We live in a highly technological world where machines are ubiquitous in our lives. This widespread presence of devices and technology influences how we see ourselves. Some people apply the machine model to the human condition. We might say, “That person pushes my buttons.” This statement suggests the individual holds a model that they are a mechanical device that an external force can make to feel an emotion by pressing on the right lever.
Alternatively, we may view the brain as the master computer that runs the body. Just like we might replace parts in a computer to make it a more powerful computing machine, we take all sorts of drugs and medications to enhance the functioning of the computer between our ears. Antidepressants, medical marijuana, antipsychotics, vitamins, and caffeine all fit the model that a brain is a machine of sorts. Old parts can be “fixed” by medications, and new components can replace broken ones to enhance the human experience, alleviate suffering, and enhance performance. I acknowledge that drugs often have a profound positive impact on millions of people. I never discourage my patients from “experimenting” with these under the supervision of a well-trained prescriber. It is not either REBT or drugs. Both can be useful for some people. Not everyone will require medication, but the point is, for some, the combination is the best path to take.
On my weekly Zoom Conversation Hour, an individual asked the following question:
Suppose you have been brought up where everything has been made to be your fault or responsibility. You can become a little bit made to feel as if you should be able to control everything, and then when you can’t, it results in quite a lot of low self-esteem, confidence, or negative states of mind. That is a sort of hardwiring. Have you got any advice on hardwiring where it is from a young age?
My concern with this question lies in the overvaluation of the mechanical model of the mind. This model implies that once people get “hardwired” to think, feel or behave a certain way due to early childhood experiences, they are more or less doomed to be this way forever.
Whether we believe others can push our buttons to make us angry, use the medical model of diseases to explain “mental illness,” or the computer model and the abstract notion of “hardwiring” to account for our self-defeating reactions, I urge caution.
REBT imported many ideas from General Semantics theory. General Semantics theory cautions that the verbal symbols of language used to speak or think about a thing are not the “thing” itself. Alfred Korzybski, the pioneer of General Semantics, famously said, “The map is not the territory.” Likewise, when speaking of the mind, we had better remember that the model we use to understand our mind is not the mind, and our models will bias us. Models of the mind are just that – representations with strengths and weaknesses. The model that things get hardwired by early experiences is likely to undermine our ability to change our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors later in life. The model that others can “push” our buttons to make us angry can allow us to be manipulated into states of anger by others who treat us poorly.
My response to the question on hardwiring was to relinquish acceptance of the validity of the concept of hardwiring and replace it with ideas based on REBT theory. I acknowledge that my suggestion is yet another model, but in my view, this model has self-liberating advantages based on reasonable assumptions. It offers hope we can change and improve our self-defeating ideas, emotions, and behaviors through hard work and deliberate practice to achieve our goal of transforming our dysfunctional feelings and behaviors.
My response to the question of others being capable of “pushing” our buttons is to show people that what people do to us sets the stage for our feelings but does not dictate them. We come to a situation with attitudes that factor into the emotional response we have to other people’s misbehavior towards us. The REBT Principle of Emotional Responsibility and the emphasis on the critical role attitudes play is an alternative model that empowers us to have healthy emotional reactions not dictated by external conditions.
I am not suggesting we discard appreciation that we are living organisms with a physical body, including a brain and nervous system. Yes, our minds live in a body. However, the hardwired model may yield negative results. Adopting it may make it harder to overcome dysfunctional feelings and behaviors. It may demoralize us, causing us to remain stuck in self-defeating low self-esteem, low confidence, and unhealthy negative emotional states.
The button-pushing model does not allow us to determine our emotional destiny. Once we have acknowledged the limitations of these models, we can experiment with a new model. I advocate you adopt the ABC model of REBT, which offers hope that we can liberate ourselves from low self-esteem, low confidence, and unhealthy negative emotional states dictated by circumstances.
Biology Provides the Ability to Use Symbols to Learn, Think and Speak
After birth, humans come to speak, think, feel and behave. We do this because it is our nature. It is natural for a baby to make utterances and gestures and develop enhanced cognitive processing as development proceeds over the years. Our biology sets the stage for us to speak, think, feel and behave. We model and learn from other people due to our biology. Said another way, biology permits us to learn.
Albert Ellis and REBT theory argues we learn on top of and due to our biology. He would say, “You are born and reared to think irrationally.” REBT theory acknowledges that how we are “brought up” impacts us. In the environments we are raised in, we learn a great deal and also fail to learn adaptive skills or ways of responding to adversity. What we hear early in life might be harder to forget or learn on top of, and therefore subsequent learning later in life requires more effort and time to achieve. Although it is true that children more easily acquire foreign languages, with sufficient effort and rehearsal, adults can learn a foreign language.
More Difficult is Not Equal to Impossible
I am willing to go along with the idea that life is not fair and some people learn more quickly and may come to learn and do some things better than others due to their biological potential for an activity or skill. REBT theory also argues that some people may be more inclined by their biology to rigid, extreme, and illogical thinking than others. This premise implies that some people will have to work harder than others to think flexibly, avoid extreme thinking, and think logically. Furthermore, some people may easily backslide into rigid, extreme, and illogical thinking due to their biological nature. If you want to use the model of hardwiring, according to REBT theory, what is “hardwired” is our ability to think in rigid, extreme, and illogical ways. However, the good news is that we also are “hardwired” to think in flexible, non-extreme, and logical ways. We are hardwired to learn as well. The hardwiring to think in rigid, extreme, and illogical ways could be more robust than the hardwiring that allows us to think in flexible, non-extreme, and logical ways. I often say in therapy that our ability to reason in flexible, non-extreme, and scientific ways is fragile; therefore, we need to strengthen it through work and practice. Albert used to say, “Repetition is the mother of learning.”
The REBT Model of the Mind is Not the Thing Itself
REBT’s ABC is an imperfect model of the mind. In all probability, nothing made by a human will ever be perfect. However, it is a reasonable model of emotion. REBT is moderately optimistic regarding our ability to change and improve our emotional and behavioral reactions. The strategies that result from endorsing this model can help us improve our lives. What do you have to lose by adopting the REBT stance toward working on the dysfunctional emotions and behaviors you have displayed since childhood? What do you have to lose by endorsing the Principle of Emotional Responsibility and striving to hold healthy attitudes when life is hard and people mistreat you?
Assuming I have persuaded you to adopt the REBT model, let us examine a small sample of the rigid and extreme attitudes that will hold you back from changing given your upbringing:
- I must learn new thoughts, feelings, and behavior as quickly as others.
- It must be easier for me to change.
- It is too hard to think, feel and act in unfamiliar ways after years of being brought up to think, feel and act in those ways.
- It is too easy to backslide into familiar ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving after making some progress in changing.
- I cannot bear lifelong practice to maintain my therapeutic gains.
- People must treat me nicely.
- When others mistreat me, I cannot stand it.
Examine the Results Approach to Disputing Rigid and Extreme Attitudes
The easiest way to challenge these self-defeating ideas is to examine the results you will get with these ideas. Those results will be a disinclination to attempt or stick with changing your dysfunctional feelings and behaviors. Not working to change is the easier path to follow. Instead, the self-liberating philosophy of REBT will offer you an alternative set of attitudes that will likely lead to emotional and behavioral change. The REBT path is the more effortful path, but it provides hope. Here is the choice of attitudes REBT offers to you:
- I wish I could learn new thoughts, feelings, and behaviors as quickly as others, but sadly, this is not the case. Life does not have to be fair, and the rate at which I learn is my burden to bear. Having difficulty adopting healthy attitudes to cope with life more effectively does not make me lesser as a person. It proves I am a fallible human. The speed with which I learn does not give me value as a human. I exist, and my actions have value but let me not concern myself with my value as a human. All humans are fallible. I will not demotivate myself by thinking I must change as quickly as others. That won’t lead to change. I will accept the rate at which I acquire healthy attitudes and change. I will stick with practicing, as repetition is the mother of learning.
- I wish it were easier for me to change, but it does not (absolutely) have to be. In a utopian world, adopting more effective attitudes would be easy. Still, I will acknowledge reality as it appears and my nature to think both rigidly and flexibly. I will make an effort against the difficulty inherent in thinking flexibly and changing my emotions and behaviors.
- It is hard but not too hard and impossible to think, feel and act in unfamiliar ways after years of being brought up to think, feel and act in those ways. Being brought up to think, feel and act in a particular manner only means I am well-practiced at this pattern. The unfamiliar ways of thinking, feeling, and behavior will become familiar with sufficient work and practice.
- It is easy to backslide into familiar ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving after making some progress in changing. However, that does not mean I can’t resume the new way of thinking, feeling, and behavior I was working to develop. I will resume doing what was working and making me better. Usually, when humans backslide, they stop doing what is working to maintain change. I can discipline myself if I accept the effort required and the ever-present possibility of backsliding. I can acknowledge these things and renew my commitment to change when backsliding occurs.
- It is inconvenient to continue to practice healthy new thoughts, feelings, and behaviors for the rest of our lives, but it is not unbearable. It is worth doing because these thoughts, feelings, and behaviors achieve better results and help us survive and be happier than if we remain stuck in old behavior patterns.
- I want people to treat me nicely, but sadly, they will not always do so. People have free will and will mistreat me, and I can bring to bear my free will to think about their mistreatment in a healthy way that allows me to address it in a self-helping, as opposed to a self-defeating way. I will function better if I do not hold a rigid attitude toward how they treat me.
- I don’t particularly appreciate when others mistreat me and feel uncomfortable when it occurs, but I can tolerate their behavior and my internal discomfort towards it. Seeing that I can handle it means I can have a healthy emotional response to it, enabling me to either assert myself or end my relationship with them. This stance is worth having because although I cannot control other people, I can control how I react to other people.
Takeaways for Growth and Self-Actualization
- Do not confuse a model of the mind with the thing itself. Humans don’t have wires in their heads or buttons that get pushed by others. How others treat us matters, as does early life experience, but so does our freely chosen attitude toward what happens to us. REBT encourages you to acknowledge that your attitudes matter slightly more than the adversity your face.
- Assume our nature is to learn, and we can quickly learn bad habits of thought, feeling, and behavior. Adopt Ellis’s position that “Humans are born and reared to think irrationally.” Accept your human fallibility but don’t use it as a reason not to assume responsibility for your emotional and behavioral reactions.
- Acknowledge we are also naturally inclined to learn more effective ways of thinking, feeling, and behavior when we are willing to make an effort. We are natural problem solvers.
- Assume backsliding will occur until we sufficiently strengthen new ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving. Backsliding is always possible, but this only means we must resume what previously worked to improve our emotional and behavioral functioning.
- Assume repetition is the mother of learning, and the unfamiliar becomes familiar with regular work and practice.