MOJ Addiction Medicine & Therapy
Opinion Open Access
Addiction to automatic negative thoughts: A
perspective from rational emotive behaviour therapy
Abstract Volume 3 Issue 4 - 2017
In the context of psychotherapy there is a huge amount of people complaining about
Montse Rovira
being addicted to their own thoughts especially to automatic negative thoughts that Albert Ellis Institute, USA
are perceived by the person as a cognitive compulsion impossible to avoid. Rational
Emotive Behavior Therapy teaches how to detect this kind of mental habit and gives Correspondence: Montse Rovira, Licensed Psychologist,
us strategies to overcome it by changing the irrational beliefs that are underlying it. Associate Fellow and International Supervisor of Cognitive
Observing, disputing and changing these irrational beliefs using cognitive, emotional Behavior Therapy and Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy of the
and behavioral tactics allow people to live with serenity and to achieve cognitive, Albert Ellis Institute, New York, USA, José del Toro, 6, A 11001
emotional and behavioral goals. Cadiz Spain, Tel +34606369547, Email
[email protected] Keywords: cognitive addiction, automatic negative thoughts, rational emotive Received: May 29, 2017 | Published: May 31, 2017
behaviour therapy, psychotherapy
Introduction front of a sad situation and it is important to understand that negative
emotions are not bad just because they are negative.2 In REBT we
In the context of psychotherapy there is a huge amount of people talk about healthy and unhealthy negative emotions and this is the
complaining about being addicted to their own thoughts. “I just question: knowing how to move from an unhealthy negative emotion
can’t stop thinking this way about it” is a common lament in the to a healthy negative one is the key to live the situation applying the
psychologists’ office. Whatever would be the issue underlying the best strategies to overcome it.
demand for psychological help most people declare to be incapable to
stop thinking in a limiting way that conducts them to feel unhealthy From the psychological view human beings have three interlinked
emotions. These unhealthy emotions use to be the first reason for levels: cognitive, emotional and behavioral. In the cognitive level we
clients to start therapy “I feel depressed”, and the incapability to move ahead or stay stuck depending on our beliefs. Healthy beliefs
control their thoughts is the next difficulty they want to treat since help us to achieve our goals while unhealthy beliefs debilitate us and
they experience it as a sort of cognitive addiction. maintain us involved in an unhealthy range of feelings. Beliefs are our
view of the reality, the way we see the world, others and ourselves.
Albert Ellis the founder of Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy Automatic thoughts are the way in which we internally express our
created the “ABC model” to explain how people disturb themselves. beliefs. So we could say that trough out the thoughts we are aware
In this model “A” stands for adversity, “C” stands for the emotional of what we think, but not always have the same awareness of which
consequence, and “B” stands for the beliefs about it. For example, are the beliefs underpinning these thoughts. The corner stone is the
according with this model a person who is involved in a process of emotional level as far as it gives us the clue to find out what is wrong
divorce may feel depressed about it if the belief is “I shouldn’t be in the cognitive level that pushes us to feel miserable. When we
living this situation in my life”. What the ABC model explains is that have healthy beliefs we feel healthy emotions. Healthy emotions and
what makes us feel in a certain way is not the circumstance itself healthy beliefs contribute to healthy behavior. Healthy behavior and
but the way we think about it which is our perspective of the event. healthy emotions also conduct us to think in a creative way and solve
According with this personal evaluation of the adversity we produce our problems successfully.
thoughts that may help us to overcome the situation or not.
Being addicted to the own thoughts is something that clients have
Mind captivity?
to overcome by acquiring the ability to identify the content of their You are listening to music, reading your favourite novel, or
way of thinking, which is the first step for a cognitive change. Rational enjoying a walk, it does not matter whatever you choose to spend
Emotive Behavior Therapy encourages people to act as a detective, a relaxation time and then something comes to your mind without
looking for the thoughts that appear automatically, observing what your permission. It is an automatic thought carrying you beyond the
they are saying, and being aware that they are only a mindset built present. After some time you become aware that you are not listening
with irrational beliefs that may be changed.1 To identify irrational to the music although you haven’t stop hearing it. Maybe you haven’t
beliefs and then challenge and change them for rational beliefs means stop reading but you are completely missed from the read. You have
to develop a flexible way of thinking that will enable people to achieve arrived to your destiny but you don’t know the route you did. You’ve
their goals. been captured by your thoughts and you feel that you can’t help it.
These thoughts are materialized in two common forms: images and
When someone is mentally harassed with thoughts around an
words. They appear in a persistent and instinctive way either you like
event such as a divorce (continuing with the example) it can be
them or not and normally they follow a negative pattern. It is like a
realistic to feel a negative emotion. Changing the addiction to think
mental channel you are hearing day in and day out, telling always the
in a negative way does not mean to feel positive emotions about it or
same story about you, your present and future life.
feel not emotion at all. It is no realistic pretending to feel happiness in
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© 2017 Rovira. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which
permits unrestricted use, distribution, and build upon your work non-commercially.
Copyright:
Addiction to automatic negative thoughts: A perspective from rational emotive behaviour therapy ©2017 Rovira 126
If the content of your mental channel is nice obviously you will hearing from our mind is true. If minds are simply what brains do3
feel fine, but when you are tuning a cheerless one your emotions we can overcome automatic negative thoughts by using the capacity
will be set on the corresponding level of suffering. According to the of self-reflection, it is developing the ability to think about one’s own
amount, the frequency and the darkness of the content your will feel thinking. One of the main psychological problems in this century is
worse and also may be convinced that you just can’t stop thinking this that we are confused about this important distinction: it is not about
way. From Cognitive Psychology we call this: Automatic Negative thinking a lot but thinking about what we think when we think too
Thoughts (ANT) and you will recognize them because they are much.
repetitive, negative and persistent.
Acknowledgements
The automatic negative thoughts are sustained by beliefs that
always lead to the same direction even though if it does not fit with None.
your vital goals, it is emotional insane and sabotage your actions. What
people do not know is that this is only a cognitive habit that appears Conflict of interest
automatically just because we haven’t done anything to change it. A The author declares no conflict of interest.
baby has not irrational beliefs but as we grow up we shape our mind
with beliefs so strongly installed that we don’t even have a doubt that References
they are true. So if we think that getting divorce is the worse thing that
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could happen to us we will automatically produce a chain of automatic
Therapy Can Change Your Life Forever. New York, USA: Prometheus
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develop feelings of failure versus the own capacity to improve both
our emotions and behavior, losing the hope to change and damning 2. Dryden Windy. Dealing with Emotional Problems. Using Rational-E-
our-selves for it. motive Cognitive Behaviour Therapy. Routledge, UK: A Practitioner’s
Guide, Hove; 2012.
To overcome the addiction to automatic negative thoughts it is
3. Ray Kurzweil. How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought
necessary to start becoming aware of every time our brain speaks Revealed. New York, USA: Viking Books; 2013.
to us in certain way and became aware that not everything we are
Citation: Rovira M. Addiction to automatic negative thoughts: A perspective from rational emotive behaviour therapy. MOJ Addict Med Ther. 2017;3(4):125‒126.
DOI: 10.15406/mojamt.2017.03.00049
