Cool Those Hot Thoughts. Once you’ve decided to cool down, an invaluable method that can help you is to write down the various “hot thoughts” that are going through your mind when you are upset. Then substitute less upsetting, more objective “cool thoughts,” using the double-column method (Figure 7–3). Listen for those “hot thoughts” with your “third ear” so as to tune in to the antagonistic statements that go through your head. Record this private dialogue without any censorship. I’m sure you’ll notice all kinds of highly colorful language and vengeful fantasies—write them all down. Then substitute “cool thoughts” that are more objective and less inflammatory. This will help you feel less aroused and overwhelmed.
Sue used this technique to deal with the frustration she felt when John’s daughter, Sandy, acted manipulative and wrapped John around her finger. Sue kept telling him to be more assertive with Sandy and less of a soft touch, but he often reacted negatively to her suggestions. He felt Sue was nagging and making demands to get her way. This made him want to spend even less time with her, which contributed to a vicious cycle.
* * *
Figure 7–3. Sue wrote down her “Hot Thoughts” when her husband acted like a soft touch in response to his teenage daughter’s selfish manipulations. When she substituted less upsetting “Cool Thoughts,” her jealousy and resentment diminished.
* * *
Sue wrote down the “hot thoughts” that made her feel jealous and guilty (see Figure 7–3). As she substituted “cool thoughts,” she felt better, and this served as an antidote to her urge to try to control John. Although she still felt he was wrong in letting Sandy manipulate him, she decided he had the “right” to be “wrong.” Consequently, Sue pushed John less, and he began to feel less pressured. Their relationship improved and ripened in a climate of mutual freedom and respect. Simply talking back to her “hot thoughts” was, of course, not the only ingredient that led to a successful second marriage for Sue and John, but it was a necessary and gigantic first step without which both of them could have easily ended up stalemated again!
You can also use the more elaborate chart, the “Daily Record of Dysfunctional Thoughts,” to deal with your anger (see Figure 7–4, page 170). You can describe the provocative situation and assess how angry you feel before and after you do the exercise. Figure 7–4 shows how a young woman coped with her frustration when she was dealt with tersely by a prospective employer over the telephone. She reported that pinpointing her “hot thoughts” and putting the lie to them helped her nip an emotional explosion in the bud. This prevented the fretting and fuming that normally would have soured her entire day. She told me, “Before I did the exercise I thought my enemy was the man on the other end of the phone. But I learned that I was treating myself ten times worse than he was. Once I recognized this, it was relatively easy to substitute cooler thoughts, and I surprised myself by feeling a whole lot better right away!”
Imagining Techniques. Those negative “hot thoughts” that go through your mind when you are angry represent the script of a private movie (usually X-rated) that you project onto your mind. Have you ever noticed the picture on the screen? The images, daydreams, and fantasies of revenge and violence can be quite colorful indeed!
* * *
Figure 7–4. Daily Record of Dysfunctional Thoughts.
* * *
You may not be aware of these mental pictures unless you look for them. Let me illustrate. Suppose I ask you to visualize a red apple in a brown basket right now. You can do this with your eyes open or closed. There! Do you see it now? That’s what I’m referring to. Most of us have these visual images all day long. They are a part of normal consciousness, the pictorial illustrations of our thoughts. For example, memories sometimes occur to us as mental pictures. Conjure up an image now of some vivid past event—your high-school graduation, your first kiss (do you still remember it?), a long hike, etc. Do you see it now?
These images can affect you strongly, and their influence can be positively or negatively arousing, just like erotic dreams or nightmares. The exhilarating effect of a positive image can be intense. For instance, on your way to an amusement park you might have an image of that first dazzling descent down the roller coaster, and you may experience the excited rush in your belly. The daydream actually creates the pleasurable anticipation. Similarly, negative images play a powerful role in your level of emotional arousal. Visualize right now someone whom you’ve gotten good and mad at sometime in your life. What images come to mind? Do you imagine punching them in the nose or tossing them into a vat of boiling oil?
These daydreams actually keep your anger alive long after the initial insult has occurred. Your sense of rage may eat away at you for hours, days, months, or even years after the irritating event has long since passed. Your fantasies help keep the pain alive. Every time you fantasize about the occurrence you shoot new doses of arousal into your system. You become like a cow chewing on poison cud.
And who is creating this anger? You are because you chose to put those images in your mind! For all you know, the person you are mad at lives in Timbuktu, or maybe isn’t even alive anymore, so he or she could hardly be the culprit! You are the director and producer of the film now, and, what’s worse, you’re the only one in the audience. Who has to watch and experience all the arousal? YOU DO! You’re the one who’s subjected to a continual clenching, a tightening of back muscles, and an outpouring of adrenal hormones into the bloodstream. You’re the one whose blood pressure is going up. IN A NUTSHELL: You’re making yourself hurt. Do you want to keep this up?
If not, you will want to do something to reduce the anger-generating images that you are projecting onto your mind. One helpful technique is to transform them in a creative way so they become less upsetting. Humor represents one powerful tool you can use. For example, instead of imagining wringing the neck of the person you are furious with, fantasize that he is walking around in diapers in a crowded department store. Visualize all the details: the potbelly, the diaper pins, the hairy legs. Now what’s happening to your anger? Is that a broad smile spreading across your face?
A second method involves thought stoppage. As you notice the images crossing your mind each day, remind yourself that you have the right to turn the projector off. Think about something else. Find someone and engage him or her in conversation. Read a good book. Bake bread. Go jogging. When you don’t reward the anger images with your arousal, they will recur less and less often. Instead of dwelling on them, think about an upcoming event that excites you, or switch to an erotic fantasy. If the upsetting memory is persistent, engage in vigorous physical exercise such as pushups, rapid jogging, or swimming. These have the additional benefit of rechanneling your potentially hurtful arousal in a highly beneficial way.
Rewrite the Rules. You may frustrate and upset yourself needlessly because you have an unrealistic rule about personal relationships that causes you to be let down all the time. The key to Sue’s anger was her belief she was entitled to John’s love because of her rule “If I’m a good and faithful wife, I deserve to be loved.”
As a result of this innocent-sounding assumption, Sue experienced a constant sense of danger in her marriage because anytime John wasn’t giving her an appropriate helping of love and attention, she would experience it as a confirmation of her inadequacy. She would then manipulate and demand attention and respect in a constant battle to defend herself against a loss of self-esteem. Intimacy with him became like slipping slowly toward the edge of an icy cliff. No wonder she was desperately grabbing onto John, and no wonder she would explode when she sensed his indifference—didn’t he realize her life was at stake?
In addition to the intense unpleasantness that her “love” rule created, it didn’t work well in the long run. For a while Sue’s manipulations did, in fact, get her some of the attention she craved. After all, she could intimidate John with her emotional explosions, she could punish him with her icy withdrawal, and she could manipulate him by arousing his gui
lt.
But the price Sue pays is that the love she receives isn’t—and can’t—be given freely and spontaneously. He will feel exhausted, trapped, and controlled. The resentment he’s been storing up will press for release. When he stops buying into her belief that he has to give in to her demands, his desire for freedom will overpower him, and he will explode. The destructive effects of what passes for love never cease to amaze me!
If your relationships are characterized by this cyclic tension and tyranny, you may be better off rewriting the rules. If you adopt a more realistic attitude, you can end your frustration. It’s much easier than trying to change the world. Sue decided to revise her “love” rule in the following way: “If I behave in a positive manner toward John, he will respond in a loving way a good bit of the time. I can still respect myself and function effectively when he doesn’t.” This formulation of her expectations was more realistic and didn’t put her moods and self-esteem at the mercy of her husband.
The rules that get you into interpersonal difficulty often won’t appear to be malignant. On the contrary, they often seem highly moral and humanistic. I recently treated a woman named Margaret who had the notion that “marriages should be fifty-fifty. Each partner should do for the other equally.” She applied this rule to all human relationships. “If I do nice things for people, they should reciprocate.”
So what’s wrong with that? It certainly sounds “reasonable” and “fair.” It’s kind of a spin-off from the Golden Rule. Here’s what’s wrong with it: It’s an undeniable fact that human relationships, including marriages, are rarely spontaneously “reciprocal” because people are different. Reciprocity is a transient and inherently unstable ideal that can only be approximated through continued effort. This involves mutual consensus, communication, compromise, and growth. It requires negotiation and hard work.
Margaret’s problem was that she didn’t recognize this. She lived in a fairytale world where reciprocity existed as an assumed reality. She went around always doing good things for her husband and others and then waited for their reciprocity. Unfortunately, these unilateral contracts fell apart because other people usually weren’t aware that she expected to be repaid.
For example, a local charity organization advertised for a salaried assistant director to start in several months. Margaret was quite interested in this position and submitted her application. She then gave large amounts of her time doing volunteer work for the organization and assumed that the other employees would “reciprocate” by liking and respecting her, and that the director would “reciprocate” by giving her the job. In reality, the other employees did not respond to her warmly. Perhaps they sensed and resented her attempt to control them with her “niceness” and virtue. When the director chose another candidate for the position, she hit the roof and felt bitter and disillusioned because her “reciprocity” rule had been violated!
Since her rule caused her so much trouble and disappointment she opted to rewrite it, and to view reciprocity not as a given but as a goal she could work toward by pursuing her own self-interest. At the same time she relinquished her demand that others read her mind and respond as she wanted. Paradoxically, as she learned to expect less, she got more!
* * *
Figure 7–5. Revising "Should Rules."
* * *
If you have a “should” or “shouldn’t” rule that has been causing you disappointment and frustration, rewrite it in more realistic terms. A number of examples to help you do this are shown in Figure 7–5. You will notice that the substitution of one word—“it would be nice if” in place of “should”—can be a useful first step.
Learn to Expect Craziness. As the anger in Sue’s relationship with John cooled down, they became closer and more loving. However, John’s daughter, Sandy, responded to his increased intimacy by even greater manipulations. She began to lie, borrowed money without returning it; she sneaked into Sue’s bedroom, went through drawers, and stole Sue’s personal items; she left the kitchen messy, etc. All these actions effectively got Sue’s goat because she told herself, “Sandy shouldn’t act so sneaky. She’s crazy! It’s unfair!” Sue’s sense of frustration was the product of two necessary ingredients:
1. Sandy’s obnoxious behavior;
2. Sue’s expectation that she should act in a more mature way.
Since the evidence suggested that Sandy wasn’t about to change, Sue had only one alternative: She could discard her unrealistic expectation that Sandy behave in an adult, ladylike fashion! She decided to write the following memo to herself entitled:
Why Sandy Should Act Obnoxiously
It is Sandy’s nature to be manipulative because she believes that she’s entitled to love and attention. She believes that getting love and attention is a matter of life and death. She thinks she needs to be the center of attention in order to survive. Therefore, she will see any lack of love as unfair and a great danger to her sense of self-esteem.
Because she feels she has to manipulate in order to get attention, she should act in a manipulative way. Therefore, I can expect and predict that she will continue to act this way until she changes. Since it is unlikely that she will change in the near future, I can expect her to continue to behave this way for a period of time. Therefore, I will have no reason to feel frustrated or surprised because she will be acting the way she should act.
Furthermore, I want all humans including Sandy to act in a manner that they believe to be fair. Sandy feels she’s entitled to more attention. Since her obnoxious behavior is based on her sense of entitlement, I can remind myself that what she does is fair from her point of view.
Finally, I want my moods to be under my control, not hers. Do I want to make myself feel upset and angry at her “fair, obnoxious” behavior? No! Therefore, I can begin to change the way I react to her:
1. I can thank her for stealing since this is what she “should” do!
2. I can laugh to myself about her manipulations since they are childish.
3. I can choose not to be angry unless it is my decision to use the anger to accomplish a specific goal.
4. If I feel a loss of self-esteem due to Sandy’s manipulations, I can ask myself, Do I want to give a child such power over me?
What is the desired effect of such a memorandum? Sandy’s provocative actions are probably knowingly malicious. Sandy consciously targets Sue because of the resentment and helpless frustration she feels. When Sue gets upset, she paradoxically gives Sandy exactly what she wants! She can greatly reduce her frustration as she changes her expectations.
Enlightened Manipulation. You may fear that you will be a pushover if you change your expectations and give up your anger. You might sense that other people would take advantage of you. This apprehension reflects your sense of inadequacy as well as the fact that you probably have not been trained in more enlightened methods of going after what you want. You probably believe that if you didn’t make demands on people you’d end up empty-handed.
So what’s the alternative? Well, as a starting point let’s review the work of Dr. Mark K. Goldstein, a psychologist who has done some brilliant and creative clinical research on the behavioral conditioning of husbands by wives. In his work with neglected and angry wives, he became aware of the self-defeating methods they used to get what they wanted from their husbands. He asked himself: What have we learned in the laboratory about the most effective scientific methods for influencing all living organisms, including bacteria, plants, and rats? Can we apply these principles to wayward and sometimes brutal husbands?
The answer to these questions was straightforward—reward the desired behavior instead of punishing the undesired behavior. Punishment causes aversion and resentment and brings about alienation and avoidance. Most of the deprived and abandoned wives he treated were misguidedly trying to punish their husbands into doing what they wanted. By switching them to a reward model in which the desired behavior got copious attention, he observed some dramatic turnabouts.
> The wives Dr. Goldstein treated were not unique. They were ensnarled in the ordinary marital conflicts that most of us confront. These women had a long history of giving their spouses attention either indiscriminately or, in some cases, primarily in response to undesirable behavior. A major shift had to occur in order for them to elicit the kind of response they desired from their husbands but were not getting. By keeping meticulous scientific records of their interactions with their husbands, the women were able to achieve control over how they responded.
Here’s how it worked for one of Dr. Goldstein’s patients. After years of fighting, wife X reported she lost her husband. He abandoned her and moved in with his girl friend. His primary interactions with wife X had centered around abuse and indifference. It appeared on the surface as if he didn’t care much about her. Nevertheless, he did call her occasionally, indicating he might have some interest in her. She had the choice of cultivating this attention or crushing it further by continued inappropriate responses.
Wife X defined her goals. She would experiment to see if she could in fact get her husband back. The first milestone would be to determine if she could effectively increase his rate of contact with her. She measured meticulously the frequency and duration of his every telephone call and visit home, recording this information on a piece of graph paper taped to the refrigerator door. She carefully assessed the crucial relationship between her behavior (the stimulus) and the frequency of his contacts (the response).
She initiated no contacts with him at all on her own, but instead responded positively and affectionately to his calls. Her strategy was straightforward. Rather than noticing and reacting to all the things about him that she didn’t like, she began to reinforce systematically those that she did like. The rewards she used were all the things that turned him on—praise, food, sex, affection, etc.
Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy Page 16