Automatic thoughts: what are they and how do they control us?

Surely the phrase "I feel like I live on autopilot" is familiar to you, either because you heard it from someone or because you repeat it to yourself. It is actually a very common habit. Today's lifestyle is fast-paced, monotonous and repetitive, making most of the people are aware of only a small percentage of all the activities they do on a daily basis day. Our brain, and specifically our memory, has a great capacity to register repeated behaviors and can manage so that we need less attention and concentration to carry them out.

For example: The first time we drive, attention is paid to the vehicle, the steering wheel, the speeds, the mirrors and the road, but after a practice time less concentration is needed, the movements do not require more effort because they are stored in the wonderful warehouse of the memory. Something similar happens with automatic thoughts.

• Related article: "The 9 types of thought and their characteristics"

Habits based on neural connections

As we adopt a habit, our nervous system internalizes it.

This type of recording is carried out even at the neural level.

When someone pinches us, for example, the neurons immediately communicate and send information from the axon of one to the dendrite of another. another, producing a connection by synapse, which sends a message of pain that causes the reaction to the stimulus, that sensation it is immediately recorded and if someone pinches us again with the same intensity it is likely that we will not react in the same way The reason? The perceived information is not new and does not surprise the neurons; it would be necessary to change the stimulus or intensify it to provoke a reaction again.

The same happens with daily life and with the experiences that we repeat every day, where we immerse ourselves in automatic movements and behaviors.

However, these behaviors are not only those that are carried out or come from the outside, such as walking, drive a vehicle or receive a strong stimulus on our skin, but we also have behaviors in our inside. They are the thoughts.

In fact, according to the theories of Cognitive Psychology, a large part of external actions and emotions depend on thoughts. And, just like our physical behavior, thoughts also become automatic.

• Related article: "What is the synaptic gap and how does it work?"

automatic thoughts

Is the existence of these thoughts really a problem? It is for that person who begins to feel bad in the different areas of her life; personal, work or family and begins to suffer symptoms of sadness, anxiety, concerns or any other factor causing physical, social or emotional imbalance, also understanding that the individual, on many occasions, does not even know why he feels that way.

Automatic thought is repeated many times and has a great influence on emotions causing what is called cognitive rumination and generally its content is loaded with a negative perception of the individual. This information lasts only a few seconds but has great power..

Have you noticed how any object remains after a mouse eats it little by little? When you realize, there is a big hole! So that's it mental ruminationLittle by little, it creates a mark and from repeating itself so much, a hole begins to form. If you don't hunt the "mouse" the situation can get out of hand.

Thoughts as simple as "I'm useless" are enough to start developing an avoidance behavior of any activity that is considered useful because an irrational belief has already been created and memory has recorded it so many times that many experiences will make it active.

• Related article: "Rumination: the annoying vicious circle of thought"

How to identify and manage them?

There are many techniques to identify and manage automatic thoughts, and whether they work or not will depend on the abilities of each person, but The first thing that is always recommended is to seek help from a Psychology professional.. Going to therapy is a beautiful path that will lead you to question many things and identify the traps that you set for yourself.

But beyond this type of service, there are tools that can be practiced at home and are very useful. One of them is self-registration. This technique is one of the most widely used in cognitive behavioral therapy And it requires a lot of commitment and discipline. It consists of recording your own behaviors (thoughts) and keeping track of them. Seems easy, right? The truth is that it requires a great level of concentration, precisely so that what is automatic ceases to be.

As mentioned before, many of the emotions are caused by distorted ideas, for this reason the Self-registration consists of identifying the thoughts that cause psychological discomfort, searching the mind those beliefs that trigger negative symptoms. This is hard and exhausting work, but it works, and when you become aware of these automatic thoughts and their content, you understand how absurd and untrue they can be.

Another way to get rid of some of these cognitive ruminations is to consciously insert positive thoughts that can counteract the negative ones. The difficult thing about this is that saying "nice" things to each other is overrated, because not having this type of self-affirmations registered in the memory cause difficulties to remember them and to think about them. they.

One way to solve this can be observed in the experiment of W. g. Johnson (1971), in which he helped a 17-year-old student to increase the rate of positive self-statements. He told her to imagine positive thoughts every time she went to the bathroom, did it work? Wow yes! At the end of this experiment, the student had noticeably increased positive thoughts and the negative ones had almost disappeared. The reason for this success? Johnson relied on the principle formulated by David Premack (1959) which states that behavior that is unlikely to occur (positive thoughts) can increase if it is combined with a behavior that has a high probability of occurrence (going to the bathroom).

The human mind is a beautiful world, mysterious and extremely interesting, fully understanding it is still a long way off but despite this remember, you are not always reacting to the outside world, sometimes you are the one creating your own reactions.

Author: David Custodio Hernández, Clinical psychologist.