Question: How do we control our thoughts and emotions?

Helen O'Connor answered on 21 Jun 2011:

Hi cupcake great Question and I hope you don’t mind this long answer:

One of the types of work I do with my clients is called Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), or Rational Emotive Behavioural Therapy (REBT) which you can Google to find out more.

The basic thought behind this is that our thoughts (the things we believe about the world, and say to ourselves inside our head) cause our feelings (happiness, sadness, anger etc), and then it is the way we feel about these things that causes our behaviour. So, if we want to change our behaviour we need to first change the way we think about things, and this will can then change the way we feel.

The way this works is to show people what we call the A,B,C and D of thoughts, feelings and behaviour.

The A is an “activating event” – something that happens (you wave at someone in the street but they walk past you without saying hello for example)

The B is for the “beliefs” you have about that thing that happened, unhelpful or ‘irrational’ beliefs (“everyone should notice me waving at them” or “she ignored me, so she must hate me”)

C is the “consequences” of having those Beliefs – often the consequences are unhelpful feelings or behaviours (you feel really rejected and sad if someone ignores you in the street, you can’t sleep because you are thinking about it all the time, you start to ignore the person too, or even worse, start to have an argument or fight with them next time you see them)

D is where the positive good work starts to happen….

D is for “dispute beliefs” – so go back to B, and instead of those unhelpful beliefs, think about other ways you could think about this situation that doesnt make you feel so bad (“sometimes people are busy so they don’t notice when someone is waving at them” or “I know I haven’t done anything wrong to upset them, so they can’t hate me”)

This way of looking at how we react to situations is positive because it means that even if “things” don’t change, we can still change the way we think about things, so that we feel and act better. With athletes I do this kind of work a lot, especially when they are disappointed when they don’t win a competition, or with people who get angry when they are playing sport and need to think more ‘rationally’ about situations so they don’t get so wound up, and get into trouble.