ABSTRACT
As we discussed in Point 3, NATS are situation-specific involuntary thoughts that ‘pop into’ a person’s mind at times of stress or emotional tension. They usually lie on the fringe of consciousness, or just outside of it, and can relatively easily be brought into the client’s awareness by the client asking herself the ‘cardinal question of cognitive therapy: What was just going through my mind?’ (Beck, 1995: 10). Some clients can report their NATS without any prompting from the therapist while other clients may be ‘completely unaware of them; they are so much a part of his [the client’s] view of himself and the world that they do not appear distorted or problematic’ (Persons, 1989: 116). Clients are often more aware of how they feel (e.g. ‘I was terribly irritable all morning’) than the thoughts connected to the feelings (e.g. ‘I can’t put my finger on why I was feeling like that’). NATS are the first type of thoughts that clients are taught to identify and evaluate as they are the easiest to detect and modify.
