ABC Theory of Emotion

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The ABC Theory of Emotion represents a widely-accepted model of how one's feelings and behavioral patterns are created. It asserts that the emotions we experience such as, for example, frustration or anxiety, and resulting behavior, do not come directly from the events in our lives, but from the interpretations[note 1] we make of those events, i.e. from conscious or subconscious beliefs we bring to that situation.[2] Its roots stem from a Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET) developed initially by Albert Ellis in 1955.[3] According to him, over 200 research articles confirm this theory.[2] The traditional viewpoints and approaches about human behavior fail especially when it comes to understanding and dealing with so called disturbed character. The current research indicates that the cognitive-behavioral therapy consisting in confronting erroneous thinking patterns and reinforcing a person's willingness to change them, together with their resulting behavior patterns, is the treatment of choice in such case.[4] Taking constructive action in one's life, such as disputing old irrational beliefs[3], helps one to live a full and meaningful existence and not be ruled by one's emotional state.[5] Disturbed emotions as consequences and concomitants of irrational beliefs can be inappropriately fueled and amplified beyond control also by addictive abuse of psychoactive substances.[6]

The Basic model

The model's fundamental principle can be outlined as follows[3]:

  • A...stands for Activating events in people's lives; these events represent what happens.
  • B...stands for people's conscious or subconscious Beliefs about these events and their meaning.
  • C...stands for emotional and behavioural Consequences or Concomitants of their beliefs; they represent the feelings and behavioural patterns (Conduct) these people have as a result.

After identifying these elements the central proposition of the theory is that the emotional and behavioural consequence (C) is not caused by the Activating event (A) directly, but by interpretation or belief (B) one has of the meaning of the activating event.

The Extended model

According to practitioners of RET, there is also extension of ABC theory for corrective approach consisting in learning how to dispute with our previous beliefs and replace them with new ones:

  • D...stands for Disputive belief or statement representing more accurate self-talk as result of effort to bring our emotional responses and behaviours under the control by learning to identify what we are saying to ourselves.[note 2] This would then likely lead to:
  • E...stands for the new Emotional consequence, feeling of relief and/or functional behavior.

Examples

Homosexual Lifestyle

    • A: Activating event: Christopher Yuan explains in his book 'Out of A Far Country'[6], co-authored with his mother, that what happened to him, when he was just 9 years old, was that he was exposed to pornography in a friend's house.[8][note 3] That gave him a distorted view of what sexuality is and awoke feelings of being attracted by images of both men and women.[10][note 4]
    • B: Belief about the activation event and its meaning: Little by little, he interpreted the activation event in line with popular unscientific misbelief that such feelings of sexual attraction can only be the result of being 'born gay'.[6][note 5]
    • C: Behavioural consequences of the belief: His belief about the activation event produced his later behavioural patterns including sexual experimentation, visiting gay clubs and bars, and promiscuous sexual encounters with other men.[10] This homosexual lifestyle was not caused directly by activation event itself, but by his interpretation of its meaning. Later, after being diagnosed as HIV positive, he realized that his justification for homosexuality was wrong and he mistakenly allowed his feelings and sexual passions to dictate who he was.[6][note 6] When passions are confused with same-sex attractions, people still have to choose to act on those feelings and their personal beliefs play the key role in this respect.[12] Slovak homosexual Jozef Demjan who previously had six relations with men quit his homosexual lifestyle and in 2012 married Julia after he changed the interpretation of his same-sex attractions. He compares them to birds that "one cannot prevent from flying all over your head but what one can do is to prevent them to make a nest upon it."[19][20][note 7] Similarly, Michael Glatze, an ex-prominent gay activist and former editor of a San Francisco-based, youth-focused homosexual magazines XY Magazine and Young Gay America (Y.G.A.), renounced homosexuality, decided to break up with his ex-partner of 10 years and in October 2013 married a woman, Rebekah. His transformation from gay to straight began after he started to question his lifestyle following a health scare. Now he stands by his opinion about homosexuality as a flawed and mistaken lifestyle.[21] How we think, what we believe, and the attitudes we've developed largely determine how we will act.[4][22]

Notes

  1. ↑ cf. "The difference between believing and disbelieving a statement – your spouse is cheating on you; you’ve just won $10 million – is one of the most potent regulators of human behavour and emotion. The instant we accept a given representation of the world as true, it becomes the basis for further thought and action; rejected as false it remains a string of words."[1]
  2. ↑ cf. "Neither emotion nor will are an argument, if there is no common sense involved." Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk[7]
  3. ↑ cf. Exposure to pornography, especially at a young age, can also be gateway into the „gay“ lifestyle itself.[9]
  4. ↑ cf.
    • Feeling distant from her unsympathetic mother, Anne Frank, a teenage girl, writes of her confusing sexual attraction for females in a diary addressed to imaginary friend: "I remember that once when I slept with a girlfriend, I had a strong desire to kiss her and that I did so. I could not help being terribly inquisitive over her body, for she had always kept it hidden from me. ... I go into ecstasies every time I see the naked figure of a woman. ... It strikes me as so wonderful and exquisite that I have difficulty in stopping the tears rolling down my cheeks. If only I had a girlfriend." Anne Frank's disclosure is a vivid example of the kinds of thoughts within many young people who occasionally experience this type of attraction. They are both alarmed and excited in the fleeting moments or dreams when their bodies are sexually drawn to the same sex. Same-sex attractions are not unusual among teenagers. Some say that these attractions qualify a person as "homosexual". But this isn't true. The attractions exist, in part, for reasons outside of a person and do not mean they are abnormal. The existence of such feelings, however, signals a deep hunger and profound confusion.[11] Ex-lesbian Lisa Miller explained that after she quit the homosexual lifestyle she realized that her feelings of same-sex attractions can just as easily be transferred to a man - "it's as if I just want someone to love me," she wrote. The struggles with same-sex attractions are no different than the struggles with loneliness, insecurity, and wanting to fill that emptiness and void with someone who could make a person feel special, loved, and wanted. Especially without a support system such a functional family, these feelings and strong desire to be loved unconditionally could lead to inappropriate thoughts of relationships[12], in the Extended ABC Theory of Emotion called irrational Beliefs.
    • The first Slovak documentary film on the gay community Crying of Angels (2005-2008) by Zuza Piussi captures the activating event for entering the homosexual lifestyle by one of the film’s major young protagonists in the following way:
    "This is the first man in my life to whom I feel so incredibly attached, when I’m falling asleep, I’m thinking of him, my first morning thought belongs to him, when I'm doing whatsoever, I’m thinking of him. Can you imagine how it feels when somebody tells you how he desperately likes you, how he wants you, how he adores every simple bit of your body - I have never experienced anything like that before." Yet, after some time, the very same protagonist exhibits signs of replacing his old beliefs and adopting more accurate self-talk as result of effort to bring his emotional response and behaviour under the control after the lesson learnt how important it is to identify what we are saying to ourselves (In the Extended version of ABC theory of Emotion this is called: Detecting/Debating/Discriminating irrational Beliefs (iB) about Activating event, and replacing them and dysfunctional behaviour with Effective rational beliefs/Effective appropriate emotions/Effective functional behaviour)[3]: "We broke up... What if... I became straight. What if I try to attract these chicks, there seem to be passing some right now. Now, after the last break-up, I feel like having an aversion to all guys, I don’t even meet with other males at the moment, nothing, nada, it does not matter whether they are straight or gay... I just feel such inner aversion to all penises...It's brutal how something broke that radically within me, for the first time I started thinking much differently -what if I have my own child, and this kid would not be with a man, what if I have it with wife and live with a woman. Perhaps it would be like passing to some sort of higher level."[13]
  5. ↑ cf.:
    • External Link: Are brains "gay"?[14]
    • "Worse yet: when people lament their homosexual tendencies, you have just told them, “You’re gay. You were born that way. Accept it.” Of course what you do not realize is that homosexuality is a learned response, a teachable response, and a recruitable response. Such recruitment took place in ancient Greece, and again in medieval Rome. And recent evidence suggests it is taking place again."[15]
    • The Christians are frequently blamed and labeled for being intolerant against homosexuals. Recently it became a part of public debate in Germany when at one event there was held a workshop offering help to people struggling with same-sex attractions. One of my teachers asked me how come that Christians are so “intolerant”. I gave her the following answer: “Think twice who is actually intolerant. There are number of people who have “homosexual” tendencies, because they were abused as children, seduced, or something similar. Many simply have homosexual fantasies, but they don’t like it and feel concerned about it. They seek for help, but at the same time they feel embarrassed to acknowledge it. They would like to live in normal way, but are struggling with their emotions. And today they are told: “You cannot have any problem! Just be homosexuals, whether you like it or not! It is compulsory upon you to be them!” Is this tolerant? There are multiples of people being ignored, who search for help, but it cannot be granted to them. They are being ignored by totalitarian homo-policy, and not tolerated! And woe to you should you be interested to help them.” This teacher was not stupid, she acknowledged my point.[16]
  6. ↑ cf.
    • “This 'knowledge' of who we really are is the gnosis that Gnosticism is all about.”[17]
    • “He who does not know the holy God cannot know himself.”[18]
  7. ↑ cf. Homosexuality is a persistent preoccupation with erotic encounters involving members of the same sex, which may or may not be acted out with another person. Put another way, it is making deliberate plans to entertain and cooperate in sexual fantasies or behaviors with someone of the same sex. Although having the same-sex attractions is not something for which we are morally responsible, it is when we begin planning to entertain these attractions in fantasy or behavior that we cross the line. If the attractions turn into a preoccupation, the temptation to embrace homosexual behavior is great.[11]

References

  1. ↑ (2006) "Sam Harris", in John Brockman: What we believe but cannot prove: Today’s Leading Thinkers on Science in the age of certainty. Harper Collins. ISBN 978-0-06-084181-2. 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 [1993] "9", A Christian's Guide to Critical Thinking. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 336. ISBN 1-59752-661-4. Retrieved on 16.2.2012. 
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Albert Ellis. Expanding the ABCs of RET. Retrieved on August 30, 2013. “The original ABCs of rational-emotive therapy (RET)—where A stands for the Activating events in people's lives, B for their Beliefs about these events, and C for the emotional and behavioral Consequences or Concomitants of their Beliefs—have proved very popular and therapeutically useful since RET was created in 1955. These ABCs have been expanded over the years by Ellis and other writers on RET. This article presents an up-to-date and more detailed expansion of the ABCs, with special emphasis on expanding the more common rational Beliefs (rBs) and irrational Beliefs (iBs)”
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 George Simon (1996, 2010). "8 The Manipulaive Child", In Sheep's Clothing: Understanding and dealing with Manipulative People. Little Rock, USA: Parkhurst Brothers, 38, 105. ISBN 978-1-935166-30-6. 
  5. ↑ Lauren Slater (February 3, 2002). The Trouble With Self-Esteem. The New York Times. Retrieved on December 22, 2014. “Reynolds writes, Cure is not defined by the alleviation of discomfort or the attainment of some ideal state (which is impossible) but by taking constructive action in one's life which helps one to live a full and meaningful existence and not be ruled by one's emotional state.”
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 christopheryuan 6, 11, 82, 186, 187. WaterBrook Press (2011). “It's not something I can choose. I was born this way...I am gay. ... I went from thinking, There is something wrong with me, to, This is who I am. ... When I stepped into the gay community, I was introduced to a world of outcasts who had come together and become family. ... With my newfound confidence, I became popular in the gay club scene. ... Life with Derek was a roller-coaster ride from the start. For the first few weeks, every morning he'd tell me how much he loved me, how glad he was I'd moved in with him. I felt like we had become one - our souls enmeshed. But in reality, much of the passion between us was fueled by Ecstasy - thus our relationship was fierce and intense, both good and bad. ... When I asked where he'd been, he got angry and told me that I should get my own place. So I started packing my staff. ... Derek had told me somany times that I was the one. Now I couldn't break free of his strong grip, and he was about to kill me. ... he pushed me away and yelled, "Get out!"”
  7. ↑ Bohumil Sláma (2010). Zapomenutý prorok Tomáš G. Masaryk (in Czech). Ateliér Sláma. ISBN 978-8025-484333. “Cit ani vůle nejsou argument, chybí-li rozum.” 
  8. ↑ Christopher Yuan's story (3 May 2010). Retrieved on August 30, 2013. “When he was 9 years old, Christopher saw pornography in a friend's house. That's when he started thinking: Maybe he was different. Those images just awoke something in me that I didn't know was there but I also noticed that I was attracted by images of both men and women. He decided to keep his feelings secret with hope they will go away, but they didn't. All these feelings were kind of bubbling up in me and I was kind of keeping them held down. ...”
  9. ↑ Scott Lively (2009). Redeeming the Rainbow: A Christian Response to the “Gay” Agenda, 1 (Version 1.1), Veritas Aeterna Press. 
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Christopher Yuan (3 May 2010). HOPE+ CrossRoads Video. christopheryuan.com. Retrieved on August 30, 2013. “Then at an early age I was exposed to pornography when I was just 9 years old. That really gave me a distorted view of what sexuality is... it was at that point that I realized that there was this attraction that I didn't really understand to both sexes ... I began to experiment with all these things that most kids experiment in college going to the bar and experiment sexually...I came across the gay clubs so I started going to those and I decided this is the way, this is what I was...”
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Jeff Olson (1996). When Passions Are Confused. RBC Ministries, discoveryseries.org, 14. 
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Rena M. Lindevaldsen (2011). The Lisa Miller Story: Only One Mommy: A Woman's Battle for Her Life, Her Daughter, and Her Freedom. New Revolution Publishers, 69, 118. ISBN 978-1-937102-01-2. 
  13. ↑ Zuza Piussi (2005). Crying of Angels (Slovak, English) 01min:55sec. atelier.doc. Retrieved on November 3, 2013. “To je prvý človek na ktorého som tak neskutočne naviazaný, ja zaspávam myslím na neho, sa zobúdzam, myslím na neho, ja robím hocičo, myslím na neho. Vieš aký je to pocit keď Ti niekto rozpráva ako sa mu strašne páčiš, ako Ťa chce, ako Ťa zbožňuje, každý kúsok Tvojho tela – to sa mi v živote nestalo. … Rozišli sme sa ... … čo keby som sa stal heterákom. Čo keby som zbalil tieto pipiny, tu idú nejaké. Teraz som po tom poslednom rozchode taký že mám averziu voči všetkým chlapom, teraz sa ani nestretám s rôznymi chlapmi, nič, to je jedno či je to heterák, či je teplý... Taká vnútorná averzia voči penisom, .... Je to brutálne, so mnou sa niečo tak zlomilo, že aké by to bolo keby som ja mal svoje vlastné dieťa, a som prvý krát začal rozmýšľať že keby to dieťa nebolo s mužom, že keby to jednoducho bolo dieťa, keby som ho mal so ženou -a žil so ženou. Možno že by to bolo také postúpenie do nejakého vyššieho levelu.”
  14. ↑ My Genes Made Me Do It! - Homosexuality and the scientific evidence..
  15. ↑ Terry Hurlbut (August 24, 2013). Homosexuality: Open Letter To Christie. Retrieved on October 31, 2013.
  16. ↑ Novak, Kornelius et al. (2010). Kreuz & Quer in der Szene (in German). Lichtzeichen-Verlag, 110. ISBN 9783869540184. 
  17. ↑ Oskar Skarsaune (2002). "12:Orthodoxy and Heresy", In the Shadow of the Temple: Jewish Influence on Early Christianity. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 246. ISBN 978-0-8308-2844-9. 
  18. ↑ Jozef Ondrej Markuš (2003). Mojžiš a Desatoro (in Slovak). Matica slovenská, 86. ISBN 978-807-096-9038. “Kto však nepozná svätého Boha, ten nemôže poznať ani seba samého.” 
  19. ↑ Svadba bez pretvárky, ale plná kontroverznosti! Róm s homosexuálnou minulosťou sa oženil s nerómkou, baptistkou! (Romany young lad with homosexual past has married non-romany babtist girl) (Slovak). markiza.sk (05. September 2012). Retrieved on August 6, 2013.
  20. ↑ Oslobodený z homosexuality - Príbeh Jozefa a Júlie Modré z Neba (Set free from homosexuality: The story of Jozef and Júlia) (Slovak). “nezabrániš vtákom aby leteli nad tvojou hlavou ale môžeš zabrániť aby si na nej spravili hniezdo”
  21. ↑ Jessica Martinez (December 13, 2013). Former Gay Activist Marries Woman; Addresses Critics Who Condemn His New Heterosexual Lifestyle. CP U.S.. Retrieved on December 25, 2013.
  22. ↑ George K. Simon (2011). "Introduction", Character Disturbance: The Phenomenon of Our Age. Little Rock, USA: Parkhurst Brothers, 42. ISBN 978-1-935166-33-7. “How we think in large measure determines how we will act.” 
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