When you learn REBT and apply the ABC model of emotion to understand your self-defeating reactions, you will see how flexible and non-extreme attitudes will lead to healthier responses to life’s adversities. One obstacle you may encounter is transitioning from intellectual insight to fundamental emotional change about the adversity you face. In REBT, the goal is to help you genuinely feel healthy negative emotions and act in ways that reflect genuine change. The easy part is gaining insight into what would be a healthier attitude. People often say, “That makes sense,” but do not feel and act differently because they do not transition from intellectual insight into deeper-level emotional change. Let us examine ways to transition from intellectual adoption of a flexible and non-extreme attitude to feeling healthy negative feelings in your heart, enabling you to behave more effectively to adversity.
Compare and Contrast the Rigid and Extreme Attitude to the Flexible and Non-Extreme Attitude
Let’s examine two competing attitudes toward the loss of a valuable relationship.
I want you to love, approve, and accept me. Therefore, you must.
vs.
I want you to love, approve, and accept me, but you do not have to.
People often easily see that the former attitude is self-defeating, leading to emotional upset and depression when rejected. In contrast, the latter attitude leads to a healthy negative emotion of sorrow. Another way of saying this is to note that the latter attitude has practical value if it can be implemented. People function more effectively when they see and deeply believe they do not have to receive the love and acceptance they want from a significant other.
People will also see that the former attitude has zero evidence to support it, as they can easily see instances where one person rejects another. They will quickly see that the latter attitude, “I want you to love, approve, and accept me, but you do not have to,” has empirical evidence to support it, as they know that in their hearts, they want acceptance from another. Still, they acknowledge the empirical evidence supporting this: the other person has volition, and rejection may ensue. They have observed people getting rejected and know this happens to all of us.
People will also admit that they would try to teach a child facing rejection to accept that rejection occurs and that, however painful it may be, it can be endured. No mature adult would teach a child they love not to accept that rejection occurs in life and that getting through life means learning to live with it no matter how much they may desire the approval of a particular individual.
Finally, if they take the time to analyze their thinking, most people can easily see that the attitude, “I want you to love, approve, and accept me, therefore you must,” is a non-sequitur. Careful examination shows that the flexible attitude, “I want you to love, approve, and accept me,” does not logically lead to the rigid attitude, “Therefore, you must.”
To summarize, comparing two attitudes on practical, empirical, and logical grounds shows that one attitude stands up to scrutiny while the other is self-defeating, anti-empirical, and illogical. Furthermore, people often quickly identify which attitude they would want a child to adopt so that the child can cope effectively with rejection.
Doubting REBT’s Effectiveness When You Do Not Feel Fundamental Emotional Change
The problem arises when people understand the better attitude to hold but do not feel a significant emotional shift. They may doubt REBT’s effectiveness and lose hope that they can feel healthy negative emotions disputing their rigid and extreme attitudes.
Reasons You Do Not Feel the Healthy Alternative Emotion After Achieving Intellectual Insight
When people ask me why they do not feel the healthy alternative negative emotions after examining and disputing their rigid and extreme attitudes, I explain that humans quickly transform their strongest desires into rigid demands, and reversing the process is challenging and will take time and practice. I explain that it is easy for humans to escalate their wishes into demands because humans do this by nature. It stands to reason that because their desire is strong, they can easily escalate it into a rigid, absolute attitude toward fulfilling it. Furthermore, it will be challenging for them to learn to keep the desire in check and at the level of a preference or a wish without escalating it into an absolute demand.
Secondly, I point out that if a human has held a particular attitude for a while, they are well-practiced at using it to evaluate the world and disturb themselves. Therefore, considerable practice is required to adopt a healthy, flexible, and non-extreme attitude and feel the healthy alternative negative emotion. To better understand why substantial practice is necessary to reverse a well-practiced habit, consider how easy it is for people to acquire a bad habit. Experienced golfers tell people who want to play golf that they should take lessons with a golf pro before swinging a golf club. Why is this bit of advice given to people? Once an individual swings a golf club improperly and swings the club like a baseball bat, it is hard to unlearn the baseball way of swinging the club and learn a proper golf swing. It is our nature as humans to form habit patterns, and once an ineffective habit pattern gets established, learning a new habit pattern can be very difficult due to the simple existence of an ineffective habit pattern. Humans develop bad habits quickly, and once established, unlearning bad habits is challenging.
Thirdly, I point out that Ellis, the originator of REBT, used to say that after disputing and examining two attitudes, a person will “lightly” believe the new flexible attitude but continue to more “strongly” believe the rigid attitude they have held for quite some time. Humans can have contradictory ideas; the lightly held attitude only strengthens with use and rehearsal. The unhealthy attitude weakens only with regular practice, picking it apart through disputing.
Address Your Low Tolerance for Practice
Often, a person may think it is too hard to work at deeply believing an attitude through rehearsal and implementation. It is essential to address this self-defeating attitude because its existence prevents fundamental emotional change. The person will continue to know the better attitude but not use the better attitude because it is too effortful. Persuade yourself to give up this unrealistic attitude that fundamental emotional change should be easy and that it is too hard to adopt a new attitude. Fight your low discomfort tolerance for working at doing what is required to make a significant cognitive-emotive-behavioral change. To this end, remind yourself that fundamental emotional change is well worth the effort!
Fundamental Emotional Change is Possible
After explaining the above, I emphasize that fundamental emotional change is possible. To improve motivation for the effort, I emphasize the emotional toll the familiar way of doing things is costing them. Then, I show them how to take their intellectual insight and get it deep into their hearts so they feel differently emotionally and display new ways of behaving.
Remember that Rome Was Not Built in A Day, and Attitudes Change Through Daily Practice
I start with a thought experiment. I have the person imagine that I handed them a sledgehammer and told them to use it to crack hard marble; I get them to acknowledge that their first blow to the marble probably would not crack this hard surface. People come to see that swinging the sledgehammer several times would be necessary to crack the marble surface. I then point out that many other endeavors in life require multiple attempts before success occurs. For example, after one hour of resistance training or cardio conditioning on a stationary bicycle, a person training to get physically fit does not leave the gym significantly stronger and in a superior state of physical conditioning. Strength and cardiovascular fitness take repeated workout sessions for the individual to cultivate greater muscle strength and cardiovascular fitness. Likewise, to relinquish a long-held rigid attitude, humans must dispute and examine alternative flexible attitudes over days before the rigid attitude yields to the flexible alternative and emotional change sets in. I recommend that people take fifteen minutes daily to think deeply about a long-held, rigid attitude and work on challenging it and comparing it to the flexible, non-extreme attitude that would be a suitable replacement for them to adopt.
Use Forceful Rehearsal
I also recommend forceful rehearsal of the healthy alternative attitude a few times daily. If the person repeats in a weak voice to themselves, “I want you to love and accept me, but I accept that you do not have to,” they will be less likely to feel an emotional change than if they firmly say this to themselves. Ellis encouraged using force and energy to help people internalize the new attitude and feel an emotional change. Again, this won’t occur after saying the new attitude forcefully a few times today. You need to do this over many days until you feel a difference.
Take Opposite Action – Do the Unfamiliar Until It Becomes Familiar
Acting in an unfamiliar way is the most important way to feel the difference a new attitude will produce. That is, the individual must act to affirm their belief in the new attitude. Identifying affirming behavior to execute can sometimes be challenging. People have to ask, “How has the rigid attitude impacted how I live my life and how would act differently if I held a flexible attitude toward this issue?” Answering this question may take some reflection, but it is one of the most important things you can do to feel a healthy emotion deep in your heart. When we act differently, our actions influence our thinking, and this sort of action is a powerful way to feel differently about a particularly troublesome issue. Thinking, feeling, and behaving are interrelated phenomena. Change one, and the others change. Again, acting the opposite and affirming the new attitude through action will not dramatically affect your feelings the first time you do it. Nonetheless, it is the most efficient way to experience a significant emotional change. If you regularly force yourself to act differently, soon, you will feel differently.
Rational Emotive Imagery
Another exercise for deepening conviction in a new attitude to feel a fundamental change in emotion is to do what Ellis called Rational Emotive Imagery (REI). To do REI, first, vividly imagine facing the problem you have been upsetting yourself about and experience the emotions that signal you are upset. Then, change those unhealthy emotions of anger, anxiety, depression, or shame to healthy alternative emotions of annoyance, disappointment, sorrow, or concern without imagining the adversity has changed at all. If you are anxious, transform your anxiety into concern. If you are depressed, transform your unhealthy feelings into healthy sadness. If you are rageful, transform your anger into disappointment or annoyance. Assume you can transform your unhealthy negative emotions into healthy negative emotions and do this without changing the adversity or avoiding the adversity. Work at transforming your negative feelings until you discover how to transform the unhealthy emotion into a healthy alternative. Practice this imaginary exercise every day for five minutes. Vividly imagine the adversity and assume you can change the associated unhealthy negative feeling into a healthy negative alternative feeling without changing the adversity associated with your feelings. You will figure out how to feel the healthy negative feeling with practice. Do this every day for a month and train yourself to discover how to feel the healthy alternative negative emotion while vividly imagining the adversity (your worst-case scenario).
Discuss and Teach Healthy Attitudes to Your Friends
The final strategy for strengthening the healthy alternative attitude is to teach your friends REBT when they disclose to you an emotional problem. Suppose your friend is open to learning about REBT. In that case, you can teach them the ABC framework and discuss the REBT aim of adopting a flexible and non-extreme attitude that leads to healthy negative emotions and constructive behavioral responses in the face of adversity. You can show them how their rigid attitudes towards themselves, others, and life conditions create their emotional disturbance. You can identify their rigid and extreme attitudes, examine them, and help them develop a healthy alternative they could adopt, resulting in a healthy alternative emotion and self-helping behavior.
Please remember that if your friend is not open to REBT, it is best to refrain from insisting they adopt the sensible philosophy you are working to adopt. Your zeal to teach REBT will only strain your relationship with them and may even contribute to them more firmly holding the rigid and extreme attitudes you wish they would relinquish!
Strive to Be a Good Model of the REBT Philosophy
Teaching REBT to others will help you strengthen your belief in the new flexible and non-extreme attitudes you are working on in your life, and in time, it will help you feel the new healthy negative emotion. When teaching REBT, be sure also to try to be someone who models what they teach others. Walk the talk! It is easy to tell others to think in flexible and non-extreme ways, but it is much more challenging to model this way of responding to adversity. By modeling REBT, you will lay the foundation for deep conviction in your new attitudes and genuinely feel healthy negative emotions about your painful losses, failures, deprivations, and threats. Walk the talk and feel the difference!