Let’s continue our quest to develop better thoughts. Here’s a quick recap of what we’ve covered so far:
- If you develop more control over your thoughts, it will improve both your emotions and your behaviors because thoughts, emotions, and behaviors are connected to one another in a bi-directional feedback loop.
- Many of your thoughts are either wrong or unhelpful, so you shouldn’t believe everything you think.
- Many of your thoughts arise automatically.
- It’s easier to choose better thoughts and actions if you cultivate some psychological distance between yourself and your thoughts. For this, it helps to remember that you are not your thoughts.
Today, we’re going to dig a little deeper into the topic of automatic thoughts, look at why so many of our automatic thoughts are negative, and consider what we can do about it.
ANTs in Your Brain?
Enter Dr. Daniel Amen, author of Change Your Brain, Change Your Life. Dr. Amen came up with a helpful shorthand for these unhappy thoughts: A.N.T.s, which stands for automatic negative thoughts. Countless people today are plagued by ANTs, especially those suffering from anxiety or depression.
Negative thoughts aren’t necessarily bad. They’re sometimes accurate reflections of reality, and they’re sometimes helpful. But many of our negative thoughts are unhelpful, biased interpretations of reality. And many people simply have too many ANTs running around in their brain.
Dr. Amen points out our culture has allowed ANTs to proliferate like never before.1 Much of our media constantly highlights the negative, complaining is an accepted form of conversation, much of our food is loaded with sugar and devoid of nutrients, and the alcohol industry actively works to damage our brains. We spend too much time looking at screens and not enough time in nature. We sacrifice sleep, exercise, and family time in the pursuit of money.
On top of that, because we are animals, human nature makes us biased toward focusing on the bad and scary in order to protect ourselves. In Buddha’s Brain, neuroscientist Rick Hanson says that our brains are “Velcro for bad,” meaning that negative stimuli are particularly salient and memorable.2 We’re also prone to worrying too much and bouts of unjustified self-righteous indignation. These tendencies, combined with our culture, make negative thinking is the automatic default setting of many people.
ANTs are obviously harmful to your emotions, but they’re also harmful to your performance. Dr. Amen has done over 100,000 brain scans in his practice as a combination psychiatrist and clinical neuroscientist. Through those scans, he has learned that activity in the cerebellum decreases dramatically when we’re focused on the negative.1 The cerebellum is responsible for physical coordination as well as thought coordination, which means that, when we’re in a spiral of negativity, we’re more clumsy and we get confused more easily.1 We’ve spoken previously about a “happiness advantage” – a boost in performance one gets from being happier3 (See: Is Self-Improvement Selfish?). Well, the flip side of that is that there’s a distinct unhappiness disadvantage,3 and Dr. Amen’s brain scans show why.
But there is hope. ANTs can be recognized for what they are. ANTs can be attacked – squashed or sprayed, metaphorically speaking. And we can take steps to prevent ANTs from entering our consciousness in the first place. Dr. Amen’s brain scans include thousands of before-and-after scans of people who made serious lifestyle changes (diet, exercise, meditation, therapy, journaling, etc.), and these before-and-after images make it very clear that you’re not stuck with the brain you have today.1 You can win the war against ANTs.
Noticing ANTs
The first step in counteracting ANTs is learning to recognize ANTs for what they are – just thoughts.
They’re not necessarily true. They’re usually not helpful. And they are not you. They’re just thoughts that arise automatically.
If you practice recognizing and labeling your ANTs as “ANTs” or as “automatic negative thoughts,” you’ll get better and better at catching them in the moment. This is huge because recognition gives you the power to do something about them. Rather than just believing and embodying your negative thoughts, you can distance yourself from them, argue against them, replace them with more helpful thoughts, and choose better behavioral responses.
Because mindfulness trains up your ability to pay attention to your own thinking, meditation is a simple technique you can use to get better at recognizing ANTs. If you get good at this, when a critical, judgmental, or otherwise unhelpful negative thought pops up as a reaction to something, you’ll find yourself saying to yourself, “That’s an automatic negative thought.” In my experience, this causes one to let go of the thought, effectively kicking the ANT out of your mind.
ANT Spray
There are many ways to combat ANTs. Some involve directly countering negative thoughts with positive ones. Some simply involve distracting yourself with an alternative activity that is too engaging to allow the mind to stay focused on negative thoughts.
Here’s a handful of my favorite forms of ANT spray:
- Spending time in nature
- Reading
- Watching comedy
- Listening to a story (try PodCastle or Levar Burton Reads)
- Remembering that today, like every day, is a bonus day.
- Taking a microbreak or a nap.
The worst version of ANTs is rumination. Ruminating is thinking a recurring series of negative thoughts over and over again, being unable to move on to other lines of thinking. Rumination is a very serious ANT infestation – one that requires an equally serious intervention. In addition to the techniques I’ve just mentioned, therapy and medication may be needed. And, as with any serious psychological challenge, I wouldn’t rely on just one tool or technique; I would run a full-court press.
ANT Prevention
Once you’ve eradicated most of the infestation (a few scrappy stragglers are inevitable), you’ll want to turn your attention to preventing ANTs from coming back. You’ll never prevent all negative thoughts from entering your mind, but you can put up some defenses that make it harder for them to get in, and you can change your mental environment in such a way that the ANTs who do make it in don’t feel as welcome.
Here are some ways you can reduce the frequency and severity of future ANTs:
- The practice of non-complaining
- Consuming daily wisdom
- Loving-kindness meditation
- Gratitude journaling
- Skipping the news
And maybe the most important ANT-prevention strategy is taking good care of your brain. ANTs thrive in brains that are poorly fed, sleep-deprived, and sedentary. So eating well, getting enough sleep, and regular exercise make it harder for ANTs to proliferate. Remember, your brain is your #1 asset, and you don’t want it to be a haven for ANTs.
1 Amen, Daniel G., MD. Change Your Brain, Change Your Life: The Breakthrough Program for Conquering Anxiety, Depression, Obsessiveness, Lack of Focus, Anger, and Memory Problems. Harmony, 2015.
2 Hanson, Rick, Ph.D, with Richard Mendius, M.D. Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love & Wisdom. New Harbinger Publications, Inc., 2009.
3 Achor, Shawn. The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work. Crown Business, 2010.