Understanding Automatic Thoughts: How They Automate Negative Behavior and Addiction

Updated November 5, 2024

Widespread social behavior significantly impact how the schema organizes
information and the intensity of automatic thoughts.

Exploring the Relationship Between Automatic Thoughts and Addictions

The concept of automatic thoughts provides valuable insight into how people accomplish their daily activities, develop routines, and cope with hardships. Negative behavior, such as addiction or substance abuse, is often initiated and reinforced by automatic thoughts. Aronson, Wilson, and Akert (2010) characterize automatic thoughts as “nonconscious, unintentional, involuntary, and effortless.” Automatic thoughts make up a significant portion of decision-making, even if they do not encourage the most rational or ideal behavior. There are so many small stressors, complex daily tasks, and social norms that if our brains attempted to completely diverge from automatic thoughts, our brains would suffer from sensory overload. Unhealthy attempts to mentally escape feelings of frustration and sadness can lead to addiction, especially if automatic thoughts are tormenting the person with a flood of intense frustration and sadness. Then cognitive processes, such as automatic thoughts, begin to unconsciously aid in the individual’s destruction through negative behavior and addiction.

An individual lacking strong exposure to alcohol or alcoholism would require a deliberate act to begin drinking alcohol, which is contrary to automatic thinking. Since this is an unfamiliar situation, controlled processing takes command in navigating this novel circumstance. Controlled processing is defined in Schneider & Shiffrin (1977) as “a conscious, intentional, and effortful method of information processing used when dealing with novel or complex situations or learning new skills.” The brain is apt to utilize automatic thinking to conserve energy because controlled processing requires the brain to be fully engaged and employ conscious effort to complete a mental or cognitive task. An individual who is new to the party scene and accustomed to participating in the same activities as their friends could automatically observe, “All my friends are drinking at this party” and then decide, “I should drink too.” The conscious decision to drink may be eased by automatic thoughts influenced by cultural knowledge that outlines social behavior at a party and that individual’s relationship with their friends. After the brain uses controlled processing to learn how to react to new situations that are deemed appropriate and reasonable to drink alcohol, the person will begin to automatically relate drinking to that specific situation. Soon the person will not need deliberate thought to drink, since unconscious thoughts already support and map out the behavior. 

 

Addiction stamps a stronger imprint on the schema of an individual who grew up in a home with drug addicts as opposed to an individual who grew up in a drug-free zone. The brain sustains and automates patterns of thoughts and behavior with the schema. Specific patterns of thoughts and behavior are categorized and continuously fed by new information even if the new information does not apply. Everyday new information is assigned to existing mental structures and beliefs. Succumbing to a drug addiction would be a largely unconscious effort for this person. Many drug addicts consciously acknowledge that substance abuse is detrimental to their well-being. However, the destructive behavior continues and the addiction grows stronger because the schema has made substance abuse more accessible through automatic thoughts. Now these same automatic thoughts that were inputted into the schema are streaming from the same schema without the individual’s awareness. For example, if an individual develops a of pattern of abusing drugs to respond to hardship, the individual will build a schema that connects hardship to indulging in drugs. In due time, the individual will not need to think before turning to substance abuse for stress alleviation. Similarly, if someone responds to stress by drinking, unfortunately each stressful situation will be characterized as the opportune time to abuse alcohol and soon the individual will consume alcohol in response to insignificant daily stressors. In other words, the individual will automatically behave similarly to other stressful events unrelated to the first stressful situation that prompted drug abuse without any conscious effort.

The schema strengthens these automatic thoughts and reinforces the behavior for future situations. These mental structures set the precedent for any other knowledge gained about similar circumstances. This has dangerous implications for the individual and the people who are directly and indirectly affected by the individual grappling with drug or alcohol addiction.  Recovery will be an immensely difficult endeavor. Socialization also has a huge impact on our behavior and the development of the schema. The media, our authority figures, our parents, and culture each have a role in inputting easily accessible data into our mental framework which formulates our automatic thoughts. This is one reason why a child who is raised by a parent battling alcoholism is more susceptible to becoming an alcoholic. 

 

I think those who play music have a stronger innate understanding of the schema. At first music demands intense learning. For example, if you were a novice violin player you may use tape to guide your fingers to play the correct notes and constantly glance at your fingers. However, after a while you can play the notes perfectly by touch without even thinking. Just like any other habit, you do not have to think about what you are doing, your brain automatically know what needs to be done because of past situations. Some people are even more musically inclined if they were raised by a musical family. Then if that same individual has a music teacher, the music lessons are reinforced again. Similarly, for some people, especially those with addictive personalities or grew up in households where addictions control daily life, addiction is highly developed in the schema before any substance is personally abused. 

 

 Exploring the Relationship Between Automatic Thoughts and Relapse

 

Even after time has passed, a familiar song is so strongly embedded in the schema of a skilled musician that the individual’s brain can unconsciously create the impulses for the hands movement needed to play the song correctly. I think this partly explains many relapses, aside from other psychological and biological causes of relapses. Even if the person has been abstaining from drugs or alcohol for some time, the automatic thoughts influencing such behavior can be strong. The person may succumb to the familiar urges that present themselves if the situation matches the information in the schema calling to engage in substance abuse. Then once they relapse, they feel like they have been drinking alcohol or consuming drugs the whole time.

Harold Kelley (1950) demonstrates that individuals can be primed with prior knowledge given to us by others. This priming can be encoded into our schema and used to help interact with a new situation. Familiar situations will always take precedence over complex and new situations which causes recovery to be challenging. Recovery is undermined since the brain has plenty more mental connections to support substance abuse. It is more effective to take action before an individual becomes an addict. A phenomenon that could counteract these challenges by taking a proactive and preventative approach to substance abuse is priming. The goal of priming would be to teach the youth effective methods of handling everyday life before they are presented with the option to abuse substances or confronted by stressful events. For individuals who are already struggling with substance abuse, therapists can help change the addict’s perspective on the addiction, hardship, and coping techniques. Support groups can create experiences for the addict that alters the schema and automatic thoughts. The combined effort of these individuals and groups can enable stronger recovery efforts. It would be important for the addict to expose themselves to as many coping and therapy experiences as possible to reinforce coping in the schema and replace the automatic thoughts associated with substance abuse. It would be especially helpful to form friendships or observe people without addictions to further positively impact their schema. A healthy schema results in healthy automatic thoughts.

Controlled processing is also offered as a remedy to flawed automatic thinking. It takes a degree of controlled processing to begin a new activity, such as abstaining from substance abuse, instead of engaging in familiar negative habits or ruminating on negative automatic thoughts. The effectiveness of controlled processing does depend on many factors, such how significant are the perceived consequences or benefits, the person’s willpower, the amount of support the person is receiving, and etc. In some instances a person’s controlled processing can be faulty due to the corrupted automatic thoughts that have damaged the schema. An addict could reshape their schema to consider the consequences of their behavior and transform their automatic thoughts.

Conclusion

 

There are many factors that influence the initiation, reinforcement, and recovery from addiction. The schema has a strong impact on the likelihood of an addiction being avoided or started. A child that grew up in a household full of addiction will have a schema that is slanted towards addiction. While children that were primed against drugs, alcohol, and other substances or activities which can encourage invasive addictions are less likely to suffer from addiction or be tempted by addiction.

 

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