The ABCDE model: take apart one upsetting moment and the belief behind it

The ABCDE model helps you take one upsetting moment apart in five steps: the Activating event, your Belief about it, the Consequences (how you felt and what you did), your Disputation of that belief, and the Effective new belief you end up with. Albert Ellis created the ABC part in the 1950s as part of rational emotive behaviour therapy, and Martin Seligman later added the D and E steps. It's a simple way to stop a small moment from spoiling your whole day.

Why can one small moment ruin a whole afternoon?

It might be an email that didn't get a reply, or a manager saying "can we have a quick chat later?" as they walk past your desk, or a friend cancelling at the last minute. On paper it's nothing much, and yet ten minutes later you're furious, or anxious, or replaying a conversation from last week and wondering what you did wrong.

By teatime you may well have built a whole story about what it all means, and that story can colour the rest of your evening. The event itself was tiny, but your reaction to it wasn't, and the gap between the two is where some very useful work can be done.

The good news is that you can learn to look at that gap calmly, and once you can, those small moments start to lose a great deal of their power.

What is the ABCDE model, and where did it come from?

Albert Ellis, an American psychologist, developed rational emotive behaviour therapy (REBT) in 1955, several years before Aaron Beck's cognitive therapy. His central idea echoed the Stoic philosophers of two thousand years earlier: we're upset less by events themselves than by the beliefs we hold about them.

Ellis set this out as A, B and C. There's the activating event, the belief you form about it, and the emotional and behavioural consequence that follows. Martin Seligman, one of the founders of positive psychology, later adapted the model in his 1990 book Learned Optimism, adding D for disputation, where you argue with the belief, and E for energisation, the lift that comes from doing so. Many coaches now use E to mean the "effective new belief" you settle on.

What this means for you is encouraging. If the upset comes largely from the belief, then the belief is something you can examine and, with a little practice, change.

How do you use the ABCDE model in PiViva?

Choose one specific moment that's still bothering you, and work through the five steps in order. For A, describe the event as though it were CCTV footage, with no interpretation at all. "She didn't reply to my email" is an event, whereas "she's annoyed with me" is already a belief, and if you let the belief slip into A, the rest of the exercise becomes much harder.

For B, write down what you told yourself it meant. For C, note how you felt and what you did next, whether that was snapping at someone, eating half a packet of biscuits or lying awake at two in the morning. Then comes D, which is where the real work happens. Ask yourself where the evidence is, what else could explain what happened, and what you'd say to a friend who came to you with exactly this story.

Finally, for E, write a more accurate way of seeing it. Take your time over D in particular. Most beliefs wobble a little when you ask them for evidence, and a little wobble is often enough to change how you feel.

What if the same kind of belief keeps coming up?

Then you've noticed a pattern, and patterns deserve a slightly different tool. ABCDE is built for single moments, so when the same belief appears again and again, such as "I always mess things up" or "people don't take me seriously", it's worth taking it into Limiting Beliefs and then writing a kinder, truer version in Reframing Beliefs. The Belief-Results Cycle will also show you how that belief has been shaping your results.

If a moment has really shaken you, it can help to start with the Self-Compassion Break before you dispute anything at all. With a little practice, you'll find you can catch these moments sooner and recover from them faster, and that's a lovely thing to get back.