I made a prosperous voyage when I suffered a shipwreck.
Zeno of Citium
youtu.be/0QI_tzaiJRI?si=JTIQdBduBuLCoGlU
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, REBT, is a system of ideas aimed at helping you bear adversity. REBT encourages you to change what you can as you see fit, but sadly, there is much in life you cannot change. The philosophical solution REBT encourages you to adopt is to learn to bear what you cannot change until you figure out a way to prevail over adversity. REBT aims to help you face your worst fears and address ways to have some happiness even after your worst nightmare.
A Thought Experiment
Do a thought experiment for a moment. What do you consider unbearable? Let us define what we mean by unbearable. Let us put forth the idea that unbearable refers to the circumstance, loss, failure, betrayal, transgression, handicap, deprivation, or threat that you consider so aversive that you will perish if it comes to pass. Let us distinguish between physical burdens and their associated emotional impact.
Some Conditions are Unbearable
As humans, some conditions will cause our lives to end. Going without air for minutes, water for days, or extremes of temperature go from challenging to withstand to death-inducing relatively quickly. To hold the attitude that going without air to breathe for approximately four to six minutes is unbearable is mainly consistent with the facts. Brain death occurs after ten minutes, so it is clear that evidence shows you, me, and everyone else cannot bear oxygen deprivation somewhere between four and ten minutes before we expire. REBT cannot help you withstand a lack of oxygen. It can help you tolerate and accept that you would die if you faced this situation. Still, it could not help you withstand oxygen deprivation, water deprivation for an extended period, and extremes of temperature for very long. Humans perish under these circumstances.
Facing the Emotionally Unbearable
Let’s refine the question for the thought experiment. What do you think is emotionally unbearable? What do you currently believe is beyond your ability to withstand emotionally? It is with these emotional burdens that REBT can be highly beneficial. Would you like to bear the “unbearable?” If so, read on.
Bearing the emotionally unbearable requires cultivating scientific, precise, flexible, and non-extreme attitudes towards something you consider emotionally intolerable. Unbearable, intolerable, and unable to withstand are synonymous ways of expressing what I am discussing. Might that be the death of a child or spouse, medical illness, functional impairment, significant financial misfortune, a painful death, or uncertainty of how and when you will die? Whatever gruesome circumstance you have in mind, if you apply the ABC model of REBT and think scientifically, you will see that if this gruesome event occurs, it will be tough for you to bear but not emotionally unbearable.
Bearing the “Unbearable” is Possible But Not Easy
It will be challenging for you to think scientifically, precisely, flexibly, and in non-extreme ways about your fears. You do not have to do it. You can avoid the emotion you feel when such circumstances come to mind. You can suppress your anxiety. However, sometimes in life, this strategy begins to stop working. When you are ready, REBT is here to help you face the “unbearable.”
The First Step in Bearing the “Unbearable”
Bearing the unbearable starts with what we call emotional responsibility. In REBT, we argue that when facing the “intolerable,” you must seek to experience a healthy negative emotion towards it if you wish to address it effectively. See that you can have two general emotional reactions to your worst nightmare. Call one category of emotions unhealthy and self-defeating. Think of the other category of emotional responses as healthy and self-helping. REBT argues that your attitude toward your so-called “unbearable” scenario largely determines whether you experience a healthy or unhealthy emotional reaction. Buying into this idea is what I call having emotional responsibility for your unhealthy emotions and self-defeating behaviors. Both categories include negative emotions, and these will likely be rather strong emotions. They will be strong because the matter is of great importance to you. However, the intensity of your negative emotions does not make the emotional response unhealthy. Several things distinguish between harmful and healthy emotional reactions.
Unhealthy emotional reactions tend to motivate us to act in self-defeating ways. We tend to avoid addressing problems, attempt to escape thinking about and planning for these problems, and try to suppress the anxiety and other emotions associated with them. We may have a myopic view as we look forward and see only doom and gloom after the gruesome event. These emotional reactions are generally rooted in antiscientific, rigid, and extreme attitudes toward the adversity we fear. We might hold rigid attitudes such as:
This gruesome adversity absolutely must not happen.
I could not bear to face this nightmare scenario.
The emotions I would experience if I did encounter it would be unbearable.
Facing this great adversity would be awful. Nothing could be worse, and no good can come from facing it.
Nothing is Terrible Unless We Think It So
REBT teaches that nothing is terrible and that things can always worsen until we die. Furthermore, REBT holds that good can come from bad, even when facing great misfortune. This stance dates back to the fourth century BC when the Phoenician merchant Zeno lost his ship and its valuable cargo in a storm. He came to be trained in philosophy and founded Stoicism. He came to be known for telling others, “I made a prosperous voyage when I suffered a shipwreck.” This quote reflects the best way to cope with great misfortune: find the good to abstract from the bad experience and capitalize on it to the fullest.
My clinical experience has shown that people significantly underestimate what they can bear. The above rigid and extreme attitudes are the types of attitudes that lurk in the depths of our minds and are our emotional Achilles heal. We tend not to develop the ability to bear the worst-case scenario of our lives until we face it. People tend to seek reassurance that the worst-case scenario will not come to pass. This approach is what your friends, family, and many cognitive behavior therapists will take with you.
REBT goes against the grain and encourages you to face the “unbearable” and to cultivate healthy attitudes towards these nightmarish events. Taking this stance takes a lot of work. However, my experience has shown this is the best way to cope with gruesome events and all other adversity of a lesser magnitude. REBT dares you to question your rigid and extreme attitudes about gruesome events to empower you to prevail over them if and when they occur.
In REBT, we teach people to seek evidence supporting their attitudes about their worst-case scenario. If you are honest and do the hard work, you will see you can not find evidence to support any of the above ideas. Healthy attitudes, consistent with REBT theory and philosophical orientation and would lead to resilience are:
This gruesome adversity must happen if it happens. When a gruesome event happens, all the factors leading to it are in place for the event to occur. The evidence shows that it has happened, so it had to happen. Although I wish it did not happen and that I could have prevented it, my wishes and possible alternative outcomes did not happen. What happened is too bad, and I will adapt if I accept what has happened, not what could have or “should” have occurred.
Although facing this nightmare scenario may be emotionally excruciating, it is not unbearable as long as I breathe. The great sorrow and other emotions I feel are incredibly hard to bear. This much is true. The message REBT remains firm in delivering is that I will do better if I acknowledge that I can withstand this excruciating emotional experience. I may not adopt this attitude easily and quickly, but neither negates the idea that I can withstand this nightmare. Somehow, some way, I will come to bear this burden.
The emotions I would experience if I did encounter this nightmarish scenario would be difficult to bear but not unbearable. The sorrow, despair, worry, etc., would take a great deal of work to tolerate, but I could tolerate them because until I ceased to exist, I would tolerate them. The evidence would show this. I may not bear them well or easily, but I can and will do better once I acknowledge that, although uncomfortable, great emotional pain is not unbearable.
Facing this great adversity would be incredibly bad, but worse could occur, and good can come from experiencing this nightmare. If I am honest, it is false to conclude that nothing could be worse and no good can come from facing it. The best way to survive is to seek the good in the bad and take advantage of that. Furthermore, I might seek social support from others and model the emotional strength and tolerance others have shown in bearing their burdens. If others can bear great misfortune, so can I if I work at it.
Assume you can bear far more than you imagine if you cultivate the proper philosophical attitude. Let REBT show you the way.
Please watch this video to see one example of bearing great misfortune: