Transforming Thoughts with the ABC Model in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy - Video Transcript
Hey everyone, I'm Kristen, the anxiety therapist. Today, I want to share a technique from cognitive behavioral therapy. It's called the ABC model, and it helps us to reframe a situation that we have certain feelings or interpretations of that might not be helpful and might make us experience some distress. So, the ABC model has five steps, which I'll list below:
A: Activating Event: This is the event that you're conjuring up in your mind. What was the situation? Who did it involve? What happened? Where did it happen? When did it happen?
B: Beliefs: What is your belief about what happened, or why do you think it happened? You're looking at your interpretation or perception of the event, and that has a lot to do with how we feel about something.
C: Consequences: Think about how you feel and what emotions you are experiencing. What did you experience during this event or situation, and then what was the resulting behavior? How did you act? How did you feel, and then how did you act? Did that work for you? Did it feel like it was in alignment with who you want to be, the behavior you want to display, how you want to interact with others, and how you want to feel? Chances are, if it was an adverse situation, then the consequences did not feel great.
D: Disputation: We want to question the original thought or belief and ask ourselves if it is irrational or unhelpful in some way. Often, we make assumptions or fill in the blanks with negative information if we don't have all the information about a certain situation. We need to figure out if we have to accept this as the truth and if there is any evidence to support that belief or interpretation of the event. Chances are, there isn't any evidence.
E: Effective New Belief and Emotional Consequence: Try reframing the situation and think about what could be a new, helpful, rational, or self-enhancing belief to replace the original belief or interpretation of the situation. Then, how does that new belief make you feel? The idea is to make the belief more neutral or positive by identifying where we have plugged in negative assumptions. Reframing the belief can lead to a new emotional consequence.
I'd like to give you an example that I think many of us can relate to because it's so common. Recently, I had a conversation with a client who shared an experience with me. Her friend was visiting family in town, and they had planned to meet up. However, my client felt that her friend was unresponsive and blew her off. The activating event, in this case, was her friend's lack of response. My client believed that this friend was important to her, so she expected her to make time for their meet-up. As a result, my client started to question herself and her friendship. She wondered if her friend enjoyed spending time with her, or if she was being blown off because she wasn't a priority.
She would have responded, so all of these negative beliefs and assumptions were going through her head. As a result, she experienced a lot of anxiety and got down on herself, questioning her identity, her approach to friendships, and whether she is likable. Consequently, she felt amped up all day and constantly waited for her friend's response to move on with her day and confirm the plan.
So, moving on to the D, the disputation, we explored her thought process and identified if any assumptions were being made or if there was actual evidence to support her thoughts. We asked if she had any evidence that her friend didn't enjoy spending time with her or was intentionally blowing her off, but the answer was no. So we arrived at a new belief and emotional consequence. In part E, we identified that the friend was visiting family, very busy trying to get people to and from the airport, and was pregnant, which could have affected her memory and added to her stress while also dealing with a toddler.
So, again, the attention is going in multiple directions all at once. It's likely that she just wasn't able to respond to my client's text in the way she felt she should have. Ultimately, this realization can alleviate some of the negative beliefs. However, my client might still want to have a conversation with her friend and let her know how it made her feel just to keep those lines of communication open. But it's important to note that she's able to explore her own beliefs about the situation, her resulting emotions, and her behaviors to bring down the level of anxiety in the meantime. This is an effective way to deal with any situation that causes emotional distress.
And yeah, just know that the more you practice this, the more you'll start to break those patterns of automatic emotional beliefs when a situation happens. You'll get better at reframing those things and distinguishing what's truthful and what might be related to anxiety or irrational types of thinking.
So I hope you found this video helpful. If you're interested in my workbook which contains several more exercises, feel free to visit my website. It's available for purchase. I hope you have a good week, and I'll see you next time.
