Let’s understand why we behave the way we do
Today we would like to introduce you to the ABC Model, developed by the psychologist Dr. Albert Ellis. It helps us understand the connection between activation events (A), our beliefs (B), and our emotional and behavioural responses (C).
Albert Ellis taught us that it’s not the activating event that determines what we feel and what we do. It’s what we say to ourselves, our beliefs, our thoughts about the situation that impacts how we feel, what we do. Sometimes our beliefs about a situation are not accurate, and our reactions. undermine resilient responses.
Daily Task
Emotional hijack is a term coined by Daniel Coleman – the famous writer and expert in Emotional Intelligence. It refers to situations when the amygdala – the part of the brain that serves as our emotional processor, hijacks our normal reasoning process. In cases of emergency, the amygdala helps us to survive (when we are chased by a tiger), but in everyday situations that we perceive as threats thanks to our wrong beliefs, the amygdala can force us to engage in risky, irrational, and even dangerous behaviour.
So, think of an occasion when you have been emotionally hijacked.
- Describe the situation
- What caused the situation (trigger)?
- How did you react? How did other people react?
- What was the outcome?
- What have you learned from this situation?
