by Dan Stelter

Created on: April 20, 2009   Last Updated: April 21, 2009

Acronyms are typically highly irritating, highly political, and difficult to remember. However, the one acronym a person affected with social anxiety, or any other anxiety disorder should be aware of is ANTS: Automatic Negative Thoughts. In fact, the acronym is not even needed if one prefers the use of the previous phrase; however sometimes acronyms are better at grasping people's attention than the use of a descriptive phrase.

So, what is an automatic negative thought? This is the thought that begins to flood into a person's thinking as soon as the anxiety-provoking person or situation appears. People with anxiety disorders who make a silly and easily forgivable mistakes such as bumping over a glass of water at a restaurant may have their minds completely flooded with thoughts such as, "I'm an idiot. I am so clumsy, and all the other people at the restaurant are looking and laughing at me," or, "Wow, it's amazing that anybody wants to be around me at all because I do such stupid things." These thoughts are there in a person's ahead before that person even realizes that he or she is anxious.

So, can a person do anything to counter this so that person does not encounter such horrendous anxiety over very small events? If so, how? The anxiety is so powerful and so sudden that it seems as though it would be impossible to reverse such a process! But, it can certainly be reversed!

It is very, very difficult for even the most experienced anxiety sufferer to cut off the thinking and come back to reality when such a situation occurs. In general, a preventative approach to treating anxiety seems best, which is certainly difficult to prove, but based on experience seems to be the best way to treat anxiety. Preventative means that a person is engaging in regular exercise, dieting, counseling, talking to supportive friends, use of medication and other anxiety-processing behaviors and techniques. The more one works to process anxiety, the less one experiences in the first place, and this means that automatic negative thoughts will cease entirely, or that they will be much weaker in terms of their effects on the anxiety sufferer's physiology. Employing one or many of these strategies can be very beneficial to the person in question.

However, even though preventative strategies can be very beneficial, they are not totally perfect and will not totally eliminate automatic negative thoughts. In this case, a few strategies can be used that will help to cease the effects of the automatic

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