The ABC of resilience
I am reading a book called ‘The resilience factor’ by Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatté at the moment and I have been reflecting on what the authors call ‘thinking traps’, of which they describe eight. The one that really stuck with me is called jumping to conclusions. How many times do we assume an outcome based on very little actual information? I do this all the time!
One of the techniques described to become more aware of any thinking trap is called ABC. A stands for adversity – these are all the things that push our buttons and challenge our resilience e.g. juggling several tasks at once, recovering from a break up, having a row with someone, losing a loved one or one’s job, etc.
When something that makes us react happens, the first part is awareness, so in this technique, A is when you describe the facts back to yourself, what happened – taking care of being as factual as you possibly can. You then move on to C which stands for consequence. These are the emotions and behaviours that the adversity has triggered in us. For example, if the adversity is a row with a loved one because they didn’t make dinner and it’s already late, the consequence might be that we feel angry and upset, and as a result we make a provocative remark.
We then move on to think about the B or beliefs – these are our ticker-tape beliefs – what we thought in the moment when the adversity happened. In this case we might feel that the other person takes us for granted, we may think something like ‘I always have to make dinner’ (this is a thinking trap called overgeneralisation) and ‘I am not your personal servant’ e.g. we believe there has been a violation of our rights which has led to anger.
To correct these thinking errors we should test the accuracy of our beliefs and evaluate their usefulness, before jumping to conclusions.
As for me, it is a long (and sometimes painful) journey of self-exploration but I find this stuff fascinating because, above all, it is a tool to improve personal awareness.
