A+B=C Stress Model
How much do your thoughts influence the way you feel? It’s such a simple yet incredibly powerful influencer of how we do life.
We are never going to be able to influence everything going on around us, but how we interpret those circumstances and how we deal with them is something we can influence. Whatever is happening around you – you have the power to choose how you respond.
Our thoughts effect our feelings, and so in turn will also effect the level of stress we feel.
The same event that causes your stress response to activate, may have no impact on the person next to you. We all manage and frame our thoughts on any given situation differently, and it’s this framing that is often central to the level of stress we feel. Let’s face it, things can go horribly wrong, sometimes fast, sometimes life seem unfair – a colleague gets a promotion you felt far more qualified for, traffic makes you late for work, maybe it rained on your wedding day. The question is, how do you deal with the challenges that drive your stresses?
Stress actually isn’t an event, or isn’t even something lurking inside of us, it’s a balance of those two things. Your individual views, perception, beliefs and expectations are the determinent to whether you think an event is stressful or not. Our thoughts will play a huge role as to whether we interpret an event as stressful or not.
Yet our thoughts don’t often get much attention, even though the way we think can and will have a significant influence over our health.
Research has shown, for example that watching a horror movie will likely trigger the release of higher levels of stress hormones, even though in reality we know we’re not really at threat from a vampire. Our fearful thoughts trigger the fight/flight response – our stress hormones. On the other hand other studies have shown that watching a relaxing comedy film, where our thoughts are less negative can actually reduce the levels of stress hormones in our blood stream. Our thoughts effect this hormonal response, as described by Dr Albert Ellis who identified the role that our thoughts, beliefs and self-talk play in triggering the fight/flight response. He called this the A+B=C equation.
A = Activating Event
Activating events are the triggers that cause us potential stress. There are the Life Event stressors, such as the death of a loved one, which are fortunately fairly rare; the majority of us would find these life events difficult and stressful. Then there are the more common stressors called Daily Hassles. Not everybody exposed to these daily hassles finds them stressful and this is partly because our individual beliefs, thoughts and perceptions about the daily hassles will determine if the event is stressful to us or not.
B = Beliefs
When we are born we come into this world with no beliefs, opinions, views or perceptions. From the moment we can talk and listen we start to learn the opinions of our parents, our peers, school etc. We automatically start to use these beliefs as a template to interpret ourselves, other people and the world in general. The problem is that other people may not necessarily have the same template, views and beliefs as us. We use our beliefs to interpret what is happening to us. These beliefs may be accurate, possible, flexible and optimistic, these types of beliefs and thinking skills can help to reduce stress, however a lot of beliefs can be in the form of automatic negative thoughts and if they are rigid, negative, inflexible and pessimistic then this can exacerbate any stress we are under.
C = Consequences
The final part of the A+B=C equation is Consequences. Consequences refer to the feelings that occur as a consequence of our beliefs and self-talk in response to the activating event. The consequences can be in the form of stress, anxiety, depression, anger, irritability, aggression, fear, worry, and frustration etc.
"We can't always influence what others may say or do to us - but we CAN influence how we react TO it!"
Why not try and consciously change your self-talk to a less rigid, less pessimistic, more positive, thinking style and see how it helps you with your challenges and stresses. You won’t always get it right, but make a note to learn from a situation and try to better understand why you’re thinking about it the way you are, and if there is a way you can reframe that thinking to lessen the stress response it arouses. Easy as A B C ;-)
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