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

by Albert Ellis

  Insight No. 9 presents the Achilles’ heel (and the Catch-22) of all therapies, including REBT. For it is easy for you to adopt and create self-defeating philosophies and to embed them into your actions and inactions. Damned easy! Because you tend to unconsciously and effortlessly make yourself miserable. In fact, in addition to your self-actualizing tendencies, you have a fine talent for self-defeat. Alas!

  Insight No. 9 of REBT tells you that, yes—definitely, yes—you can work to change your miserable thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. But it doesn’t necessarily make it easy to do so!

  However, Insight No. 9 at least gives you a good chance to change. For it clearly states that if you are willing to work and practice—and to continue to work and practice—to surrender your irrational Beliefs and actions, you will most likely (I would say you are about 98 percent likely) to make yourself much less miserable.

  Insight No. 9 shows how REBT differs from most other awareness-oriented psychotherapies, for several cognitive therapies were devised before REBT—those of Pierre Janet, Emile Coué, Paul Dubois, and Alfred Adler.

  But these intellectual therapies fail to stress behavioral methods of changing personality. They often forget that to change your ideas, you had better persistently work at doing so—since you are born and reared to think crookedly and to unconsciously slip into rigid shoulds and musts. Even when you clearly see your musturbation and therefore give it up, you easily fall back, again and again, to dogmatic thinking.

  Moreover, unless you repeatedly act against a phobic belief, you rarely eliminate it. If you are anxious about making friendly overtures to someone and you avoid making them, every time you “escape” from this “fearful” situation, you unconsciously reinforce your phobia. By running away, you actually tell yourself, whether or not you realize what you are thinking, “It would be awful if I were rejected! I must be sure I will be accepted before I try again.” So you become more afraid.

  On the other hand, if you keep making friendly overtures in spite of your horror or rejection, you usually see that nothing “horrible” happens, and you greatly help yourself overcome your phobia.

  If we wish to put most neurotic problems under two main headings, we can call them (a) ego disturbance (self-damning) and (b) low frustration tolerance (LFT) or discomfort disturbance. Ego disturbance arises when you strongly believe, “I must do well and win others’ approval, and I am an inadequate, undeserving person when I don’t do as well as I must.” This is really grandiosity—since you are demanding that you be special, outstanding, perfect, superhuman—which, of course, you will rarely be!

  Discomfort disturbance is also godlike because the main philosophy behind it is: “Since I am such a special person who needs to have my main wants and interests gratified, other people must give me exactly what I desire and conditions must be nicely arranged to cater to my wishes. If not, it’s awful, I can’t stand it, and life is hardly worth living!”

  So one major idea leading to discomfort disturbance is: “My life must be easy and people have to give me everything I truly crave.” This can then lead to a related irrational Belief: “In order to make my life completely satisfying, I must always do well and have to win the love of all significant people all the time!” These ideas create LFT. But they also involve ego because they insist that “I must have an easy life, I must be perfect, and people and conditions should always cater to me, me, me, me!”

  Why is LFT so important in therapy? Because no matter how you originally disturb yourself, when you know you are upset, know your upsetting Beliefs, know what you can probably do about them, and still refuse to work at upsetting yourself, you almost always are a victim of your own LFT. For example, if you know that you feel uncomfortable going for job interviews and especially being turned down for a job, and if you realize that you have irrational Beliefs that escalate your discomfort and pain into great anxiety, then you can overcome your anxiety by using REBT to strongly convince yourself that you can stand being rejected and that your discomfort is inconvenient but hardly awful. But you will have to work hard at convincing yourself of these sane ideas when you forcefully believe the unsane ones.

  You had better, therefore, use your knowledge of how to change your ideas that create your anxiety; and you had better keep working at using it until you overcome your anxiety and rarely bring it back. You had also better force yourself, no matter how uncomfortable you are, to go on many job interviews until you become less and less panicked about them.

  When you indulge in your anxiety instead of making real efforts to overcome it, you are giving in to your LFT or discomfort disturbance. And when you temporarily make yourself unanxious but then refuse to keep doing so, you are also indulging in LFT.

  Low frustration tolerance, then, often leads to anxiety and depression. But even more often it encourages you to maintain your disturbed feelings when you could let them go. To reduce LFT, you had better make yourself do many difficult tasks not pronto, no matter how you feel about doing them.

  Do, don’t stew! And don’t wait until you feel in the mood to do so. Strike while the spirit is cold!

  Isn’t this Catch-22: To try to overcome your LFT—which stems from the idea that working to overcome it shouldn’t require real effort—by pushing your rump to do “overly” hard things? Yes, it is. But don’t forget that Catch-22 stems from an idea in your head and doesn’t really exist in itself. And if it is mainly a thought—REBT clearly says—you can overcome it by debating and Disputing it!

  The contradiction leading to Catch-22 about LFT is:

  1. “I shouldn’t have to work very hard to get what I want, even though I will benefit in the long run by doing so. It’s too hard to really work for my own happiness. I need immediate gratification.”

  2. “The only way to get over my LFT and become a long-range, sane hedonist is to work hard to overcome my prejudice against working hard!”

  The rational answer that you can use to overcome this paradox is: “Yes, it’s quite hard to work to get what I want and to delay immediate gratification in order to derive further pleasure. But it’s considerably harder if I don’t! Short-range gain will often bring me long-lived pain in the future! Too bad—but that’s the way it often is. Sure I have to exert myself to overcome my LFT—but I’ll require more effort, leading to prolonged pain, if I don’t overcome it.”

  “Nobody promised me a rose garden. If I insist that they do, I’ll only end up with extra thorns!”

  Back to REBT’s Insight No. 9. Almost always there’s no way but work and practice—w-o-r-k and p-r-a-c-t-i-c-e—to eradicate, and to keep away your emotional misery. Insight by itself is not enough. Nor will you get too far by merely acknowledging and expressing your feelings.

  You had better also challenge and Dispute your irrational Beliefs a thousand times. Arrive at rational Beliefs and forcefully get them into your head a thousand times. Get in touch with, feel, and sometimes express your feelings a thousand times. Act against your disturbed thoughts and emotions a thousand times. And then, if necessary, a thousand more times! For many months, sometimes for years. Sometimes, off and on, for the rest of your life!

  We can state Insight No. 9 differently: There is no magical, easy way of changing yourself. Optimism and hope won’t do it. Prayer and supplication won’t do it. Getting support and love from others won’t do it. Even reading this book won’t do it! All these things may help you feel better. Some of them will show you what to do to get better. But in the final analysis, only you can make yourself change. You and the persistent work you do. Work? Yes, work!

  You can stop feeling severely anxious, depressed, and otherwise miserable by employing REBT principles of work and practice in two main ways:

  1. Use several thinking, feeling, and action REBT techniques—such as those explained in this book and other REBT writings. Give each one a fair chance. If one doesn’t work, use another, and another, and another! And if one does work, keep trying some of the other REBT techniques, too.


  2. Keep using each REBT method many times. Even when one of them—such as singing rational humorous songs to yourself—works beautifully for a while, employ it again and again until you sink its message into your head and into your bones. Overlearn it. And from time to time, keep reviewing it—lest you forget, lest you forget!

  Pablo, a forty-year-old travel agent, understood the principles and practice of REBT well and frequently used them with his close friends and with the volunteers at my regular Friday-night Workshop in Problems of Daily Living, to whom he often gave excellent rational suggestions after I interviewed them about their emotional problems. But whenever Pablo became angry at others—which was several times a week—he let his rage boil for over an hour, sometimes for the entire day, before he used REBT to overcome it and allow himself to go back to writing the great American play.

  Because of his knowledge of REBT, Pablo knew how he created his fury with irrational Beliefs: “People shouldn’t act so damned stupidly! What hopeless idiots they are!” And: “My wife, who keeps saying that she loves me, must not be so selfish and uncaring! What a rotten hypocrite she is!”

  Pablo also often recognized his secondary disturbance and the irrational Beliefs behind it. He knew that he hated himself whenever he had a furious outburst at others. And he tracked down his self-damning ideas: “I should know better than to bring on this childish rage! What a fool I am for not using REBT to eliminate it! How disgusting!”

  In spite of his insight into how he kept needlessly enraging and downing himself, Pablo frequently indulged in both these miserable feelings—and kept ruining his playwriting and his relationships. On several occasions, he got into fistfights with “horribly stupid” people. His wife kept leaving him because of his outbursts against her and others. And his plays never got finished. Still he refused to use REBT to overcome his rage and self-hatred.

  After many failures to do his REBT homework, Pablo worked out the following plan with his therapy group:

  For one month, he would devote at least two hours a day to using—not merely understanding but using—REBT. He would especially work at fully accepting himself no matter how many times he foolishly enraged himself against others:

  1. He would spend at least ten minutes every day actively Disputing his irrational Beliefs: “I should know better than to bring on this foolish rage! What a fool I am for not using REBT to eliminate it! How disgusting!”

  2. He would persist at this Disputing until he fully accepted himself with his foolish behavior.

  3. He would very strongly repeat to himself, at least fifteen times each day, the rational Belief: “Because I am a fallible human, I will often act stupidly and at times continue to foolishly enrage myself. Too damned bad!”

  4. He would make a list of the disadvantages of damning himself for anything, then read and think about this list at least five times each day.

  5. He would do at least one REBT shame-attacking exercise daily—force himself to do what he considered a “shameful” or “stupid” act in public (such as singing at the top of his lungs in the subway) and work at not—yes, not—feeling humiliated or downed when he did it.

  6. He would sing to himself several times a day one of the rational humorous songs that rips up perfectionism and self-downing, such as the ones that follow.

  PERFECT RATIONALITY

  (Tune: Luigi Denza, “Funiculi, Funicula”)

  Some think the world must have a right direction,

  And so do I! And so do I!

  Some think that, with the slightest imperfection

  They can’t get by—and so do I!

  Lyrics by Albert Ellis, copyright © by Albert Ellis Institute

  For I, I have to prove I’m superhuman,

  And better far than people are!

  To show I have miraculous acumen—

  And always rate among the Great.

  Perfect, perfect rationality

  Is, of course, the only thing for me!

  How can I ever think of being

  If I must live fallibly?

  Rationality must be a perfect thing for me!

  BEAUTIFUL HANG-UP

  (Tune: Stephen Foster, “Beautiful Dreamer”)

  Beautiful hang-up, why should we part

  When we have shared our whole lives from the start?

  We are so used to taking one course

  Oh, what a crime it would be to divorce!

  Beautiful hang-up, don’t go away!

  Who will befriend me if you do not stay?

  Though you still make me look like a jerk,

  Living without you would take so much work!

  Living without you would take so much work!

  I AM BAD, OH SO BAD!

  (Tune: Antonin Dvoák, “Going Home,” from The New World Symphony)

  I am bad, oh so bad, just a worthless cad!

  Oh, my gad! Let me add: I’m so bad it’s sad!

  I’m so bad I deserve every ugly twist!

  I’m so bad I’ve a nerve even to exist!

  I’m so bad that I’m clad in pure villainy!

  Oh, I’m so bad, you egad

  Must take care of me!

  Yes, take care of me!

  Yes, take care of me!

  As he worked—and worked and worked!—on his secondary symptom of damning himself for his rage and for not trying hard enough to give up his fury, Pablo also worked on his primary symptom of rage. He took his irrational Beliefs that people shouldn’t be so stupid and that his wife must be less selfish and more caring and (with the help of his therapy group) planned these REBT homework assignments:

  1. He spent at least ten minutes a day actively and vigorously Disputing his irrational Beliefs.

  2. He forcefully told himself rational coping statements, at least fifteen times a day, such as: “People should often act stupidly—because that is their nature!” “My wife will be at times selfish and uncaring—and has a perfect right to be more interested in herself than in me!”

  3. He penalized himself by burning a hundred-dollar bill every time he got into a fistfight with someone and every time he screamed at his wife.

  4. He practiced rational emotive imagery at least once a day by imagining that people were really acting stupidly, letting himself feel very angry about this, and then working on feeling only disappointed and frustrated, but not angry, about their stupid behavior.

  5. He sang to himself every day—and really thought about—several rational humorous songs poking fun at feelings of anger, such as these two popular songs, to which I have put new rational lyrics :

  LOVE ME, LOVE ME, ONLY ME!

  (Tune: “Yankee Doodle Dandy”)

  Love me, love me, only me or I will die without you!

  Make your love a guarantee, so I can never doubt you!

  Love me, love me totally; really, really try, dear;

  But if you demand love, too, I’ll hate you till I die, dear!

  Lyrics by Albert Ellis, copyright © by Albert Ellis Institute

  Love me, love me all the time, thoroughly and wholly;

  Life turns into slush and slime ’less you love me solely!

  Love me with great tenderness, with no ifs or buts, dear.

  If you love me somewhat less I’ll hate your goddamned

  guts, dear!

  GLORY, GLORY HALLELUJAH!

  (Tune: “Battle Hymn of the Republic”)

  Mine eyes have seen the glory of relationships that glow

  And then falter by the wayside as love passions come—

  and go!

  Oh, I’ve heard of great romances where there is no slightest

  lull—

  But I am skeptical!

  Glory, glory hallelujah!

  People love ya till they screw ya!

  If you’d lessen how they do ya,

  Then don’t expect they won’t!

  Glory, glory hallelujah!

  People cheer ya—then pooh-pooh ya!

  If you’d softe
n how they screw ya,

  Then don’t expect they won’t!

  Pablo did a good job of carrying out these thinking, feeling, and activity assignments. And when at times he failed to do his REBT homework, he worked hard at refusing to blame himself for failing. He only criticized his performance but not his self, his totality.

  As a result of this REBT homework program, Pablo cut down his temper tantrums to a few times a month. Whenever he did have them, he quickly admitted that he had upset himself and indulged in his rage for only five or ten minutes. Then he found his irrational demands that made him angry and succeeded in actively Disputing and surrendering them in a few minutes. He occasionally slipped and let himself rage for an hour or more. But he usually continued his outbursts for no more than ten minutes—and often for only two or three.

  Pablo was happy about the time and energy he saved by his anti-anger program. He no longer wasted hours indulging in his rages and his sulking, and he was able to devote much more time every week to writing his play.

  You will find no panacea when you work and practice at changing your self-sabotaging ideas and behaviors. Telling yourself that you must work hard at therapy and have to keep practicing REBT can even be harmful. And seeing how you upset yourself and how you can stop doing so is not enough. Using REBT and forcefully striving to minimize your misery is the key. Not a magical but a practical key to stubbornly refusing to make yourself miserable about anything. Yes, anything!