Following up on thoughts and thinking in the last post, especially the idea of slowing down the process to take control of, well, what we can control…our own behavior. There are three ideas to expand on here, so I’ll explain these in the next couple posts.

The first idea is – Breaking down a reaction into the process of thought, sensation, feeling, and urge. So much in the mind seems to happen automatically that by looking at the parts of the reaction, we can make better choices on how to act next time.

We used an oval diagram, and followed instructions in a clockwise direction:

1. In the top box, write a scenario that made us react negatively.
2. In the next three boxes, write thoughts, feelings/sensations, and urges that came as a result of that scenario.
3. At the bottom, fill in any action taken.
4. On the left, fill in the three boxes for any response to our action and thoughts/urges and feelings/sensations brought up by that response.

This completes the oval. When a reaction is broken down into its parts, it’s easier to see at different points along the way where we could have made a different choice. In the center, then, were three boxes to write:

1. Validation of the feelings we had
2. What skills we could have used
3. New behavior we could try next time

Here’s an example…  

These were the boxes down the middle…

First quote posted!