The ABC of Emotional Intelligence, Or Learning To Ask The Right Questions About The Difficult Emotions That You Experience
Hi Everyone,
Continuing on the emotional intelligence theme from the last few articles on the mental fitness blog, here is a simple, practical technique for upgrading your emotional intelligence.
Psychologist Albert Ellis created a simple, three stage process for understanding how our emotions develop called the ABC model.
Put briefly it looks like this:
A – The ACTIVATING EVENTS that stimulate emotions in us
When we experience a difficult emotion there is always an activating event or interaction that triggers it. Quite often if we have not developed our emotional intelligence it will appear that this event is the primary cause of the emotion that we experience.
B – The BELIEFS that cause us to react/respond to the situation in a particular way (note we have conscious and unconscious beliefs)
This is the second and far more hidden cause of our emotions. Within our mind we have a complex structure of belief that arises from what we have been taught and experienced previously in our life. We experience our life through a complex web of conditioned beliefs that arise from our past experience
C – The emotional CONSEQUENCES arising from the activating event and our belief
Finally, in the third or “C” stage we see the actual emotion that has developed as a result of the coming together of the activating event (stage A), with the belief structures in our mind (Stage B). Stage C sees the development of a fully fledged emotion arising from an inner and outer cause reacting together.
Three Questions to ask ourselves based around the ABC model
The next time you find yourself struggling with a difficult emotion, ask yourself these three questions:
1) What is the outer cause or activating event of this emotion?
2) What is the inner belief structure in my mind that has stimulated this emotion?
3) Based around the understanding I have developed from questions one and two, what is the most intelligent, compassionate (toward self and others), and empowering way I can respond to this emotion?
Thanks for reading!
Yours in the spirit of emotional intelligence,
Toby
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