Written by: Byron Athene, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
This article may very well change your life. I’m going to share with you a new perspective on how negative and positive emotions are maintained. I guarantee you that by the end of the article, you will have the keys to happiness in the palm of your hand. I’ll start by outlining the CBT model of emotional disturbance. I’ll then outline a model of emotion regulation that’s based on this model. I’ll describe a personal experience that shows the mechanics in action. I’ll end by giving you a simple four-step process that can help you secure happiness.
To put what you’re about to read into better context, let’s start this by having a whistle-stop tour of the history of psychotherapy. I’m only going to talk about three ground-breaking ideas, psychoanalysis, behaviorism, and the cognitive approach. We could go back even further, however, because you could argue that the first form of psychotherapy was philosophy. Although the topics covered in philosophy had universal implications, it wasn’t a popular field of interest. This meant unless you were in a philosophical circle or had access to texts, you didn’t have immediate exposure to ideas that would benefit you.
Psychoanalysis gained popularity because talking about your problems with a specialist could be beneficial. Psychoanalysis highlights the importance the past and our unconscious play in maintaining issues in the present. It involves conversations that explore significant events in our past and the unconscious processes they may have created.
Another important development in psychotherapy was the emergence of behaviorism. Behaviorism highlights the importance of conditioned responses. One of the more famous behaviorists was a psychologist called Ivan Pavlov. He carried out a series of experiments that showed how easily dogs could be conditioned to salivate at the sound of a bell after making an association between this bell and food.
In the 1950s, psychotherapist Albert Ellis conceived what we now call cognitive behavior therapy or CBT. He had a background in psychoanalysis but became frustrated at how long this form of therapy could take. He recognized the importance of conditioned responses, but he believed it failed to take other important things into account. He reasoned for long-lasting change to take place. You would need to make a philosophical change. He was interested in Stoic philosophy, in particular a philosopher from the 1st century called Epictetus. Ellis based a new therapeutic approach on the following quote from Epictetus, “Men are disturbed not by things but by the views which they take of things.” This suggests that it’s not what happens that disturbs us. It’s our opinions or our thoughts about these things that disturb us. This idea was initially met with a mixed reception when first suggested, but now it’s a popular premise.
To simplify the process, Ellis devised the ABCs of CBT. The A stands for ‘activating event.’ This is any event from the past, present, or future, real or imagined. The B stands for ‘belief.’ The C stands for ‘consequence,’ which includes behavior, emotions, and thoughts. Ellis pointed out that most people have an A-C way of thinking in that people believe events cause behavior, emotions, and thoughts. He showed this isn’t true: it’s not events that cause these consequences. It’s our beliefs about those events that cause them.
My view shares the mechanics of the ABCs, but instead of ABC, it’s ACE. A stands for the same thing, activating event, any real or imagined event from the past, present, or future. C stands for concept. E stands for emotion. Most people have an A – E way of thinking in that they believe events cause emotions, but this isn’t true. It's our interpretation of the event, particularly the concept we've associated with it that causes emotions. Therefore, we’re able to feel bad about things that haven’t happened.
Negative concepts can lead to negative emotions. Positive concepts lead to positive emotions. If you’re thinking about a negative concept and feeling bad, you need a concept that counters it – a counter concept – to feel better. This might sound familiar to some because this is a similar idea to positive reframing. Positive reframing is taking something that you used to feel negative about and changing your perspective to see the positive things in the situation. My approach is not just positive reframing because positive reframing is the end of the process. I’m trying to outline the whole process from start to finish in the clearest way I can.
Some people may have reservations about this idea's effectiveness, but this is what we are all doing already. The difference is we’re doing it in an unconscious or an unstructured way. Doing it in a structured way enables us to exercise conscious control of a subconscious process. How many times have you felt bad about something but then talked it over with someone, and that has left you feeling better? During those conversations, the person or people you’ve spoken to has generated a counter concept. Or they have inspired you to generate one. Bad emotions are only maintained in the absence of counter concepts. A counter concept can come in multiple forms, and some of them are subtle. Having the thought, “I’ve been feeling bad about this for long enough.” could work. If you didn’t have that thought or a similar one, the negative emotion would persist.
I’ll invite you to test this but can give you an example first. I’m a member of Toastmasters, which is a club created to help people improve public speaking. When I gave my first speech, it didn’t go as well as I wanted it to. This speech is a useful way to introduce yourself to the other members and say a bit about your reasons for joining. I didn’t memorize the speech, and when reading the notes, I misread something and lost my place. I uttered a mild expletive in momentary frustration as I recovered. I thought this ruined an otherwise articulate and well-presented speech, so I felt bad about it for a couple of days. I felt better when I changed my perspective. I can describe the situation using the ACE framework. The event (A) is me giving a speech. The concept (C) is my belief that the speech was ruined. The emotion (E) was a disappointment. I felt disappointed until I realized a counter concept. I remembered the main aim of the speech was to speak authentically. I, therefore, reasoned that messing up was possibly the best part of the speech because that was me being my most authentic.
The above example is a trivial situation, but every instance of negative emotions is resolved in the same way. When debating this framework's universal effectiveness with someone, I asked them to think of situations where they felt it would not work. They asked how you could apply this if someone died? I said you could feel bad that someone died or feel good that they lived and positively influenced you and helped you become the person you are. So, you could mourn their death or celebrate their life. They said if someone died, they would not want to feel good out of respect for the person. I pointed out if they want to feel bad about something, they wouldn't use this framework because it’s most useful when you want to reduce unwanted bad feelings
They introduced a hypothetical scenario that I found interesting. How could you apply this if you failed to catch a serious offender before they committed another crime? How can that be positively reframed? I realized they could extend the scenario and gave them two alternatives. The first one is catching the criminal, but mistakes were made during the legal process, so the criminal remained free and reoffended. The second is failing to catch the criminal but learning someone else had. No legal mistakes were made, so the criminal was appropriately prosecuted and rehabilitated. My debater seemed to reluctantly accept that they would feel happier in the second scenario. It may not be easy to reframe some things some of the time, but the more we look, the more we’ll find.
You can test this by thinking about an event in the past that usually makes you feel bad. Are you able to positively reframe that event? If so, that positive reframe will change the negative feeling into a positive one. Did any positive things stem from the negative? Did that negative thing teach you a valuable lesson you may not have learned otherwise? It may seem difficult to use this framework in the moment because you may be too negatively affected by the situation and the emotion. There is a simple process you can follow that makes it easier.
Step 1: When you’re feeling a negative emotion, notice how you feel and think about the event you think triggers the bad feeling.
Step 2: Acknowledge you’re not feeling bad because of the event; you’re feeling bad because of a concept you’re associating with that event.
Step 3: Identify the concept. If there’s more than one, what’s the main one?
Step 4: Generate a counter concept that neutralizes this concept by positively reframing the event.
So to recap, we don’t emotionally respond to events. We emotionally respond to our interpretation of the event, particularly to the main concept at the core of the interpretation. If it’s a negative concept, it can lead to negative emotion. We can feel positively by generating a counter concept. Bad emotions are maintained only when this doesn’t happen. This means the keys to happiness have always been in our hands. Albeit subconsciously. It can seem like events determine the length of time you experience bad emotions, but our subconscious determines its length. You can start exercising conscious control to dramatically reduce this time and feel happier more. So, now, what are you going to do?
Byron Athene, Executive Contributor, Brainz Magazine
After fully immersing himself in the fields of philosophy and psychology for 30 years, Byron Athene is truly an innovative force. His 'Generative Mindset' and 'Emotions Mastery' packages vastly extend the boundaries of conventional thinking. He encourages clients to change their current perspectives. This often results in them immediately tapping into the infinite source of creativity and power of the mind, and this will have significant emotional, psychological, and behavioral benefits.
