by Albert Ellis
REBT, then, shows how you upset yourself with absolutistic shoulds, oughts, and musts. It holds that you can nicely hold conditional and logical musts—such as, “If I want to read this book, I must buy or borrow a copy.” And: “If I want to get a degree at college, I must get passing marks in my required subjects.” For these conventional musts merely say, “If I want something, then I have to act properly to get it.” This kind of must is (though not always) realistic and helps you to act sensibly.
REBT accepts your realistic musts but shows you how to look for your unconditional and illogical musts. Such as: “Even if I can’t get a copy of this book, I still must read it.” And: “Although I have not passed any college courses, because I strongly want a degree they should give it to me!”
REBT adds this rule to Insight No. 3: In seeking to discover the irrational Beliefs (iBs) you use to disturb yourself, cherchez le should, cherchez le must! Look for your dogmatic shoulds and musts!
Using REBT, you can quickly find these musts and see how you needlessly upset yourself by devoutly holding them. If you look!
Sandra insisted that she first felt that being rejected by a lover was awful and terrible, and that once she felt that way, she then said that she must not get rejected. To begin with, she insisted, she only had strong desires, and not demands, to be loved.
I was quite skeptical. “Let’s suppose,” I said, “you only wanted your lover strongly, and were not also insisting that you must not lose him. What would your entire belief be about having and losing him?”
“Uh—. I guess, I strongly want him to love me. And if he doesn’t, that’s terrible and I can’t stand it!”
“You’re implying that if you only weakly wanted him to love you and if he didn’t, that would be somewhat inconvenient but hardly terrible. Right?”
“Yes, only when I see that my strong desire for him may be blocked do I feel that it’s terrible.”
“But suppose you believed, ‘I strongly want my lover to love me but he really doesn’t have to. I really don’t need him to love me, though I truly desire him to do so.’ How would you then feel if you lost him?”
“Well—uh—If I really believed he didn’t have to love me, that I don’t need him to, I guess I would feel that I could go on without him and it wouldn’t be so terrible. But it would be quite frustrating and bad.”
“See! If you were not making his loving you a necessity but only a strong desire, you would feel highly frustrated and inconvenienced. The stronger your desire for his love is, the more inconvenienced you will be. But to turn your great inconvenience into a holy horror, to make it terrible, you are really adding a second idea: ‘Since losing my lover is so bad, I must not be that inconvenienced. And if I am so very frustrated, as I must not be, that is awful, that is terrible!’ ”
“So my awfulizing about losing my lover really stems from my musturbating about such a great loss?”
“Doesn’t it? If you only stayed with a preference sentence, wouldn’t you be saying to yourself, ‘I hate like hell losing my lover. But there is still no reason why I must not lose him’?”
“Yes, I guess I would.”
“And would you not then conclude, ‘Because there is no reason why I must not lose him, it would be highly obnoxious if I did, but the world won’t come to an end, it won’t be terrible, and I could still be a happy—though a less happy—person’?”
“Yes, I might well conclude that.”
“I think you would! Your awfulizing and terribleizing basically stems from your command, your necessity, that this very bad loss must not occur.”
“If I tell myself, ‘Losing him is awful!’ am I then saying that this loss must not exist?”
“Not always. You may just be using awful when you really mean, ‘It’s very bad losing him,’ and that would merely make you feel healthily sad and frustrated at this loss. But when you say to yourself, ‘It’s awful that I lost him,’ you may also mean, ‘It’s more than bad, it must not be that bad, I can’t bear that degree of badness!’ Your must is crucial here. For missing out on your strong desire to be loved may indeed be very bad and may help you feel quite sorrowful. But telling yourself that this degree of badness absolutely ought not exist and therefore is more than bad puts you outside of reality and makes you severely anxious and depressed. Do you see the difference ?”
“I think I do. But it’s hard to see it clearly and keep seeing it.”
“True! Moreover, once you say to yourself, ‘I must not lose my lover, and it would be terrible if I did,’ you then tend to add, in a circular fashion, ‘And since it would be so terrible, this loss must not occur, absolutely should not exist!’ And then you foolishly think that your musts stem from your terribleizing.”
“When only the second must does! Is that what you mean?”
“Yes. You bring musts or demands to the possible loss of your lover. You therefore define this loss as terrible. Then you bring the demand that ‘terrible things must not exist!’ to your terribleizing. So you have first-level and second-level musts that you tend to bring to undesirable situations. And you therefore have, very often, primary and secondary disturbances.”
“Both of which I make exist because I tell myself that bad and ‘horrible’ things must not happen to me.”
“Yes, that’s a good point you’re making. You can think that mildly bad, very bad, and so-called terrible events must not occur. And in all these cases, even with the mildly bad events, you’ll needlessly disturb yourself. While if you convince yourself that even if the very worst things in life—such as painful deaths—should and must at times exist, because they simply and truly do exist, then you’ll tend to feel sad and frustrated, but not severely anxious and depressed.”
“I see now that the must seems to be basic to my disturbances,” said Sandra.
“Fine. But don’t let me talk you into this. Figure it out for yourself. Whenever you really feel miserable—especially panicked, depressed, or enraged—look for your should, look for your must. And then see that if you gave it up, you’ll still feel frustrated and saddened—but not off the wall!”
“Okay, I’ll really keep looking.”
Sandra did keep looking for her musts and shoulds—as well as for the awfulizing and terribleizing that stemmed from them—and for the first time in her life managed to feel quite sad but not depressed when an important lover rejected her. When she occasionally sank into depression again, she saw she had returned to musturbation, worked at giving it up, and then felt alone and sad but not self-downing or depressed.
It is about time that I fully explain some confusing aspects of your Belief system. This system includes rational Beliefs (rBs) and preferences (which are also rational), which also includes irrational Beliefs (iBs) and absolutistic shoulds, oughts, and musts (which are also irrational).
I was wise enough to pioneeringly point out in my first paper on REBT at the American Psychological Association convention in Chicago in 1956 that Beliefs include thinking, feeling, and behaving—all three processes. Feelings also include thinking and behavings; and behavings also include thinking and feeling. Again, all three.
However, in some of my early writings, I carelessly used the term “Beliefs” as if it included only thinking; I omitted saying that Beliefs are full of feeling and of actions, too. I later corrected this in my books, as in Feeling Better, Getting Better, and Staying Better, in Overcoming Destructive Beliefs, Feelings, and Behaviors, and in other recent writings. I did not make this correction in the first edition of the present book and wish to make it quite clear now.
My original ABCs of REBT are still accurate if, by B, Belief System, you (and I!) clearly understand that Beliefs include, influence, and are integrally related to feelings and actions. When you think about something, you really THINK-feel-and act about it. When you feel about something, you really FEEL-think-and act about it. When you act about something, you really ACT-think-and feel about it. That is your nature—both innate and learn
ed; and unless you are brain injured or otherwise defective, you think-feel-act. So when I use Belief and Belief System in this book, try to realize—which is difficult—that I really mean think-feel-and-act. That is why REBT, as I shall show, has so many important emotional and behavioral methods, in addition to its cognitive methods, to help you change your dysfunctional thinking-feeling-behaving.
I particularly bring that to your attention again on page 85.
REBT Exercise No. 7
Look for something that you really believe is awful, terrible, or horrible. See if you can find—as you most probably can—the must that lurks behind your defining this thing or act as awful.
Example: “I think that being rejected by a person I truly love is awful.”
Hidden musts
“. . . Because I must not be rejected by anyone I truly love.”
“. . . Because I must be good enough to win the favor of anyone I truly love.”
“. . . Because I must not be deprived of the companionship of someone I really love.”
“. . . Because I am a nice person who deserves to be loved, and therefore the world must arrange things so that I get the love I truly deserve!”
Look for something you think you can’t stand and try to discover some of the musts that make you feel that you can’t stand this thing.
Example: “The conditions under which I work are so disorganized and unfair that I can’t stand working there.”
Hidden musts
“The conditions under which I work are so disorganized and unfair that they must not exist. And therefore I can’t stand their being as bad as they must not be.”
“I must have pleasure and relaxation at work, and I cannot have this when the conditions there are so disorganized and unfair. Therefore, these conditions are so bad that I can’t stand them.”
“I must have some degree of happiness at work, and the conditions there are so disorganized and unfair that I can’t be happy at all there. Therefore, I can’t stand working there.”
“My work must be the way I want it to be, and the disorganized and unfair conditions where I work don’t allow this. Therefore, I can’t stand working there.”
Look for some occasion when you felt you were an inadequate person, or felt worthless, or felt undeserving of good things. Try to discover your hidden musts that made you feel this way.
Example: “I failed a good many times to establish a long-term relationship with someone for whom I really cared. That shows what an inadequate, unlovable person I am.”
Hidden musts
“I must succeed in at least one long-term relationship, otherwise I am an inadequate, unlovable person.”
“I must not keep failing at relationships with people for whom I care, and if I do I am clearly worthless.”
“Because having a good relationship is the most important thing for me, I have to achieve one soon. If I fail at this, as I must not, I am obviously an inferior, undeserving person.”
“I am sometimes allowed to fail at long-term relationships, but I have failed too many times, as I must not! Failing so many times shows that I am an inadequate, unlovable person!”
Look for some time when you felt hopeless and knew you would never succeed in life and would always be deprived of what you most wanted. Find your hidden musts that led you to this feeling of hopelessness.
Example: “Now that I have lost several good jobs, I’ll never be able to get and keep a good one and always will be doomed to a lousy position.”
Hidden musts
“I must never keep losing good jobs, and if I do, I’ll clearly never be able to get and keep a good one.”
“I have to stay on a good job for a reasonable length of time. Otherwise, I’ll never be able to get another good one and always be doomed to poor ones.”
“I must prove what a worthwhile worker and person I am and will never be worthwhile if I keep losing good jobs. Being worthless, I’ll never be able to get and keep a good job!”
“I can lose a good job now and then but must not keep losing so many of them. Since I keep losing them, as I must not, I’ll never be able to keep a good one and always will be doomed to a lousy position.”
Whenever you are upset about anything, look for your obvious or hidden dogmatic musts. Assume that you really have them; and if you can’t find them ask a friend, relative, or therapist to help you look for them. Cherchez le should, cherchez le must. Seek and ye shall find!
9
REBT Insight No. 4: Forget Your “ Godawful” Past!
For several years I was a highly successful psychoanalyst and thought that I was greatly helping my clients by exploring the gory details of their early life and showing them how these experiences made them disturbed—and how they could not understand and remove these early influences. How wrong I was!
After I honestly admitted that my psychoanalytic “cures” were hardly as good as I would have liked them to be, I began to see that helping people to understand their past was not only doing them little good but was actually blocking their dealing with their preset problems. So I founded REBT and began to help my clients in the present and to help them with their current difficulties. I immediately experienced better results in teaching them how to be “unneurotic.”
Many of my clients, however, still insisted on talking about their past—partly because they previously had years of psychoanalysis and had been trained to do so. I then showed them that, yes, their mother or brother had severely criticized them during their childhood (at point A, or Activating Event, in the ABCs of REBT). And, yes, they had then undoubtedly felt depressed and self-downing (at point C, or Consequence). But A did not cause or create (though it may well have contributed to) C.
B (their Belief System) was the main contributor to C; and B included a rational Belief (rB)—such as, “I don’t like being criticized. Maybe it shows that I’m doing something wrong and, if so, I’d better correct it.” But B also included an irrational Belief (iB) and a dysfunctional feeling, such as, “I need my mother’s love and absolutely must not act badly and get her disapproval. If she, whom I need, dislikes me, I am surely an unlovable, crummy person!”
So I showed my early REBT clients the iBs and dysfunctional feelings that they brought to their early childhood situations. I proved to them that, as children, they basically upset themselves.
More important, I demonstrated by examining their present lives how they were still using these same early iBs to castigate themselves and that they were therefore currently disturbed. Unlike many other people who were upset during childhood but long since changed their thinking and got over downing themselves (and hating their parents), these clients still actively clung to their original shoulds and musts and refused to give them up.
Their early thoughts and feelings did not make them anxious today. Rather, their present and continuing dogmas and feelings (iBs) were really the more direct cause of their current neurosis.
This brings us to Insight No. 4 of REBT: Your early childhood experiences and your past conditioning did not originally make you disturbed. You did.
You chose, because of your disturbed thinking and feelings, to overreact or underreact to the Activating Events and Experiences of the past. You were actually an integral part of these Experiences.
Because when you do something (say, take a boat trip), you approach the situation (the boat, the people on it, the water on which it sails), and you react, as only you can react, to it. Moreover, you bring your memories of past events (including your reactions to these events) to the new situation, and you therefore “experience” it in a biased manner. You largely (though not completely) are your experiences—are an active creator of them.
So to some extent you “invented” your past. And when “it” supposedly “makes you” feel upset today, you are really choosing to keep it alive. How?
1. By thinking the same kind of irrational Beliefs (iBs) with which you upset yourself—during your childhood. For example, “I not
only want my mother’s approval but I completely need it and am a basket case without it!”
2. By still actively holding on to these views and feelings today.
3. By refusing to rethink and act against your iBs until you no longer use them to upset yourself.
In the past, you largely made your bed of neurosis and you are insisting on lying in it today! If, therefore, you use REBT to understand your early life, you can focus on your part in creating it and on how you now perpetuate your childish thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
Ironically, if you forget about your past, if you assume that you are still bothering yourself today, and if you look for what you are now doing to make yourself miserable, you will often see what really “happened” in your childhood—and what you did to make it happen. The less you gripe about your past, the more you tend to admit that you partly created it. The more you explore what you are now doing to cause your upset feelings, the more insight you will have.
Karen, a member of one of my regular therapy groups at the Albert Ellis Institute in New York, kept insisting that she hated herself because all during her childhood her mother continually told her that she was stupid and ugly. Rob, another group member, backed her up by stoutly contending that he had no confidence in himself because his father insisted that he become a wealthy businessman, and he actually turned out to be a low-paid civil servant.
The other group members and I tried to show Karen and Rob that their brothers and sisters, who had also been severely put down by their parents, were—peculiarly enough!—confident and self-accepting. No sale. Karen and Rob firmly held on to their “traumatic” pasts—and did little to change themselves in the present.