College Counsellor

A.N.T. attacks and the power of “What if…”

I’ve noticed we’ve been talking a lot about A.N.T. attacks these last few weeks. But it’s not what you might think. 

An A.N.T. is and Automatic Negative Thought. How often when something happens do we go straight to attaching a story to it that is negative – we are victim to an A.N.T. attack. Perhaps you recognize some of these thoughts yourself: “This won’t end well”, “Nobody really likes me” or “This always happens to me”. Here are some more A.N.T.s: 

These are all stories that we tell ourselves, and they leave us feeling bad. If you were to stand on an actual ant’s nest, the ants would start to crawl up your foot. What would you do – you’d move away, and probably pretty quickly! 

When we have an A.N.T. attack with those niggling thoughts, why is it that we don’t act in the same way? In fact, we often find ourselves doing the opposite, almost setting up camp on the ants nest and calling it home! 

The first step is to recognize you are having an A.N.T. attack: I am having some automatic negative thoughts and this invasion is making me feel bad. This is the first step to moving off the ants nest, so you can start to change your thoughts. 

A helpful way is to use the words, “What if…” and finish the sentence with a positive story about what happened. 

“What if… they don’t like me” becomes “What if… they’re having a bad day”

“What if… this won’t end well” becomes “What if… whatever happens, I know that my friends and family will be there for me”.

“What if…this always happens to me” becomes “What if… this time will be different”.