In the United States, about 20% of youth reported symptoms of anxiety from 2021 to 2023, and 12% of adults regularly reported feelings of worry, nervousness or anxiety in 2024, according to the CDC. These findings suggest that millions of Americans could benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which teaches people to reframe their thoughts and look at their challenges from a more objective point of view.
The tools below are sometimes called thought-stopping techniques. The goal of CBT, though, isn’t to push negative thoughts away. It’s to notice them, examine them and change how you respond, so they have less power over how you feel and act. With some practice, you can learn how to stop negative thoughts from taking over the moment they come up.
5 CBT Tools to Stop Negative Thoughts
According to the American Psychological Association, CBT has been demonstrated to be effective for a range of problems, including depression, anxiety disorders, alcohol and drug use problems, marital problems, eating disorders and severe mental illness. Many different CBT techniques and worksheets are available to help you learn and practice these methods. Consider these five.
1. Journaling
Journaling is the act of writing down thoughts, feelings, ideas and daily events. Psychological journaling as part of CBT focuses on two specific qualities. First, you open up your thoughts and feelings to a broader perspective. By putting your feelings down on paper and looking at the big picture, it’s easier to work through them.
Second, by putting thoughts down on paper, you can get a better perspective on why you are feeling the way you do. This makes it easier for you to change your views.
For CBT, journaling should follow a basic format:
- Start with the emotions you want to focus on. Use statements like “I felt” or “I feel.”
- Describe the event that makes you come to those emotions.
- Explain why this made you feel the way you do.
- Challenge yourself to change your recurring thoughts and reactions.
- Examine how you could respond differently.
Cognitive journaling works if you get in the habit of doing it regularly and addressing negative thoughts as soon as possible.
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2. Progressive Muscle Relaxation
Tension and stress often manifest themselves throughout the body. This can cause headaches and a general feeling of being unwell. Fortunately, progressive muscle relaxation is an excellent way to help calm your nerves and occupy your mind when it starts thinking negative thoughts.
Find a safe, quiet place to relax, then start by tensing all of the muscles in one area of the body, such as your leg or foot. Slowly relax one group of muscles at a time until all the muscles in your leg are relaxed. Do this with all areas of your body until you’re confident that you’ve released the tension.
3. Relaxed Breathing
People who experience panic attacks and anxiety may use deep breathing to slow the heart and overcome an episode. This refocuses your mind and eases your nervous system out of panic mode.
To start, get into a comfortable position. Breathe in deeply through your nose. Let your stomach and diaphragm fill completely with air. Hold this for a few seconds, then breathe out slowly through the mouth. Place your hand on your stomach so you can feel the air releasing when you exhale and feel it rise when you inhale. Take at least three more full breaths or until your heart begins to slow and you feel relaxed.
Practice relaxed breathing at least once a day so that your body gets used to the sensation. Research supports the practice: a 2023 meta-analysis of 12 randomized controlled trials found that breathwork was associated with lower self-reported stress than comparison conditions.
As a bonus, this exercise only requires a few minutes of your time, and you can do it virtually anywhere. Try relaxed breathing when you’re waiting in line, sitting in a lobby or trying to focus at work.
4. Cognitive Restructuring
Cognitive restructuring involves examining your negative thoughts. Once you identify these distortions, you can work to overcome them. After all, most patients with depression didn’t start out feeling the way they do. Something triggered or caused these reactions, which led to an automatic response.
Think back to when you first started feeling the way you do about a particular event or situation. Next, challenge these negative thoughts. For example, if you’re angry at yourself for failing a test, try looking at the situation objectively. Are you really a bad person just for failing an exam? Is ruminating on the situation going to improve your grade? How can you change your behavior to get better grades in the future?
The main goal is to treat yourself with compassion once you realize you’re having intrusive thoughts. Instead of feeling like a failure, you’ll learn to accept mistakes and unwanted thoughts and focus on changing them. As you start to be kinder to yourself, you’ll notice you are kinder to those around you.
5. ABC Functional Analysis
Also referred to as antecedent-behavior-consequence analysis, the ABC model helps people examine specific behaviors that they want to change, the triggers of those behaviors and how the triggers impact daily life. With this model, you start by identifying and writing down a specific negative behavior, what led up to it (the antecedent) and what happened right after the event (the consequence).
This is one of the simplest forms of behavioral observation. It provides insight into an individual’s environment.
The chart is labeled with the date. Then each date lists the behaviors in order as they occurred, followed by the antecedent, the behavior and the consequence.
Once you’ve collected several days or weeks of data, it’s possible to go back and see the thought patterns that exist. If the results lead to a wide range of behaviors that are hard to analyze on your own, it may be a good idea to locate a professional with a background in applied behavior analysis.
Learn More About CBT
If you’re living with a mental illness or substance use disorder and finding it hard to cope on your own, FHE Health can help. Cognitive behavioral therapy is one of the evidence-based therapies used in treatment at FHE Health.
We have a team of caring staff members available 24 hours a day and seven days a week to talk to you, discuss your treatment options and answer any questions you might have. Call 833-596-3502 or contact us today to learn more about your options.
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