Chapter 2
Take it to another level
Just like you learned your ABCs in kindergarten as the building blocks for reading and writing, these are the building blocks for understanding your emotions. Once you are comfortable with your ABCs, you will be able to attack and conquer the most complex emotional problems. Internalizing the three insights, knowing your ABCs, actively red-flagging, and consistently disputing are the keys to mental health and a successful life.
How do you get upset?
This video explains the mechanics of how a negative emotion gets formed.
[Reading]
The ABCs of How We Create Emotion
Just like you learned your ABCs in kindergarten as the building blocks for reading and writing, these are the building blocks for understanding your emotions. Once you are comfortable with your ABCs, you will be able to attack and conquer the most complex emotional problems. Knowing your ABCs, actively red-flagging, and consistently disputing are the keys to mental health and a successful life.
In the ABC model, the first three letters explain how we create our emotions:
A = Activating Event
B = Belief or Belief System
C = Consequences
The letter ‘A’ refers to the Activating event. The Activating event is anything that happens to us—a situation, another person’s behavior, or even our own thoughts. We often think of this as the trigger that ‘put me over the edge’ or ‘set me off.’ The Activating event is just simply reality. It is a provable, measurable, observable result of millions of circumstances that transpired for it to happen exactly as it did. It is unchangeable, whether we like it or not.
‘B’ refers to our Beliefs, the stories we tell ourselves that color our perception of the world. This is where our Narrator comes in and creates a story about the Activating event.
The ‘C’ is the Consequence; the emotional, behavioral, and physiological response to the Belief about the Activating event. It’s not just your emotions, but the way your body feels and the actions you performed.
Now the A and the C are usually pretty obvious. You know how you feel, you know how you responded, and you can usually point to what you think caused it. The B is a little more complex but absolutely essential in resolving negative thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Our beliefs color our experience of the world, often without our realizing it. Much of this course will focus on helping you identify, flag, and challenge these beliefs in order to resolve negative emotions. If you’re here, it’s because you don’t like the Consequences or your response to Activating events. You or someone you love is suffering as a result of repeating the same behaviors over and over, getting stuck in that loop on the Negative Feedback Superhighway.
The last two letters of the ABC formula represent the process for resolving our negative emotions and replacing them with happiness and calm. These are our exit off that Negative Feedback Superhighway. The ‘D’ represents Disputing, Dissolving, and Destroying the irrational beliefs by challenging the thinking behind them. The ‘E‘ is Equanimity, a state of peace and contentment that results from the Effective, Efficient, and Eloquent new rational beliefs that come from disputing.
So the entire ABC model for creating emotions is:
A = Activating Event
B = Belief or Belief System
C = Consequences
D = Disputing
E = Equanimity
In the following lessons we’ll discuss how to use the entire ABC model to identify, dispute, and replace our negative emotions.
[Exercise]
The ABCs of Emotion worksheet
Use this exercise to guide you through the ABCs of your emotional response to an event. It will help you in separating facts from beliefs, disputing irrational thoughts, and reaching peace. You may find it easier to complete A and C first, since you can readily observe what happened and how you reacted. Be careful, though—it’s easy to fool ourselves about even facts and reality when we’re emotional!
You can download and print the worksheet at the end to repeat this exercise whenever and wherever you want.
A: Activating Event
What is the ‘trigger’ or event you feel emotional about? Write down just the facts—the information gathered by your senses.
B: Belief*
What are you telling yourself about the event? For example: “This means I’m a bad person.” “I deserved better treatment.” “He shouldn’t have done that.”
C: Consequence
How are you feeling and behaving in this circumstance?
D: Disputing*
Is your belief rational or irrational? Is it 100% absolutely true? What true, rational statements can you substitute for irrational ones?
E: Equanimity
How have your thoughts, feelings, and behavior changed as a result of reaching equanimity using rational beliefs?
*Don’t worry if you’re struggling with these. We’ll explore Beliefs and Disputing later in the lesson. You can always come back and revise these answers later!