Struggling With Negative Thoughts? Here’s How Therapy Can Help

An unhelpful thought creeps into your head, “My boss is in a bad mood, it must have been something I did wrong.” You feel your anxiety increase and your thoughts start to race as you wonder if you’re going to lose your job.

Sound familiar? 

Thoughts that are unhelpful, irrational, or exaggerated are called cognitive distortions (or automatic negative thoughts) and are experienced by nearly everyone at some point in time. However, negative thoughts occur more frequently and with greater intensity for those who experience depression and anxiety. 

What is probably more likely but is more difficult to consider is the alternative, “My boss is just having a bad day.” Therapy with a professional counselor like me can help you identify cognitive distortions and learn strategies to help ease negative thoughts, restructuring them into more helpful, positive ones. My counseling approach at Lifeologie Counseling Raleigh thoughtfully blends person-centered therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), solution-focused brief therapy, and mindfulness techniques. CBT helps people understand how their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are connected, which can be especially useful when inspecting cognitive distortions. During counseling sessions, I encourage clients to identify their triggers, keep thought records, and practice thought-stopping techniques with me.

types of cognitive distortions 

Magnification & Minimization: Magnifying the mistakes you made and minimizing your achievements. This also includes catastrophizing – which is when we jump to the worst possible conclusion. 

Overgeneralization: Making broad generalizations about situations, “I’m always so awkward.” 

Magical Thinking: Believing that you influenced something bad to happen to someone by your thoughts, actions, or feelings. 

Personalization: Feeling like you are responsible for events outside of your control. 

Jumping to conclusions: Includes mind reading and fortune telling; interpreting a person’s actions or situations with little or no evidence. 

Emotional Reasoning: Treating emotions as facts.

Disqualifying the Positive: Focusing on only the negative parts of a situation instead of focusing on the positives or considering what went right.

“Should” statements: Believing that things should be a certain way all the time. 

All-or-nothing thinking: Thinking in absolutes: “never”, “always”, “every.”  

strategies to restructure negative thought patterns

There are many ways therapists can help alleviate the stress that automatic negative thoughts cause for clients, including the following approaches:  

1. Psychoeducation about automatic thoughts and their triggers. 
2. Thought-stopping techniques that include introspective thinking.
3. Relaxation techniques like mindfulness and breathing exercises.
4. Behavioral analysis, such as keeping dysfunctional thought records. 

When combined, these strategies can bring awareness to your negative thought patterns and clear the way for more constructive thoughts. 

If you feel cognitive distortions are impacting your mental health, contact me at Lifeologie Counseling Raleigh in North Carolina at (919) 900-7552 or find a therapist near you in our directory.