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:
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:
