Healthcare Training Institute - Quality Education since 1979

Let’s explore you self-talk in further detail regarding how it is created in the first place… how it originates. Your feelings are not caused by events. If they were, everyone would have the same feelings after any given event. It is really your belief about a situation, or your thoughts about a situation, that cause your feelings. For example, if the Dietary Supervisor has a frown on her face as she passes you in the hall, do you think, "Gee, she is still mad at me because I did not order the Birthday Party punch on time," or "Gee, I know her daughter has health problems. I bet she's worried." Or, "Gee, what's her problem!" For each of these possible thoughts or self-talk statements, the event was exactly the same. The Dietary Supervisor walked past you with a frown. Let's explore via Albert Ellis's A, B, C's what happens inside of you that causes you to, for example…

1. In the first example above, feel guilty and take blame automatically regarding ordering the punch late. Or…
2. Look for a deeper meaning with empathy towards the Dietary Supervisor and a possible personal problem. Or…
3. Feel slightly angry and perhaps a little blaming of the Dietary Supervisor for not smiling. By stating to yourself, "Gee, what's her problem!"

The ABC’s of Your Emotions
Albert Ellis, Ph.D., a renowned psychologist, developed a theory to explain the relationship between events and your feelings. He reasoned that the true causes of feelings are not the events themselves but the beliefs or thoughts you have about these events. Dr. Ellis proposed a simple model to help better understand emotions. Here are his ABC’S of emotions:

• A’s are the activating events. In the situation described above, the Dietary Supervisor's frown was the activating event.
• B’s are the beliefs. In this case, these were your three self-talk sample messages regarding her frown
• C’s are emotional consequences. In the example above these emotional consequences were feelings of guilt, empathy, and anger respectively resulting from each of the three sample self-talk messages.

This way of understanding our feelings is not new, of course. As Ellis points out, a famous philosopher once wrote, “Men (and might I add, women) are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.” William Shakespeare stated in Hamlet: “There is nothing neither good nor bad, but thinking makes it so.” And Abraham Lincoln stated, “People are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”

Your Administrator and Your Beliefs
Let's take another example. If your Administrator calls you into her office, her intent may be to compliment your work. But before you go into her office, you wonder why she wants to see you. You may decide that she wants you to work late again, and you are irritated because you feel you are already doing too much work. By the time you get into her office, you may be angry in anticipation that she will ask more of you. In this example,
A (or the activating event) is the Administrator calling you into her office,
B is your belief that she wants you to do more work, and
C (or emotional consequences) is the anger you feel boiling up inside of you.

Get the drift of how this works? Your thoughts or beliefs have prejudiced your feelings, actions, and reactions about the purpose for being called into your Administrator's office. If you knew that your Administrator was going to compliment you, the following may happen
A. (A) would have been the same activating event (Administrator calling you into her office),
B. But your belief system (B) would have been different. "How great my Administrator is to recognize my efforts."
C. In turn, the emotional consequence (C) would also have been different—perhaps pleasure or even excitement.

Make your own example now. Think back to the most recent event in the facility you would define as "stressful."

• A’s are the activating events. Describe the event that activated or contributed to your stress. (CNA, Wendy, not providing Hazel with the activity left in her room.)

• B’s are the beliefs. What did you say to yourself? What was your self-talk message or thoughts? (“Wendy does not care about quality resident care.”)

• C’s are emotional consequences. Describe how you felt after these thoughts? (mad, sad, etc.)

As you can see, quite literally the key to your happiness and leading a stress-free life is examining your belief systems, self-talk, and thoughts about an activating event.

Hopefully by now you understand the role that your beliefs, self-talk, or thoughts play in your stress level at work. In the next Section we will examine four stress provoking beliefs you hold. See if you use any of them in your self-talk regarding the implementation of Culture Change in your facility. I have grouped two of the most widely used ones into what I call Exaggeration Clusters. The two exaggerations are: "Can’t-Stand-It’s or Awfulizing" and "Must's or Should's" You will be provided with techniques to dispute these beliefs or exaggerations in the next section.

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