Parkinson's: ANTS

 A Journey Into Parkinson's with Nancy Mellon

Coordinated by Corrine Bayraktaroglu

ANTS

Automatic Negative Thoughts

During my Boxing class, today Cynthia talked about ANTS again.  She'd mentioned it before- as we all know, ANTS are very hard to get rid of.    But she said  these ants stood for Automatic Negative Thoughts.  I liked it. It was probably the best acronym I had ever heard.  The last time she mentioned that some people like to help themselves to change a negative thought pattern by wearing a rubber band around their wrist and twanging it every time they had an automatic  negative thought.  But then she winced so it didn't sound like a good thought.

This time she brought up a lot more facts about ants- some kind of depressing-like 60% of our thoughts are negative. (My thought was  “How do they check that?”)

That automatic negative thoughts become hard wired into your brain.  And they can even change the chemistry of your brain.

So why is this important to people with Parkinson's?  Well first off, to be blunt, anything that messes even more with my brain is something I don't want. But mostly it is because  for many people with PD  anxiety and depression are something they have to deal with.  And negative thoughts feed into that.

So Cynthia gave out some tips for combating ANTS.  (And it didn't include ant bait. Or trying to catch the quick moving, tiny bug, to put outside.  But she did kind of include squashing ANTS come to think of it.)

•      First ask yourself  “Is this thought true?”

•      If not, then ask yourself “What is the opposite of that thought?”

•      Ask yourself “Am I safe?”

•      If that is true, then remind yourself “I am safe.”

•      Remember to Breath.

•      Say out loud, or write down, each morning or evening or better yet  both,

•      three things you are grateful for.

That grateful thing comes up a lot.  I wrote about writing in a gratefulness journal each day on a blog post before.  But it is hard to remember to continue.  Which might be why it keeps coming up again.

I went on line and found out there are some great charts for coping with ANTS.  I found one on Mindwell  I like the way it tells you about an ANT and then gives you a tip for taking care of it under the heading “Don't feed the  Ant!”

I think this is all part of  CBT - Cognitive Behavior Therapy.  But that is a topic for another post!

 Cheers,

Nancy and the Snark

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Footnotes From Corrine : Sometimes I think we slip into ANTS without realizing it and then before you know it you are into full blown depressive mode. What a great Acronym.