Chapter 9 – Refusing to Feel Desperately Unhappy
The authors say REBT can teach you to be almost never desperately unhappy. They admit they have less expertise in teaching you how to be happy
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. That is because people find happiness in all different kinds of pursuits. I guess the implication is that unhappiness has its roots in common things that can be identified and worked on, while happiness is more unique to the individual. They do make some suggestions on what might make you happy, like having an absorbing project you’re working on. My current absorbing work is the book I’m writing which is challenging and frustrating, but it also keeps me out of trouble, and I feel a lot of satisfaction when I make progress. When you have an absorbing interest, you have less time to look inward and navel gaze about your problems. It’s a distraction and keeps you occupied. Some suggestions I can think of for your absorbing work might be: learn how to be a great public speaker, take acting classes, read the great novels, travel and see the great works of art, become really good at a social sport like volleyball, skiing, bowling, etc. The authors suggest that you use trial and error to find what floats your boat.
Many people make themselves miserable – anxious, depressed, self-pitying or self-downing. Almost all of the sustained and “unbearable” anguish that you feel, except that which goes with prolonged physical pain, is unnecessary. You mostly manufacture it. They define extreme unhappiness when something bad happens as having two parts (1) you feel sad, sorrowful, irritated, annoyed, sorry etc (2) you feel depressed, worthless, and/or enraged. #1 is healthy. You acknowledge something bad happens like a loss of a job or a girl. Misery enters the equation when you add #2. #2 comes from exaggerated thinking, like being horrified and losing all hope that life can ever be good again, or self-flagellation.
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Put another way, the healthy negative feelings in #1 come from thoughts that feature: preferences, wishing, and desiring. You wish that girl liked you. You desire that the night would have ended with her in your bed, you wish things would have turned out differently with her. The unhealthy feelings in #2 come from demanding, insisting, and commanding. She must not have flaked on me and she is (or I am) a rotten person because she did!
When you add this demanding style of language to your thoughts (#2), you inflame yourself. You create a very unrealistic situation in your head that you can’t resolve (because it’s impossible to fix something that doesn’t exist- it just frustrates the fuck out of you). “She must not have flaked on me.” But she did flake, what the fuck did you mean by “she must not have flaked on me?” There is no reasonable way to resolve this conflict you created in your head. Since she already flaked, you would need a time machine to go back to before she flaked. Then even if you had a time machine, how can you make her (a person with free will) like you and not want to flake? You’d have to have the power of god or a dictator to make her like you when she does not (and even then she would have to pretend to like you because she was coerced).
It might not seem like a big difference, but it is. When things go wrong and you think in realistic terms and wish things turned out different, you feel maybe annoyed or sorrowful. Conversely, when you say things that exist “must” or “should” not exist, you inflame yourself.
When you desire rather than demand, you understand you don’t control the universe and accept the fact (even with regret) that things won’t always go your way. It’s a mature and healthy attitude. When you demand things go your way, you are acting like a spoiled child and make yourself feel shitty. Ellis calls demanding that things go your way that you can’t control “whining.”
You may sanely choose to feel strongly annoyed or irritated by frustrating conditions. But you need not make yourself feel very enraged or self-pitying about these defeats.
I said in an earlier post that REBT is largely about not exaggerating. When you describe a bad event as “horrible” you will feel “horror.” When you think of a setback as “awful”, you feel “awful.” If you describe something as “unfortunate” you will feel a less intense feeling than horror or awfulness, probably something more like “regret.” These bad feelings are much less intense, are easier to cope with, and they go away faster when you choose to think of things without exaggerating. In the context of game, keep things in perspective! It’s not like we are in a foxhole in a war, or we just found out we have cancer, or just lost a limb in a car accident. Our setbacks in chasing tail are not “horrible” or “awful”. At most they are “annoyances” or “inconveniences” that can be shaken off quickly. You will enjoy game better, and be much more resilient if you choose appropriate language to describe events and don’t freak out over little shit.
One of the root causes of approach anxiety I believe is the belief that “I must not be rejected.” You set things up so that when you are rejected, you will not feel merely disappointed, you will feel destroyed. Because what you really mean is “If she rejects me, I will be a thoroughly inadequate person who cannot possibly accept myself or lead an enjoyable existence.” Thinking this way will make you feel very insecure, and it will probably show in your demeanor and body language. If you thought instead “I wish she would accept me and not reject me, but I understand she has free will and I might not be her type, and I can give it a shot and if she rejects me that’s regrettable but fair.” You will feel more secure. The first example is a demand ("I must not be rejected by her”) the second is a preference (“I wish she would not reject me, but I’ll understand if she does.”). You really turn down the pressure when you think “preferentially” rather than “demandingly.” This is one of the ways you acquire a calm and cool attitude about approaching. You readily acknowledge that the girl has free-will, she has every right in the world to reject you if she chooses, and you accept that fact of life in a calm and mature way. The opposite of resistance is acceptance. When you demand, you resist reality. When you prefer, you accept reality.
Think about a toaster. A toaster has those curled wires that turn bright red when the electricity is on, and the heat toasts your bread. The reason those curled wires get red-hot is because the electricity is being resisted. It can’t flow through the wire unimpeded, so there’s a bottleneck of electrons and things heat up. Likewise, when you resist the bad things in life and say they “must” not exist, when in fact they do exist, you are resisting reality; your emotions get red hot. When you accept that something bad happened, without even liking it, but acknowledging it is reality and you have no choice but to accept it, then reality can make its way through your mind without your emotions getting overheated, and you can resolve problems faster.
Remember the ABC model in post #7? You can choose your beliefs (B) when things go wrong at A. You can consider set backs to be unfortunate and unpleasant rather than awful or terrible. If you do so, your emotions will be much more manageable and beneficial for achieving your goals in the long run.
Disputing irrational beliefs is probably a life long pursuit. However, if you consistently seek out and dispute your disturbed philosophies, you will find their influence weakens greatly. You will never be perfectly rational, nor perfectly in control of your emotions all the time, but the more you do it, as time goes by, your irrational beliefs will come back less often and have less of an influence.
This book was written in the 1960’s. It’s funny, Ellis gives an anecdote in this chapter about a fat frumpy young girl who was his client, who he was trying to get to lose weight and dress nicer to get a man. This book is very highly rated on Amazon, but if you read the few bad ratings, they are usually women who hate this anecdote (It’s sexists! It’s behind the times! Etc).
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, which hasn’t yet happened.). I do try to not focus too much on negative things (although it can be fun sometimes) and try to be good natured and laid back a good deal of the time. I read once that Albert Ellis himself used to get aggravated at airports and so forth dealing with slowpoke people. He knew it was irrational to be upset by others dithering, but he said it wasn’t worth his time and energy to fix. He said he was mildly crazy enough to put down others sometimes, but not crazy enough to put down himself ever. I’d say I am pretty similar.