Have you ever been so frustrated with yourself for having the same response over and over again even though you “know better”?  Do you feel like you see the patterns and know what to do differently, but just can’t seem to be able to control yourself in the moment? Are your emotions dictating your reactions?

What if you didn’t even need to feel the emotions that create these frustrating reactions?  The goal of a particularly effective intervention called “ABCDE” is to do just that, change the pattern of the emotions and behaviors that have been trapping you.

We start with A or Activating Event.  We all have thousands of activating events happening to us every day.  For our purpose, though, the activating event is the “trigger” for the negative pattern that we want to end.

B is the Belief or the thoughts that we use to interpret the Activating event.  These beliefs are our learned, basic assumptions through which we see the world, others, and ourselves.  Beliefs are so basic to our thought process that they often go unnoticed and unquestioned.  Acceptance of these beliefs at almost a subconscious level is why we often don’t see a way out of these negative patterns.  Our interpretations are not seen as interpretations but as undisputable facts.  Therefore, the outcomes could not be different than they always are.

Those outcomes are C – Consequences of emotions and resulting behaviors.  These are the two aspects that we would like to change, if only we could.  They flow out the Beliefs that we interpret the Activating events through.   ABC describe the habitual pattern as it currently stands. 

An example that I like to use when describing this intervention uses the Activating event where you are driving down the highway and someone pulls in front of you and then slows down. Thinking about that circumstance people are often able to identify C- Consequences rather quickly.  The emotional consequence is often anger. The behavioral consequences can be anything from muttering under your breath, honking your horn, riding their tail to full road rage.  The Beliefs are a little more difficult to identify though: “YOU put ME in danger” or “You are a terrible driver and shouldn’t be on the road”.

If you want to change the habitual behaviors in that or similar experiences we often feel like we have to clamp down on the emotion experienced.  Count to 10 is the advice we receive and grasp tightly on the steering wheel, our knuckles turning white from the sheer pressure of the internal anger looking for a way to explode.  What if you were able to significantly reduce or eliminate the emotion of anger felt in those moments?  The goal of controlling the behavior would be so much easier if the rage was not present. 

So, we move to D – Dispute.  Here is where we begin to make the changes.  We take a look at the Beliefs that led to the Consequences that we do not want and Dispute them.  Lets take a look at the example above as we think about how to Dispute those beliefs.  “YOU put ME in danger” is a strong personalization – it is taking as a personal attack the actions of another person who had no intention of attacking you.  This statement makes the other driver’s actions a personal affront.  However, the other driver likely doesn’t even know who you are and the reason for their actions had some other cause.  Therefore, we could Dispute this Belief by saying, “There must be some reason for their actions that I can’t see”.  Really, have you ever gotten angry and as you passed the driver who slowed down found the beginning of a traffic backup that you couldn’t see from your previous position or some other logical explanation? What about “You are a terrible driver and shouldn’t be on the road”? Have you ever made a mistake driving? A mistake doesn’t mean a person is a terrible driver.  A mistake doesn’t mean that the person should be banned from driving – there wouldn’t be anyone driving if this was the case.  This statement is an over generalization.  A good Dispute might be, “We all make mistakes sometimes”.

What would it be like to automatically interpret the Activating event of driving down the highway and someone pulls in front of you and slows down using the Disputes?  To have your first thoughts be:  “There must be some reason for their actions that I can’t see”; and “We all make mistakes sometimes”.  These Beliefs would certainly elicit a new E-Emotion.  You would no longer react with anger almost immediately but instead would be curious and calm. 

Knowing what we would rather think and how we would rather interpret the world, others and ourselves is not the end of the intervention however.  Moving a Dispute into the position of a Belief is the final step.  This is where the hard work comes.  Beliefs are learned concepts – they have been practiced over and over again.  If one thing is learned another thing can be as well, we can program a new response.  This new response also requires practice.  One way that we can practice our new Beliefs is to use old memories of times (like the example above) and run them through like a movie in our heads, except use the Disputes as the new Beliefs and “correct” the circumstance.  You can run this movie with related Activating events as well, each time using the new Beliefs and allowing your mind to practice the preferred response.  We don’t have to wait for more Activating events to occur in the course of our lives but we have as many of these events as we can imagine and as much time as we can devote to creating personal change as we allow.  Be the author of your own story. 

-Tiffany Guthrie, LPC