Coping with Change

Depending on the circumstances, most humans find adapting to change difficult at one time or another in their lives. When children and adolescents change schools or when a divorce occurs, they can feel anxious and depressed in response to the change. When adults change jobs or career paths, move from one location to another, or divorce, the required adaptations are challenging, and many people will react with anxiety and depression. When children grow up and go to college, marry and leave home, their parents may find it challenging to adapt to the new normal of a quiet house, more commonly known as the empty nest syndrome. When a person retires, the change in routine can often be quite a challenge for the ill-prepared retiree who has not given sufficient thought to using their time in retirement. When a grandparent, spouse, or child gets sick and dies, that can be an enormously painful adaptation to make.

Life is change, yet humans often have a great deal of difficulty adapting to change. Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) is a philosophically rooted cognitive behavior therapy that facilitates adaptation to change. The basic premise of REBT is that rigid and extreme attitudes towards change and the challenges it ushers in are at the core of the emotional disturbance people feel when significant aspects of life change. REBT distinguishes between healthy and unhealthy negative emotions. Unhealthy negative emotions and emotional upset (i.e., emotional disturbance) are used synonymously in REBT. Healthy negative emotions like (concern, disappointment, sorrow, and sadness) are appropriate and self-helping. They are inevitable emotions when life goes against you or could do so in the future. These emotions are self-helping because they lead to behaviors that help us adapt to significant life changes and challenges. Unhealthy negative emotions and the self-defeating behaviors that go along with these emotions undermine our ability to adapt to substantial changes in our lives. We may not act on our behalf, freeze, avoid or withdraw from the adversity in a self-defeating way. Furthermore, even when a person faces a significant life change, even a positive one, it is healthy to experience healthy negative feelings like concern and sadness. These emotions acknowledge what is going on and the inevitable challenges and tradeoffs associated with the change we are facing.

REBT teaches both helpful ideas and a process for coping with significant life changes. Some ideas include calculated risk-taking, unconditional self-acceptance, unconditional life-acceptance, flexibility, non-utopianism, high frustration tolerance, and uncertainty tolerance. REBT also encourages ongoing self-awareness and immediate and consistent effort to transform unhealthy negative emotions and self-defeating behavior into healthy negative emotions and self-helping behavior through the critical thinking process we call disputing. Disputing is when we reflect upon the consequences of our rigid and extreme attitudes. We then examine evidence in support of these attitudes or acknowledge the absence of such evidence. We also determine if they are internally logical. When we conclude these rigid and extreme attitudes lead to functional impairment and see no evidence exists to support them and that they are not logical, we strive to replace them with healthier attitudes and then act upon these attitudes to adapt to life changes. REBT takes work, but it will yield significant benefits in coping with life’s challenges. With ongoing effort, people can get better at regulating their emotions and adapting to life’s challenges. Through REBT’s process of disputing, you can achieve a profound philosophical change that enables you to change what you can change and live well and accept what you cannot change. With REBT, a person can summon the courage and persistence to go beyond the mere amelioration of emotional disturbance and make fundamental changes in their lives to improve life satisfaction, meaning, and joy.

There are four unhealthy attitudes REBT posits which lead to emotional disturbance when we face significant life challenges and change:

1. This change and the adaptations it brings absolutely must not occur.

2. It is too hard for me to bear this change and adapt to it.

3. This change is so bad that, therefore, it is awful, terrible, or the end of the world that this change is happening.

4. Because of this change, my life is totally bad. Note: this last attitude of devaluation has two permutations – 1. I am lesser as a person or worthless because this change is happening to me. 2. You are lesser as a person or completely bad because you are causing this change to occur.

I will now dispute each of these self-defeating, maladaptive attitudes towards change:

Rigid attitude: This change and the adaptations it brings absolutely must not occur.

Likely functional impairment: anxiety, anger, depression, and possibly denying that the change is or will occur. Failure to take steps to prepare for it. Engagement in self-defeating ways of soothing oneself once it has happened.

Evidence in support of it: There is no evidence. The change is occurring. All the conditions are in place for it to happen. Therefore it absolutely should occur, as it is occurring or has occurred.

Examination of internal logic: It is a non-sequitur. The unstated premise is, “I do not want this change to occur.” The attitude I hold does not follow my flexible premise. A rigid attitude cannot follow or emerge from a flexible attitude.

Flexible attitude facilitating adaptation to change: I do not want this change to occur, but sadly it is happening. It does not follow that it absolutely should not, absolutely must not happen. Regardless of how strongly I do not welcome this change, it does not mean it absolutely must not occur. I do not control external events. I will control my reaction to events so that I adapt and have some happiness despite this change in my life.

Unbearability attitude: It is too hard for me to bear this change and adapt to it.

Likely functional impairment: The individual may experience a desire to avoid thinking about, experiencing feelings towards, or reacting in a healthy behavioral way to the change that is or will happen. Unhealthy drinking and other forms of substance abuse may occur. A person may fail to take steps to prepare for the upcoming change.

Evidence in support of it: There is no evidence to support this attitude. Other changes in my life have occurred, and although it was a struggle to adapt, I did eventually adjust to them. Just because something is painful, it does not mean it is unbearable.

Examination of internal logic: It is a non-sequitur. The unspoken premise is that “it is hard for me to bear this change.” Difficult is not equal to unbearable. Therefore, my conclusion that it is too hard for me to bear this change and adapt to it is illogical.

An attitude of bearability facilitating adaptation to change: It is a struggle for me to bear this change and adapt to it, but it is not unbearable. I can tolerate the effort of adaptation. It is worth doing because maladaptation is suffering. I am willing to struggle to make this adaptation because the change will occur, whether I adapt and accept it or stubbornly refuse to do so. I do not wish to suffer by refusing to adapt to life as it is after the change.

Awfulizing attitude: It is awful, terrible, or the end of the world that this change is happening.

Likely functional impairment: Anxiety, depression, anger, and self-defeating behavioral avoidance. Possibly impaired sleep, possible physical manifestations of anxiety, and emotional upset. Other forms of self-defeating attempts to soothe oneself.

Evidence in support of it: There is none when I properly define awful. It is conceivable that something worse could occur to me than this change. If I can acknowledge the possibility that something worse could happen to me in the form of a different change, then I cannot validly consider this change to be awful, terrible, or the end of the world. Awful means that nothing could be worse, but if I am honest, I can imagine other changes that could be far worse than this one. Awful, properly defined means I cannot transcend this change. However tragic this change is, surmounting it is possible as long as I am alive. It could take time and a great deal of effort but this very bad event is something short of the end of the world. Furthermore, I can acknowledge that good can come from this regrettable event. I could grow in ways never imagined because I transcended this exceptionally bad event. Lastly, awful means it is so bad that it absolutely should not occur, but of course, this tragic event has happened, and therefore all the conditions were in place for it to happen.

Examination of internal logic: In my view, this change is very bad, but it does not make for me to jump to the conclusion it is, therefore, awful, terrible, and the end of the world. The way to rate how bad this change is for me is on a badness scale that starts at 0% and goes to 100% bad. Yes, this is a bad event for me. It falls at the upper end of the badness scale. However, for me to then jump to the conclusion it is awful is illogical because awful is beyond 100% bad. Nothing logically can be more than 100% bad.

Anti-awfulizing attitude facilitating adaptation to change: The event leading to this change in my life is perhaps the worst I have had to address so far in my life, but it does not mean it is awful, terrible, or the end of the world. I can surmount it, transcend it, conquer it. Doing so will take significant effort, but that effort will lead to good coming from bad. The good that will emerge from this bad will be the confidence I can handle challenging events and adapt to the changes that I face due to these events.

Devaluation attitudes: Because of this change, my life is totally bad.

Note: this last attitude has two permutations:

1. I am lesser as a person or worthless because this change is happening to me.

2. You are lesser as a person or totally bad because you are causing this change to occur.

Likely functional impairment: This attitude will put a person at risk of a range of unhealthy feelings, including depression, shame, and anger. As stated above, behavioral withdrawal or avoidance is possible, including social withdrawal from allies.

Evidence in support of it: There is no evidence to support devaluation attitudes because a negative part of something does not make the whole of it bad. This period is undoubtedly a tough time of my life, but there is no evidence to support the notion that the entirety of my life is negative because of the change occurring. Furthermore, there is no evidence to support the idea that this change diminishes my value as a person, even if I contributed to the events leading to this change. Alternatively, just because this is happening to me, my human value is not defined by my actions or what happens to me. I can rate parts of me as unfavorable and discrete times in my life as negative, but the parts do not represent my whole and my whole life. The same applies to a person who may be causing the change. Their behavior driving this change is one act in a lifetime of deeds. One deed does not stand for all prior or future acts this person has done or will do. Their action is bad, but they are not devalued as a person by this deed.

Examination of internal logic: The premise that a part of something is bad never makes the whole of something bad. The part of a person or life is a part, and the whole is something else. A part of something so complex and in a state of change, like a person or life itself, cannot represent the value of the whole.

Unconditional acceptance attitude facilitating adaptation to change:

Because of this change, a part of my life is bad, but my entire life is not bad. Life is a complex mix of good, bad, and neutral elements and moments. Change is part of life, and even if the change in my view is bad, that never means my entire past was bad and that my whole future will be bad. A bad chapter does not mean the book is bad.

Although this event and the negative changes it brings are happening to me, it does not mean that I am lesser or worthless because this change is happening to me. Despite this event and its negative changes, I remain a fallible human with good and bad parts. I will choose to unconditionally accept myself and evaluate if I wish to improve any part of me.

Although this event and the changes you have brought on me are bad, it does not mean you are lesser as a person or a bad person as a whole. Your actions prove you are a fallible human with good and bad parts. I will have a healthy response to you and your actions and the negative changes they have brought on if I do not condemn you as a person for any acts or decisions you have made that have led to these undesirable changes in my life.

Conclusion

REBT is a philosophy that helps you change what you can change and accept what you cannot. Life involves facing difficult situations, and often when our lives change in significant ways, we may experience emotional disturbance that undermines adaptation to the new chapter of our lives. Life from birth to death involves things changing. One aspect of life is that parts of it evolve and change. People also evolve and change. Rigid attitudes make adaption to change harder than it need be. Learn to use REBT on any life change you come to face regardless of how painful that change is to you. Some degree of pain to change is inevitable, but suffering is optional. As you face more challenging life events that change how you live your life, the flexible and non-extreme attitudes REBT teaches will be of more use to you.  Use the philosophy of REBT to help you have some degree of happiness as you encounter the adversities and changes that inevitably occur in life.

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