This is a fictional work through of the ABC. The idea was brought up during my CBT group. This is my take of how to use CBT for myself. I understand there are minor differences, even an error here or there, but I’m learning & blogging this so I can see where I was 5 years from now.)

a: Activating Event: Failed a critical test to your career path.

b. Beliefs: I’m a failure, I lost my career, I suck, I’m stupid, the teacher hates me, I’ll never amount to anything.

c. Consequences: I’ll never get into an undergrad college, I’ll never work in my career path, I failed and lost all the financial sponsorship.

How to work through those thoughts and consequences.

a. Activating Event: Failed a critical test to your career path.

b. Counter Beliefs: I’m not a failure – perhaps I studied the wrong material, or the teacher graded me wrong, I should talk to the teacher about what went wrong and how to improve, I’m worth fighting for, I’ve gotten this far so I’ve amounted to something.

c. Consequences: Look at how to change the outcome for the better, use the opportunity to grow, communicate with the professor and see how to better the outcome, fight for your future, it may not turn out bad, it may lead you to a better job.

These beliefs and how we feel about the consequences are driven by emotions. We were given a emotions wheel, but it is too large and in-depth to share here at this time.

Mostly I suspect fear, anger, and shame would be the driving emotions behind the above beliefs and consequences of failing the exam.

We have to not only fight the thoughts that our emotions challenge us with, we need to combat the emotion and understand why we are feeling that way. In order to change our perception of ourselves and life we need to understand how our emotions affect our thinking and perception of life.

Many of us because we are depressed have our perception filters broken. We’re numb inside because our emotions have been wiped away. A fog filters our brain and were unable to see things for truly what they are. Quickly deceived we launch ourselves into the abyss of thought, spiraling out of control.

I’m hoping this CBT is part of the way out for me.