ABSTRACT
Negative automatic thoughts (NATs) are the first type of thoughts that clients taught to check as the easiest to detect and change. This does not mean that clients offer only NATs when revealing their situation-specific upsetting thinking: underlying assumptions and core beliefs are likely uncovered too. The therapist needs to 'sort through' these cognitive facts to categorize it. The therapist normalizes NATs by helping clients to see that everyone experiences them and they often 'pop up' when feel upset. Often these thoughts dismissed, challenged or ignored. However, difficulties with NATs start when they linked to prolonged emotional distress, difficult to 'turn off', not submitted to rational reflection or empirical testing, seem plausible to the person and say content of activated core beliefs While emphasize detecting NATs, clients experience self-defeating PATs (positive automatic thoughts). These kinds of PATs also need detected, examined and modified. In this point and the following ones look at some of the main ways of detecting NATs.
