Awareness Is Your Superpower: Recognizing Automatic Thoughts
In coaching sessions, a cornerstone of cognitive behavioral work is helping clients notice their automatic thoughts—those instant, often subconscious interpretations of events that shape how we feel and act. These thoughts often show up so quickly and habitually that we don’t realize they’re not facts. One of my coaching clients is currently focused on identifying and labeling these thoughts, and it's been a game-changer in her self-awareness.
What Are Automatic Thoughts?
Automatic thoughts are brief, internal statements that pop into our minds in response to a situation. They’re usually emotionally charged and often unexamined. For example:
“I’m definitely going to fail this presentation.”
“No one responded to my text. They must be mad at me.”
“They complimented me, but they didn’t mean it.”
These thoughts may feel true in the moment—but that doesn’t make them accurate. That’s where we begin: building awareness.
A Coaching Example: Learning to Label the Thought
A recent client** felt overwhelmed after receiving constructive feedback at work. Her automatic thought was, “Typical me: I always mess things up.” Using the Beck Thought Record, we unpacked the moment and identified it as overgeneralization—drawing a broad negative conclusion from one event.
Through practice, she’s learned to label these thoughts as they arise. Here are a few more real examples we’ve explored in our work:
All-or-Nothing Thinking (“If I’m not a total success, I’m a failure..”)
Emotional Reasoning (“I know I do a lot of things okay at work, but I still feel like I’m a failure.”)
Personalization (“If the team didn’t meet the goal, it must be my fault.”)
“Should” and “Must” Statements (“It’s terrible that I made a mistake. I should always do my best.”)
Naming the thought gives us distance, clarity, and choice about how to react.
What Is a Beck Thought Record?
The Beck Thought Record is a structured worksheet used to:
Identify the situation.
Recognize the automatic thought.
Label the type of distortion.
Explore emotions and alternative perspectives.
Reframe the thought into something more balanced.
In Closing
In coaching, I partner with clients to build greater inner awareness and resilience using tools like the Beck Thought Record. Learning to spot automatic thoughts and label them is a powerful first step toward lasting mindset shifts. It’s not about eliminating negative thoughts entirely—it’s about changing your relationship with them. With practice, clients gain the confidence to challenge unhelpful patterns and make choices rooted in clarity, not fear.
If you're curious about how this kind of structured, supportive work can help you move forward, I’d be honored to connect. Coaching is where insight becomes action.
***
**Any and all client examples are composites, shared with care to protect privacy and confidentiality.