In the 4th century B.C. a philosopher by the name of Epictetus stated:
“Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.”
Let’s test this out...
For the next week keep track of your thoughts by using the ABC model. You will know it is time to log an experience when you feel your negative reactions increasing. Jot down:
(A) Activating Event
What just occurred?
(B) Belief(s)
What do I believe about what just occurred?
(C) Consequence
How did this effect my emotions?
You can also record your level of distress in that particular moment by using a 0-10 scale where 0 represents “no distress” or neutral and 10 represents the highest level of distress you can imagine.
An entry may look like this:
A: Wife didn’t text me back
B: "She doesn’t care about me"; "I’m unimportant to her"
C: Sadness; Anger
7
All of us have both rational (healthy) and irrational (unhealthy) beliefs. Since irrational beliefs can result in unhelpful emotions and behaviors, a major goal of our own work is to investigate and change our irrational beliefs—first by identifying them, then by disputing them.
How do I go about disputing my irrational thoughts?
One way is to ask ourselves questions about that belief. Is it true? Can you really know that is true? How do you know it’s true? Are there other possible conclusions? Would others see it the same way as me? Might I be wrong?
I always like to add: Is it it helpful and/or kind towards myself? If not, what good is the thought?
Another way to dispute our thoughts is to reality check with a friend, family member, or therapist. Do they feel the same way you do? Would they necessarily see it the same way?
And if those don’t work you can always reality check with Spock.
Spock is one of my favorite fictional characters. He is a loyal friend and the ultimate scientist. Known for his attention to logic he is not swayed by emotion or flights of fancy. He just acknowledges what is.
Ask yourself if Spock would come to the same conclusion as you. Imagine Jim Kirk coming to Spock in a panic. Spock asks Jim what the matter is. He blurts out “I’ve failed the latest Starfleet Academy test! It’s the end of the world!” You can almost hear Spock’s response: “Your conclusion is highly illogical, Jim. There is no discernible relationship between your test scores and the end of the world.”
Try it sometime. Ask Spock what he thinks about your distress-causing beliefs. You may be surprised that your conclusions do not flow from the data.
For good measure, here is a list of several types of negative thinking that get us into trouble. See if any of these apply to you...
Magnifying negatives: Dwelling on a negative event so that it gains excessive importance and influence in your feelings.
Discounting positives:Ignoring positive events, such as compliments, so that their importance and influence is lost.
Mind-reading: Jumping to conclusions about what others are thinking without considering other possibilities.
Fortune-telling:Jumping to conclusions about how something will turn out without considering other potential outcomes.
Catastrophizing:Exaggerating the extreme negative; seeing something as exessively bad, awful, unbearable, necessary, etc.
Minimizing:Diminishing your own accomplishments or other people's imperfections.
Personalizing:Wrongly assuming your influence on a situation, such as assuming a friend's bad mood is caused by something you did when in fact it is not.
Grandiosity:Having unrealistically high expectations of youself, such as expecting yourself to perform a new skill easily even though everyone else has difficulty.
Overwhelming yourself:When faced with many tasks, thinking about them all at once so that they seem impossible to do.
All-or-Nothing Thinking:“I have to do things perfectly, because anything less than perfect is a failure.”
Disqualifying the Positives:“Life feels like one disappointment after another.”
Negative Self-Labeling:“I feel like a failure. I’m flawed. If people knew the real me, they wouldn’t like me.”
Disqualifying the present:“I’ll relax later. But first I have to rush to finish this.”
Pessimism: Always thinking with a negative slant.
If you'd like to watch a movie-related example of this principle click on the link below:
In the following scene from the Sci-Fi movie After Earth a father relates an experience to his son where he battled an alien creature.
Notice how he separates activating events from the beliefs (or stories) we choose to believe about ourselves and the situations we find ourselves in:
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