The ABCD of how people work and how to use this technique to solve personal problems.
We are self programming devices. Through our lives we have experiences and learn to do things. The things that we learn to do become automated and like subroutines in a computer program can function without supervision. Most of us should be able to remember learning to ride a bicycle and drive a car. Initially the task requires a lot of conscious supervision, often more than we can handle and we get nervous and make mistakes, but, eventually we learn the skill and can drive a car or ride a bicycle without a conscious thought to the details of the task. We develop our instincts and can instinctively ride a bicycle or drive a car. Most of what we do becomes instinctively done. This includes how we perceive things including emotions like anger in other people. Just as we can instinctively catch a tennis ball thrown at us we can also experience fear as we nearly have, or have, an accident on a road.
You might have heard it said "If only they had stopped and thought before they did it". This is factual because most of what we do is done instinctively, it is automated and often referred to as subconscious. This includes how we see things and how we feel things and how we respond to things. But we do not have to suffer in misery and failure all our lives as we can reprogram ourselves for success and the following is a technique for reprogramming ourselves for success.
One unfortunate thing about people is that we tend to keep making the same mistake over and over again. There are extreme examples such as people who self mutilate, they cut themselves and the reason they do this is mostly because the physical pain replaces the emotional pain they feel and the physical pain is less than the emotional pain. The act of changing the processes that causes the emotional pain can solve this problem and can be very difficult and requires some reprogramming.
We run a cycle in that something happens in the world around us, this is the Affect and we respond to this effect, the response. The response can have an influence that makes things worse or could make things better. The response could inflame a husband or wife to greater anger and distress and they then behave in a way that escalates our anger or distress and a viscous cycle continues till we become exhausted. This need not happen. There is a problem solving technique where we can avoid this conflict situation and even develop ways of controlling it.
The Technique has four components as follows:-
A The Affect
This is what happens that will invoke a response from us.
B how you see it
This is how we interpret what happens, how we see the emotions
behind what was done, what we see their intent may have been.
C how you feel it
What happens can invoke some strong emotions that will drive
our behaviours and response. Fear, guilt, anger, love etc all have their
instinctive responses for us. Our behavious is different for different emotions.
D how you respond
There are responses which can inflame the situation and their
are responses that can solve a problem and there are responses that can calm the
situation. How we respond has big bearings on what happens next.
Now we create the following table on paper and we write down what happens for each column.
| The Affect | how I see it | how I feel it | how I respond |
There are option, we could decide to see things differently so we brainstorm all those possibilities and write them down, including the ones we do not agree with, but are possibilities.
We could decide to feel it differently and we write down all those possibilities, including the ones we do not agree with, but are possibilities.
We can decide we could respond differently and we write down all those possibilities, including the ones we do not agree with, but are possibilities.
After the brain storming exercise we then consider the possibilities and choose next time to implement a different perception of the problem, to feel differently about the situation and to have a different response. This the outcome will be different and the viscous cycle of emotions and despair can be avoided. This process may need to be repeated several more times till the best options have been developed and implemented.