The essential parts of a simple thought record are spaces to record information about: Psychology Tools publish many different types of thought record adapted for specific purposes. Psychologists use a tool called a CBT thought record to help their clients to catch their thoughts.

Writing it down quickly means that you are less likely to forget or dismiss the thought – many people find it very powerful to see their thoughts written down. Whatever it is that goes through your mind the important thing is to write it down as soon as possible after you notice it. have a mental image of my face going red and embarrassing myself). Other people notice that their thoughts are in the form of images (e.g.

Some people notice that they have a lot of verbal thoughts – these thoughts can be like a little sentence of words in your mind (e.g. “what was going through my mind just then?” The most important question that you can ask yourself is: To ‘catch’ your automatic thoughts you need to start paying attention to what is going through your mind: particularly at times when you notice a change in how you are feeling.

They can help us to make changes to our thinking.

They help us to identify any problems with our thinking.

They make our negative automatic thoughts visible to us.

Thought records are an important part of cognitive behavioral treatment for many problems.

Automatic thoughts are very believable, but they can be inaccurate.

These automatic thoughts are often based on assumptions, not facts.

We all have quick and automatic thoughts that just ‘pop’ into our minds.

Key things that you need to know about your thoughts are: “I really messed up that time”) and others are untrue (e.g. More importantly, some are accurate (e.g. “I’ll never be able to do this”, “I’m a waste of space”). “I’m glad I did that”, “I really like being here”), and some are more downbeat (e.g. It follows that if we want to change the way we feel then we will need to make changes to the way we think and act.Įverybody has thousands of thoughts per day. The key message of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is that the way we think (our cognitions) and what we do (our behavior) affects the ways we feel.

Cbt automatic thoughts