It is not uncommon to encounter people who are emotionally disturbed about a parent, child, or spouse’s suffering. We love our family and often experience disturbance because we hold unrealistic attitudes towards their suffering. Usually, the individual who disturbs themselves in this way will experience either other-pity, depression, anxiety, or guilt. Experiencing these feelings may seem inevitable when we love others who are suffering, but they are not necessarily so. Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy is a realistic philosophy. It can help the individual who is disturbing themselves about the pain and suffering of a loved one.
It is essential to start with a clear understanding of a healthy reaction when a loved one suffers. REBT distinguishes between healthy and unhealthy negative emotions. REBT theory argues that pain in life is sometimes inevitable, but our suffering about the suffering of a loved one is optional. When a loved one suffers, healthy negative emotions would include feelings of sadness, sorrow, concern, and remorse. Like unhealthy negative emotions, healthy negative emotions acknowledge that a negative state of affairs exists for our loved ones and ourselves. Healthy negative emotions are motivational in so far as they prompt us to change what we can change. They rest on a realistic and flexible set of attitudes towards the suffering our loved one is experiencing. Healthy negative emotions also rest on non-extreme attitudes towards the state of affairs for our loved ones and ourselves. The healthy negative emotions allow us to do our bit to help without harming ourselves as we aim to help our loved ones. We also can guiltlessly have some degree of happiness even when our loved one is suffering. Enjoying life while a loved one is suffering may be challenging to do in some circumstances, but given that you have one life to live, it is in your best interest to enjoy it even when a loved one is facing a difficult period in their life. Your suffering will not undo their suffering.
When we notice ourselves experiencing unhealthy negative emotions, the theory of REBT says that we make an effort to transform our unhealthy negative emotions into healthy negative emotions. This emotional self-correction process involves reflection, critical questioning, and creating a new philosophical attitude to replace the attitude leading to our unhealthy negative emotions and self-defeating behavior. There are two sets of questions you need to learn to ask in order to effectively challenge your self-defeating, rigid, and extreme attitudes:
Set 1 – Functional questions:
Does my particular thought or attitude help me or hinder me to cope with the pain and suffering I am witnessing?
If it hinders me, what realistic thought or attitude would help me function in a healthy way and assist my loved one in a healthy way?
Set 2 – Empirical questions:
Are my thoughts and attitudes about the pain and suffering I am witnessing consistent with the facts?
If my thoughts and attitudes are not, what thought, or attitude would be consistent with the facts?
Below you will find a sample of the attitudes that a person theoretically could use to disturb themselves about the pain and suffering of a loved one. There are likely to be other self-defeating attitudes, but this sample will enable me to show you how REBT can help you face this challenging situation. Space limitations keep me from using the two sets of questions against each of these self-defeating attitudes, but you could take those questions and write down your answers for one or more of the below sample attitudes. Doing this exercise will help you learn REBT and help yourself. Below I will provide examples of the new philosophical attitude which would result from such critical thinking. These healthy alternative attitudes would help you to function optimally and enable you to assist your loved one face their burdens in a healthy way.
Unhealthy attitude: My loved one must not suffer.
Healthy alternative attitude: I wish my loved one was not suffering, but sadly they are, and there is no logic in believing they must not be suffering. Life involves suffering, and when and who it has pain and suffers is often beyond my control. Children and adults suffer as this is part of the human condition. No matter how unfair it may seem to me and how painful it may be to see, it is false to the facts that it must not be happening. I will do what I can to help them bear their burden, but I had better accept that what I can do for them may very well be pretty limited.
Unhealthy attitude: I cannot bear to see a loved one suffer.
Healthy alternative attitude: Whether it be a child, a spouse, or an elderly parent, it is tough to bear witness to their suffering, but it is not unbearable. It will be easier to bear if I hold a healthy attitude towards the situation. I can bear the discomfort I feel, and it is worth withstanding because my loved one’s suffering is occurring. How well I bear witness to their suffering will not take away their suffering. If I upset myself in an unhealthy way I could add to their burdens.
Unhealthy attitude: It must be me who suffers, not my loved one.
Healthy alternative attitude: I wish it were me who is suffering, not my child or my parent, but sadly it does not have to be me who suffers. Unfortunately, the choice of who suffers is beyond my control. I had better accept this and see that no person, young or old, is exempt from life’s hardships.
Unhealthy attitude: I am lesser of a person or a bad person if I do not do everything my parents ask me to do to keep them comfortable.
Healthy alternative attitude: It is bad that I cannot do everything my parents ask me to do to keep them comfortable, but it does not make me a bad person. I am a human, a fallible human who also is responsible for caring for myself. I do not have to feel guilty because I have to take care of myself as I care for my parents. Even if my parents try to make me feel guilty, it is my thinking and not their thinking that causes my guilt and self-defeating behavior that will lead to my illness. I will determine how much I do for my parents based on reasoning, not neurotic feelings of guilt.
Unhealthy attitude: I have to solve all problems for my loved ones rather than teaching them how to help themselves.
Healthy alternative attitude: I do not have to solve all problems for my loved ones. I might want to do this because it is easier for me when I solve their problems, but I do not have to do this. The more I solve problems for my loved ones, the more unlikely they are to conclude they cannot bear to solve problems on their own. If this is my child, fostering such dependence on me can be very harmful to my child over the long run. Do I want to do that? Who will take care of their problems when I am deceased? I had better tolerate my feelings of discomfort when I watch my child struggle to learn how to solve their problems. It is better to teach a child to fish than to give the child a fish dinner all the time. If this is my elderly parent, the same logic applies. I do not have to solve all their problems for them. I will not be able to keep up with my problems and theirs. I will run the risk of harming myself if I do not care for myself to a healthy extent. Solving and helping to solve my parent’s problems is not an all-or-nothing proposition. I can assist with some problems, but it would be best for me to pick and choose which problem my parent could use help with and which problem they can do independently. Rather than overextend me, it will better if I allow them to face the consequences of their unwillingness to do what they can to help themselves. Not devoting my entire life to them does not define me as a heartless or ungrateful person.
Unhealthy Attitude: I cannot bear seeing my parent or child feeling depressed.
Healthy Attitude: It is uncomfortable to bear witness to my parent or child feeling depressed, but it is not unbearable. I can withstand observing their depression, and it is worth doing because depressing myself over their depression does not do either of us any good. Instead, I can speak to them about their losses, failures, and undeserved burdens and encourage them to change what they can and accept what they cannot. I can model this liberating form of acceptance and suggest that they learn REBT philosophy by going to REBTDoctor.com. However, I had better acknowledge that I can only attempt to influence them and see that I cannot change them. If I demand that they take my well-meaning advice and do not, I will get angry or depressed. The only person I really can “change” is myself, and therefore I had better practice the very philosophy I am encouraging them to adopt.
Unhealthy Attitude: Life is totally bad because my loved one is suffering.
Healthy attitude: Life is certainly bad in a sense because my loved one is suffering, but it is an overstatement to contend that life is totally bad. I had better watch my extreme way of thinking as this will defeat me. Life may be very, very bad if my loved one is suffering badly, but life is not totally bad as life for them was once better and could improve in the future. Extreme thinking leads to unhealthy and self-defeating feelings rather than adaptation to harsh reality. I can have some degree of happiness even if my loved one is suffering. It might be harder to have some joy than if they were not suffering, but in the end, it is best to see that I can have some happiness even when my loved one is facing a difficult or even grim set of circumstances.
Summary and Conclusions
REBT philosophy acknowledges that it is hard to see our loved ones frustrated, uncomfortable, deprived, in pain, ill and depressed. We want our loved ones to be happy and survive, and when they are suffering, it is a challenge to bear witness. For our emotional health, it is essential that we hold a flexible, realistic, and non-extreme attitude when our children and parents are suffering. The world is very unfair. Children get sick and die. Elderly parents lose through death their beloved spouses who have lived with them for years and then experience pain and suffering. We do not like to see this happen, but it is essential that we not demand that our loved ones not suffer. The Buddha said, “Life is suffering.” We had better accept that our loved ones will suffer and then think of how we can help them while remaining healthy ourselves. Help your loved ones but also teach them how to help themselves. Helping others is good, but doing what they can do for themselves will lead them to be dependent. If you are the primary caretaker of an elderly parent or a sick child, you had better work on yourself and your philosophy towards your loved one’s pain and suffering. First, work on adopting a healthy attitude and then proceed to help them in healthy ways. Keep in mind your human limitations and then change what you can and accept what you cannot change.
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