by Albert Ellis
REBT answer: You damned well can! Even if you stupidly sold at exactly the wrong time and lost money on the stock, while everybody else held on until they made a mint, you could make yourself feel disappointed—but not self-hating—about your loss. You could convince yourself, “If I choose to gamble at anything, I had better acknowledge that it is a gamble and that there is never a certainty of winning. Second, no one buys and sells stocks and always makes maximum gains. Including me! Third, it was good that I made anything on the deal. What luck! Fourth, this gives me a chance to see what I am doing to foolishly make myself anxious about this deal, and what I can do in the future to make myself less anxious. Fifth, making a pile of money is good and will make me happier. But I can also be distinctly happy with less money. If I stop berating myself for making less!”
Question: Suppose your beloved mate or one of your close friends for whom you really care dies. How can you rationally deal with that great loss?
REBT answer: By steadfastly accepting, without at all liking, what you can’t change. Firmly tell yourself, “Death, so far, is inevitable for all of us. Nor could I have prevented this death. I shall miss this person considerably and feel truly deprived of companionship and pleasure. But I can still think of the fine times we did have. And I can realize that he or she gave me great joy, but the feeling I had was my feeling and I can have similar feelings and pleasure with others. What can I now do to increase my ability to love and to find suitable partners to care for?”
Question: Suppose you no longer can enjoy the main things you used to enjoy—such as sports, work, romantic love, or sex. Isn’t that good reason to feel depressed?
REBT answer: Definitely not! You would then clearly have less satisfaction, less pleasure in life. But hardly none. Unless you foolishly depress yourself by telling yourself, “I must still have these former enjoyments.” Then you will ruin your life and enjoy virtually nothing. But if you no longer can thrill at sports, work, sex, or anything else, you can almost certainly, as long as you are truly alive, find something that you really like. What? Seek, experiment, and find out. Just thinking can be enjoyable. Or even television! As long as you stop convincing yourself that life without certain pleasure is totally unsatisfying!
Question: Suppose you are in constant physical pain (for example, from advanced cancer), you really don’t enjoy anything, and you are pretty certain that this painful existence will continue until you die. What can you then do to avoid real misery?
REBT answer: Very little, physically. And emotionally you would hardly be happy! If I were in that sad condition and had no important goal to keep fulfilling—such as to help my loved ones or to finish a major project—I might rationally, calmly, decide to painlessly kill myself. For though I definitely find life good, it is hardly sacred, and it is not good under all conditions. So if my pain blocked all satisfactions, I would see little sense in living. But I wouldn’t desperately depart. I would feel thankful for the life I had had, feel sorry that it was now so painful, and feel glad that I could think of some quick way of ending it. My other choice might well be to focus on some important thing I could do—such as finish a major book I was writing—and bear my pain until I at least finished this project. In either case, I would use rational thinking to show myself that even the “worst” conditions are not “horrible.”
Question: Suppose you find a most unusual love partner with whom you are very happy and you then act so meanly with this person that he or she leaves you and goes off with someone else. How can you stubbornly refuse to make yourself depressed?
REBT answer: By doing exactly that: stubbornly refusing to make yourself depressed. You can tell yourself, “That was mean behavior —but that never makes me a mean and rotten person! I’d better admit that I made myself unlovable this time and ruined a fine relationship. But again, this foolish conduct doesn’t by any means make me a totally unlovable individual. If I recognize my great loss and truly regret it, I can work hard at being less mean and more caring in the future and do my best to win back my partner’s love. Or if that is impossible, I can push myself to look for another mate, act much better next time, and work to establish a fine relationship.”
Question: Suppose that you know for sure that you’re soon to die in an atomic holocaust and that, in fact, the whole human race will perish with you and completely die out. How would you feel, and what would you do?
REBT answer: Let me, once again, give my own answer. For a few minutes, I would make myself feel damned sad and frustrated. “What fools these mortals be! How foolish and unnecessary!” I would tell myself. “But if that’s the way humans are, that’s the way they are! Tough!” Then I would try my best to have a damned good time—eating, loving, and having sex while listening to great music!—during the last minutes or days of my one and only earthly existence.
What do all these questions and answers show? That much of your discomfort, pain, failure, rejection, and loss cannot be avoided or eliminated. Life, as we say in REBT, is frequently spelled H-A-S-S-L-E. A good deal of it, with thought and effort, you can greatly improve. Not all! Not completely!
Tough. But not awful, not horrible, not terrible. Just tough.
Now—how are you going to arrange for greater enjoyment?
Appendix: The Biological Basis of Human Irrationality
Before stating any hypothesis about the b²asis of human irrationality, definitions of the main terms employed in this appendix, biological basis and irrationality, are presented. Biological basis means that a characteristic or trait has distinctly innate (as well as distinctly acquired) origins—that it partly arises from the organism’s natural, easy predisposition to behave in certain stipulated ways. This does not mean that this characteristic or trait has a purely instinctive basis, that it cannot undergo major change; nor does it mean that the organism would perish, or at least live in abject misery, without it. It simply means that, because of its genetic and/or congenital nature, an individual easily develops this trait and has a difficult time modifying or eliminating it.
Irrationality means any thought, emotion, or behavior that leads to self-defeating or self-destructive consequences—that significantly interferes with the survival and happiness of the organism. More specifically, irrational behavior usually has several aspects:
1. The individual believes, often devoutly, that it accords with the tenets of reality although in some important respect it really does not.
2. People who adhere to irrational behavior significantly denigrate or refuse to accept themselves.
3. Irrational behavior interferes with their getting along satisfactorily with members of their primary social groups.
4. Irrational behavior seriously blocks their achieving the kind of interpersonal relations that they would like to achieve.
5. Irrational behavior hinders their working gainfully and joyfully at some kind of productive labor.
6. Irrational behavior interferes with their own best interests in other important respects.
The major hypothesis of this appendix is as follows: Humans ubiquitously and constantly act irrationally in many important respects. Just about all of them do so during all their lives, though some considerably more than others. There is, therefore, some reason to believe that they do so naturally and easily, often against the teachings of their families and their culture, frequently against their own conscious wish and determination. Although modifiable to a considerable extent, their irrational tendencies seem largely ineradicable and intrinsically go with their biological (as well as sociological) nature.
This hypothesis goes back to the statements of some of the earliest historians and philosophers and has received adequate documentation over the years by a host of authorities, such as J. G. Frazier, Claude Levi-Strauss, Eric Hoffer, Walter B. Pitkin, and O. Rachleff. R. S. Parker noted that “most people are self-destructive, they behave in ways that are obviously against their best interest.” Nonetheless, whenever I address an audience of psychologists or
psychotherapists and point out this fairly obvious conclusion and state or imply that it arises out of the biological tendency of humans to behave irrationally, a great many dyed-in-the-wool environmentalists almost always rise with horror, foam at the mouth, and call me a traitor to objective, scientific thinking.
Hence this appendix. Following is a brief summary—for the amount of supporting evidence assumes overwhelming proportions and would literally take many volumes to summarize properly—of some of the main reasons behind the thesis that human irrationality roots itself in basic human nature. The summary is confined to outlining the multiplicity of major irrationalities and to giving some of the logical and psychological reasons why it seems almost certain that they have biological origins.
First are listed some of the outstanding irrationalities among the thousands collected over the years. The following manifestations of human behavior certainly do not appear completely irrational—for they also have (as what behavior has not?) some distinct advantages. Some people, such as those Eric Hoffer calls true believers, will even hold that many of them bring about much more good than harm. Almost any reasonably objective observer of human affairs, however, will probably tend to agree that they include a large amount of foolishness, unreality, and danger to our survival or happiness.
1. Custom and Conformity Irrationalities
a. Outdated and rigid customs
b. Ever-changing, expensive fashions
c. Fads and popular crazes
d. Customs involving royalty and nobility
e. Customs involving holidays and festivals
f. Customary gifts and presentations
g. Customs in connection with social affairs and dating
h. Courtship, marriage, and wedding customs
i. Puberty rites, bar mitzvahs, etc.
j. Academic rites and rituals
k. Hazings of schools, fraternal organizations, etc.
l. Religious rites and rituals
m. Customs and rites regarding scientific papers
n. Circumcision conventions and rituals
o. Rigid rules of etiquette and manners
p. Blue laws
q. Strong disposition to obey authority, even when it makes unreasonable demands
2. Ego-Related Irrationalities
a. Tendency to deify oneself
b. Dire need to have superiority over others
c. Tendency to give oneself a global, total, all-inclusive rating
d. Tendency to desperately seek for status
e. Tendency to prove oneself rather than enjoy oneself
f. Tendency to believe that one’s value as a human depends on one’s competency at an important performance or a group of important performances
g. Tendency to value oneself or devalue oneself in regard to the performances of one’s family
h. Tendency to value or devalue oneself in regard to the performances or status of one’s school, neighborhood group, community, state, or country.
i. Tendency to denigrate or devil-ify oneself.
3. Prejudice-Related Irrationalities
a. Strong prejudice
b. Dogma
c. Racial prejudice
d. Sex prejudice
e. Political prejudice
f. Social and class prejudice
g. Religious prejudice
h. Appearance prejudice
4. Common Kinds of Illogical Thinking
a. Overgeneralization
b. Magnification and exaggeration
c. Use of non sequiturs
d. Strong belief in anti-empirical statements
e. Strong belief in absolutes
f. Gullibility and over-suggestibility
g. Strong belief in contradictory statements
h. Strong belief in utopianism
i. Strong adherence to unreality
j. Strong belief in unprovable statements
k. Shortsightedness
l. Overcautiousness
m. Giving up one extreme statement and going to the other extreme
n. Strong belief in shoulds, oughts, and musts
o. The dire need for certainty
p. Wishful thinking
q. Lack of self-perspective
r. Difficulty of learning
s. Difficulty of unlearning and relearning
t. Deep conviction that because one believes something strongly it must have objective reality and truth
u. Conviction that because one had better respect the rights of others to hold beliefs different from one’s own, their beliefs have truth
5. Experiential and Feeling Irrationalities
a. Strong conviction that because one experiences something deeply and “feels” its truth, it must have objective reality and truth
b. Strong conviction that the more intensely one experiences something the more objective reality and truth it has
c. Strong conviction that because one authentically and honestly feels something it must have objective truth in reality
d. Strong conviction that all authentic and deeply experienced feelings represent legitimate and healthy feelings
e. Strong conviction that when a powerful thought or feeling exists (e.g., a mystical feeling that one understands everything in the universe), it constitutes a deeper, more important, and factually truer idea than a rational thought or feeling
6. Habit-Making Irrationalities
a. The acquiring of nonproductive and self-defeating habits easily and unconsciously
b. The automatic retention and persistence of nonproductive and self-defeating habits in spite of one’s conscious awareness of their irrationality
c. Failure to follow up on conscious determination and resolution to break a self-defeating habit
d. Inventing rationalizations and excuses for not giving up a self-defeating habit
e. Backsliding into self-defeating habits after one has temporarily overcome them
7. Addictions to Self-Defeating Behaviors
a. Addiction to overeating
b. Addiction to smoking
c. Addiction to alcohol
d. Addiction to drugs
e. Addiction to tranquilizers and other medicines
f. Addiction to work, at the expense of greater enjoyments
g. Addiction to approval and love
8. Neurotic and Psychotic Symptoms
a. Overweening and disruptive anxiety
b. Depression and despair
c. Hostility and rage
d. Extreme feelings of self-downing and hurt
e. Extreme feelings of self-pity
f. Childish grandiosity
g. Refusal to accept reality
h. Paranoid thinking
i. Delusions
j. Hallucinations
k. Psychopathy
l. Mania
m. Extreme withdrawal or catatonia
9. Religious Irrationalities
a. Devout faith unfounded on fact
b. Slavish adherence to religious dogma
c. Deep conviction that a supernatural force must exist
d. Deep conviction that a supernatural force or entity has special, personal interest in oneself
e. Deep conviction in heaven and hell
f. Religious bigotry
g. Persecution of other religious groups