Strive to work on one of the more challenging irrational and self-defeating attitudinal processes in REBT known as awfulizing. People often resist this self-helping recommendation but if you give it real thought and work with it you will reap many benefits. With this concept, we mean that your self-defeating anxiety, horror, anger or despair is created and maintained by defining things as limitlessly bad. The antidote is to see things as “bad or very bad but not awful, terrible or the end of the world.” See that things can only be rated in a valid way on a scale of badness from 0% to 100%. Awful, when properly defined, means more than 100% bad. No event can be 100% bad. Any event, regardless of how bad, can always be worse short of, perhaps, the destruction of the universe. The other problem with awful is that it implies that the awful event absolutely should not exist and that no good can possibly come from this awful event. Here the problem is that if a bad or very bad event occurs it should occur because it has occurred. All the conditions were in place to allow the event to take place. Therefore, the bad event absolutely should have occurred because if it absolutely should not have occurred it would not have occurred. Furthermore, it is often the case that good comes from bad events. Reflect on your life. Think of instances when good has ultimately come from bad or very bad events which at the time of their occurrence were thought of as “awful, terrible or the end of your world.” Strive to hold the attitude “I wish this very bad event had not occurred but it did and in fact all the conditions were in place for it to occur. It is very bad NOT awful, terrible or the end of the world or MY world. Although it may be very difficult for me to see at this moment, GOOD may come from bad if I do my part to accept and cope with this bad event.” If you avoid awfulizing, or terminate it once it starts you will cope far better with the bad and very, very bad events fate throws your way. Try it and see!