It’s Bad, NOT Awful – Dr. Walter J. Matweychuk
Awfulizing exists on a world wide scale and may well be an inherent reaction to very bad, potentially fatal events. Who among us doesn’t fairly often engage in it? Few!…Nonetheless, exceptionally bad occurrences are only awful, horrible, or terrible when you define them as such. Bad never really means awful but you may think it does. And you never have to think in that self-destructive way…About the only thing that could really be totally bad would be the annihilation of the entire human race, all living and non-living things that now exist, and the whole universe…Convince yourself that badness is only bad, not awful. Even very bad is still just bad, never more than bad. Accept obnoxious happenings as you keep trying to no longer believe in them…you will practically never make hassles into catastrophes, nor real misfortunes into fictional horrors.
– Albert Ellis, Ph.D.
In Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, we argue that the core of emotional disturbance lies in rigid and extreme thinking about negative events, events which I also refer to as adversities. Rigid, absolutistic attitudes, towards adversity, often are expressed with words like (absolutely) should, must, and have to. An example of this type of attitude would be “People absolutely must not show me disrespect. It is awful for them to treat me this way.” When one holds a rigid attitude towards disrespect, and others act disrespectfully, the insulted person will experience unhealthy anger. Ellis taught that the kernel of emotional disturbance was this absolutizing attitude. He also taught that extreme derivative attitudes come from it. One such derivative attitude was what he called awfulizing, terriblizing, or end of the world thinking. When we Awfulize about some negative event we imply:
1. The event is more than 100% bad. It is off the badness scale; it is beyond 100% bad. It is limitlessly bad…
2. It is so bad that it, therefore, should not exist.
3. No good can come from this bad event.
4. It cannot be transcended.
REBT advocates that people learn to spot their tendency to awfulize to avoid experiencing unhealthy negative emotions like panic, anxiety, and anger. The rational alternative to Awfulizing is to rate adversity on what I call a badness scale. When negative events occur, step back and rate the event on a continuum from 0% (not at all bad) to 100% (totally bad) which is the proper endpoint of the badness scale. Many bad events that you once thought to be awful are in the midrange of the scale if you attempt to assign them a numerical rating from 0 to 100% bad. Events that you may consider very bad are still not nightmare scenarios. Even exceptionally bad events can be worse. Rating negative events on a badness scale will help you evaluate them in such a way that you have healthy negative emotions that enable you to cope with these negative events more effectively. You cope with things better because your badness rating will rest on the healthy implied mindset that:
1. The event is bad, but the event and surrounding conditions could be worse.
2. The event is bad, but it should exist because bad events are part of life. They should exist because they do exist.
3. Although the event is bad some good could come from it.
4. Although the event is bad, it can be transcended.
It is important you appreciate that when you discipline your mind to evaluate negative events on the 0 to 100% badness scale, you will still have negative emotions. However, those negative emotions will not be paralyzing anxiety and panic but various degrees of healthy concern. You surely will be annoyed, displeased or disappointed by these negative events but not enraged over events you no longer deem awful, terrible or the end of the world. If someone is showing you disrespect seeing it as bad not awful will allow you to have healthy feelings of displeasure and disappointment, not unhealthy rage and anger. Healthy negative feelings will enable you to problem solve, assert yourself in a controlled manner, or to choose to live well with those things you cannot change. Awfulizing about negative events may occur on a worldwide scale as Ellis points out, but it certainly does not mean this reaction is healthy and adaptive. If rating negative events on a badness scale is statistically uncommon for humans to do, I want to be one of the outliers who do the uncommon thing because it works better than the typical human reaction. Those who discipline their thinking to evaluate things as bad, very bad, inconvenient, or very disappointing instead of awful, terrible or the end of the world will function in the face of adversity considerably more effectively than those who awfulize and terriblize.
After you have challenged your extreme thinking and converted an evaluation of awful to a numerical rating from 0 to 100% bad go back and think about and dispute the original rigid attitude, i.e. must, that gave rise to it. In the example above that people must not show you disrespect, take a hard look at that idea. Is this attitude a realistic one to hold in a world where people show disrespect to one another? Does the anger that your dogmatic must gives rise to helping you live well in this world? Is it true that people must not show you disrespect or is it false? This examination will make it clear that you may never want disrespect or like it, but this does not mean that you must not be shown disrespect. When you see that you want but do not have to have respect, you will be less likely to jump to the conclusion that the disrespect shown to you is awful, terrible or the end of the world. You will certainly feel annoyed when disrespected, but you will have a healthy negative emotion towards it which will allow you with a cool head to decide how best to respond. When you stop demanding respect and think sensibly about disrespect, you will be less disturbable. You will also be better able to live in a world where different degrees of bad events occur. You will acknowledge that the universe permits humans to show each other disrespect and so philosophically when you are shown disrespect this “should” happen even if you prefer it not to happen. You will accept that the nature of the human condition is to be shown disrespect from time to time, and you can transcend it in part because you evaluate this dispreferred treatment as bad NOT awful, terrible or the end of the world. Try it and see!
Bottom line: Bad events are part of the human condition. No matter how bad events are, they can always be worse.
Attitude to Rehearse: This is a very bad event, but it is NOT awful, terrible or the end of the world. Evaluating it as bad not awful will allow me to transcend it. I can and will choose to see it for what it is, namely bad not awful.