Automatic Thought Record for Therapy

My therapist gave me an automatic thought record that I'm supposed to fill out (it's been over a week and I haven't done anything, and I have three days left). When I notice my mood getting worse I'm supposed to ask myself "What's gong through my mind right now?" and very often it's really nothing in particular, like, really. Sometimes I think about how I'll never amount to anything because I'm too lazy and uninterested in everything. Sometimes it's thinking about others doing great things and I'm here not doing anything. It's just name-calling. When I'm being snappy or aggressive with my parents, nothing goes through my mind except that I find them annoying at that moment. I'm supposed to write what the situation is, but most often there is no situation.
And I have a really hard time identifying things/thoughts/feelings, and can't explain anything. I absolutely hate the questions I'm supposed to ask myself if some thought does pop up. I don't want to do any of this. I don't even think anymore that I'm actually depressed. I'm just a lazy teen with attitude issues who has no real problems. I feel like I'm not trying to get better.
And I really don't feel like I can say everything in therapy, just because I'm face to face with someone and have to speak. My therapist is really nice and a lot better than the person I had before, but still. I feel like I can say more when I'm writing (despite the fact that I also hate writing). I wish that I could just have my therapy on this website. Or that I could get online therapy, but my parents would never let me do that.

Back to the original point, tough. How do I do this sheet? (Or how do you do these when you have to?)

Did any of this make sense? Oh well, close enough.

Dear RikerR5,
Early on in my therapy, my therapist asked me to journal daily. At first, I didn't really do it. For me, I had to see her for awhile before I started taking all of her suggestions seriously. You also have to really trust a person before it is possible to really tell them your innermost thoughts. In my case, I am really not a very deep thinker nor was I in touch with my emotions (I sort of buried them) so journalling has become helpful in my recovery.
You've already expressed many thoughts in this post that you can use to "fill in you sheet." That being said, some days, I don't have much to journal about and others days there is much to talk about. For example, conversations with my spouse or children and the thoughts/emotions that are triggered; dreams, fears/anxieties, my thoughts/emotions about my previous therapy session, etc.
Don't beat yourself up if you don't fill the entire sheet out. The therapy is for your benefit. It will be helpful to you to express to your therapist why some portions of the sheet were hard to fill out. Your therapy should not be stressful. I think it works best when you find yourself looking forward to sharing a discovery about yourself with your therapist and when you no longer worry about letting your therapist down.
I hope this helps you with your sheet. Your posting makes complete sense to me. For some of us, being able to identifying things/thoughts/feelings, and explain them, takes time and practice.
Sincerely, Myst

Hi RikerR5, I think the thoughts that you mentioned in your first post would make perfect entries on your sheet. In fact if you are having trouble you could copy and paste your post above verbatim and explain to your T that you are having trouble filling it out.

If the sheet is asking for specific things that you are having trouble identifying, I still think your post is valuable to include and explain to the T that you are having trouble with the specific entries.

Good luck Riker.

Also I wanted to comment on a specific aspect of journalling that helped me. I do understand that many times thoughts come without a situation attached to them. In my case for one example it was insomnia from anxiety that led me to thinking about suicide. By journaling during my insomnia I made a point to try to identify what was happening or what I was thinking right before the anxiety. It turned out the "what was happening" was nothing, there was no triggering situation. But my thoughts before the anxiety were of anger about something. So I journaled about the anger, and that led me to realize that the anger was about something I was fearful of regarding this thing, and then after a bit more time I realized that the fear was coming from some insecurity, insecurity that my logical mind knew to be invalid.

That didn't solve the problem but it gave me something to work on, something specific, to work on with positive affirmations and other coping skills that DID help with the problem.

Remember that the journaling is for you YOUR benefit, not your T's. My journal is mine and my T never asks to look at it. She does ask if I am keeping it regularly, that's all.

Sometimes in group therapy we are asked if we want to share any of the entries on our worksheet in order to help others in the group and to get feedback from others and from the clinicians. This is always voluntary but it is often helpful in the long run to share some of the hard things and get some feedback, even if the feedback is temporarily painful.

I can't speak for your situation but maybe see if the T intends to read your worksheet or have you read it to him/her... Either way it is to your benefit to be as honest as possible.

Good luck.

I did this as part of my CBT - and making the effort did wonders. It started out difficult I admit. frankly I thought the whole idea pointless. There is a reason for this 'madness' though. The next step will be to learn what kinds of (10) Automatic Thought types there are, and assign what you have been thinking accordingly. Finally, the work becomes about 'what are the alternate thoughts?' I can be having to these situations and examples. It IS difficult, repetitive work that on the outset seems pretty silly. Just know though there is a reason to do this which will all eventually come apparent to you.

The idea is to retrain yourself to think the alternate thoughts.

I'm not sure what I can say to encourage you to keep up with the homework assignments (there will be more). It helped me to set aside time each day to complete them. By the way, my program was completed months ago - and I continue to do the work.

I don't want to go to the session without anything filled in. My therapist does want to see it, and I feel bad because I didn't really do previous sheets my therapist gave the last time. I just find it difficult to explain things. Or to pinpoint them. I think most of the time all my thoughts go by too fast, so it feels like I don't have many. And when I might have something to write down then I have a vague idea but cannot put it into words (not just with this but with other thoughts/ideas too). There are some that I know I have (name-calling) but I don't want to sharee those because I know that theyre silly and stupid. I don't like sharing things, period. I keep things to myself, but I don't just bottle everything up like my mum thinks.

I can't really explain this to you guys or my therapist because (as the whole theme of this) I just don't know how to say it, and I don't know 100% myself either. It's so frustrating, and I just want to stop therapy completely. But I know that my mum wants me to go because I'm really annoying my parents. I just wish that nobody cares sometimes.

I don't want to disappoint my therapist tomorrow... so I'm screwed.

Give yourself permission; permission to freely write those thoughts, permission to share them. Don't forget, your therapist has seen everything.

I got caught up too in trying to explain my feelings and my first sheets were lengthy. I learned though to leave it as one or two words describing the feelings. Remember to note the positive emotions too.