Chronic Pain and Automatic Negative Thoughts

Chronic pain causes immeasurable suffering. Pain that lasts from months to years disrupts life trajectories, relationships, work, home, self-efficacy, and self-view. Pain psychology and psychiatry play an important role in changing one's pain and pain experience. 

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for chronic pain is one of the most commonly utilized psychotherapy modalities with beneficial outcomes. There are several different levels in CBT to treat pain. One of them is becoming aware of and attending to our automatic negative thoughts (ANTs).

Automatic Negative Thoughts (ANTs) form a core intervention target in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), a widely used psychological approach to treat depression, anxiety, chronic pain, and sleep. ANTs are immediate and reflexive thoughts that arise in response to everyday situations or experiences. 

ANTs occur outside of conscious awareness. They can be pessimistic or unhelpful, self-critical in nature and often stem from doubt/fear, and/or or distorted such catastrophizing, fortune-telling, and all-or-none thought process. 

In individuals with chronic pain, these thoughts evoke anxiety, depression, hopelessness, decreased capacity to manage their pain, heightened pain intensity, and pain catastrophizing. 

CBT helps reframe unhelpful thoughts (ANTs) to helpful thoughts. First, individuals gain awareness of ANTs and then learn to identify them. Second, they learn how to identify and question the truth of these thoughts and check their validity. Third, patients learn how to reframe ANTs into more helpful, realistic, and balanced thoughts.

For example, instead of thinking, "My pain is never going to get better," CBT helps reframe it to a thought, "I am in pain but I am working on managing it better, getting help, and learning new coping skills”. 

By addressing ANTs, CBT empowers individuals to cultivate helpful thoughts and foster more adaptive thinking and behaviors. Although ANTs happen to all of us naturally, they are not set in stone. They can be reframed to thoughts that more helpful and alleviate emotional distress. 

#ChronicPainRelief #CBTforPain #PainManagement #MentalHealthAwareness #SelfHealing #MindOverPain #CognitiveBehavioralTherapy #PainPsychology #OvercomePain #AutomaticNegativeThoughts #HealingJourney #ResilientMindset #PainCopingSkills #HopeForHealing 

#PositiveMindset #KalmPsychiatry