Automatic Thoughts Worksheet

Looking for an automatic thoughts worksheet to share with therapy clients? This article includes examples of automatic thoughts and tips for using an automatic thought record.

An automatic thoughts worksheet can be a useful tool to share in session to help clients gain awareness of their thoughts.

Automatic thoughts are a universal experience. Thoughts are constantly moving in and out of the human mind. In every situation, clients can experience thoughts that aren’t planned or premeditated.  

These thoughts, also sometimes called cognitions, can arise so quickly that a client may not even realize that they are experiencing them. 

Despite their unintended onset, automatic thoughts can greatly influence someone’s feelings and behavior.  

Automatic thoughts can be negative, neutral, or positive in nature. Depending on the sentiment behind the thoughts, a correlative emotional response will follow. 

To help clients gain awareness of these thoughts and work to change them—especially the negative thoughts—mental health clinicians can download the automatic thoughts worksheet, or automatic thought record, attached to this article and save it to their electronic health record (EHR) for future use.

Benefits of using an automatic thoughts worksheet

In order to begin working with clients on identifying and changing automatic thoughts, you must start building their awareness. 

Clients need to start noticing and identifying the situations or events that trigger specific statements, words, and assumptions in their minds. 

A thought tracking worksheet can be a great place to do this work because it allows the client to pause, rewind their internal response, replay things in slow motion, and use prompts to identify their automatic thought processes.  

Negative automatic thoughts, or cognitive distortions, can contribute to anxiety, depression, and other emotional or behavioral responses.

Through this insight-building exercise, a client can start to recognize their thought patterns in various situations and develop a greater capacity to start restructuring those automatic thoughts.

Another benefit of using a challenging automatic thoughts worksheet, is that it allows clients to work on changing their automatic thoughts. Once they have identified their automatic thoughts, they can then start to shift those thoughts. 

After identifying and regularly restructuring cognitive distortions, clients may be able to stop these thoughts in their tracks or intercept them before they are fully formed. 

Through changing their thoughts, clients can positively influence their emotions—and indirectly improve their mental health. 

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How to use the automatic thoughts worksheet

The first page of the automatic thought record worksheet attached to this article focuses on helping clients gain clarity on their specific automatic thoughts.  

Step 1

Clients are prompted to name their automatic thoughts in the following ways:

• When I feel ___________, I am thinking _____________.
• If a friend were repeating back to me the things my mind is thinking, what is my friend saying to me?
• If I were in a cartoon, what would be written in the thought bubble above my head?
• If my brain were recorded by a microphone, what would the recording say when I listen to it?

Each prompt offers a unique way of encouraging clients to articulate their automatic thoughts. Clients may only need one or two of the prompts to get them to identify their thoughts. 

Step 2

The next step of the automatic thought record is to help the client couple the automatic thoughts they experience with the situations or events that trigger them. 

This section of the worksheet can be used when the client is experiencing negative automatic thoughts and difficult emotions, or it can be used in reflection (the client can recall the instances that trigger their thoughts). 

First, clients are prompted to identify a situation or trigger. 

As they reflect on that moment, they name the thought in the automatic thought record , followed by the related emotions and physical sensations. 

Step 3

In the final step on the automatic thoughts worksheet, clients are prompted to develop alternative thoughts that can elicit a different emotional or physical response for them when they are triggered.  

Here are several questions provided in the automatic thoughts worksheet to help clients transform their automatic thought into an alternative thought:

• What is the evidence that the automatic thought is true or not true?
• Is there another way to explain this situation?
• If my best friend were going through the same situation, what would I tell them?
• What is the worst that could happen, the best that could happen, and the most likely to happen?

Clients can use any or all of these prompts from the automatic thoughts worksheet to create a new alternative thought that would replace their original automatic thought. Ideally, the new thought would be something more positive or neutral than the original cognition.  

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Examples of automatic thoughts

Example #1: Identifying automatic thoughts

If I were in a cartoon, what would be written in the thought bubble above my head?

This isn’t good. What if she is going to fire me?

Changing automatic thoughts

Situation or trigger:

My boss asked me to have a meeting with her at the end of the day today.

Emotions and body sensations:

Fear, panic, racing heart, sweaty palms

Questions to ask to create alternative thoughts:

What is the evidence that the automatic thought is true or not true?

Alternative thought:

I haven’t had any bad reviews lately. I don’t know what she wants to talk to me about. It’s unlikely that I would be fired.

Example #2: Identifying automatic thoughts

If my brain were recorded by a microphone, what would the recording say when I listen to it?

I can never do anything right. I’ll never get my life together.  

Changing automatic thoughts

Situation or trigger:

I accidentally sent an email with confidential information to the wrong person. 

Emotions and body sensations:

Fear, embarrassment, shame 

Questions to ask to create alternative thoughts:

If my best friend were going through the same situation, what would I tell them?

Alternative thought:

You made a mistake, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do things right. You’ve succeeded before, and you can learn from this.

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