Let us be honest with each other. Mother Nature screwed up when she made human beings. She probably meant to create saints but failed miserably. Because she did, humans needed to develop ethical standards, laws, and other codes of conduct. If our nature were not to err in our interpersonal affairs, there would be no need for laws and lawyers, courts and judges, ethics and ethical boards, marital vows, and wedding ceremonies. Our nature would be such that there would be no need to learn how to act toward each other in a civil society. There would be no need for incentives to motivate us to adhere to codes of conduct. We, as superhuman saints, would be naturally forced by our essence to always adhere to our ethical, legal, and personal standards. We would live in a Utopia where crime, divorce, conflict, and war would not occur. However, we are deeply flawed human beings. We require moral education and sometimes rehabilitation to keep us adhering to an evergrowing body of laws and ethics to maintain social harmony and safety.
Human Fallibility and Healthy Negative Emotions
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) stands alone in the cognitive behavioral tradition of emphasizing human fallibility with personal responsibility. We help people distinguish between healthy and unhealthy negative emotions when they misbehave. Healthy negative emotions, like healthy disappointment, healthy shame, healthy guilt, and healthy remorse, help us to acknowledge our misbehavior and learn from it. Healthy negative emotions allow us to remember past wrongdoing and motivate us to resist temptation, and avoid repeating our errors. Sometimes, we reveal our fallibility by making the same mistake more than once before we learn to do better in the future. Making the same mistake more than once merely shows we are slow learners and need more practice or a better strategy to change our future behavior. Making the same mistake repeatedly reveals that we tend to improve our behavior and backslide. Backsliding into bad habits is another expression of our human fallibility.
Self-Devaluing Definitional Attitudes Block Change
Unhealthy negative emotions like unhealthy shame, guilt, and self-directed anger tend to undermine improved behavior in the future. We tend to deny, minimize, or rationalize our mistakes or contributions to our interpersonal conflict. We may resort to self-devaluing definitional attitudes like “I am a bad person, a bastard, an addict, nothing more than a hypocrite,” which will not motivate us to change but demotivate and allow us to continue misbehaving. We create the psychological mindset that we cannot possibly act better or find a way to resist our greatest temptations, as our essence is such that it is rotten or defective. There is none of the good stuff within us to strengthen, build upon, or call upon to change our future behavior because we possess only a dark side with no healthy side to counter our evil, broken, defective nature. What a simplistic way of thinking about a human.
Humans Possess Two Sides
REBT takes a more sophisticated and balanced view and acknowledges that we all are flawed and have two competing sides that influence our behavior. We have the rigid, extreme, temptation-yielding, demanding, antiscientific side that leads to all sorts of errors and interpersonal conflicts. However, REBT also points we all have a healthy side that can be flexible, non-extreme, temptation-resisting, accommodating, and scientific. There is an inner tension within us between the healthy and unhealthy sides, the adaptive and the rigid sides, and the logical and the illogical sides. REBT notes that the relative strength of these two sides may not be equal among all people, and some may have to work harder than others to cultivate the healthy side and its quintessential characteristics. Nevertheless, with work and practice, each of us can better contain the self-defeating side of us, strengthen the healthy side, and maintain hope that, at least some of the time, we can do better.
Unconditional Self-Acceptance with Personal Responsibility
REBT advocates that you unconditionally accept yourself even though you are flawed and will make mistakes. We help you to cultivate unconditional self-acceptance with personal responsibility. This concept of unconditional self-acceptance is not an excuse that will shield you from the legal and ethical consequences of your misbehavior. Breaking laws and ethical violations will get you in trouble and reduce your long-term pleasure, so adhere to ethics and rules. Keep your healthy wish to do well, act nicely, function within the law, and display ethical behavior, but recognize that life is messy and you are deeply flawed. In so doing, you will experience healthy negative emotions, like disappointment, healthy shame, healthy guilt, and remorse, helping you acknowledge and learn from your misbehavior. You will only condemn the sin, the error, the mistake, or the negative side of you, but you will not define the whole of you in terms of the negative part. Self-devaluing definitions like “I am bad, you are a bitch, I am an ass, you are an idiot” are emotionally charged and look past the good and evil within each of us. You can do better, but you will never perfect yourself, even with the regular use of REBT. However, if you use the philosophy of REBT, you will learn to do better and acknowledge the error of your ways when you misbehave. Then you can work on that dark side of you. Keep at it.
Remember the proverb, “Let he who is not guilty cast the first stone.”