Читать книгу The Road to Resilience - Adam Przytula - Страница 21

Automatic Negative Thoughts are also known as ‘ANTs’. The thing is, we all have ANTs. It's normal. Our brains are wired to think negatively because ANTs exist to keep us safe. How so? In prehistoric times, our ancestors relied on negative thoughts for their survival. Random thoughts helped keep them alive. For example:

‘Don't eat that — it might be poisonous!’

‘What's that noise? I'm being hunted!’

However, ANTs aren't nearly as useful for those of us who are living a fairly cosy existence in the twenty‐first century. We might be trying to shoot a goal in basketball when a thought pops up: Don't shoot — you'll miss! or What's that whispering? My teammates are laughing at me. These ANTs don't help us to survive. In fact, they often prime us for failure.

The tricky thing about ANTs is that they often come from deep beliefs we have about life. Often, ANTs seem so true that we don't notice when we're having one, and we don't stop to question it. Instead, we just start feeling bad about ourselves without really knowing why. So how do we overcome ANTs?