Dr. Albert Ellis: 104 Rational Maxims to Control My anxiousThinking. Copied from How To Control Your Anxiety Before It
Controls You (pages 190-205)
Minimizing my absolutistic musts, shoulds, aughts, and demands and the irrational beliefs that go with them
1. I will
watch my unconditional, absolutistic
musts and change them into strong preferences, such as "I would very much
like to do well and be approved by others, but I don't have to do so and my
worth as a person doesn't depend on doing anything!"
2. I
will watch my overgeneralizations and make them more concrete: "If I fail
at something important, I won't always fail and may frequently succeed."
3. I
will watch my awfulizing. "It's bad
to lose out on something I really want, but it's not awful or horrible. There's a good chance I'll get it later, but
if I never do, it is just very depriving.
The earth will keep spinning! Life will go on!
4. I
will watch my personalizing. "Maybe
I lost out on a relationship because of stupid things I did. But there may be several other reasons why it
didn't work out. If it really was my
fault, what can I learn from this to gain the relationship I want next
time?"
5. I
will watch my emotional reasoning.
"Because I feel like a loser, am I really a loser? No, I hate losing and this time I failed to
win. But my deep feeling makes me only
a person with feelings, not a hopeless loser."
6. I
will watch my going from one extreme to another. "Winning this campaign doesn't make a me
a glorious, noble person. But
losing it doesn't mean that it doesn't
matter at all. It does matter, and it
would have been much better had I won.
But losing doesn't destroy me and make me a nothing." I will watch my concluding that I am my behavior. "Failing miserably at my goal doesn't
make me a failure. I am a person who
failed this time and who may fail many times before I distinctly succeed."
7. Failing
is very valuable if I don't take it too seriously and want--not need---to
ultimately succeed.
8. Did
other people who eventually succeeded in my field quit after a few bad
tries? Where would they now be I they
had not persisted in spite of initial failures?
9. I
will often generalize, categorize, and help myself think, think about my
thinking, and think about my thinking about my thinking. But I will try not to overgenearlize and to
get what W. Quine called hardening of the categories. Thus, I will avoid saying that I am what I do, will stop labeling people as some of their traits, and will avoid
thinking of my thoughts as things that are entities in their own right.
10. I
will try to avoid saying that because I've failed I will always fail or that I am a
failure. Or that because I often
failed I will never succeed. Or that because I have done bad things that I am a bad person.
11. I
will try to realize that things are not either this or that, good or bad, black
or white, but are frequently this and that,
good and bad, both black and white and shades of gray. I, too, have good and bad traits, black,
white, and gray traits, and I have good, bad and indifferent characteristics.
12. I
had better realize that overgeneralization or overcategorizing is logically
incorrect, is unrealistic, and gets me and others in emotional difficulties. I am not what I think, feel, and do; I have
much too many different thoughts, feelings, and actions to put them under a
single good or bad category. I am no
lovable if a few people love me, nor am I unlovable if several people do not
love me. The world is not a good place
or a bad place, but has many good and bad conditions. People and things, as Alfred Korzybski said,
cannot be accurately seen as black or white, good or bad. They also have traits and conditions, and my labeling
them in one general way makes me see them in a
inaccurate light. Especially if I
overgeneralize about people's and may own unfavorable traits, I do a grave
injustice to m and to them.
13. Let
me try to be open-minded, skeptical, and experimental. Final answers to my and others' problems are
to be highly suspect! I can roll with
the tide of new and changing evidence. But
even this "evidence" may partly arise from my and others' views,
desires, and prejudices. Absolute and
final truths probably never exist!
Dealing with catstophizing thoughts about the future
1.
When I keep making myself anxious by telling
myself what if bad thing happen, what if people treat me unfairly, what if I
act foolishly and bring about bad results, and similar what ifs, I can always
tell myself, as Arnold Lazarus recommends, so what if these things occur to I
make them occur? I can still change my anxious
and panicked feelings to concern, regret, and frustration. When I do so, I can see that most of these "terrible"
things will never occur, but if some of them do, I can handle them, cope with
them, improve them, or fully accept them and live a less happy life but no an
utterly miserable one.
2.
Similarly, when I catastrophize about things
happening, I can imagine them at their very worst and see that indeed that
would be very bad, but realize ways I could deal with them and still have some
degree of human happiness. Thinking that I can't cope with Adversity if and
when it occurs will only make me less able to cope with it.
3.
When I think of "terrible" what ifs, I can remember the wise saying of
Mark Twain, "My life has been
filled with terrible misfortunes--most of which never happened."
4.
I can also call to mind a number of people to
whom serious Adversity did occur--such as leprosy, cancer, blindness, deafness,
quadriplegia and so on--and who still lead productive and happy lives. Adversity conquers many people because they
let it conquer them. But not all!
5.
When I plague myself with what ifs, I can again
show myself that I can handle the worst possibilities, but then I can
realistically see what he probability is of these dire things happening. It is usually very small.
6.
Also, what is the probability of serous
Adversities---such as business failures and rejection by people I really
like--lasting forever or being endlessly repeated? Slight, if I do not devastate myself about them
if and when they actually occur.
7.
Practically nothing lasts forever, even severe
anxiety and panic. Providing I do not
horrify myself about them, this too shall pass.
8.
Many things are bad, because I don't want them
to occur. Even catastrophes occur--such
as wars, earthquakes, famine, mass killings, and torture. But quite rarely! I
had better not make hassles and
troubles into catastrophes. There is a
Persian saying: "I was horrified at
the loss of my shoes until I saw a person with no legs."
9.
Whenever I am really anxious and overconcerned
about things going or not going the way I want them to go, I shall assume that
I have some Irrational Beliefs and that they include an absolute must should
ought, or other demand or guarantee and that there is a chance that this demand
may not actually be fulfilled. I shall
find my must and change it to a preference or a wish.
10. I
will enjoy the present as much as I can and also prepare for enjoying the
future. I can control, to a large degree,
my reactions to what happens in the future, but I can control only to a limited
degree what the future actually will bring.
The more I insist on controlling it, the more I
will probably help screw it up.
11. When
I worry about what if this happens, I
will try to figure out some practical things I can do if by any chance it does
happen..
12. When
I make a mistake or the situation turns out badly for me, I will remember that
there are almost always is a next time.
13. When
I say "I can't do it" in the present or the future, I may
realistically see that it is hard but exaggerate the impossibility of doing
it. "I can't do it" will often
make it next to impossible for
me to do. "I can learn how to do it." Is much
better!
14. The road to hell is paved with dogmatic and
absolutistic, not probabilistic, expectations. To rigidly expect "good" behaviors
of myself or others is to set myself up for "horrors."
15. Keep
my desires and goals in mind. Don't
insist that they must or must not be fulfilled.
Let me work unfrantically to achieve them.
This is great. I recognise that tendency to judge yourself. I think belief systems which make out almost everything is a sin make it very hard to be easy on yourself.
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