Snippets of REBT Ideas – Dr. Walter J. Matweychuk
I am always looking for new ways to assist people in understanding, implementing, and profiting from Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy’s core philosophical attitudes and self-change strategies. Below you will find five short statements I have made to my patients during REBT psychotherapy sessions. Review them and perhaps they will deepen your understanding of how you upset yourself, rate and thereby reject yourself, and naturally create fictional rigid and extreme attitudes which lead to self-defeating emotional reactions. These statements reflect the tough-minded stance towards adversity that REBT advocates. I hope they help you appreciate and then implement REBT philosophy. I hope they strengthen and liberate you. Please read them and reflect on their meaning and utility. Then adopt them and put them into ACTION!
1. You may not see it but you really are not the emotional victim you tend to make yourself out to be. In my view, you make yourself a victim when you disturb yourself about the “politics and BS” that goes on at work. You can learn NOT to victimize yourself over what goes on at work and thereby more creatively resist what you do not like or see as unjust.
2. It would be better if you held this philosophy about your weight: “Yes, I am overweight, and that is undesirable, but no this does not make me lesser as a person. Even if some people think weight is the true measure of a person that is their bias NOT the absolute truth. I am an imperfect human, and my excess weight reflects my imperfection. I can accept myself with my faulty features as well as my desirable features. My features and characteristics cannot be summated to yield a human worth score. Human worth scores are fiction which leads to shame, thoughts of inferiority, unhealthy envy and other self-defeating emotional and behavioral reactions.”
3. REBT teaches Unconditional, Self-Other-Life Acceptance. We live in a technologically based society where we aim to change what we do not like and assume this can be and should be quickly done. Sadly, not everything can be changed. We tend not to teach our children how to accept things as they are, which sometimes is our only real option. Acceptance in REBT does not mean liking or endorsing the negative things which go on. Acceptance is an acknowledgment of what is happening and has happened with an effort to change what can be changed in the future. Acceptance in REBT also is a commitment to have some degree of happiness despite the existence of an undesirable state of affairs in the present. Acceptance is not easily achieved BUT it does have significant benefits. Push yourself to cultivate acceptance.
4. Assertiveness rests on thinking for yourself. Think for yourself and ask for what you want. Don’t tread on the rights of others, but tolerate the awkward moment and ask for what you want and decline what you do not want. See that you have a right to put yourself first and others a close second. You have a right to do this.
5. We are natural myth makers. Our rigid and extreme attitudes about ourselves, others, and life lead to emotional disturbance and are the myths we humans are naturally inclined to create. If you were to reason properly, you would come to see these rigid and extreme myths are not consistent with observable reality. They just do not correspond and work very well in the real world. They undermine your efforts to get more of what you want, all things considered. With effort, you can create flexible and non-extreme attitudes to replace your rigid “Musts” and extreme “It is awful” and “I cannot stand it” attitudes. Flexible and non-extreme attitudes are not myths. These attitudes would be in accord with reality and help you live with reality until you can change what can be changed. You will still have negative feelings like disappointment and concern, but with flexible and non-extreme attitudes you will tend not to get so bent out of shape, so neurotically worried, and thereby roll much better with the punches of life.