Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes breaks down the ABCs of cognitive behavioral therapy: A is the activating event, B is your automatic belief about it, and C is the emotional consequence. She uses getting cut off in traffic to show how disputing unhelpful beliefs can change your reaction.
Welcome to this presentation on the ABCs of cognitive behavioral therapy. This is part of the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Nuggets series and I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. The ABCs are one of the most foundational skills in cognitive behavioral therapy. In the ABCs, we recognize an activating event, what happened, we recognize the consequences of that event. What was our reaction? And between the time that something happens and we have a reaction, we have this whole litany of automatic and often unhelpful, exaggerated or out of context beliefs. I'm going to use the example of getting cut off in traffic because most people have experienced that activating event. You get cut off in traffic, consequences. You get angry, you have that HPA axis gets activated, your blood pressure goes up, your heart starts racing, you feel angry, your thinking, your cognitions get kind of cloudy because you're in that adrenaline haze. And you may get grumpy and irritable with, you know, the person who cut you off, even if they can't hear you because they're in a whole nother car. Those are the consequences. How did we get from getting cut off in traffic to that reaction? What happened that prompted that reaction, that threat response? Well, that's when you go through and you identify what were all of the beliefs that I had that contributed to my reaction? Okay. Once you do that, you go back over each belief and dispute it based on the facts. So if you think, well, that person, you know, was being rude, do we know this? Are there, do we have facts to know that the person was being rude? Maybe you were in their blind spot and they didn't see you, so you can cross that one off, I could have died. Well, that's kind of extreme. Most of the time when we get cut off in traffic, we have to apply brakes a little bit. But the chances that we were actually that close to getting killed are grossly exaggerated. So we may adjust that, you know, I could have gotten into a car accident and go through each belief, addressing them based on the facts. What you know from for a fact to be true, not what you assume, not what you think, not what you hypothesize, but what you know based on the facts. You're going to have some beliefs that still remain, and that's cool because those are helpful. So you go back and you evaluate the effectiveness of your reactions based on the beliefs that are actually factual. How effective is my reaction for helping me use my energy and time in ways that move towards my rich and meaningful life? Said another way is getting all bothered by this person who cut me off in traffic. Is all that energy that I'm using helping me move towards my rich and meaningful life? Probably not. And I will share a little anecdote with you. I remember when my son was about 2, he was in the backseat and I got cut off in traffic and I started, you know, talking angrily at the person and this little voice from the back of the car pipes up and he said, he says, mommy, why are you talking to that man? He can't hear you. Yeah, you're right. Holding on to that anger, getting upset, getting rageful at that person wasn't going to change his behavior even if he knew what I was saying most likely. And all it was doing was keeping me stirred up instead of choosing a more effective way to react. For example, backing off so I wasn't around that person anymore who was not driving in a safe and defensive manner.
