Skip to main content

We disturb ourselves



“People are disturbed not by events, but by the views which they take of them,” said the Greek philosopher Epictetus 2000 years ago.  20th century psychologist Albert Ellis [1913-2007] said the same thing in slightly different words, “People disturb themselves by the things that happen to them, and by their views, feelings, and actions.”

It is facile to argue that Salman Rushdie or Wendy Doniger disturbs us with their books.  The fact is they don’t.  There are more people in the world who are not disturbed by their books than those who are.  What makes the difference?

There is a model in psychology known as the A-B-C framework.  A stands for activating agent, B for belief, and C for Consequence (emotional and behavioural).  A book may be the activating agent.  It creates a belief in us: that our religion or god is in danger or something of the sort.  And the consequence is anger, frustration, or some such reaction. 

The basic premise of this approach to psychological understanding of human behaviour is that faulty thinking, making incorrect inferences on the basis of inadequate or incorrect information, and failing to distinguish between fantasy and reality engender problems

In other words, how we feel and behave is determined by how we perceive and structure our experience. 

How to rectify our wrong or inaccurate perceptions and interpretations which lead to problems?

The A-B-C framework suggests that we should question our beliefs with a disputing intervention (D) which will have an effect (E) on our emotions and behaviour leading to a new feeling (F).

If we feel hurt by a book, we can questions ourselves why feel so?  Is the book factually correct?  If it is not, it need not disturb me since I can disprove the claims of the book.  If it is factually correct, it is my beliefs that need correction or modification.  This is just an example.  We may need to ask more questions than these.  Relevant questions.

This may appear too simple or even childish.  The fact is that this model is working wonders in psychological counselling.  It can work wonders in our lives too if we are genuinely interested in solving our problems.  If we want to take political mileage out of problems, then neither this model nor any other will work.  Psychological theories and frameworks are effective only if our quest for solution is genuine.  


Let me conclude with Ellis’ words: “The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own.  You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president.  You realize that you control your own destiny.”


Top post on IndiBlogger.in, the community of Indian Bloggers

Comments

  1. Very nice thought and wish if everyone start accusing theselves for their condition.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I wouldn't use the word 'accusing', Hemant. It is taking charge of oneself. It is accepting one's own responsibility for his/her life and what happens in it.

      Delete
  2. Great analysis, Sir.
    ABCDEF has so much meaning...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Glad you found it meaningful, Anita. I have used this in my counselling sessions and found it absolutely useful. World over, cognitive psychology is being applied very effectively.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Beautifully put: You realize that you control your own destiny

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Pankti. In fact, the credit should go to Albert Ellis & Co.

      Delete
  5. ABCD...
    Obvious truths have to be put out in such writeups to make ome realize it.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Missing Women of Dharmasthala

The entrance to the temple Dharmasthala:  The Shadows Behind the Sanctum Ananya Bhatt, a young medical student from Manipal, visited the Dharmasthala Temple and she never returned to her hostel. She vanished without a trace. That was in 2003. Her mother, Sujata Bhatt, a stenographer working with the CBI, rushed to the temple town in search of her daughter. Some residents told her that they had seen Ananya walking with the temple officials. The local police refused to help in any way. Soon Sujata was abducted by three men, assaulted, and rendered unconscious. She woke up months later in a hospital in Bangalore (Bengaluru). Now more than two decades later, she is back in the temple premises to find her daughter’s remains and perform her last rites. Because a former sanitation worker of the temple came to the local court a few days back with a human skeleton and the confession that he had buried countless schoolgirls in uniform and other young women in the temple premises. This ma...

Two Nuns and two questions

The nuns kept in custody  Two Catholic nuns were arrested on 25 July 2025 at Durg railway station for allegedly trafficking tribal women from Narayanpur in Chhattisgarh to Agra in UP. Today’s newspapers in Kerala have expressed their contempt of the act more vehemently than I had expected. It seems secularism has hope yet in this country. For those who are not aware of the incident, two nuns were arrested because some criminals of a depraved organisation called Bajrang Dal in Chhattisgarh chose to conclude that the nuns were committing the crime of human-trafficking. Since that charge wouldn’t stick, because the women confessed that they were going voluntarily to take up jobs with the help of the nuns in order to raise their families from miserable poverty in a country that claims to be a $5-tillion-economy, another charge was fabricated that the nuns had indulged in religious conversion. Now let us look at certain facts. Though I keep questioning the Christian churches for...

Capital Punishment is not Revenge

Govindachamy when Kerala High Court confirmed his death sentence The Bible suggests that it is better for one man to die if that death helps others to live better [ John 11: 50 ]. Forgive me for applying that to a criminal today, though Jesus made that statement in a benign theological context. A notorious and hardcore criminal has escaped prison in Kerala. Fourteen years ago he assaulted a young girl who was travelling all alone in a late evening train, going back home from her workplace. The girl jumped out of the running train to save herself from this beast. But he jumped after her and raped her. The postmortem report suggested that he raped her twice, the second being when she had already fallen unconscious. And then he killed her hitting her head with a stone. Do you think that creature is human? I wrote about this back then: A Drop of Tear For You, Soumya . The people of Kerala demanded capital punishment for this creature, the brute called Govindachamy. He is inhu...

Gods, Guns and Missionaries

Book Review Title: Gods, Guns and Missionaries: The Making of the Modern Hindu Identity Author: Manu S Pillai Publisher: Penguin Random House India, 2024 Pages: 564 (about half of which consists of Notes) There never was any monolithic religion called Hinduism. Different parts of India practised Hinduism in its own ways, with its own gods and rituals and festivals. Some of these were even mutually opposed. For example, Vamana who is a revered incarnation of Vishnu in North India becomes a villain in Kerala’s Onam legends. What has become of this protean religion of infinite variety and diversity today in the hands of its ‘missionary’ political leaders? Manu S Pillai’s book ends with V D Savarkar’s contributions to the religion with a subtle hint that it is his legacy that is driving the present version of the religion in the name of Hindutva. The last lines of the book, leaving aside the Epilogue titled ‘What is Hinduism?’, are telltale. “Life did not give Savarkar all he...