Why we behave the way we do?

How we react to situations can be easily answered but why do we react in that fashion is not always an easy question to answer.
In this blog we will try to answer that question based on the existing psychological theories.

Observe the following diagram:

Ignore the swipe button.

In this diagram if you look carefully, it basically describes how we respond to a particular event.

At any given time and at any given situation, we have already had few past experiences and core beliefs and assumptions. They can be a result of the societal construct we are in, the age we have attained and a lot more other factors.

Whenever we encounter any situation, whether we have already experienced it or not, our brain has a way to resist or embrace it. It is a complete cycle that effects our entire stimulus control system. Whenever we encounter any situation, we have a certain thought process related to it and this is based on the early experience and the core beliefs that we have. It is so fast that almost always we miss them and due to that we start feeling the consequence of that automatic thought and then we react according to the feeling if we choose to act on it. Either way, that’s how we behave and then that too creates another automatic thought and the cycle continues.

Automatic thoughts are so fast that we hardly recognize them if we don’t pay attention to them.

How to apply the model to understand our own thought process

Example 1:

As an example, we will examine the thoughts of a person who is afraid to talk to people. While there could be many reasons, let’s look at the most common reason where the person fears that he/she would look like a fool if they spoke over something. Observe the diagram below:

Given the situation where a person has to speak something publicly, the image above, shows the cycle of cognition that stops him from saying anything.

• Automatic thought : What if I make a fool of myself
• Emotion : Anxiety, fear. The automatic thought is enough to trigger the onset of the emotions and most of the times, the person will not even be aware and will describe his feelings like feeling afraid without accepting the reason. Why this is done is another topic that is beyond the scope of this article.
• Behaviour : This includes the body sensations, if any, like sweatiness, increased heart rate etc and prevents the person to speak altogether. Now not speaking here would reinforce his belief in his previous thought process of what if he makes a fool of himself and the same behaviour will continue

Example 2:

An example of a hypochondriac thought process. Here the person feels that there is some misdiagnosed illness that might be affecting them internally. Look at the following diagram carefully:

In this case,

• Automatic thought: What if I have some misdiagnosed illness that I would suffer.
• Emotion: Anxiety, fear.
• Behaviour: Try to selectively seek confirmations for safety. When the clarity is less, this becomes a highly repetitive and stressful cycle

The above image represents the various stages that a hypochondriac undergoes.

It is possible that you have more than one automatic thoughts and they may bring one or more emotions

If you carefully note at the examples above, they are mostly about the negative aspects of thought process. This is because, this method is a standard practice in the psychology domain to help people understand and train themselves (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy). Please note that this is only one of the few methods and it is not a substitute for actual therapist’s advice for you. The content is generic to cater to all viewers.

Let me know in the comments sections about the positive examples!