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

by Albert Ellis

  1. She reminded herself that one of the best means of overcoming her jealousy was refusing to connect her worth as a person with her ability to satisfy David sexually. She showed herself many times that she could accept herself fully even if she no longer greatly aroused him.

  2. She forcefully kept telling herself the rational Belief (rB): “I can be loved by David and have a good marriage even if he does lust after women with big busts!”

  3. She kept challenging and Disputing her irrational Belief (iB): “I must be the only truly exciting woman to David!”

  4. She deliberately kept going with David to restaurants and other places where he was likely to see attractive women. She assumed he was staring at them and kept telling herself, “Tough!—that’s the way he is: desiring other women. I can live with it!”

  5. She saw the difference between her feeling healthily sorry and unhealthily panicked and depressed when David stared at other women. She used rational-emotive imagery, imagined him eagerly staring, and made herself feel only sorry and disappointed, but not anxious and self-downing.

  6. She noticed that she was making excuses for not viewing the Miss America beauty contest on TV. So she set herself a penalty of burning a ten-dollar bill for every minute she avoided viewing it with David. She saw the entire contest and burned no money.

  7. She gave herself the challenge of not only refusing to be miserable but actually enjoying her outings with David, even when she was sure he was staring at women with big breasts.

  8. She repeated REBT’s original Insights No. 1, 2, and 3 to herself, especially No. 3: “Becoming less jealous requires work and practice. So I damned well had better keep working and working against my silly jealousy!”

  9. She absorbed herself in the vital interest of designing and making her own clothes. She kept focusing on how well they looked rather than on how puny and “ugly” were her breasts.

  10. She talked to a few of the group members and to her women friends who also knew REBT and who kept helping her go back to using it when she slipped into jealous rages.

  11. She used REBT to help her friends and business associates (including her supervisor), and thus taught it better to herself.

  12. She recorded her part of her group sessions and listened several times a week to the Disputing and advice that I and the other members used with her. She kept reading REBT books and pamphlets, even though she had previously read them several times. She thereby kept reminding herself on points that she had half forgotten.

  As a result of applying herself so strongly to REBT maintenance practices, Georgiana got to the point where she rarely felt intense jealousy and rage. She was able, with the group’s full consent, to quit therapy and keep working on her problem successfully by herself. She and her husband still come from time to time to my regular Friday night live demonstrations of REBT. Her husband is most enthusiastic about her progress and has come to see one of our other therapists at the Albert Ellis Institute in New York to work on his anxiety about his job.

  REBT Exercise No. 16

  Select some task that you would like to do and know that you preferably should do but you are avoiding or—at very best—are procrastinating on and therefore doing very slowly. For example:

  Finishing a paper or a report

  Checking your monthly bank statement

  Doing your REBT homework

  Making business calls, on the phone or in person

  Coming to work regularly on time

  Writing a new job résumé

  Answering a long overdue letter to a friend

  Outlining a book you want to write

  Preparing to give a talk or a workshop

  Look for the things you are telling yourself to make yourself avoid or procrastinate. Especially:

  Shoulds and musts: “I shouldn’t have to do this difficult paper.” “My REBT homework must be easy to do.”

  Awfulizings: “It’s awful to check this damned bank statement!” “It’s terrible to make these blasted telephone calls!”

  I-can’t-stand-it-itis: “I can’t stand dressing to go to this party! I can’t bear stupid parties like this one is sure to be!”

  Too-hards: “It’s not only too hard to write this outline for a book, it’s too hard! It’s harder than it should be!”

  Self-damning: “Because I’m not preparing this speech, as I should be, and because others prepare their speeches with no delays, there’s something basically wrong with me, and that makes me an incompetent person. What a total idiot I am!”

  Always and neverness: “Since I fell back at doing my REBT, as I must not do, I’ll always be no good at doing it and will never do it well.”

  Hopelessness: “Because I’ve been late to work a hundred times, as I must not be, it’s hopeless, and I simply can’t make myself be on time!”

  Select some behavior or habit in which you are foolishly indulging even though you are harming yourself considerably by continuing to indulge in it. For example:

  Smoking cigarettes

  Overeating

  Telling yourself what a rotten person you are

  Drinking too much

  Overspending

  Doing pleasant tasks, like television viewing, instead of working on your REBT homework

  Continuing to make yourself enraged at people’s stupidities and inefficiencies

  Indulging in foolish phobias (such as avoiding using escalators or elevators)

  Look for the things you are telling yourself to pander to immediate gratification and to make yourself addicted to harmful habits. Especially:

  Shoulds and musts: “Even though it’s doing me great harm, I must have the relief of smoking this cigarette right now. I absolutely need it to relieve my tension.”

  Awfulizings: “It’s awful that I just can’t enjoy myself instead of working steadily at changing myself with REBT! It’s terrible that I must go through present pain to get later gain!”

  I-can’t-stand-it-itis: “I can’t stand pushing away this delicious food when it tastes so good! I need this extra food right now!”

  Too-hards: “It’s not merely hard for me to give up the pleasure and relaxation of booze and marijuana, it’s much too hard! It must not be that hard!”

  Self-damnings: “Because I’m not working my butt off at doing REBT as I ought to be doing, and because I’m indulging instead in immediate enjoyable activities, as I ought not be doing, I’m a pretty rotten person who deserves to keep suffering.”

  Always and neverness: “Because I keep spending money on things I really do not need to get short-term pleasures that I foolishly think that I do need, I’ll never change and will always be a stupid spendthrift !”

  Hopelessness: “Because I have fallen back several times from doing my REBT homework, and instead have taken the easier and instantly more gratifying path of not working at changing myself, it’s hopeless. I can’t stop indulging in easy things, so I might as well give in to my natural tendencies and forget about changing myself.”

  Once you look for and discover your irrational Beliefs (iBs) with which you are creating your low frustration tolerance and your indulgences, actively and vigorously dispute all your shoulds, oughts, musts, your awfulizings, your I-can’t-stand-its, your too-hards, your self-damnings, your always and nevernesses, and your conclusions of hopelessness. For example:

  Disputing: “Why must my REBT homework be easy to do? Why shouldn’t I have a hard time doing it and continuing to do it?”

  Answer: “There’s no reason why it should be easy, and several reasons why it should be hard: (a) Because it is hard. (b) Because I’m not yet used to doing it, and it may well become easier as I continue to do so. (c) Because it’s natural for me to act foolishly, and at times highly unnatural for me to act sensibly. So I’d better keep acting well, until I make it more ‘natural.’ ”

  Disputing: “What makes it awful to keep checking my damned bank account?”

  Answer: “Nothing makes it awful, since it’s on
ly, in itself, a real nuisance. Only I make it awful—by foolishly defining it in this way. So I’d better stop that nonsense and only see it as it actually is—a required pain in the neck!”

  Disputing: “Where is the evidence that it’s too hard for me to give up the pleasure and relaxation of booze and marijuana? Prove that it must not be that hard!”

  Answer: “If it were really too hard, then I couldn’t possibly give up this pleasure at all. But of course I can give it up—if I accept, without childishly whining about and immensely exaggerating, its difficulty. Apparently it isn’t too hard for me to whine and moan about it. Only too easy! So I’d better stop making it harder than it really is by having a temper tantrum about it. So it’s hard! Tough! But it’s not horrible !”

  Disputing: “Even if I never prepare this speech, and even if I find that other people easily and quickly prepare their speeches, how does that wrong behavior of mine, procrastination, make me a thoroughly incompetent person?”

  Answer: “It doesn’t, of course. It makes me a person who is not acting competently, right now, in this particular way, and who still has the ability—if I push myself!—to act more competently in the future. If I were a thoroughly incompetent person, I could do practically nothing well. And that of course is quite false: since I do many things with no trouble at all. So I’d better focus on this incompetent act, and not on my ‘inadequate personhood.’ Yes, I’m still fallible and will most probably always be. Now how do I stop this procrastinating and make myself less fallible? Once again: by prodding—yes, prodding!—myself.”

  Disputing: “Even though I keep spending money on things I really do not need in order to get short-term pleasure that I foolishly think that I do need, how does that indicate that I’ll never change and will always be a stupid spendthrift?”

  Answer: “It doesn’t! No matter how many times I idiotically overspend, I can most likely change and stop it now and in the future. If my past mistakes proved that I will never be able to undo them, I could never have learned the multiplication table! They only prove that I easily and often fail—as just about all humans do. But not always! And not that I’m doomed to never succeed!”

  Disputing: “Let me acknowledge that I have fallen back several times from doing my REBT homework, and instead have taken the easier and instantly more gratifying path of not working at changing myself. Where is it written that this makes things hopeless and that I can’t stop indulging in easy things? How does this prove that I might as well give in to my natural tendencies to take things easily and that I should forget about changing myself?”

  Answer: “It doesn’t! Just because I have natural tendencies to take things easily, and just because I therefore keep falling back from doing my REBT homework, I’d better work harder to keep doing and doing this homework, until I acquire a ‘second nature’ and begin to automatically and fairly easily do it. No matter how difficult it is to do something, or to not give in to any of my compulsions, that never proves that it’s hopeless and that I can’t change. Even when something is next to impossible, it usually can eventually be done. Fortunately, I made myself this way, even though I had great help from my heredity and my environment! And that means that, in all probability, with persistent effort I can make myself act another, better way!”

  Keep observing and admitting your backsliding at REBT or at anything else, and keep noticing how often and how nicely you are addicted to striving for some kind of immediate gratification rather than for long-range gain and happiness. Stubbornly refuse to put yourself down for your low frustration tolerance, and then keep working to eliminate it. With actual addictive, compulsive, and indulgent behaviors, force yourself many times to stop them. And when you later fall back—as you often may—to indulging in them again, force yourself, no matter how hard it is, to give them up, give them up, give them up.

  Because virtually all harmful habits that you favor award you some kind of quick pleasure or payoff, use the principles of reward, reinforcement, or what B. F. Skinner calls operant conditioning (and what other psychologists often call contingency management) to help you give them up. When you contingently reinforce yourself, you pick some action or behavior that is pleasurable, and preferably even more pleasurable than the habit you are trying to give up, and you allow yourself this pleasure AFTER you have refused to engage in the habit you are trying to break.

  Suppose, for example, you want to stop smoking cigarettes or want to eat no more than 1,500 calories a day. You look for some pleasure that you find most enjoyable and that you tend to engage in every day in the week—such as listening to music, reading the newspaper, masturbating or having some other kind of sex, having social conversations, exercising, or television viewing. You then allow yourself to have this great pleasure only AFTER you have refrained from smoking or AFTER you have stopped before eating 1,501 calories. Be very strict about this reinforcement or reward, or it will not work. No excuses! If you have a single cigarette or eat even fifty extra calories, no music, no newspaper reading, no television viewing, or no other reward that you have set for yourself. Right!—none!

  Stiff penalties are even better, if you will properly use them. For you obviously feel real pain or discomfort when you are trying to break a bad habit and actively start breaking it. So, pick something even MORE uncomfortable and make yourself do that thing whenever you refuse to give up your harmful habit or whenever you temporarily give it up and then foolishly fall back to it again.

  Once more, let us suppose you know that smoking cigarettes will definitely harm you but you self-defeatingly keep smoking. Or suppose you keep unhealthfully gaining weight and had better stay with no more than 1,500 calories a day; then, instead, you keep getting up to 1,800, 2,000, or even 2,400 calories a day. How do you penalize yourself every time you go over your own set limits of smoking no cigarettes or eating only 1,500 calories? Quite simply. Set a strong and painful penalty—such as lighting every cigarette you smoke with a twenty dollar bill. Or talking to a boring and obnoxious acquaintance for at least an hour every time you take a single puff. Or running for two miles (if you hate running) whenever you eat more than 1,500 calories. Or eating a half pound of some food you find very distasteful or taking a sniff of an odor that you find utterly repulsive every single time you eat five calories more than 1,500.

  Using the principles of immediate reinforcement and quick (and inevitable!) penalties on every occasion when you indulge in bad habits or refuse to engage in good habits (like exercising or doing at least an hour’s work on a paper you are writing) won’t absolutely make you give up your low frustration tolerance and your tendency to foolishly indulge yourself in pernicious behavior. But it will definitely help!

  17

  REBT Insight No. 12: If You Backslide, Try, Try Again!

  As noted in the previous chapter, human beings change for the better—then backslide. You, too!

  If you use REBT to overcome your misery and you never fall back to it again—great. But never fear. You will sometimes fall back. Want to bet?

  We prepare our clients at the Albert Ellis Institute by giving them the pamphlet, How to Maintain and Enhance Your Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy Gains. The second part of this pamphlet, “How to Deal with Backsliding,” emphasizes REBT Insight No. 12: When you improve your emotional disturbances, it will be a miracle if you never backslide. When you do, back to the REBT drawing board. Try, try again!

  The section of our pamphlet that deals with backsliding makes these points:

  1. Accept your backsliding as normal—as something that happens to almost everyone who at first improves emotionally. See it as part of your being a fallible human. Don’t damn yourself when some of your old problems return; and don’t think that you have to handle them entirely by yourself and that it is wrong or weak for you to seek help from others.

  2. When you backslide, look at your self-defeating behavior as bad and unfortunate, but work very hard at refusing to put yourself down for engaging in this behavi
or. Use the highly important REBT philosophy of refusing to rate you, yourself, or your being but of measuring only your acts, deeds, and traits.

  You are always a person who acts well or badly—and never a good person or a bad person. No matter how badly you fall back and make yourself upset again, you can always accept yourself with this poor behavior—and then keep trying to change this behavior.

  3. Go back to the ABCs of REBT and see what you did to fall back to your old anxiety or depression. At A (Activating Event or Adversity), you probably experienced some failure or rejection once again. At rB (rational Belief) you probably told yourself that you didn’t like failing and didn’t want to be rejected. If you only stayed with these rational Beliefs, you would merely feel sorry, regretful, disappointed, or frustrated.

  But when you felt depressed again, you probably then went on to irrational Beliefs (iBs), such as: “I must not fail! It’s horrible when I do!” “I have to be accepted, because if I’m not that makes me an unlovable, worthless person!” Then, after convincing yourself of these iBs, you felt, at C (emotional Consequence), once again depressed and self-downing.

  4. When you find irrational Beliefs with which you are once again disturbing yourself, just as you originally used Disputing (D) to surrender them, do so again—immediately and persistently. Thus, you can ask yourself, “Why must I not fail? Is it really horrible if I do?”

  And you can answer: “There is no reason why I must not fail, though I can think of several reasons why it would be highly undesirable. It’s not horrible if I do fail—only quite inconvenient.”

  You can also Dispute your other irrational Beliefs by asking yourself, “Where is it written that I have to be accepted? How do I become an unlovable, worthless person if I am rejected?”