identify negative thinking. However, core beliefs are harder to identify as they are hidden below layers of problematic thoughts. You sometimes have to dig deep to find the underlying core belief. Uncovering your core belief goes something like this:
Imagine you didn’t get a promotion at work after you took initiative and put in overtime. Your thoughts might be:
- I didn’t get the promotion.
- I don’t try hard enough at work.
- Because of this I will never get a promotion.
- I will always be in the same position.
- I am not good enough.
There are a few problematic thinking patterns here.
- You made several generalizations, using “never,” and “always.”
- You jumped to conclusions, such as “I will never get a promotion” and “I will always be in the same position.”
- You may have been trying to combat these negative thoughts, but you found they continued to surface because you have not gotten down to the core belief. Until you address the negative belief that you are not good enough, addressing the other issues might not work.
If you have the tendency to use one or two problematic thinking processes, you can create coping statements to counter the unhelpful thought patterns.
DEFINITION
A coping statement is a statement that counters your most sensitive struggles and gets you to focus on where you have control, who you are committed to, or how you are feeling.
Coping Statements:
- De-generalize: “Not everything is going to go my way.”
- Don’t jump to conclusions: “I have no evidence that I won’t get promoted next time. Two people senior to me recently got promoted, so I am next in line.”
- Deal with core beliefs: “Because I didn’t get what I want, it doesn’t mean I am a failure.”
Look over the different problematic thinking processes in Chapter 2. Do you have a dominant style? Create a coping statement to help remind you of the alternate thoughts.
IMAGINE THAT
You may not completely believe your core beliefs, but even those you partially believe impact your behavior. For example, you are going on a job interview and you say, “It will be a good interview; I am going to get this job,” even though you don’t believe it completely. You think you have a 50 percent chance of being offered the job. Even so, you dress appropriately, are well-groomed, bring along your resume, and act professionally. You don’t need to completely believe the interview will be successful in order to make good decisions.
Use coping statements to help you deal with situations that repeat themselves. For example, you are always worried your boss is angry about something you did wrong. Your coping statement might be. “I know my boss is in a bad mood sometimes. It isn’t about me.” Whenever you notice you are personalizing the situation at work, repeat your coping statement.
Your Turn: Rating Core Beliefs
When challenging your core beliefs, think about how much you believe something. For example, suppose you come home late from a night out with your friends. Your wife is angry that you didn’t call to say you would be late and yells at you when you enter the house.
Core belief: I am no good. I can’t do anything right.
Ask yourself, how often does your wife think you can’t do anything right? How often does she think you are inconsiderate? Rate your answers on a scale of 0 to 100 percent. You might think that your wife thinks you are inconsiderate 20 percent of the time, which means that 80 percent of the time she believes you are considerate.
Your coping statement might be: “Most of the time I am a considerate husband. Most of the time I am doing an okay job.”
Develop New Core Beliefs
Just as you challenged other negative thinking processes, you can challenge your core beliefs. Try to gather evidence decrease the strength of your belief.
Core belief: I am not good enough.
Experiences to disprove this belief:
- My boss has complimented my work in the past.
- I have gotten raises on a regular basis.
- I have been asked to do special projects.
- At my last job I received a promotion.
Once you list past experiences that go against your belief, you can look at it in a more balanced way. For example, “I didn’t get this promotion but have received compliments on my work in the past, therefore I am good enough.”
In Chapter 10, you will learn about behavioral experiments and how to test your predictions and core beliefs. For now, you can create a simple hypothesis about your belief and then gather evidence to proof or disprove your ideas and beliefs about yourself.
Write down a core belief you have about yourself. List any past experiences that go against this belief. Although you may not completely disprove your core belief, you may have to revise it to say it is not always true. For example, suppose you don’t have any friends and believe you will always be lonely. You write down a list of all the people you have been friends with throughout your life. You realize that although you don’t have any friends right now, you have had friends before; therefore, you can have friends again. You revise your core belief to, “I don’t have any friends right now, but I have had friends in the past and can have friends again if I make the effort. I am lonely now, but I won’t always be lonely.”
The Least You Need to Know
- Automatic thoughts are those that pop into your head without consent. These thoughts reflect how you view yourself, others, and the world around you.
- Listening to and changing your automatic thoughts can change how you view and react to a situation.
- Assumptions are based on partial information. Taking time to gather more information helps you make better judgments and decisions.
- A core belief is a strong belief you hold about yourself. Core beliefs can be challenged just as your thoughts can.