I wanted to start this while its fresh in my mind. I attended a workshop today based on the work of Albert Ellis, who developed Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy, a precurser to CBT. The course was given byPARK UniversityEnterprises- Career Track
We started by talking about our Conscious vs. Unconscious mind. Your conscious mind is the Mr. Spock, the logical part. (Neo-Cortex)It deals with learning, no feelings, no interpretations, no perceptions. The Unconscious mind (the lymbic system for you scientists out there) deals with feelings and interpretations. The teacher likened it to The conscious mind being the rider and the Unconcscious being the horse. If you have ever tried to ride a horse where it doesn't want to go, you can see that if not properly trained, the horse is usually in charge. Your horse does almost everything except learning. Learning is handled by the rider. Why doesn't a horse want to go somewhere? Because it is uncomfortable in some way. Through prior experiences it has learned that something bad happens in certain areas. Or it is something different. To your horse, different is always wrong. The rider has to learn to train the horse correctly.
Some things about your horse.
It is possible for your rider and your horse to hold opposite thoughts at exactly the same time. (Logically, I know I won't die if I have to give a speech in front of a large group of people, but my horse thinks its that bad.)
Your horse sees no gray. Everything bad is exactly the same amount of bad. A bruise is as bad as an amputation.
This program uses the rider to do the untwisty work we do here. The horse has all those twisted ways of thinking, the should haves, the Awfulizing, etc. and the rider has to untwist them.
Some ways they untwist
Using the scale above, the break down physical injuries on a scale from 1-100. 1 being a small bump up to 45 being 4 broken limbs. The last is much worse than the first, but none are really permanent. 55- 100 are actually losing parts of ourselves, permanent losses. We need to think of events as happening on a similar scale. Is it permanent or temporary, is it the worst possible thing,(death) or somewhere in the middle or a paper cut? AA way to teach ourselves to look for the gray. "It (a problem) is only an event. That event has happened. It's about x percent bad and I can handle x percent. (100% being death., so we can handle anything else.)"
Another way to not over-react.
"I realize that I am living proof that I've withstood everything that's ever happened to me. I'm going to be able to stand and handle everything that's going to happen to me except the one thing that is going to kill me."
We also talked about Ellis' ABC's.
Here is an exerpt from Wikipedia.
Quote:
The ABC-model of psychological disturbance and change
A major aid in cognitive therapy is what Albert Ellis calls the ABC-model.[2] In therapy the client and the therapist work through a situational episode a person has a significant disturbed emotional response in relation to. These situations and problems may be used to assess and map more complex and multi-layered problem issues.
A - Activating Event or adversity. This represents the situation, that is, the often infered situational and critical event that triggers a significant emotional response.
B - Beliefs. This is the evaluative emotional and behavioral beliefs about the adversity the client has in relation to his unique personal likes and dislikes.
C - Consequence. This represents the negative disturbed emotions and dysfunctional behaviors related to A and B. The beliefs and assumptions at B are seen as a connecting mediating bridge between the situation and the unhealthy feelings and maladaptive behaviors.
For example, Gina is upset because she fails an important math test. The activating event, A then is that she failed her test and infers that she will not be able to get her degree. The evaluative belief, B about A, is that she believes in her heart and head that she absolutely always must have good grades and succeed or else its awful the end of the world. The Consequence, C, is that Gina tend to feel depressed and thinks may be no use to continue school.
Disputing. After a situational episode, beliefs and responses have been identified and assessed, the therapist will often work in wide array of ways with the client in challenging and disputing the dysfunctional beliefs on the basis of evidence from the client's experience. By using many cognitive, emotive and behavioral methods and techniques the client is helped to develop and ingrain more functional and rational beliefs with succeeding healthy and adaptive responses.
From the example above, a therapist may help Gina realize that it is self-defeating and that there is no evidence and does not make sense to believe that she absolutely always must pass her tests and succeed - and that such kind of thing is an absolute horror. Although she normally may want and strongly prefer to pass her tests and succeed, she has alternatives and not doing it would not be the end of the world. If she realizes that not passing her tests, and even have trouble getting her degree is highly unfortunate and sad, but not awful and horrible she will tend to feel sad or frustrated, but not depressed and helpless. The sadness and frustration are then healthy negative emotions because they are more likely to make her to study more effectively or deal with her problems as a reponse.
Another example from the class
Activating Event (A)- A woman gets flowers from a man.
Belief system 1 - He cares about me, thats wonderful, = I (C)"m happy
Belief system 2 - He's done something wrong, he's just trying to sleep with me = (C)I'm suspisious. (sp?)
We can Change many parts of this equation.
Analogy - I walk to work every day and I walk by this alley. Everyday, someone comes out of the alley and hits me with a two by four. I can change the event (Avoid walking by the alley, drive to work, bring a gun to protect myself, etc.) In the same way I can retrain my Horse to recognise that emotions are different than thoughts and facts. Changing the belief system was called flipping your horse. (it helps to think of a funny image of a horse on its back. They aren't very powerful that way.)
So, your boss yells at you at work.(A) You believe that if he yells you are a worthless being(B) You cry and hide in the bathroom all afternoon. (C)
The next time it happens, your boss yells at you at work.(A) You believe that if he yells you are a worthless being(B) You cry and hide in the bathroom all afternoon. (C)
You come to the realisation that that is an undesirable outcome.
You imagine your picture of a horse on its back.
You think the logical response out and practice it. (I will say to him "I work hard and do not deserve to be yelled at. Please speak to me in an appropriate manner, or I will go to HR about this) Do not wait until you feel perfectly ready, you never will. You have to recognize the discomfort, then respond anyway.
And Fake it til you make it. Maybe it takes going to HR with that boss, or saying stop more than once, or even finding a new job that will make you happier, the important part is making a change, learning to react with facts instead of emotions and following through. Change comes from repitition.
I know this is long, If people have questions, please respond. It just seemed to be another way of explaining some of the basic things we work on here. (they also used information from the four agreements and the Covey ideas on highly effective people.)
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