Action Cycle

Welcome to the Thought-Emotion-Action Triangle of Mental Health. Basically, this is cognitive behavior therapy in action. I Okay, so you may have heard about CBT, or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and you may have heard about changing thoughts, emotions, and actions. But how does it all work really? Well, the premises that are thoughts, emotions, and actions exist together in a triangle. Thoughts lead to emotions, which lead to actions, which in turn lead back to thoughts. The thing that starts all of this going is a trigger. So imagine you're standing on a busy street, and you see a friend on the opposite sidewalk, and you wave, and you shout, hey! But to your surprise, your friend looks right at you, and then looks away, and keeps on walking. What might your first thought be? Well, it might be something along the lines of this. My friend doesn't Now, according to the triangle, thoughts lead to emotions. So if you thought, my friend doesn't How about sad and rejected? Sound about right? Okay, so if you're feeling sad and rejected, what might you do? Well, there's probably lots of options, but for the sake of brevity, let's just say you'd isolate yourself. Now in this triangle, that action of isolating acts as the new trigger. So if you isolate, what might you think? Well, if you've turned your phone off and you aren't checking your email because you're isolating, chances are no one can get a hold of you. And you might think something If you think that, you might feel alone, or angry. And if you're feeling that way, you might do something You see how this is going? Sending that angry email might have seemed like a good idea when you were feeling alone and angry, but now that you did it, you might think, Because some part of you, even though you're heading down this negative spiral, is still logical. But with that logical thought about your behavior, you might now feel shame or guilt. And then you might engage in some self-destructive behavior, When it's broken down And this, I guarantee you, is much, much slower than the speed it actually all happens in your brain. So what to do? Okay, let'start at the beginning again. Triangle, thought, emotion, action. Now, same story, same busy street, same wave and shout, same non-response, same trigger that leads to that same first thought. But, as that thought is careening down towards emotions, we need to catch it, and then we need to question it. And we can do that with a simple t-chart of evidence for the thought and evidence against it. Okay, so let's check. To be totally transparent with you so let's look at the evidence. Okay, there was no wave. It seemed Hmm, not sure about a third right now, but there probably is one. Okay, now what about evidence against it? Well, definitely it's a busy street, Hmm, I don't actually know what my friend's eyesight is. What about recent interactions? How did they go? If they seemed okay, that could be pretty good. Evidence against this idea of my friend disliking me. Perfect. Now here's the good news. If there's any evidence against that first thought, then that means it is not a fact. And if it's not a fact, we can head on back to the beginning of this whole cycle to that first thought and replace it with a more reasonable, more factual thought. Something that corresponds to the evidence at hand. Now this doesn't need to be the total opposite, like my friend thinks I'm the most amazing h Because that's not what the evidence tells us here, is it? Our brain is too sophisticated to fall for that trick. So let's just be honest with it. Honestly, factually, what's a reasonable thing to think when your friend looks right at you but doesn't wave? How about, hmm, that was odd. Which would then lead you to feeling perplexed, maybe a bit disappointed? Sure, it's not all roses, but it's not devastating If you're feeling a bit perplexed and disappointed, do you think you might call your friend and see what's up? Essentially, this stops the negative spiral cycle from ever happening, or at least it slows it down to the point where you can probably tune in and notice that you're spiraling and do something about it. For more CBT interventions counselorheather. ca.