The downward arrow technique

Joel Dean, Founder of Joyful
Last updated October 30, 2026

One question, asked again

The psychiatrist David Burns described it in Feeling Good in 1980, as the vertical arrow technique.¹ In a later note for therapists, he gives the question in two parts: "Why would it be upsetting to you if this thought were true? What would it mean to you?"²

Each answer is a new thought. It goes under the next arrow, and you ask the question again. A few rounds down, the answers usually stop being about the situation and start being about you, other people or how the world works. That's the level CBT calls core beliefs.³

Burns is clear about the purpose. The technique uncovers beliefs, and changing them is a separate job that comes afterward.²

From a forgotten birthday to "I'm unlovable"

An example written for this page:

Only the first line is a fact. The rest is what the fact means to this person, and the meaning is what hurts. Someone else could forget the same birthday and end up at "I'm disorganized", which stings far less.

Burns' rules for running it

1. Start from one thought you've written down. Burns says to always start from a negative thought on a written log, not from a vague mood.² A thought record works.
2. Draw an arrow and ask the question. "If this were true, why would it upset me? What would it mean to me?"
3. Write the answer as a thought, in quotes. Keep feelings and events out of the column. "I feel awful" isn't a thought. "I let everyone down" is.²
4. Turn questions into statements. "Why do I always do this?" becomes "I always mess things up." Burns gives this rule too.²
5. Repeat several times. Burns doesn't set a number. Stop when the answers start to repeat, or when you reach a short, absolute line about you, other people or the world.
6. Stop early if it gets heavy. Burns tells therapists that if a person becomes tearful, they should "put your techniques on the shelf and empathize."² If you're doing it alone, that means closing the page and doing something kind for yourself.

When you're stuck at "I don't know", try offering yourself a few guesses and see which one stings. Burns calls this Multiple Choice Empathy, and suggests it for exactly this point.²

Where chains tend to end

Burns found that many chains end in what he calls self-defeating beliefs. Some follow a formula: "To be a worthwhile human being, I need..." filled in with achievement, love, approval or perfection.² Examples he names include:

Perfectionism

Approval addiction

Achievement addiction

Always pleasing others

Three times to leave it alone

A worry about the future

The downward arrow digs into meaning, and a fear about the future hasn't happened yet, so there's more to check than to dig into. Write the feared outcome and a date, then see what happens; the worry time and behavioral experiments pages show how.

The middle of a crisis

If you're already at the bottom of the arrow, you don't need to dig. You need support.

Someone else's mind

Therapists agree least about the deeper levels of a person's thinking. When 115 practitioners formulated the same case, agreement dropped for the parts that needed inference.⁴ A belief someone else hands you is a guess, and one you find yourself is easier to test.

No trial of it on its own

We couldn't find a trial that tested the downward arrow alone as a treatment. It has been used at scale, though: Millings and Carnelley analyzed the beliefs 1,813 people found with it in an online CBT program, and the core beliefs page lists what they wrote.⁵

What the arrow gives you is a clear target for methods that have been tested, such as Socratic questions, the thought record and behavioral experiments.

What to do with the belief you find

1. Write it down and rate how much you believe it, from 0 to 100. The number gives you a starting point to compare later.
2. Draft a replacement. Put the kinder belief in words that sound like you. Padesky found that long-held beliefs rarely shift until there's a new one to compare them with.⁶
3. Collect small evidence for the new one each day. This is Padesky's positive data log, and in her experience it takes weeks before the new belief feels even slightly true.⁶
4. Bring it to a therapist if it keeps coming back. Core beliefs are often worked on over months.

Questions people ask

What questions do you ask in the downward arrow?

Start with Burns's two-part question.² You'll also see "What's the worst part of that?" and "What does that say about me?" Pick one wording and keep it for the whole chain, so each answer is replying to the same question.

When should you stop the downward arrow?

When the answers repeat, when you reach a short, absolute belief, or when it's getting too painful to go on. There's no prize for going deeper.

Is the downward arrow the same as "what's the worst that could happen"?

No. "What's the worst that could happen" asks about outcomes. The downward arrow asks about meaning: what the outcome would say about you.

Related

• Core beliefs: what the arrow usually leads to, and how they change.
• Automatic thoughts: where the arrow starts.
• Thought record: the place to write the first thought down.