How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything-yes, Anything!

by Albert Ellis

  Disputing question: “Is there any way in which I can falsify or invalidate my irrational Beliefs (iBs)?”

  Example: “Is there any way in which I can falsify or invalidate my Belief that because I selfishly harmed my innocent friend, as I absolutely should not, I am a damnable person who deserves to be punished? Can I really prove or disprove the idea that I am undeserving of any acceptance by others and should be severely boycotted and punished?”

  Answer: “No, I cannot falsify my belief that I am a damnable person who deserves to be punished. I can prove that I selfishly harmed my innocent friend, which was wrong. But I can only arbitrarily insist that the wrongness or evil makes me a damnable, undeserving person who absolutely should be punished and deprived of all human acceptance and pleasure.

  Concepts like damnation, undeservingness, and total unacceptability as a human imply that there is some superhuman higher power that absolutely knows when human acts are bad enough to levy such undebatable sanctions. But such superhuman powers cannot be proved or disproved, so there is no way to falsify (or to verify) these exceptionally punitive concepts. To believe in them leads to extreme self-damnation and self-deprivation. But since I cannot justify or falsify these irrational Beliefs, and they are therefore matters of pure choice, why should I choose to self-defeatingly believe them? For no good reason!”

  Disputing question: “What results will I get if I continue to hold these irrational Beliefs? What good—and harm—will it bring me to believe them?”

  Example: “What results will I get if I believe that I absolutely should not have given in to my plane phobia and driven a thousand miles to get from New York to Chicago, and that therefore I’ll never be able to overcome my irrational fear of planes? What results will I achieve if I firmly believe that I’ll always have to drive instead of fly long distances?”

  Answer: “Very poor results! If I rigidly hold to this overgeneralized way of thinking, I will doom myself to my all-and-never predictions and make my phobia a hopeless condition. Whenever I insist that I can’t change and that I must always function badly, I block my progress and practically force myself to stick in the mud.”

  Disputing question: “Can I choose to stop believing and following my irrational Beliefs?”

  Example: “Can I choose to believe that I do not have to be perfect, special, and noble and choose to give up the belief that if I am not all I am nothing?”

  Answer: “Of course I can! Anything I choose to believe I can obviously choose not to believe. Even if I am strongly indoctrinated—or indoctrinate myself—with these nutty beliefs in my early life, I may have to make some effort to change them, but as long as they are my ideas I can choose to change them or give them up. Many of the things I once believed I no longer hold to, and any notion I now choose to cling to I can later change. So let me work at changing my irrational and self-defeating Beliefs to those that will bring me better results!”

  Once you have written down some of your dogmatic musts and the other irrational Beliefs (iBs) that they tend to lead to, ask yourself the Disputing questions listed above and do your best to answer them until you at least temporarily change these Beliefs to rational preferences. Do this until you feel much better and have changed your unhealthy feelings and behaviors for more appropriate ones. Repeat this exercise whenever you feel quite disturbed or act in a distinctly self-defeating manner. If necessary, repeat it two, three, or more times a day when you feel seriously anxious, depressed, hostile, self-hating, or self-pitying.

  11

  REBT Insight No. 6: You Can Refuse to Upset Yourself About Upsetting Yourself

  Many therapies, such as behavior therapy, try to relieve people’s neurotic symptoms—their phobias, obsessions, compulsions, and addictions. Some therapies, such as existential analysis and psychoanalysis, try to go “deeper” and help clients change their philosophy, and thus prevent them from creating new symptoms in the future. REBT goes still further and aims for a profound new philosophy as well as for relieving symptoms. It also helps people become unanxious and undepressed about their neurotic problems.

  REBT’s view that crooked thinking leads to emotional problems has much evidence to support it, as I have already noted. But it is also supported by the very nature of neurosis. As I point out in Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy and A Guide to Rational Living, we may drive rats and guinea pigs “neurotic” in psychological laboratories, but they do not seem to know they are disturbed. They don’t observe their crazy behavior, or think about it, or hate themselves for suffering from it. Humans often do.

  People continually see that they are anxious, know that worry is inefficient, measure how bad it is, accept responsibility for producing it, and criticize themselves for “weakly” or “stupidly” bringing it on. They then tend to make themselves anxious about their anxiety, depressed about their depression, guilty about their addictions, self-pitying about their neurosis.

  George is often angry at his senile, demanding mother—and hates himself intensely for being angry at her. Cynthia smokes two packs of cigarettes a day in spite of her weak lungs and steady coughing and is very guilty about her “horrible weakness.” Josef is unassertive with his woman-friend—and angry at her for “making him” afraid to assert himself.

  Are disturbances about disturbances important? Indeed they are! For if George hates himself for being angry at his mother, he will tend to be so wrapped up in his self-denigration that he will have little time and energy to work on the problem of giving up his anger. If Cynthia is guilty about her “horrible weakness” of continuing to smoke when she has weak lungs, she will upset herself so severely that she may “need” more cigarettes to distract her from her self-hatred. While Josef remains angry at his woman-friend for “making” him unassertive, he will be aggressive rather than assertive and will hardly work on expressing himself. By bringing on their disturbances about their original neuroses, George, Cynthia, and Josef will add considerably to their emotional problems.

  This brings us to Insight No. 6 of REBT: Once you make yourself miserable about anything, you easily tend to make yourself miserable about your misery. If you look at what you are doing, you can often discover that you are making yourself anxious about your anxiety, depressed about your depression, and guilty about your rage. You really are talented at upsetting yourself!

  Don’t take my word for it. Be honest with yourself. How did you really feel when you were last panicked? Yes, how did you feel about your panic? And about your last bout of depression? And about your severe feelings of inadequacy? See!

  The REBT solution? Oddly enough, more thinking, more reasoning. When you create problems about problems by observing your bad feelings and telling yourself that you must not have these feelings, you can remove them by using Insight No. 6.

  To be more precise, to stop disturbing yourself about disturbing yourself, try the following steps:

  1. Ask yourself, “Now that I feel very anxious, am I also anxious about my anxiety?”

  2. Acknowledge, when you find them, your secondary symptoms—such as your depression about your anxiety and your anxiety about your depression.

  3. Understand that you have created your secondary symptoms—yes, made yourself panicked about your panic, self-hating about your self-hatred.

  4. Recognize that because you brought on your secondary feelings of misery, you also have the ability to work at changing them. You strongly (emotionally) and persistently (actively) recognize this—use thinking, emotion, and action to do so.

  What next?

  Suppose that, using REBT, you have made yourself fully aware that you feel, let us say, anxiety about your anxiety—or panic about your panic! What do you do now?

  Take these Disputing steps:

  1. Assume that you created your panic about your panic with some absolutistic musts—such as, “I must not be panicked! I have to be calm!”

  2. Seek out, probe for your musts until you find them: “Oh yes. I now see that I do believe
that I must never be panicked, or else I’ll end up in the loony bin. And that would really be terrible!”

  3. Actively Dispute your musts until you come up with—and truly believe!—Effective Rational Philosophies. Like this:

  iB (irrational beliefs)—“It’s awful to be panicked!”

  D (disputing)—“Where is the evidence that it’s awful?”

  E (effective rational philosophy)—“Nowhere except in my foolish thinking! It’s only very inconvenient, but I can always stand it—and work to get rid of my panic about panic.”

  iB—“I must not be panicked!”

  D—“Where is that law of the universe written?”

  E—“Nowhere. Only in the heads of crooked-thinking humans like me! If the universe ruled that I must not be panicked, I couldn’t possibly be. Obviously its rule is that I can be extremely anxious—if I allow myself to be!”

  iB—“If I am panicked, I’ll end up in the loony bin and that would really be terrible!”

  D—“Is this true?”

  E—“Nonsense! I and billions of other people have been panicked before and have somehow managed to stay out of the mental hospital. Feelings of panic are painful but rarely produce nervous breakdowns. Otherwise, all of us humans would be confined! And even if the worst comes to the worst—which is most unlikely—and I do for a while get hospitalized, that would be highly uncomfortable. But I can still survive, calm down, and lead a happy life. If I think I can!”

  If you Dispute (D) your irrational Beliefs (iBs) leading to your emotional Consequences (C) of anxiety about anxiety, you can then keep thinking and planning to rid yourself of it and to see that you rarely bring it back. Your final conclusions will tend to be:

  1. “I am never an incompetent or rotten person for making myself anxious and making myself anxious about my anxiety. I am merely a person who has some rotten philosophies—which I can work at changing.”

  2. “No matter how badly I inconvenience and handicap myself with feelings of stress and panic, they are only that: inconvenient. Never awful or horrible! Never unbearable! Only a royal pain in the neck!”

  Once you keep making these conclusions, you can go back to your original feelings of panic (such as your horror about being rejected by someone); discover your irrational Beliefs that are creating the panic (for example, “I cannot be alone and be happy!”); and Dispute these iBs and remove your original anxiety.

  Insight No. 6 of REBT, as you can see, indicates that you easily create primary emotional problems and secondary problems about your original ones. It encourages you to give up, first, your secondary neurosis—and then to undo your primary one.

  Insight No. 6 also shows you how you can create third-level disturbances and how to work against them, too. Gerald, for example, first made himself anxious about doing well at work (primary problem). Then he became addicted to alcohol in order to temporarily calm his anxiety (secondary problem). Then he damned himself severely for his drinking (third-level problem). Because of his third-level self-blame he upset himself so much that he did worse at work and (to soothe his anxiety) drank much more.

  If you heed Insight No. 6, you will undo your second-level and third-level emotional problems, then get back to working against your primary disturbances and thus comprehensively help yourself.

  Here are some follow-ups on the clients mentioned previously in this chapter:

  George examined his irrational Belief, “I must never be angry at my mother, even though she neglected me as a child and now demands that I devote myself to her in her old age. What a louse I am!” He first accepted himself with his anger—then, free of his self-hatred, he stopped demanding that his mother be nondemanding and gave up hatred of her (though not his dislike of her behavior).

  Cynthia, after much rethinking, was able to strongly repeat to herself many times, “My continuing to smoke is indeed a bad weakness. But beating myself for smoking only makes me weaker! If I am no good for smoking, how can rotten me ever do a good thing like stopping? Never! So even if I keep foolishly smoking, I am determined to stop my self-beating!” As soon as she ceased her self-blaming, Cynthia found it much easier to stay at five cigarettes a day, instead of her usual two packs.

  Josef acknowledged that his woman friend really was making it difficult—though not impossible—for him to assert himself. But by showing himself that she had a right, as a human being, to be wrong, he lost his anger at her—and then, despite his fear and discomfort, he was able to force himself to be more and more assertive, until acting that way became natural and easy.

  Gerald, with the help of one of my regular therapy groups, first worked at his third-level problem—his downing himself for his alcoholism—by showing himself that his drinking was stupid but that he was not a stupid, hopeless person. Then he tackled his secondary symptom (low frustration tolerance), which accompanied his irrational Belief, “I can’t stand feeling anxious, so I must immediately relieve myself by drinking!” Finally, he went back to his primary symptom, his anxiety created by his demand that he had to do very well at work—and he was able to make himself concerned but no longer overconcerned about his job performances and to become much less anxious. On all three levels he improved—and his drinking and his work considerably improved, too. As his anxiety, low frustration tolerance, and self-damning decreased, he was able to stop drinking altogether and lead a much more productive life.

  REBT Exercise No. 10

  This is an exercise in self-honesty. Dishonesty with yourself is usually the result of your self-downing. You feel ashamed to admit the truth—as when you fail miserably at something or see that others are laughing at you—so you lie to yourself and deny your errors and your foolishness.

  What you can do now is honestly admit when you recently felt upset—felt anxious, depressed, or enraged. For example:

  • Were you anxious about your children or other close relatives coming home later than expected?

  • Were you panicked about a pain in your chest, thinking it might be a heart attack?

  • Were you depressed about the death of a relative or close friend?

  • Were you enraged about terrorism directed against innocent civilians?

  These are anxieties about real major or important events and you probably were able to accept your reactions and deal with them. But how about some recent minor or unimportant events? For example:

  • You notice you have a spot on your shirt and are anxious about the strangers on the bus or subway who might notice it.

  • You are at a party or a convention and forgot someone’s name and are panicked lest that person see that you have forgotten it.

  • You were unassertive with your barber and are afraid that people will discover that you let him cut your hair too short.

  • You have to go to the bathroom in the midst of a concert and are ashamed that people will think you foolish and disruptive for going.

  Look for minor incidents like these and acknowledge that you were really anxious, panicked, or ashamed about them—and that you were anxious about your anxiety, ashamed of your shame, depressed about your panic. Can you be quite honest with yourself? Can you fully admit your original panic about this slight failing or screw-up—and can you admit your secondary panic of letting people know about your original anxiety? Force yourself to be honest. If it kills you!

  Now do something more.

  1. Laugh to yourself about your panic and your panic about your panic. See how ridiculous it is that you absolutely need people’s approval for almost everything you do—and that you need their approval for your needing their approval! See how funny this is!

  2. As a shame-attacking exercise, tell someone—better, tell several people—about your “shameful” feelings. Let them know what a trivial thing you upset yourself about. Show them how you made yourself upset about your upsetness. Be ruthlessly open and honest to others about how afraid you are—and how fearful of your fearfulness!

  3. Find your main musts about y
our original feelings of panic. For example: “I must remember this person’s name! I must not have to ask him, once again, what his name is! I must not insult him by forgetting who he is! I must not let him know I stupidly forgot!”

  4. Find your musts about your secondary anxiety. For example: “I must not show my anxiety to others! I must not be so anxious over trifles! I must get over my anxiety immediately!”

  5. Rip up these musts and change them to preferences.

  6. Continue to observe and admit that you often make yourself anxious or panicked over many little things. Continue to accept yourself with your anxiety, to often confess it to others, and to find and dispute the musts with which you create it.

  To make things even clearer and prevent your confusion, let me emphasize again that your Belief System (B) always includes—as I said in 1956—thoughts, feelings, and action-tendencies. You seem to have pure Beliefs but they are mixed in with feelings and actions. You think-feel-behave and your thoughts influence your feelings and behaviors, your feelings influence your thoughts and behaviors, and your behaviors influence your thoughts and your feelings. All three are integrated and we falsely see them as separate. So when you think about your thinking—as you are uniquely able to do—you also think-feel-act about your thinking. You strongly or lightly (that is, emotionally) think about it; and you persistently, obsessively (that is, actively) think about it. Why? Because that is the way you are—a thinking-feeling-behaving creature. It is hard to keep this in mind, but you had better try to do so. If you only think and not also feel and behave about your irrational Beliefs, you will not truly “understand” them and change them. Thinking-feeling-behaving and the language we use to do them are confusing and often contradictory, and that is one reason why we do them destructively and why there may not be any perfect and permanent way to keep them in order. So you do your best to think-feel-and-act about your dysfunctional and irrational Beliefs—which, again, include thoughts, feelings, and actions—and you thereby make them more functional, but not completely functional and sane. You also accept your imperfections in doing this thinking-feeling-acting about your dysfunctional thinking-feeling-action and stubbornly refuse to upset yourself about upsetting yourself! Unconditional acceptance includes acceptance of your limitations! Too damned bad—but not awful!