Now what happens to our thoughts and emotions when we approach rather than avoid uncertain situations? When we approach the uncertain situation, we can learn that uncertainty is not catastrophic and that it is manageable. This will increase the likelihood that we approach the situation in future and feel more confidence around it. To break the vicious cycle of uncertainty and rumination, we want to engage in alternative behaviours, which in turn, leads to improved emotions and realistic thoughts. See the diagram below for breaking the vicious cycle.

Here, we are applying principles of behavioural activation to help you face - rather than avoid-uncertain situations and to break the cycle of rumination. In other words, rather than ruminating in uncertain situations, these principles will help you activate alternative behaviours to approach the situation and feel more able to cope with uncertainty in the long term. That is, to overcome rumination, you want to pick an alternative ‘approach’ (instead of rumination) to uncertain situations and practice/schedule it with an aim of managing the uncertain situation. This alternative approach should help you reduce rumination, leading to less negative emotions. Now, with this GOAL in mind, let’s learn how to find alternative activities that can help you achieve this goal.

Let’s have a look at Juan’s example.
 

Juan keeps thinking/ruminating about how badly his last training session six months ago went and how he felt after, and this makes him feel even more nervous and stressed about his first training session at his new fencing club. These thoughts and feelings make him not want to go to the training session. To help Juan feel less nervous and stressed and go to the training session, his school counsellor suggests to Juan that instead of sitting and thinking about the past and how he felt then, he could engage in an alternative activity, such as watching some interviews with professional fencers, who talk about how they overcome their mistakes and the feeling of losing, so he can remember that everyone has bad training sessions, even professionals but they still go back to training and he can too. Another activity could be joining an online group of fencers, such a Reddit page and discussing his nerves with other people who would understand him and provide some tips to feel less nervous about it – such as practising some drills at home.

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When thinking about the activities, it is important to think about what GOAL you want to achieve. A long-term goal takes a long time to achieve (i.e., weeks, months, years), while a short-term goal is something that can be achieved sooner (i.e., today, tomorrow, this week). In Juan’s case, his long-term goal is to regularly attend the new fencing club, without thinking about the past training sessions that went wrong and how that made him feel. A short-term goal for Juan would be attending the first training session, since he is considering not going anymore because of how nervous and stressed he feels. The activities he schedules will help him achieve the short-term goal. One way to achieve a short-term goal is to make it a SMART goal: a Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound goal.

Below is an example of Juan’s goals, to show the differences between what is/isn’t a SMART goal:

 

A SMART goal:	Not a SMART goal:
I am going to attend the first training session tomorrow.	I am going to feel great at fencing sessions.

For Juan, setting the goal to attend the first training session is more SMART than his long-term goal of not thinking about all his previous mistakes and feelings at past trainings in order to feel great at fencing sessions.

To achieve this short-term goal, Juan needs to plan some activities that through practice, will help him achieve his goal. This is the premise of Behavioural Activation. Using the ABC model to better understand your rumination, will help you brainstorm some activities.
 

Situation (Trigger):  First training session at a new club Rumination (Your Thoughts): I made a lot of mistakes at previous training sessions. It might be my personality that I always react this way. Any Negative Consequences (Emotions or Behaviours):     Feeling nervous and stressed, not attending training

What are some activities you could do to change your thoughts?   Write down all the times training sessions went well Watch videos about professional fencers making mistakes and they overcome them.

Now it’s your turn! Let’s recall the example you provided in Session 1 regarding your “Uncertainty and related thoughts, emotions, and behaviours”. 

Situation (Trigger): 

Rumination (your thoughts): 

Any Negative Consequences (Emotions or Behaviours): 

What are some activities you could do to change your thoughts?

Next, reflect on your answers above and set a long-term goal below:

e.g. Going to all fencing training sessions (without spending time thinking back on all the mistakes I made, how bad those mistakes made me feel, and thinking they will happen at the next session).

Now set a short-term SMART goal, that can help you achieve your long-term goal:

e.g. Go to the first training session.

Finally, select one or a couple of activities that you can practice in the next week, to achieve your short-term goal:

e.g. Watch videos about professional fencers making mistakes and how they overcame them

Good job!

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Behavioural Activation

Behavioural activation teaches you how to change your avoidance behaviours/actions to manage your negative emotions related to the behaviours. As you learned in Session 1, rumination is a maladaptive emotion regulation strategy that people often use in uncertain situations. When people perceive that uncertainty may risk failure and negative outcomes, they tend to avoid situations with uncertainty by ruminating.

Rumination is seen as an action of avoidance because when you ruminate, you repetitively focus on the negative or catastrophic aspects of the uncertain situation and the negative thoughts you have instead of problem-solving (i.e., managing the uncertainty or solving the problems related to the uncertainty). You also lose the opportunity to find out the truth due to avoidance, thus falling in a vicious cycle.

In other words, when people ruminate, they often focus on unhelpful thoughts such as “why do I have problems other people don’t have?”; “why do I always have these feelings?”, “why are most people handling their lives better than I am?”, “I am unable to control my worries and feelings”. This prevents them from taking proper actions to manage the uncertain situation and their emotions and results in them experiencing the negative emotions even more strongly. See the below diagram to better understand this:

The cycle of uncertainty and rumination

Let’s recall the example you provided in Session 1 regarding your “Uncertainty and related thoughts, emotions, and behaviours” – to fill out the blank uncertainty and rumination cycle diagram below with your own uncertain situation, the repetitive thoughts, and feelings you have that help you avoid the situation, and how you feel afterwards.

Your uncertain situation: 

Your avoidance of uncertain situation by rumination (thoughts): 

Feelings: 

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Rummination

 Review of Session 1

We learnt in Session 1:

(1) Intolerance of Uncertainty and related thoughts, emotions, and behaviours.

(2) Adaptive and maladaptive emotion regulation strategies used under uncertain situations. Given that maladaptive emotion regulation strategies are related to increasing negative emotions; we want to learn how to manage our negative emotions under uncertain situations by specifically focusing on reducing unhelpful strategies.

(3) Rumination is a maladaptive emotion regulation strategy. It is a repetitive thinking style that has negative emotions associated with it. Understanding your own rumination in uncertain situations is important. Using the ABC model to better understand an uncertain situation is the first step to conquering rumination, via a method known as Behavioural Activation.

In this session, you will learn how to battle rumination using a strategy called BEHAVIOURAL ACTIVATION.

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