1-28 of 104 Rational Maxims to Control Anxious Thinking

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.