Tomichan Matheikal's blog

“People are disturbed not by events, but by the views which they take of them,” said the Greek philosopher Epictetus 2000 years ago.  20 th 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 tagline of Quickfix adhesive in the 1970s was “Joins everything except broken hearts”.   At about the same time, a therapeutic process known as Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) was gaining ground in psychology. It sought to help people arrive at quick solutions to psychological problems since everyone was too busy to go digging into the past and thus arrive at radical solutions.   The advocates of SFBT argue that it is not necessary to know the cause of a problem to solve it and that there is no necessary relationship between the causes of problems and their solutions.   The problem is not what matters, but the solution.   Searching for the “right” solution is as futile as seeking to know and understand the problem.   What is important is to know your goals, what you want to accomplish, rather than diagnosis of the problem and its history. The fundamental assumption of SFBT is that people are healthy and competent and have the ability...