Principlev1PR-1677
Identify the automatic thought mediating between trigger…
Identify the automatic thought mediating between trigger and emotion, not just the correlation between situation and response, because the appraisal is the actual causal mechanism.
Why This Is a Principle
Derives from Automatic Narrative Generation Precedes Conscious Evaluation (brains generate causal narratives pre-consciously) and Between every event and every emotional response… (cognitive appraisal interprets events before emotion). This prescribes capturing the mediating thought, not just the trigger-emotion pair, based on the axiom that appraisal causes emotion.