Cognitive Behaviour Therapy. Avy Joseph

You do not think infidelity will definitely happen. You misinterpret your partner's conversation with and actions towards another as having sexual or romantic feelings. You do not misinterpret your partner's conversation with another as having sexual meaning. What you do or feel like doing What you do or feel like doing You have visual images of infidelity. You do not create sexual images of your partner with another. If your partner admits to finding someone attractive, you see yourself as less attractive. You accept that your partner can find another attractive without thinking that you are less attractive. You want your partner to only ever think of you. You accept that your partner can see others as attractive just as you can.

      You will notice the heading in both the unhealthy negative emotion and the healthy negative emotion ‘What you do or what you feel like doing’. The action that we take is called ‘behaviour’ and what we feel like doing is called ‘action tendency’. To understand and check whether your emotions are unhealthily or healthily negative it is more accurate to reflect on your action tendency. Ask yourself, ‘What did I feel like doing?’ If your answer is ‘I felt like running away’, then your emotion was anxiety. Sometimes, we behave differently to what we feel like doing and this can give the wrong assessment of emotions. For example, you agree to give a presentation at work but what you really feel like doing is avoiding and making up an excuse to get out of doing it. It's what you feel like when you are experiencing a negative emotion that gives you an accurate way of understanding your emotions. This is significant because many people behave in accordance with their action tendencies or in accordance with their unhealthy negative emotions such as anxiety. For example, you may feel like avoiding and then you act in accordance with that feeling and choose to avoid. Unfortunately, this would leave you emotionally stuck. Whether you act on the tendency is matter of choice. Just because you may have a tendency to act in a particular way does not mean that you have to. You can choose to act against what you feel like doing, that is, against your unhelpful action tendencies. In order to overcome emotional problems you need to think in a healthy way and act in accordance with the helpful action tendencies.

      Exercise

      Identify the different emotions in the example below and work out if they are healthy or unhealthy.

      Sam is a 40‐year‐old man and has been married for three years. He is studying towards some professional qualifications and has to sit for his final exams in a couple of months. He is finding it difficult to concentrate when he sits down to revise. He keeps thinking that he will fail and, whenever he tries to revise, he ends up doing other work. When his wife tells him to sit down and get on with it he slams his books shut and shouts at her. After his outburst he ends up begging for forgiveness and thinks that he is a bad person.

* Answer at end of chapter

The following diagram illustrates key points in this chapter.

NOTE

      1 * Answer to identifying emotions exercise: Anxiety – unhealthy negative emotion; Anger – unhealthy negative emotion; Guilt – unhealthy negative emotion.