Taking Responsibility for Your Emotional Upset
Main Point: REBT cannot help you to change others or external situations since these are beyond your direct control. However, REBT can help you to change your behavior so that you increase the chances of influencing others to change, and of bringing about change in external situations.
In Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), I help you to adopt a realistic mindset. Whether you are in formal REBT therapy or merely using REBT on your own, you had better appreciate what REBT can and cannot do. Recognizing its limitations will enable you to use it most effectively.
On Changing Others
I have found that it is often the case that many people go through life, hoping to find a way to change others. REBT cannot help you to improve or control others or alter aspects of external situations that are beyond your direct control. However, REBT can help you to change your behavior so that you increase the chances of influencing others to change, and of bringing about change in external situations in ways that are realistically within your domain of influence.
Perhaps people seek ways to change others because they have never appreciated the primary source of their emotions and because they see this as a more natural path to take. People commonly tend to use language that suggests that the primary source of emotions corresponds with the actions other people make or with external circumstances. To help them with their emotional disturbance, I introduce to them the ABC framework of REBT. “A” stands for the adversity you are disturbed about; “B” stands for basic attitudes you hold about the adversity at “A.” Your basic attitudes can be self-helping or self-impairing. Whether they are self-helping or self-impairing, “C” stands for emotional, behavioral, and thinking consequences of your basic attitudes.
The Victim Model of Emotion: A – C model
Before I introduce to them the ABC model, people tend to have an implicit A-C model of emotion. They wrongly think that others “cause” them to experience self-impairing emotional upset or that circumstances “cause” their emotional disturbances. By holding this model of emotion, they are prisoners of others and a victim of external circumstances. With this A-C model of emotion, they make statements like:
1. He made me angry with his insult.
2. My children hurt my feelings with their disrespect.
3. My job conditions demoralize me.
4. The potential dangers of modern living make me anxious.
A Self-Empowering Model of Emotion: ABC Model
Using the ABC model of REBT, I quickly show them how to empower themselves through the adoption of language consistent with the ABC model. Compare the two sets of statements found below:
A-C Model of Emotion
1. He made me angry with his insult.
2. My children hurt my feelings with their disrespectful behavior.
3. My job conditions depress me.
4. The potential dangers of modern living make me anxious.
A-B-C Model of Emotion
1. I angered myself over the comment he made. I enabled the insult to occur with the attitude I hold.
2. I hurt myself over the disrespectful behavior my children displayed toward me.
3. I depress myself over the conditions of my job.
4. I make myself anxious over the potential dangers of modern living.
Identifying A Rational Role Model
It is essential to have genuine buy-in with the A-B-C model of emotion to begin to depict one’s emotional experience in this self-empowering way. Perhaps the best way to come to see how we disturb ourselves is to have a role model who uses the A-B-C model of emotion, whether they call it this or not. Do you know anyone who seems to have, with some regularity, a resilient attitude in the face of different adversities? Do you know anyone who has significant medical burdens, but who seems to adapt to these burdens despite the inconvenience and physical impairment these burdens cause them? If you do not know anyone who can serve as a rational role model, perhaps with a little research, you can find someone in history who has managed physical problems or tremendously unfortunate external circumstances with a healthy attitude. One such person is the noted psychiatrist Viktor Frankl. This man was able to survive life during the holocaust and an arduous stay at the notorious Auschwitz death camp. Frankl wrote in his well-known book Man in Search of Meaning three quotes, which are highly consistent with the A-B-C model of REBT and found below.
1. Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
2. When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
3. Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
If you are honest, chances are you know someone who adapts to unfortunate circumstances by holding a healthy attitude. Reflect on how they do this. Whether you know someone who you can model or use Victor Frankl as your role model, challenge yourself with a question. Ask yourself, “If they can hold a healthy attitude towards their inconveniences, losses, burdens, betrayals, and notoriously lousy living circumstances, what stops me from doing this? What is my “yes-but my situation is different” attitude, which absolves me of responsibility for my emotional disturbance? How am I excusing myself and keeping myself a victim of circumstances?” Take an honest look at how you are contributing to your emotional upset by holding the attitude that external conditions and other people’s behavior directly “cause” your emotions. Examine the downside of this way A-C model of emotion. Consider the advantage of REBT’s A-B-C model of emotion.
Make A Commitment to Self-Liberation and
Self-Empowerment
Commit yourself to see that you largely determine your emotional destiny by the attitude you choose towards your adversities. Instead of using A-C language and thinking that renders you a victim of self-impairing emotions, choose to deliberately liberate yourself by adopting the A-B-C model of emotion endorsed by REBT. Be patient with yourself, and do not put yourself down as you learn to embrace personal responsibility for your emotional reactions. Listen to yourself and monitor your thinking. When you catch yourself externalizing responsibility for your self-impairing emotions, take a step back, and challenge yourself to adopt the A-B-C model. Then go from blaming others for your self-impairing feelings and explicitly remind yourself that you are upsetting yourself about their misbehavior towards you. You do not deny that their behavior plays a role in the matter, it is an opportunity of sorts, but also acknowledge the more critical role you play in your emotional response. After accepting that you upset yourself about what they do or fail to do, you can go on to look for the rigid attitude which lies at point B of the A-B-C model and underpins your self-impairing emotional reaction. See below for examples.
A-B-C Model of Emotion
1. I made myself angry by the comment he made. I insulted myself.
2. I hurt myself over the disrespectful behavior my children show me.
3. I demoralize myself over the conditions of my job.
4. I make myself anxious over the potential dangers of modern living.
Rigid Attitudes At Core of Disturbance
1. People must not insult me.
2. My children must show me respect.
3. My job conditions must be as I want them to be.
4. I must have a guarantee that I will not encounter the dangers of modern living.
Once you have both acknowledged how you primarily upset yourself and identified the rigid attitude that lies at the core of your emotional disturbance, go further, and challenge it. Do people have to treat you as you wish? What makes you so special when we all, from time to time, face mistreatment? Does the universe compel others to treat you nicely, or is it merely your wish? Must the conditions of life be to your liking? Do other people have conditions in life that are also inconvenient, uncomfortable, unfair, and downright lousy? Push yourself to adopt a strong but flexible preference towards others and life conditions. Adopt a flexible wish, want, and desire that others be kind to you, that life be relatively smooth and comfortable. See that holding a flexible attitude towards adversity will enable you to have healthy negative emotions like disappointment and concern. These emotions are informational and acknowledge that something is wrong, and you do not like what is going on in your life. They are motivating in that they will spark you to take action to attempt to influence others to change themselves, or motivate you take action which may bring about change in external situations.
REBT’s Emphasis on Realism
REBT is a realistic philosophy. With a healthy realistic and flexible philosophy, you will acknowledge what is unfortunate and wrong, accept what is unchangeable in life and then take action to attempt to change what is changeable. Adopting responsibility for your emotional disturbance will help liberate you from avoidable suffering. It will not anesthetize you to all negative feelings. Doing so would be unhealthy to do. Furthermore, your flexible attitude will enable you to have some degree of happiness despite the existence of ongoing adversity. In the end, REBT teaches that your serenity rests far more on the attitude you hold and considerably less on the circumstances you face.