ABSTRACT
David M. Clark has observed, not all automatic thoughts are clinically useful: 'Anyone who is at all distressed will have an enormous number of negative thoughts, most of which are totally irrelevant. They're sort of rubbish, really. They're not driving the system'. Therefore, the therapist needs to sift through this cognitive data outpouring carefully to pinpoint the hot thoughts that are 'doing the emotional damage'. For example, a client may give reflections on his thinking in a particular situation than the real thoughts. Clients often readily report streams of thoughts connected to their difficulties but key disturbance-inducing NATs. Such as, client says she feels 'terribly guilty' about her daughter's behaviour, but guilt-inducing thoughts are not clear in the way she talks about problem. Running parallel with this first stream of thoughts is a second one containing the client's appraisals of herself or the situation. The therapist helps the client to 'tune into' this second stream to find her distressing thoughts.
