Irrational Thinking

1
Irrational Thinking

• How Old Schema Can Keep You From Functioning to
  Your Potential

2
What Well Look at

• Recognizing how your thoughts influence your
  feelings, physical sensations, and behaviors
• Assessing your distressing thoughts
• How to counteract your needless distressing
  thoughts

3
Self-talk Good vs. Evil

• Most every minute of your life you are engaged in
  self-talk, the internal thought language
• If self-talk is accurate and in touch with
  reality
• You function well
• If it is irrational and untrue
• You experience stress and emotional disturbance

4
Example of Irrational Self-talk

• I cant bear to be alone
• Has anyone who is physically healthy ever died
  from merely being alone?
• It may be uncomfortable, undesirable, and
  frustrating, but you can live with it and live
  through it.
• I should never be cruel to my friends. If I am,
  I know I am a rotten person.
• Should never allows no room for failure
• When you fight with your friends, you indict
  yourself as entirely rotten.

5
Irrational Ideas Where do they come from?

• May be based on misconceptions
• When the wing on the plane shakes, I know its
  going to fall off.
• May be based on perfectionistic shoulds, oughts,
  and musts
• I ought to keep quiet rather than upset anyone.
• I must do everything by 3pm or I will have
  failed today.

6
Rational Emotive Therapy

• System based on attacking irrational ideas or
  beliefs and replaces them with realistic
  statements about the world (Ellis, 1961).
• Basic thesis is that emotions have nothing to do
  with actual events
• Between the event and the emotion is realistic or
  unrealistic self-talk
• Self-talk is what produces the emotions
• Your thoughts, directed and controlled by you,
  are what creates anxiety, anger, and depression
  (Feedback loop).

7
Irrational Beliefs

• You must have love or approval from all the
  significant people in your life
• You absolutely must be thoroughly competent,
  adequate, and achieving in some particular area
• People must not act obnoxiously and unfairly, and
  that when they do, you should blame and damn
  them, and see them as bad, wicked or rotten
  individuals
• You have to see things as being awful, terrible,
  horrible, or catastrophic when you are seriously
  frustrated or treated unfairly
• You must be miserable when you have pressures and
  difficult experiences and that you have little
  ability to control, and cannot change, your
  disturbed feelings

8
Irrational Beliefs (cont.)

• If something is dangerous or fearsome, you must
  obsess about it and frantically try to escape
  from it
• You can easily avoid facing many difficulties and
  self-responsibilities and still lead a highly
  fulfilling existence
• Your past remains all-important and that because
  something once strongly influenced your life, it
  has to keep determining your feelings and
  behavior today
• People and things absolutely must be better than
  they are and that it is awful and horrible if you
  cannot change lifes grim facts to suit you
• You can achieve maximum human happiness by
  inertia and inaction or by passively and
  uncommittedly enjoying yourself

9
You must have love or approval from all the
significant people in your life

• People strongly desire approval and would be much
  less happy if they received none
• Most of us prefer or desire acceptance and feel
  happier when we obtain it

10
You absolutely must be thoroughly competent,
adequate, and achieving in some particular area

• Virtually nobody can be competent and masterful
  in most respects and almost no one can perfectly
  achieve
• Achievement does not augment your intrinsic worth
• You are not any particular thing in life
• Accomplishment may bring you advantages, but
  devotion to success is risky and uncomfortable

11
People must not act obnoxiously and unfairly, and
that when they do, you should blame and damn
them, and see them as bad, wicked or rotten
individuals

• Humans have inborn tendencies to behave in
  certain ways
• What is bad or wicked comes out of what our
  morality sees as acceptable
• We cannot condemn people for not following
  societal standards about right or wrong
• If you chastise yourself for making errors, you
  may feel too afraid of making further errors that
  you avoid taking any risks

12
You have to see things as being awful, terrible,
horrible, or catastrophic when you are seriously
frustrated or treated unfairly

• You may find it unpleasant when you do not get
  what you want in life, but it is not catastrophic
  or horrible unless you choose to see it that way
• If you make yourself upset about your
  frustrations, you will set up blocks to
  effectively removing them.
• The more time and energy you spend lamenting
  about your sorry state, the less active you will
  be in dealing with change

13
You must be miserable when you have pressures and
difficult experiences and that you have little
ability to control, and cannot change, your
disturbed feelings

• Outside people and events can, at worst, do
  nothing but harm you physically or cause you
  various kinds of discomfort
• Most of the pain you experience comes from taking
  peoples criticisms and rejections too seriously
• You can control the emotional pain you experience

14
If something is dangerous or fearsome, you must
obsess about it and frantically try to escape
from it

• Real and rational fears do exist!
• Anxiety consists of overconcern of exaggerated or
  needless fear
• It is often about mental injury or harm, not
  physical injury
• Usually is overconcern about what someone thinks
  of you
• The awfulness is often exaggerated when
  unpleasant events are involved!

15
You can easily avoid facing many difficulties and
self-responsibilities and still lead a highly
fulfilling existence

• The notion that the easiest way out of
  difficulties is the best way often leads you to
  avoid action at the moment of decision and to
  dis-ease during the hours, days, weeks, years
  that follow
• Avoiding many difficulties tends to cause one to
  exaggerate the pain and discomfort

16
Your past remains all-important and that because
something once strongly influenced your life, it
has to keep determining your feelings and
behavior today

• If you still let yourself feel unduly influenced
  by your past experiences, you are
  overgeneralizing
• By allowing yourself to remain too strongly
  influenced by past events, you cease to look for
  alternative solutions to a problem
• Many behaviors that are healthy at one time are
  unhealthy at others

17
People and things absolutely must be better than
they are and that it is awful and horrible if you
cannot change lifes grim facts to suit you

• There is no reason why people must be any better
  than they are, even when they act badly
• When people behave other than the way you would
  like, they often do not affect you badly unless
  you think they do
• Assuming people and events actually harm you,
  your upsetting yourself will rarely help instead
  you will become more upset
• Upsetting yourself will usually sidetrack you
  from your main concern the way you behave, the
  things you do

18
You can achieve maximum human happiness by
inertia and inaction or by passively and
uncommittedly enjoying yourself

• People rarely feel happy or alive when inactive
  for extended periods of time
• Intelligent people tend to require vitally
  absorbing activities to stay stimulated
• To some extent, happiness comes from absorption
  in outside people and events, basically being
  goal-oriented

19
Other Irrationalities

• All or none thinking
• If I fail at this job, Ill always fail ad be a
  total failure
• Jumping to conclusions
• Because people saw me lose three games, theyll
  see me as a rotten player
• Fortune-telling
• I see people are laughing when I am speaking.
  That means they despise me and know I am a lousy
  speaker

20
Other Irrationalities

• Catastrophizing
• I played the wrong card and that ruined the
  whole game
• Awfulizing
• I have so little money that its awful! People
  will see how poor I am, and that will be
  terrible!
• Perfectionism
• I did pretty well at that interview but I gave a
  bad answer to one of the questions. Ill never
  forget that blunder and cant forgive myself!

21
Still More Irrational Ideas

• You are helpless and have no control over what
  you experience or feel
• People are fragile and should never be hurt
• Good relationships are based on mutual sacrifice
  and a focus on giving
• If you dont go to great lengths to please
  others, they will abandon or reject you
• When people disapprove of you, it invariably
  means you are wrong or bad

22
Still More Irrational Ideas (cont)

• Happiness, pleasure, and fulfillment can only
  occur in the presence of others, and being alone
  is horrible
• There is a perfect love and a perfect
  relationship
• You shouldnt have to feel pain you are entitled
  to a good life
• Your worth as a person depends on how much you
  achieve and produce
• Anger is automatically bad and destructive
• It is bad or wrong to be selfish

23
How to Promote Rational Thinking

• Evaluate your self-statements against these six
  rules
• It doesnt do anything to me
• Everything is exactly the way it should be
• All humans are fallible creatures
• It takes two to have a conflict
• The original cause is lost in antiquity
• We feel the way we think