[form] "The REBT Toolbox" Your Name please: [text,r_name,30] Email: [text,r_email,30] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Identifying your Irrational Beliefs When you feel disturbed what do you believe about the Activating Event that makes you feel emotionally upset and makes you behave self-defeatingly? Click Here to see the Three Major MUSTS "I believe and tell myself... (Keep in mind the three Major Musts). ("I must always do well on interviews") [textarea,believe and tell self,3,70] The aim is to understand the relationship between your self-talk, feelins, and actions. The main idea is to learn that your Beliefs (self-talk and basic philosophy) influence your feelings and to a large extent determine your behaviour. Identify the Meaning you give to your Adversities For now, focus on the meaning that your Activating Experience has for you. REBT holds that when you feel disturbed you give a special meaning to Adversities that happen - or that you think may happen - to you. You are a human being and have lots of thing sin common with other people. But you are still a unique individual. Other people have experienced difficult Activating Events like your own. Still, your particular experience - what you perceive at A and what you Believe about this perception at B - is unique to you. In fact, each time Activating Events occur, you may have a somewhat different Belief about them. Think carefully. When you experienced the Activating Event or Adversity you wrote about earlier, what disturbing meaning or philosophy did you create about it and you? Experiencing this undesirable Activating Event or Adversity means or suggests to me that... (Example: "That it is AWFUL." "That I am WORTHLESS for not handling it well.") [textarea,this adversity means,3,70] People often believe or suspect that when your Activating Experience (A) is failure or rejection it means (at B) that they are a failure or an inadequate person. Many people identify their poor performance and then rate or down themselves. It is as if their experience somehow proves that they are totally "bad" or "inadequate" which is not true! By taking the time and effort to confront or face the meaning (B) that you give to your undesirable experience (A), you learn how you needlessly upset yourself. Then you can give your experience a new meaning by changing your thinking and thereby changing your disturbed emotions and behaviours. You will then feel appropriately sorry, disappointed, or frustrated, instead of inappropriately and destructively panicked, depressed, and self-hating when unfortunate Activating Events occur in your life. Identify how Rational Beliefs (rBs) Help You Think about how your life would improve if you refused to upset yourself overly when undesirable Activating Experiences happen. Imagine that you work hard at using REBT and that when an unfortunate Activating Experience occurs, like you mentioned earlier, you tell yourself only rational or self-helping Beliefs about it. What good results would you get? When the unfortunate Activating Event I listed above occurs and I think rationally or self-helpingly about it, I would tend to feel and behave... (Example: "Sorry and disappointed, but not horrified." "Determined to cope with it and improve it if I can"). [textarea,rational alternatives,3,70] If you think rationally and work hard to make your undesirable Activating Experiences better, you may well experience more enjoyment. But this will not prove anything about you as a person REBT holds strongly that you never have to, nor can you really, prove that you are "good" or "bad" - but only that you behave "well" or "badly." As noted before, you cannot prove or disprove your human value, but you can choose to think of yourself as an okay or acceptable person. Yes, you can think this way just because you choose, because you decide to do so. It is "good" to rate your performance because it helps you to judge where you are in relationship to your goals, provides corrective feedback, and encourages you to assume responsibility for your actions and to improve these actions. It is inefficient to rate or down yourself or others for doing poorly, for making mistakes, and for being error-prone. First, everyone is error-prone and makes many mistakes. Second, if you see you, your entire self, as "no good" how can a "nogoodnik" like you correct your errors and do better? Third, you are an ongoing process who may change your ways no matter how poorly you have done up to now. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Questions or Comments? [textarea,questions or comments,3,70] [checkbox,send copy,checked] To receive a copy of your work here. Uncheck it if you have printed off a hardcopy for yourself. [submit,SEND this Entry][reset,Start Over again] [/form]