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

by Albert Ellis

  REBT Exercise No. 14

  For the exercise, you can write out an REBT sheet for Disputing Irrational Beliefs (DIBS). The instructions are given in A Guide to Rational Living and in a separate pamphlet on “Techniques for Disputing Irrational Beliefs,” issued by the Albert Ellis Institute. To do this, take one of your irrational Beliefs (iBs) and ask yourself several important challenging questions about it, until you really give it up and strongly believe—and feel that it is false.

  The questions that you use in DIBS include the following:

  1. What irrational Belief (iB) do I want to Dispute and surrender?

  2. Can I rationally prove this Belief?

  3. What evidence can I find to disprove this Belief?

  4. Does any evidence exist for the truth of this Belief?

  5. What are the worst things that could actually happen to me if I give up this Belief and act against it?

  6. What good things could happen or could I make happen if I give up this Belief?

  If you have low frustration tolerance about doing REBT and working hard and persistently at it until you begin to change your disturbed thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, you might use this DIBS to change your LFT:

  1. What irrational belief (iB) do I want to dispute and surrender?

  • Illustrative Answer: “I must not have to work hard at changing myself with REBT. It should come easy! It’s much too hard to go to all that trouble. How awful that someone won’t do it for me!”

  2. Can I rationally prove or support this belief?

  • Illustrative Answer: No.

  3. What evidence can I find to disprove this belief?

  • Illustrative Answer: Considerable evidence, such as:

  a. There is no reason why I must not have to work hard at changing myself with REBT. If hard work were not required, changing myself would be very easy. But, obviously, it’s not easy! So it looks like I’d better acknowledge that if I want to change, I’d damn well better work persistently and hard to do so!

  b. Where is it written that changing myself by using REBT should or ought to come easy? Only in my grandiose wishes and in my silly head! No matter how desirable it is for me to change easily, my desire for ease does not automatically bring it on.

  c. How is it too hard for me to go to the trouble of changing myself with REBT? It surely is not impossibly hard, though it may be very hard. To call it “too hard” is for me to resort to magical thinking, for I really mean that it is harder than I want it to be and therefore it is “too” hard. But this means that I say that whatever I want to be easy must really be easy—that I run the blasted universe! Well, do I? Hardly!

  d. Yes, it is hard for me to change by using REBT, but right now it should be that hard—for that’s the way it is: truly difficult. So it is! Tough! But no matter how tough I find it to be, it still is that hard.

  e. Yes, it’s hard for me to change, but I’d better face the fact that it’s much harder if I don’t. For then I keep my usual anxiety and depression and probably keep it forever. Look how hard that is!

  f. Where is the evidence that it is awful if someone doesn’t make me easily change or do my REBT for me and thus make me change! It’s not awful, because awful, in the sense I’m using it, means more than bad; it may be bad, or inconvenient, that I have to work at the REBT to change myself, but that inconvenience is hardly 101 percent or 120 percent bad. Not even 99 percent. And the badder I see it, the more exaggerated badness that I give to it, the more frustrated I’ll feel and the more I’ll interfere with my using REBT to change myself. So I’d better see it as just bad or inconvenient.

  4. Does any evidence exist for the truth of my irrational belief, “I must not have to work hard at changing myself with REBT?”

  • Illustrative Answer: “None that I can see. There is a good deal of evidence that it is hard to work at changing myself with REBT and that it right now should be hard (because it realistically is!). But although it would be very fortunate if I could easily and quickly change, just by knowing REBT and thinking about how good it is, that kind of good fortune just doesn’t exist in the world. If I presently work hard at using REBT, I may later find it easy and automatic to do so. But at the present time it’s hard because it’s hard! So, having no better resource, I’d better do the work it entails gracefully, without creating for myself an even bigger hassle about it!

  5. What are the worst things that could actually happen to me if I give up the belief that it’s too hard to work at changing myself with REBT?

  • Illustrative Answer:

  a. I would keep working at REBT and that would be a real pain in the neck. So it would be a pain in the neck! But if I don’t work at it, I would continue to have all the hassles and troubles I do have—and I would presumably have them forever!

  b. IF I don’t use REBT and don’t work at it to get over my problems, they will not only remain, but they will most probably increase. That will be even worse. But even if I do nothing and my problems increase, it will only be uncomfortable and inconvenient. It still will not be awful—that is, badder than it should be, and totally bad. It will only be bad!

  c. If I work at REBT, the worst that could really happen would be that I still won’t improve at all, so all my work would therefore be wasted. But at least I would then know that I had tried to do my best to get better. That way, without working and without trying, I will never even know how much better I could get—or could not get. So I had better make the effort and see how well I can do.

  d. Even if I work hard at REBT and never get better at all, I could then still live with my frustration and my pain. This is unlikely—for if I work I most likely will improve to some degree. But if I never improve one bit, I don’t. Whatever happens—or does not happen—to me in life is still only a bother, still only an inconvenience. And if I stop whining and screaming about that inconvenience, that in itself will save me gratuitous, extra bothering of myself. So I’d still better do the work.

  6. What good things might happen or might I make happen if I work at using REBT in regard to my problems?

  • Illustrative Answer:

  a. I might really get over my problem by using REBT. I’m now anxious and depressed, and by using REBT I could well become considerably less anxious and depressed. Or even unanxious and undepressed!

  b. If I overcome my low frustration tolerance in this area I will tend to become more generally disciplined and may well overcome my LFT in various other areas of my life, such as overeating and procrastination.

  c. It is a great challenge for me to enjoy life while working hard to use REBT and while giving up present pleasures for future gains. The challenge of not upsetting myself while I am going through some amount of deprivation is one of the best challenges that I can take in life.

  d. By working against my low frustration tolerance, even if it takes me a while to succeed, I will get better and better at it, can at times enjoy my activity, and can see that I am increasingly promoting my own independence and emotional mastery. What could be more rewarding than running my own life?

  15

  REBT Insight No. 10: Forcefully Changing Your Beliefs, Feelings, and Behaviors

  You can express thoughts, feelings, and behaviors lightly or strongly, mildly or forcefully—as you can easily observe. You can feel mildly or intensely sad about a loss. You can exercise vigorously or gently. You can be greatly or moderately addicted to smoking or overeating.

  Can thoughts, too, be weak or strong?

  Robert Abelson, Robert Zajonc, and other psychologists say yes. As Abelson pointed out a number of years ago, you can have “cool” and “hot” cognitions. According to REBT, your “hot” thoughts influence you more and create more intense feelings than do your “cool” thoughts.

  Thus, if you have to pass an exam to get a job, you may have a cool thought: “Jobs like this frequently require a test.” Your cool, descriptive thought will lead to your having little or no feeling.

  You may also
have a warm or preferential thought—which in REBT we call a rational Belief—about the test and the job: “I definitely want to pass this test and get this job, and since the test doesn’t seem too hard, I like taking it.” This warm thought will probably lead you to feel optimistic and help you do well on the test.

  You may finally have a hot or highly evaluative thought: “I have to pass this test and get this job in order to enjoy life at all and to accept myself as a good person! If the test is harder than it seems and I fail it, that would be awful and would prove that I’m a schnook who will never get a decent job!” This is a hot thought—an irrational Belief in REBT—and will likely make you feel intense anxiety and interfere with your doing well on the test.

  REBT also states that you hold some hot thoughts strongly, rigidly, and forcefully, while you hold some lightly and less vividly. You may believe that you must pass a test and are a real clod if you don’t and may believe this (a) occasionally or always, (b) loosely or devoutly, (c) mildly or intensely, (d) blandly or vividly, (e) softly or loudly, or (f) in a limited way (about one situation) or generally (about many situations).

  As you can see, your hot thoughts include many kinds of heat! REBT also holds that you create more intense feelings—and particularly disturbed feelings—with your hot than with your warm thoughts. Hot thinking often encourages you to have self-defeating emotions and behaviors that persist longer and are harder for you to change.

  If you fanatically believe that you must always pass important tests and get every single job for which you apply, and you also believe that you are a hopeless nincompoop when you in any way fail, you will tend to make yourself extremely anxious when you go for a test or a job interview. This anxiety may disrupt your whole life, and you will have one heck of a time relieving it. Moreover, you will often feel such intense panic and discomfort that you may well make yourself terrified about it. You then bring on strong secondary symptoms of anxiety about your anxiety.

  Because your hot thoughts create intense and lasting anxiety and depression, you had better acquire Insight No. 10: If you mildly Dispute your irrational Beliefs (iBs) you may not change them and keep them changed. Therefore, you had better powerfully and persistently argue against them and persuade yourself that they are false.

  When, for example, you ask yourself—at point D, Disputing of your iBs—“Why must I always pass important tests?” you had better very vigorously (and often) reply: “I don’t have to do so! I’d love to pass and will work hard to do so. But if I don’t, I don’t! I definitely want this job, but I never, never need it. I can be happy if I don’t get it, though not as happy as if I do. I can pass other tests and get other jobs even if I fail at getting this one. I will only be a person who failed this time, and clearly not a hopeless failure!”

  REBT says that the more emphatically and the more frequently you challenge and debate your red-hot negative thoughts, the quicker and more completely you will kill them—and the more you will reduce (and keep away) the disturbed feelings they create.

  So back to Insight No. 10: When you track down your iBs that make you anxious (and that panic you about your anxiety), you can become a passionate scientist who strongly comes up with rational answers to your irrational Beliefs.

  Take Tom, for example. Although tall and handsome, aged thirty-five, and a successful physician, he kept falling madly in love with fine women—and quickly turned them all off. They found him too insecure, too needy. As I often ask my clients, who needs a needy person? Not Tom’s women friends!

  Tom understood REBT and knew exactly what he was telling himself to make himself shaky when he met a charming woman: “I love her so strongly and would feel so deprived if she did not return my feelings that I absolutely must win her. I have to! I’ve got to! I must!”

  Noting this kind of musturbation and seeing that it didn’t work, Tom used REBT to try to give it up, and kept asking himself, “Why must I win this woman I care for? Do I really have to please her? Would I die without her love?”

  He gave the correct, rational answers to these Disputations and helped himself somewhat. For a while. But then he fell right back to his great need. And to his insecurity.

  I gave Tom the REBT homework assignment of having a forceful rational dialogue with himself and recording the dialogue. He tried to do so and brought me in a cassette tape in which he nicely Disputed his iBs about winning the love of a special woman, but when I and members of his therapy group listened to it, we found his arguments good—but his tone wishy-washy. He knew the rational words to combat his neediness; but he obviously didn’t believe them.

  So I had Tom do the tape over, asking him to be much harder on his irrational Beliefs.

  No dice. His second tape dialogue was only a bit stronger in tone than his first one. And he still remained a love slob.

  His third tape was much better. Part of it went as follows:

  Tom’s irrational voice: If Cora, who’s just about the best woman I have met in years, doesn’t really love me, what decent woman will? None!

  Tom’s rational voice: None? What crap! With so many fine women I could meet? Obviously, some would care for me. Even if they were stupid for doing so!

  Tom’s irrational voice: But suppose they only cared because they were stupid. That would show what an unlovable jerk I am!

  Tom’s rational voice: To hell it would! At worst, it would show that I am sadly lacking some good traits. But never that I am totally unlovable. Nor would it show, if no woman found me desirable, that I would be a complete jerk. I would just be a loser in that area.

  Tom’s irrational voice: Yes, the most important of all areas. That would really make you one damned loser!

  Tom’s rational voice: No—a loser in love. But not in every area. Not in life! A loser to fine women. But not, dammit, to me!

  Tom’s irrational voice: There you go—rationalizing again! What good is your life if you can’t have real love? So you’ll be a great physician. Hah!

  Tom’s rational voice: Yes—I hope—a great physician. And great at sports! And a fine reader! I have lots of things I can really enjoy—even if I never find a good partner.

  Tom’s irrational voice: Never? Never?

  Tom’s rational voice: Yes, never! Immanuel Kant never mated—or probably ever even dated. And he had a good life! Many other outstanding people, too, were happy without love. But whether they were or not, I’m going to be! Just as soon as I stop whining about my being “unlovable”!

  As soon as Tom learned the knack of vigorously, powerfully Disputing his own irrational Beliefs—which he now referred to as his Bullshit—he began to do so many times. I and the members of his therapy group didn’t have to tell him, after he recorded a dialogue like the one above, that it was strong enough. His feeling of immense relief from anxiety and depression showed him that it was. He immediately felt he didn’t need (though he still keenly desired) love. And he felt that way for the next few weeks.

  As Tom kept fiercely arguing himself out of being a love slob, he felt much less needy. Four months later, he was almost totally improved—and consequently the women he dated often wanted to continue seeing him—and some highly desirable ones tried to cart him off to the altar! A year later he began to live with the one he liked best, and three years later he married her. He is now teaching her how to actively—and quite vigorously—talk herself out of some of her own emotional Bullshit.

  REBT Exercise No. 15

  Take one of your irrational Beliefs that you really want to give up, because you know that you are seriously defeating yourself by holding it, and dispute it both mildly and moderately, on the one hand, and vigorously or powerfully on the other hand. You may do this by writing out the irrational Belief and then making one column of mild disputings and changing of it, and one column of vigorous disputings and changing. Or better yet, you can record your irrational Belief on a tape recorder, and then have a dialogue with yourself on the recorder, in the course of which you moderately and
powerfully dispute this Belief until you really feel that you have made some real progress in giving up and changing it to a set of strong rational philosophies.

  A sample of your written out Disputing might go as follows:

  IRRATIONAL BELIEF

  I really have to pass this test that I am about to take because if I don’t, my whole career will go down the drain and I’ll surely end up working all my life in some menial capacity and making very little money, and that would be absolutely horrible! What a worm I would then be!

  Instead of, or in addition to, disputing your irrational Belief powerfully and vigorously on paper (as in the above illustration), you can have both a mild and a forceful dialogue with yourself on a tape recorder, and make sure that you end up by believing and feeling the forceful arguments that you present on the tape. Take this self-dialogue, for example:

  Mild Disputing and Rational Answer Powerful Disputing and Rational Answer

  If I fail this test I can take other tests and pass them later. So why worry? Even if I fail the test and every other test, I still can get a good job doing something. And if I don’t, I don’t! I can still be happy.

  My whole career won’t go down the drain. I’ll just be slower at getting what I want in the course of it. If my whole damned career went down the drain, I could still get another enjoyable and well-paying career!