In the future, I plan to curtail my use of the terms awfulizing and terriblizing, using them rarely. Instead, I will refer to this self-defeating evaluative process as end-of-the-world thinking. I suspect talking about this pernicious evaluative way of thinking as end-of-the-world thinking will be more helpful to people in understanding how to spot it and address it once it occurs.
Nothing Could Be Worse, and No Good Could Come From the Adversity
Albert Ellis, the originator of REBT, argued that awfulizing and terriblizing, when properly defined, means that nothing could be worse, and thinking in this way leads to unhealthy, self-defeating emotions. From this point in this essay, I will limit my comments to the use of the term ‘awfulizing’ as I tend to use it more frequently than its synonymous term, terriblizing, but note these words are nearly identical in meaning. Windy Dryden agreed with Ellis but also emphasized that awfulizing not only conveys that nothing could be worse, but also that no good can come from bad. The idea conveyed is that when we awfulize, we are holding an attitude towards bad events that leads us to overestimate their severity. When we do this, our extreme evaluations give rise to unhealthy feelings, usually anger, anxiety, depression, rage, panic, and despair. We then jump to other cognitive conclusions that are likely to be extreme, perpetuating, and broadening our emotional disturbance—our emotions spiral out of control.
Awfulizing – An Underutilized Important Concept in REBT
I agree with both of these points. However, I often privately concluded that awfulizing was an underappreciated concept in REBT and struggled to derive greater utility from it. The idea did not resonate with many people and, therefore, was not very eagerly embraced and helpful to them in alleviating their unhealthy emotional disturbance.
I have also always found the concept of awfulizing to be of limited utility, personally, and attempted to teach myself and others that they would be far better off if they rated bad events on a badness continuum from 0% (not at all bad) to 100% (completely bad, with no good found within the event). However, I found that this way of putting it was not much better. Although this is an intellectually valid way to speak about the process under consideration, it, too, did not resonate deeply with people.
End-of-the-World Events Nearly Never Occur
Ellis used to say that people disturbed themselves by “terribilzing,” “awfulizing,” and then added that when people wrongly thought something was the end of the world, it was nearly always something short of that. The dictionary defines the end of the world as the termination of life on Earth. It does not get much worse than that, other than the destruction of the universe. Perhaps the destruction of the universe would constitute a truly awful state of affairs.
My reflection has led me to believe that the problem stems, in part, from the fact that people generally believe awful events occur. The Oxford Languages dictionary defines awful as very bad or unpleasant, adding that the word emphasizes the extent of something, especially something unpleasant or negative. Terrible means extremely or distressingly bad or serious. It is therefore evident that awful and terrible events do exist, and when REBT discourages awfulizing and terriblizing, the point is not relatable to most people.
Awful and Terrible Events are Real and Occur
Awful and terrible events include the death of a loved one, a loss of a job, being arrested for a crime, the loss of love, severe medical illness, or even a profoundly disappointing occurrence of great importance to someone. All of these occurrences are awful, meaning exceptionally bad and unfortunate to the person experiencing them. However, here is the point: Is there value to the person in coming to appreciate that there is psychological space between the awful event and the end of the world? Does one feel healthy negative emotions and cope more effectively when they realize that, although they are facing what they consider to be an awful event, they could be facing a worse event? Does the individual who comes to know they have not yet arrived at the end of the world benefit from this insight? My personal and clinical experience leads me to believe the answer is clearly yes.
I am not debating that there are awful things like those mentioned above. The point I am emphasizing is that none of these events is literally the end of the world, and there is value in appreciating this.
The theory of REBT argues that all humans are prone to episodes of emotional disturbance. I confess I am prone to end-of-the-world thinking more than I once believed. I have long believed I could readily spot my tendency to demand that people and events be as I want them to be, and I have learned over the years that I can tolerate quite a bit of discomfort and accept myself unconditionally despite my flaws and mistakes. However, recently I have become aware that from time to time, I have overlooked holding end-of-the-world attitudes. I never really saw this until I stopped telling myself that something was bad, not awful, and started to see that bad things, even awful events, were not the end of the world.
Extracting the Good from the Terrible Things that Happen in Life
The other key to improving coping with less-than-end-of-the-world losses and occurrences is to get in the habit of immediately seeking to extract the good from the bad that you face. It may not be immediately apparent to you, but disciplining your mind to extract the good from the bad will help you significantly. I will now offer a personal example of how I overcame a brief instant of end-of-the-world thinking.
On a recent Saturday, I purchased two movie tickets online for Sunday so my wife and I could see the popular new movie Nuremberg with Russell Crowe. I was looking forward to seeing the film immensely. At dinner the night before the movie, my wife said her knee was hurting. Upon waking on the day of the show, she had acute pain and trouble walking. Following through on our plans to go to the cinema would be imprudent. I was somewhat upset. My wife, a retired operating room nurse, believed she may have a torn meniscus, which, if true, would likely require surgery. Then I inferred that we may very well have to cancel our December vacation (a subsequent biased inference). Needless to say, this inference did not buoy my spirits.
My initial emotional response was one of disturbance. I was angry not at my wife, but at life. I then did some REBT self-therapy, and I realized this was far from the end of the world. Why?
- Instead of not being able to walk, she could be ill with a disease like cancer with far greater ramifications, not merely hobbled by an orthopedic problem that is likely resolvable, even if not on the timeframe I would prefer.
- Not going to the movies gave me time to write this Intermittent Reinforcement essay, which allows me to disseminate REBT, something that is important to me. If I were at the movies, I would not have had time to write this essay. To the extent this essay makes sense and proves helpful to one or more of the many people who read my work, those good things would not occur if I were sitting in a movie theater watching a movie.
- If we cannot go on vacation in December, we will enjoy our next vacation all the more for having to cancel it.
- I will get better at extracting the good from the bad, which will pay future dividends for both me and my patients.
- The practice I get at properly evaluating misfortune will empower me to handle future misfortune of a greater magnitude more adroitly.
I cannot say that after my self-therapy, I was “happy,” but I was, more truthfully, in a state of genuine healthy disappointment about missing the movie and concerned that our December vacation to Hawaii might have to be cancelled.
Conclusion and Summary
REBT is a discipline of the mind. It is admittedly hard to consistently practice responding to adversity with healthy, constructive negative emotions. Under some conditions (fatigue, deprivation, stress, etc.), people, even REBT psychologists, will lose their emotional footing and will engage in rigid and extreme thinking, end-of-the-world thinking, and then generate inferences that will be biased and exacerbate the emotional episode, leading to more unhealthy emotions.
In contrast, flexible, non-extreme attitudes to the extent we can maintain them in the face of adversity lead to self-helping, healthy negative emotions, which set the stage for changing what you can, accepting what is unchangeable, and still enjoying life. It is far easier, under some conditions, to make ourselves angry, depressed, or anxious by holding end-of-the-world attitudes about the misfortunes and disappointments we face. Nonetheless, it is in our best interest to strive to spot our end-of-the-world thinking and quickly, whenever it occurs, and remind ourselves that both our relatively minor disappointments and life’s greatest misfortunes may, in fact, be somewhere between bad and awful, but still short of the end of the world. Furthermore, if you discipline your mind to become proficient at extracting the good from the unfortunate things that happen to you, the sooner you will see and benefit from the power that follows from the realistic thinking of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy.
Postscript: My wife’s acute knee pain significantly subsided this morning as quickly and strangely as it occurred. Fortunately, she was able to consult an orthopedic surgeon early this morning, and the diagnosis was an acute flare-up of arthritis. She was prescribed a topical remedy and told to accept that if future acute flare-ups were to occur, she could pursue physical therapy. The inference that she had structural damage that would require surgery was completely invalid.
The moral of the story is to avoid end-of-the-world thinking and to get a proper diagnosis, not a self-diagnosis. The patient is also free to go on vacation in December.