Using Math to Learn How to Stubbornly Refuse to Make Yourself Miserable about Anything, Yes, Anything!

All of us worry or agonize or fret about something, big or small, every day. But much of the emotional misery we feel is an overreaction, and it can be significantly reduced with a fairly simple method developed by Albert Ellis in his book, "How to Stubbornly Refuse to Make Yourself Miserable about Anything, Yes, Anything!" I briefly summarize the concept here for the benefit of my family (who no doubt appreciates it beyond imagination); but certainly read the book if this leaves you wanting for more.

Albert Ellis discovered that we make ourselves miserable, and he has the science to back it up. We all have healthy and unhealthy emotions and thoughts. Both are normal, but as colds are normal they are also unhealthy. We have many ways of thinking that are unhealthy, and they almost always prevent us from achieving our goals. How do we go from healthy feelings of sadness, irritation, and concern to unhealthy depression anger, anxiety, rage, or panic? The answer, which is deceptively simple (easy to understand but harder to do!), is illustrated in the "ABCs" of RET (Rational-Emotive Therapy). 

A + B = C

(A) Activating event, which most people erroneously believe is the cause of their anguish; 

(B) is your Belief System which you will learn is the root of your troubles; and 

(C) is the emotional Consequence. 

Assume that As are constant; by simply changing B, your reaction to it, you can change C. 

Easier said than done. Start by examining the beliefs behind your reactions. Behind our Bs that make us miserable is what Ellis calls iB (irrational Belief) - thoughts we use to upset ourselves, what he calls "MUST-erbations." The tyranny of the SHOULDs. Absolute thinking, rigidly believing unconditional shoulds, oughts, and musts. The three most basic "musts" that create emotional disturbance are:

1. How "I" must be: I must perform well and/or win the approval of important people or else I am an inadequate person!

2. How "YOU" must be: You must treat me fairly and considerately, and not unduly frustrate me, or else YOU are a rotten individual!

3. How "THE WORLD" must be: My life conditions must give me the things I want and have to have to keep me from harm or else life is unbearable and I can't be happy at all!

He gives examples of how we create both appropriate and inappropriate feelings when our goals and desires are blocked: "If you are disappointed and sad about a situation (break up, job loss, illness), you will try to discover why, and take positive action....but anger, rage, fury--even over concern, anxiety and panic--interfere with our coping and block our ability to improve the situation. Whenever you feel really miserable - especially panicked, depressed, or enraged--look for your "should," look for your "must," some sort of absolute thinking.  

Another common and important factor that fuels our anger is overgeneralizing and associating a person's action with his being--a person who does something bad is NOT a bad person, and we make ourselves needless angry in the process, and sabotage our own goals. When people are merely frustrated they usually feel annoyed at the frustration. But when they think someone UNFAIRLY frustrated them, they often make themselves angry at the frustrating PERSON. Consequences of anger:

1. Anger stems from your belief that a person's action is the same thing as the person himself. Just as you evaluate his act as negative you respond to his whole being as "bad." Your iB results in your damning a whole person who will most probably in turn respond in a defensive manner in order to protect his own self-image. So long as you are angry, your openness vanishes, and your anger will inhibit a speedy and effective resolution of your problem.

2. Anger, a rather strong emotion, tends to overlap or extend into other areas of your life. Many people, when angry, feel hostile to others who have done slightly "wrong" things. This often creates unnecessary social tension and a counterproductive atmosphere.

3. Your depression and anxiety that may result from increased tensions stemming from anger reduce your effective performance in the various aspects of your life.

4. Points 2 and 3 may lead to the creation of negative responses from other people that may in turn cause you to feel highly critical of yourself. In many instances, this encourages self-downing, and intensifies your anxiety.

5. Anger compounded with a combination of its above-mentioned side effects can create difficult tensions both within yourself and in your relationships with others. These may result in such complications that you have difficulty realizing that your original anger leads to other bad situations. Hence, any resolution of the original problem will still fail to resolve the new difficulties that anger encourages.

By not making yourself feel angry, you leave open the possibility of reestablishing a good relation with the person who did the "wrong" thing, for you still acknowledge his good qualities; when you respect him as a person in spite of his behavior, you tend to respect yourself as a person in spite of your ineffective anger. 

(This last part comes from an updated book by Ellis, "Anger: How to Live With and Without It.")

Choices

We have choices and control over our responses to every situation...The intermediate thought process we carry on between A and C is an evaluation in which we make a decision that will determine our response. The more aware we make ourselves of this intermediate phase, the better chance we have of making a choice that makes us likely to achieve our goals. Through such choices we minimize the possibility of interfering with our progress by impulsive behavior.

HEALTHY: Your strong feelings of sadness, irritation, and concern are considered to be HEALTHY, because they help you to express your displeasure at undesirable happenings and to work at modifying them.
HARMFUL: Your feelings of depression, anger, and anxiety are almost always HARMFUL, because they stem from your unrealistic commands that unpleasant events absolutely must not exist, and those feelings are unhealthy because they usually interfere with your changing these events. 

RET is a dramatic shift in practice and philosophy from what we learned growing up, but a healthy one, and similar to what I've been exploring some time, in The Work of Byron Katie, and Marshall Rosenberg's Non Violent Communication. More recently, I have been reading John Gottman's Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work (nice summary here). The most important part of Gottman's work in my opinion is to be aware of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as he calls them: Criticism, defensiveness, contempt, stonewalling. These have no place in any relationship - including yourself! 

Good stuff!