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

by Albert Ellis

  12

  REBT Insight No. 7: Solving Practical Problems as Well as Emotional Problems

  Although REBT is often accused of being a superficial form of therapy—because its ABCs are simple and easy for almost anyone to understand—it actually is more comprehensive than most other therapies. For it sees everyone—including you—as affecting and being affected by the people and the environment around them.

  You live in a social system—with your family, friends, business associates, acquaintances, and strangers. To some degree, you affect these others, and they affect and influence you.

  You also live in an external environment—with air, vegetation, roads, buildings, weather conditions, machines, and autos. All of these, too, affect you; you, in turn, act on them.

  Finally, you live in your own body—with bones, blood, internal organs, skin, nerves, and other tissues that strongly influence you. Again, your doings—such as eating, drinking, exercising, thinking, and feeling—importantly affect your body.

  Living in this complicated environment, you have (as noted previously in this book) basic Goals (G), which you bring to the Activating Events of your life. These Goals create many practical problems for you to try to solve. Such as:

  • How shall I get a good education?

  • What shall I do to find a suitable mate?

  • Which profession shall I choose and how shall I succeed at it?

  • What recreations do I find enjoyable and worthy of my time and effort?

  Once you recognize these reality problems, you can try to solve them—or you can foolishly choose to make yourself upset about them. If you upset yourself, you then have a problem about a problem—an emotional problem (or neurosis) about your reality problem (how to survive and enjoy yourself).

  REBT is more systematic than most other therapies in that it encourages you to tackle both your original practical difficulties and your later emotional difficulties—though not necessarily in that order. In fact, it often encourages you, when you have a neurotic problem, to first work at solving that dilemma—and then to tackle your practical problems.

  Why so? For several reasons:

  1. While you are anxious or depressed about making a decision—such as, “Shall I stay with my love partner or end our relationship?”—you may be unable to see which of your desires (to stay or leave) is greater. Your guilt about leaving, for example, may prevent you from seeing that you really want to go. Or your anger at your partner may push aside your real desire to stay.

  2. You may spend so much time and energy being disturbed that you have little left to devote to solving your practical problem. Thus, you may spend so much time whining about having to decide whether to leave your love partner that you never get around to actually making a clear decision.

  3. You may be so upset about having a practical problem and knowing no good and quick solution to it that you may not be able to keep your thoughts in order to help solve it.

  REBT, therefore, encourages you first to solve your emotional upsetness (your problem about a problem) and then carefully consider your practical decisions.

  This brings us to REBT’s Insight No. 7: As you attempt to solve your practical life problems, look carefully to discover whether you have any emotional problems—such as feelings of anxiety or depression—about these practical issues. If so, seek out and actively Dispute your dogmatic, musturbatory thinking-feeling-behaving that leads to your emotional difficulties. While working to reduce your neurotic feelings, go back to your practical difficulties and use effective self-management and problem-solving methods to tackle them.

  Joani greatly wanted to finish college but had little money and had to commute fifty miles to do so. Rough going! But she made it much rougher by telling herself, “I must finish college and do so soon! This means that I have to work hard at my job and at school, and also spend time commuting—and that’s unfair and things shouldn’t be that unfair! Besides, my father keeps telling me that I haven’t the ability to finish—and maybe he’s right. If so, that would be awful and I’d never get any of the good things I really want in life! I hate my rotten father for doing this to me!”

  With these strong irrational Beliefs, Joani took her original practical problems and used them to make herself feel anxious, depressed, angry, and self-hating. Naturally, her disturbed feelings greatly interfered with her solving her practical (money, school, work, and commuting) problems—not to mention her trouble communicating with her father.

  Joani and I first worked at revealing and changing her dogmatic musts about herself, about her father, and about the school situation. Then, as we did this, I helped her improve her practical problem skills and figure out alternate solutions that her upsetness blocked her from discovering—including borrowing money and living and working closer to her college. I also helped her to learn communication skills (to get along better with her father) and to acquire organizing and study skills (and thus be capable of doing more schoolwork in less time).

  You, too, can first change your irrational Beliefs and the disturbed emotional Consequences to which they lead. You can then go back to A (the Activating Events or Adversities of your life) and use the problem-solving and other skills to make your decisions more practical and pleasurable.

  To improve your life, you can use REBT to acquire assertiveness training, time-management methods, relationship skills, sex education, job advancement methods, and various other skills that may help you lead a more self-fulfilling existence. Because REBT deals with thinking and behavior and because it includes corrective teaching, it is a pioneering problem-solving and skill-training approach to therapy.

  Which once again shows that it is comprehensive! It is a “systems theory” of human behavior that is truly systematic! By helping you to understand your disruptive feelings (C) about your life events (A), and to change your ideas (B) that produce these feelings, it enables you to work at recognizing your As, Bs, and Cs. And to see and rearrange the complicated ways in which A, B, and C interact.

  REBT Exercise No. 11

  Think of a practical problem that you want to solve or a decision you want to make. For example, consider:

  How to get a better job

  How to give a good speech

  How to win a golf game

  How to write a term paper

  How to drive to a strange city

  How to relate well to others

  How to have more enjoyable sex

  Think about these decisions:

  Which TV set to buy

  Which house to purchase

  Which person to choose as a partner in a game

  Which courses to take at school

  Which suit or dress to wear to a party

  Which life career to choose

  Which exercise program to select

  Look for any emotional-behavioral problems that you have about these practical problems. Examples include:

  • Are you anxious about getting a good job and keeping it?

  • Would you be ashamed if you gave a poor speech?

  • Would you be depressed if you played golf poorly?

  • Are you continuing to procrastinate about writing a term paper?

  • Are you angry about driving in a strange city?

  • Are you afraid to try to relate to others?

  • Do you blame yourself severely for having sex problems?

  • Do you compulsively keep getting more and more information about TV sets before you decide to buy one?

  • Are you extremely fearful that the house you purchase will collapse or be burned down?

  • Do you mercilessly blame yourself for picking the wrong partner in a game?

  • Do you keep changing your school courses even after the term has begun?

  • Do you agonize over choosing a suit or dress to wear to a party?

  • Do you do nothing about choosing a career?

  • Do you try one exercise program after another and quit before it real
ly gets underway?

  If you are anxious, ashamed, depressed, or enraged about your practical problems or if you are indecisive, phobic, or compulsive about making decisions, look for your dogmatic demands—for your shoulds, oughts, and musts, and for your awfulizing, self-downing, and I-can’t-stand-it-itis that accompany them.

  Examples

  “I must get a good job and have to keep it when I do!”

  “My speech must come off marvelously! It would be shameful if they laugh at me when I give it!”

  “I should have played that golf game better! What a hopelessly rotten athlete I am!”

  “Writing that damned term paper ought to be easier! I can’t stand the hassle of doing it! I’ll do it later!”

  “These blasted city streets should be laid out better, with much clearer signs! How awful that they are giving me needless trouble!”

  “I must get the very best TV set for the money! I can’t bear it if I get gypped!”

  “Suppose something dreadful happens to a house after I purchase it! I must have a guarantee that everything will be all right with it!”

  “I’ll never forgive myself if I pick the wrong partner for this game. What a complete idiot I would be!”

  “I must have the best course and the best teacher. It would be horrible if I wasted my time in this course. If I don’t change it right away, even though it’s against the school rules, I’m a perfect wimp!”

  “If I choose the wrong suit or dress for this party and people laugh at me for picking it, I might as well kill myself!”

  “Every possible career I choose has too many hassles that go with it. I can’t bear any career with so many hassles!”

  “I shouldn’t have to keep exercising but should be perfectly healthy without doing it!”

  Actively dispute your shoulds and musts, your awfulizing, your can’t-stand-it-itis, and your self-downing. Consider the folllowing:

  Disputing: “Why must I get a good job and where is it written that I have to keep it when I do?”

  Answer: “I don’t have to get or keep a good job, but very much want to. So I’ll keep pushing to get one.”

  Disputing: “Where is it written that my speech must come off marvelously? How would it be shameful if they laugh at me when I give it?”

  Answer: “It is not written anywhere—except in the foolish scripts I write for myself! It would be unfortunate if they laughed at me when I gave it, but only my speech would be bad and I would not be a bad, incompetent, shameful person.

  Disputing: “Why should I have played that golf game better? How does playing it badly make me a hopelessly rotten athlete?”

  Answer: “No reason why I should or must play it better, but it would be great if I did! It only shows that I was rotten at playing golf this time and not that I never would be good at playing it or any other sport!”

  Disputing: “Prove that doing the term paper ought to be easier. In what way can’t I stand the hassle of doing it?”

  Answer: “Doing the paper ought to be just as bad as it is. For that’s the way it is right now. I don’t like the hassle of doing it, but I’ll like even less the hassles that stem from not doing it. So back to the drawing board!”

  Disputing: “Can I show why the blasted city streets should be laid out better, with much clearer signs? Is it really awful that it’s giving me this much trouble?”

  Answer: “I can only show that it would be lovely if the city streets were laid out better and had much clearer signs. But I cannot show that this is necessary, because if it were these streets would be laid out to suit me. Obviously, the city planners do not care the way I want them to care. Tough! But I can still find my way around!”

  Disputing: “Must I really get the best TV set for the money? Can’t I bear it if I get gypped?”

  Answer: “No, I clearly don’t have to get the best set for the money. I can end up with an inferior one. And if I actually get gypped and end up with an inferior set, I can still get a lot of pleasure out of it. That would be too bad—but it would still be more good than bad. And if I don’t take the risk and buy one of the sets available, I’ll never enjoy TV at all! So I’d better choose one!”

  Disputing: “Do I really need a guarantee that everything will be all right with any house that I purchase? Will the world come to an end if something dreadful happens to it?”

  Answer: “No, it would be great if I had such a guarantee—but guarantees like that simply don’t exist. All I can get is a high degree of probability that any house I purchase will last a long time in spite of all the things that could happen to it. And even if the house somehow gets demolished, my life will go on and I can still enjoy it.”

  Disputing: “Can I forgive myself if I pick the wrong partner for this game and consequently we lose the match? Would picking the wrong partner make me an idiot?”

  Answer: “Of course I can forgive myself for making a poor choice of a partner. That would be a foolish act, but it would hardly make me a totally stupid person. Since I am fallible, I will often make foolish choices, but I will not always make them or be damnable for making them. I can decide to accept myself, if not my poor decisions, and thereby prepare myself to learn and make better decisions in the future.”

  Disputing: “Do I really have to take the best course and have the best teacher? Does it truly make me a wimp if I don’t rebel against the school rules and make them change my courses?”

  Answer: “No, it is obviously unnecessary for me to take the best course and to have the best teacher, though that would be highly desirable. If I go along with the school rules and don’t make them change my course, I won’t be acting wimpishly but merely will be following normal restrictions. And even if I do act weakly, that never makes me a total wimp or a weak person.”

  Disputing: “Why does every possible career I choose have too many hassles that go with it? Where is the evidence that I can’t bear any career with so many hassles?”

  Answer: “Just about any career I choose will have many hassles but not too many. Because it is the nature of careers to have hassles— they all do! Too bad—but unless I accept such hassles I’ll end up with no career—and thus have worse problems! I may never like the difficulties of a career I choose, but I definitely can stand them. And I’d damned well better do so—if I want any career at all!”

  Once you find your irrational Beliefs (iBs) that interfere with your solving your practical problem and from making good decisions, then go back to these original problems and do your best to solve them.

  Write down a good many problem-solving questions, such as these, on any practical problems you wish to solve:

  • What should I do to get a good job?

  • What step had I better take first?

  • What steps shall I take next?

  • Who should I consult about getting a good job?

  • Can any of my friends possibly help me?

  • What kind of a résumé—or several résumés—shall I write?

  • How can I get help with my résumés?

  • Shall I let my past employers know I am looking, to be fully sure they give me good references?

  • What shall I do to have better job interviews?

  Now, outline—and preferably put on paper—your answers. Then make a plan to act on and to implement these ideas. Then follow this plan—yes, push yourself to follow this plan.

  If everything goes well, fine. Continue to solve your practical problems and issues. If you don’t follow your plan, or follow it poorly, or make yourself upset about the results of following it, assume that you have some emotional difficulties about your practical difficulties—and go back to the ABCs of REBT, again, to see what they are and how you can deal with them. As you keep resolving your emotional problems, go back, once again, to your practical questions to work out, as above, solutions for them. Keep shuttling back and forth from your practical to your emotional and once again your practical problems. And don’t expect any perfect or super-m
arvelous solutions. For that silly expectation will only enhance your emotional dilemmas and make everything much worse!

  REBT Exercise No. 12

  You cannot very well solve practical problems or make good decisions without taking some risks. Typical risks include:

  • Taking too long to solve a problem or make a decision

  • Spending too much time and energy to solve it or to decide on a solution

  • Taking too little time and trouble to plan and decide what to do

  • Picking the wrong decision and having to live with it

  • Doing well with your practical problems at first and later failing at them

  • Finding a fairly good solution but not a great one, which you would really like to find.

  If you tend to be overconcerned about solving a problem or making a decision and to take too much time and energy with it, free yourself to take the risk of planning and deciding on it more quickly. Thus, give yourself a limited amount of time to make up your job résumé, to get a list of people to send it to, to send out letters to these people, and to start going on job interviews. Don’t prepare too much. Take the chance that you may do poorly. Show yourself that you can learn by your errors and probably do better next time.