Avy Joseph - Cognitive Behaviour Therapy

SHAME VERSUS REGRET

UNHEALTHY ENVY VERSUS HEALTHY ENVY

UNHEALTHY JEALOUSY VERSUS HEALTHY JEALOUSY

You will notice the heading in both the unhealthy negative emotion and the healthy negative emotion ‘What you do or what you feel like doing’. The action that we take is called ‘behaviour’ and what we feel like doing is called ‘action tendency’. To understand and check whether your emotions are unhealthily or healthily negative it is more accurate to reflect on your action tendency. Ask yourself, ‘What did I feel like doing?’ If your answer is ‘I felt like running away’, then your emotion was anxiety. Sometimes, we behave differently to what we feel like doing and this can give the wrong assessment of emotions. For example, you agree to give a presentation at work but what you really feel like doing is avoiding and making up an excuse to get out of doing it. It's what you feel like when you are experiencing a negative emotion that gives you an accurate way of understanding your emotions. This is significant because many people behave in accordance with their action tendencies or in accordance with their unhealthy negative emotions such as anxiety. For example, you may feel like avoiding and then you act in accordance with that feeling and choose to avoid. Unfortunately, this would leave you emotionally stuck. Whether you act on the tendency is matter of choice. Just because you may have a tendency to act in a particular way does not mean that you have to. You can choose to act against what you feel like doing, that is, against your unhelpful action tendencies. In order to overcome emotional problems you need to think in a healthy way and act in accordance with the helpful action tendencies.