Dealing with
Emotional
Problems Using
RationalEmotive
Cognitive
Behaviour
Therapy: A
Practitioner's
Guide
Also available, Dealing with
Emotional Problems Using
Rational-Emotive Cognitive
Behaviour Therapy: A
Client's Guide.
In this practical companion to the Client's
Guide, Windy Dryden draws on rationalemotive cognitive behaviour therapy (RECBT)
± a form of CBT that focuses on challenging and
changing the irrational beliefs that largely
determine emotional and behavioural issues ±
to encourage people to deal with their emotional
problems.
This Practitioner's Guide includes all of the
information presented in the Client's Guide
with the addition of helpful hints and tips for
the therapist, making it straightforward to use in
the consulting room with no need for further
references.
Dealing with Emotional Problems using RationalEmotive Cognitive Behaviour Therapy: A Practitioner's Guide will allow the therapist to work
through and help the client learn to deal with
their problems from an RECBT perspective,
covering:
anxiety
depression
guilt
shame
hurt
unhealthy anger
unhealthy jealousy
unhealthy envy.
This practical workbook presents each emotion
in a similar way, allowing the reader to compare
and contrast common and distinctive features of
each problem. It will be essential reading for any
professional using RECBT with their client.
Windy Dryden is Professor of Psychotherapeutic Studies at Goldsmiths, University of
London.
Dealing with
Emotional
Problems Using
RationalEmotive
Cognitive
Behaviour
Therapy
A Practitioner's Guide
WINDY DRYDEN
First published 2012 by Routledge
27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex BN3 2FA
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business
Ø 2012 Windy Dryden
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identi®cation and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Dryden, Windy.
Dealing with emotional problems using rational-emotive cognitivebehaviour therapy : a practitioner's guide / Windy Dryden.
p. ; cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-415-67764-6 (pbk.)
1. Rational emotive behavior therapy. 2. Cognitive therapy. I. Title.
[DNLM: 1. Cognitive Therapy. 2. Emotions. 3. Psychotherapy,
Rational-Emotive. WM 425.5.C6]
RC489.R3D78632 2012
616.89©1425±dc23
2011013056
ISBN: 978-0-415-67764-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-15763-3 (ebk)
Typeset in Stone Serif by Gar®eld Morgan, Swansea, West Glamorgan
Paperback cover design by Andrew Ward
Printed by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall
Contents
Preface
vi
1
Emotional problems: foundations and healthy alternatives
1
2
Dealing with anxiety
22
3
Dealing with depression
56
4
Dealing with guilt
87
5
Dealing with shame
117
6
Dealing with hurt
148
7
Dealing with unhealthy anger
176
8
Dealing with unhealthy jealousy
207
9
Dealing with unhealthy envy
237
References
267
Appendix 1
268
Appendix 2
273
Appendix 3
275
Appendix 4
277
Appendix 5
279
Appendix 6
281
Appendix 7
289
Index
299
Preface
I have written this book as a practitioner's companion to Dealing with
Emotional Problems with RECBT: A Client's Guide. In that book, I deal with
the eight emotional problems that clients routinely seek help for and
show them how they can deal with them.
There are three ways I could have written this Practitioner's Guide. First, I
could have written totally separate Client and Practitioner Guides. In taking
this approach I would have to make frequent page references to the
Client's Guide in the Practitioner's Guide. This means that you would have
to have both guides open when working with a client and go backwards
and forwards from book to book. While there would be little repetition
within each book, you would waste much valuable therapy time consulting both texts at the same time.
The second approach I could have taken is to write totally separate
Client and Practitioner Guides but to include them in one volume. Again in
taking this approach I would have to make frequent page references to the
Client's Guide in the Practitioner's Guide. This means that you would have
to go backwards and forwards from guide to guide within a single volume.
While again there would be little repetition within each part of the book,
you would again waste much valuable therapy time moving from one part
to another.
The third approach I could have taken and which, in fact, I decided to
take involves having a separate Client's Guide and reproducing this guide
in the Practitioner's Guide. In taking this tack, I present the material so that
you have access to it when and where you need it. You do not, therefore,
have to go from book to book or from one part of a single book to the
other part. While this necessitates repetition of salient material, I believe
that this is a price worth paying to facilitate use by practitioners.
In the present book, then, I reproduce the Client's Guide and at salient
points, I discuss issues that may come up in therapy when you use the
Client's Guide with your clients and show how best you can address these
issues. The material that I have written for practitioners in this book is in
a different typeface to the Client's Guide so you can easily ®nd it.
In the Client's Guide (which is reproduced in this book), I begin with
outlining the foundations of emotional problems from an RECBT
Preface
vii
perspective. I then devote one chapter to each of the eight emotional
problems and use a similar structure in each chapter. I start by helping
clients to understand the emotional problem in question, discuss what
they disturb themselves about when they experience the emotion, and
outline what largely determines the emotion and how they tend to act
and think when they experience it. I show clients how to deal with the
emotional problem in question. I help them to identify the themes in
the emotion, detail their behaviour and thinking when they experience it
before encouraging them to set appropriate emotional, behavioural and
thinking goals. Then, I help them to identify, challenge and change the
rigid and extreme beliefs that account for their emotional problems and
to develop the ¯exible and non-extreme beliefs that will enable them
to achieve their goals. Next, I show clients what they need to do to
strengthen their conviction in their rational beliefs so that they become
less prone to the emotional problem. I then deal with a number of
additional issues relevant to the emotional problem in question before
®nally outlining a number of world views that underpin each emotional
problem and its healthy alternative.
The common chapter structure that I employ in Chapters 2±9 of
the Client's Guide is to ensure that all relevant issues are discussed for
each emotional problem. It is unlikely that clients will be prone to
all eight emotional problems, but they may be prone to two or three. The
view of emotional problems that I am taking in this book states that while
there are common features among the eight emotions, there are also
features that are distinctive to each emotion. This is re¯ected in Chapters
2±9 of the Client's Guide and they will need to bear this point in mind
when they read these chapters or a selection of them.
The same is the case in this Practitioner's Guide. There are common and
distinctive features that are relevant when helping clients deal with the
eight emotional problems. To help you use this Practitioner's Guide, I
produce common features in each of the eight chapters and the distinctive features where relevant. I have decided to organise this book in this
way to help you get the most out of the relevant chapter when working
with a client's chosen emotional problem. While this means that certain
issues are repeated throughout the book, as I mentioned above, it also
means that the relevant material is there when and where you need to
consult it.
Windy Dryden
London and Eastbourne
1
Emotional problems: foundations and
healthy alternatives
In this book, I am going to discuss some common emotional problems and
show you how to deal with them. The book is structured as a workbook so
that you can implement the skills that I teach you in a step-by-step manner.
It is worthwhile stressing to your clients that the order of these
steps is indicative and not set in stone. Over time and with
increased experience, different clients will use the steps in different
orders.
In this opening chapter, I am going to cover some important material that
I regard as foundations to your understanding of the eight emotional
problems that I discuss in this book and their healthy alternatives.
WHAT ARE THE EIGHT EMOTIONAL PROBLEMS?
I have been practising in the ®eld of counselling and psychotherapy since
1975 and have worked in a variety of different settings. In that time, I have
seen many people suffering from one or more of the eight emotional
problems that I cover in this book. They are:
anxiety
depression
guilt
shame
hurt
unhealthy anger
unhealthy jealousy
unhealthy envy.
You will note that I have put the adjective `unhealthy' in front of anger,
jealousy and envy. I have done this to distinguish the unhealthy version of
2
Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
the emotion with its healthy version. I will discuss healthy alternatives to
the eight emotional problems in the next section.
Unfortunately, we don't have agreed language for emotional problems. It is better to use the terms with which your clients resonate
than to impose on them terms such as those above that are used
in the RECBT literature. When you have agreed a term for an
emotional problem with a client, make a clear note of it in the
client's ®le.
HEALTHY ALTERNATIVES TO THE EIGHT
EMOTIONAL PROBLEMS
Adversity is unfortunately a fact of life.1 None of us can say that we have
lived a life untouched by adversity. An adversity is a negative event. So
when you are looking for a healthy alternative to an emotional problem in
the face of adversity, it is not realistic for you to select an emotion that is
positive or neutral.
Problems with positive emotions as healthy
alternatives to the emotional problems
If you want to feel a positive emotion about an adversity, you will have to
convince yourself that it is good that the adversity happened. Now, I
concede that adversities do have some positive features, but they are
largely negative in nature. As such, the only way you are going to convince
yourself that it is a good thing that an adversity happened is to lie to
yourself and to believe your lie. As you can see, this is unlikely to work in
the longer term and is, thus, not a good strategy.
Problems with neutral emotions as healthy
alternatives to the emotional problems
It is also not realistic to have a neutral feeling about an adversity. If you
want such a neutral response, you will have to convince yourself that it
1 Throughout this book, I will refer to events where you don't get what you want, or get
what you don't want, as `adversities'.
Emotional problems
3
does not matter to you that the adversity happened. However, that won't
work since it does matter to you that the adversity happened. Quite
properly, you would have preferred that the adversity did not happen. So
again the only way you are going to convince yourself that it doesn't matter
to you that the adversity happened is to lie to yourself and to ®nd your lie
convincing. This, again, is unlikely to work in the longer term and is, thus,
not a good strategy.
Problems with living in an emotional vacuum as a
healthy alternative to the emotional problems
If a positive or neutral emotional response to an adversity is ruled out as a
healthy alternative to an emotional problem, what is left? You could say that
when an adversity happens, you don't want to feel the emotional problem
that you felt.
Harry regularly experiences anxiety about going to see his tutor because he
thinks she is going to criticise his work. When asked what he wanted to feel
instead, Harry replied: `I don't want to be anxious about the possibility of my
tutor criticising my work'.
The problem with this approach is that we don't tend to live in an emotional vacuum when an adversity has happened or we think that it is likely to
happen. Thus, it matters to Harry that his tutor does not criticise him. We
experience emotions in areas of life that matter to us. Since it matters to
Harry that his tutor does not criticise him, he is going to experience an
emotion about this prospect. Don't forget that we are looking for a healthy
alternative to the emotional problem of anxiety in Harry's case, and to all
eight emotional problems in general.
Problems with reducing the intensity of emotional
problems as healthy alternatives to these emotional
problems
People often say when they are asked to nominate a healthy alternative to an
emotional problem that they want to feel a less intense version of the emotional problem. Applying this to our example, when asked what he wants to
feel instead of anxiety about seeing his tutor, Harry says that he wants to feel
less anxious. Now the problem with having a less intense version of an
4
Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
emotional problem as a healthy alternative for that emotion is that it is still
unhealthy, albeit less intense. If something is unhealthy, it would make
sense to want to have a less intense version of it only if this is the only
alternative available. Fortunately, it isn't!
Healthy negative emotions as healthy alternatives to
the emotional problems
Healthy alternatives to emotional problems are known as `healthy negative
emotions'. This term is used for two good reasons. First, such emotions
have a negative tone and this is their realistic aspect. Remember we are
talking about emotions in the context of life's adversities. It is realistic to
feel a negative emotion about a negative event. Second, such emotions are
healthy in that they are associated with a different set of behaviours and
ways of thinking than are emotional problems. I discuss this in greater
detail later in this chapter. For now, here is the list of healthy negative
emotions:2
concern (rather than anxiety)
sadness (rather than depression)
remorse (rather than guilt)
disappointment (rather than shame)
sorrow (rather than hurt)
healthy anger (rather than unhealthy anger)
healthy jealousy (rather than unhealthy jealousy)
healthy envy (rather than unhealthy envy).
As with emotional problems (or unhealthy negative emotions) we
do not have agreed terms for healthy negative emotions and once
again, therefore, it is better to use the terms with which your
clients resonate than to impose on them terms such as those above
that are used in the RECBT literature. When you have agreed a
term for a healthy negative emotion with a client, make a clear
note of it in the client's ®le. As we will see, this healthy negative
2 We do not have agreed terms for healthy negative emotions. Thus, it is important
that you use the terms that are meaningful to you if they are different from the terms in
this list.
Emotional problems
5
emotion will be your client's emotional goal in response to the
adversity that he or she is facing.
The idea that the only truly constructive emotional alternative
to an emotional problem about an adversity is a healthy negative
emotion will, in all probability, be a new and revolutionary idea
for your client and one that will require quite a bit of digesting
before your client accepts it. It is useful to suggest to those clients
who are grappling with this idea that, as a homework assignment,
they spend some time thinking about all the possible alternatives
to their emotional problem and that they write down the advantages and disadvantages of each alternative as they see them. You
can then review these with your client in an open and frank
manner. Do not hesitate to correct any misconceptions that your
client may demonstrate in the course of this review, but do so in an
accepting and respectful manner. If you cannot think of any
rebuttals to clients' misconceptions on this issue, discuss this
matter with your RECBT supervisor.
RATIONAL-EMOTIVE COGNITIVE BEHAVIOUR
THERAPY
This book is based on rational-emotive cognitive behaviour therapy. You
may have heard of cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) and it being described
as a therapeutic approach. However, in my view, CBT is not a therapeutic
approach, but a therapeutic tradition in which there are a number of distinctive approaches, of which rational emotive behaviour therapy (known as
REBT) is one. REBT was founded in 1955 by Dr Albert Ellis (1913±2007). The
term rational-emotive cognitive behaviour therapy (RECBT) ± which I will
use in this book to remind you of the book's legacy ± shows that RECBT is
placed within the CBT tradition and that its distinctive features are rooted
in REBT.
Some clients may ask you about the differences between REBT and
CBT since the term REBT is more prevalent on the internet and in
the professional and self-help literature than is the term RECBT.
They may well have heard of the term CBT, but not REBT or
RECBT. One way of dealing with this question is to build on what
appears above, but to say something about the distinctiveness of
RECBT. Thus, you might say something like:
6
Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
Well, RECBT is a speci®c approach within the general tradition
known as CBT, so it is dif®cult to compare a speci®c approach within
this tradition with the tradition itself. However, while most CBT
approaches would agree with Epictetus, the Greek Stoic philosopher,
who was reported to say `People are disturbed not by things, but by
their views of things', RECBT holds that `People are disturbed not by
things. Rather they disturb themselves by the rigid and extreme beliefs
that they hold about things.' Thus, in RECBT we place particular
emphasis on helping you to identify these beliefs and to change them
to their more constructive ¯exible and non-extreme belief equivalents.
This emphasis on rigid and extreme beliefs is explored further in
the Client's Guide, as you will presently see. Should a client want
to go further with this comparison, you might suggest that they
consult Dryden (2009a), which is a volume in the `CBT: Distinctive
Features' series that details the distinctive features of REBT ± and
to compare this with one of the other CBT approaches in the series,
such as Beck's Cognitive Therapy (Wills 2009).
The eight emotional problems are underpinned by
irrational beliefs
RECBT theory argues that each of the eight emotional problems stems
from two irrational beliefs: a rigid belief and three extreme beliefs that are
derived from the rigid belief. Thus, an irrational belief is characterised by
being rigid or being extreme. It has three other characteristics:
it is false
it is illogical
it has largely unconstructive consequences (e.g. in the face of an adversity it leads to
an emotional problem).
Let me consider rigid and extreme beliefs separately.
Rigid beliefs
Perhaps the most basic characteristic of human beings is that we have
desires. We want certain things to happen and other things not to happen,
but when we turn these desires into rigidities when we don't get what we
want, or get what we don't want, then we experience one or more of the
Emotional problems
7
emotional problems described in this book. Here are a few examples of
rigid beliefs:
I must do well on the forthcoming test.
You must respect my boundaries.
The world must not give me too much hassle.
As these examples show you can hold rigid beliefs about yourself, others
and life conditions.
Later on in the Client's Guide, I discuss ¯exible beliefs where the
client's desires are kept ¯exible and not transformed into rigid
beliefs. It may therefore be helpful to stress that rigid beliefs also
tend to be based on desires as well. You can do this by reformulating the above examples, thus:
I would like to do well on the forthcoming test and therefore I must do so.
I want you to respect my boundaries and therefore you have to do so.
I would prefer it if the world did not give me too much hassle and therefore it
must not do so.
The point to emphasise here is that a rigid belief is based on a
desire and an `and therefore' statement in which clients transform
their desire into a rigidity.
Three extreme beliefs
According to RECBT theory, rigid beliefs are paramount in explaining the
existence of the emotional problems and three extreme beliefs tend to be
derived from these rigid beliefs. These are
awfulising beliefs
discomfort intolerance beliefs
depreciation beliefs.
While the classic RECBT position is that rigid beliefs are primary,
and awfulising beliefs, discomfort intolerance beliefs and depreciation beliefs are secondary beliefs derived from these primary
rigid beliefs, it is best not to make this a stumbling block if your
clients do not accept it. As long as they work to change both their
8
Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
rigid belief and the one extreme belief that best accounts for their
disturbance, then the question of what is primary and what is
secondary can be put aside.
Awfulising beliefs
An awfulising belief stems from the rigid belief that things must not be as
bad as they are. An awfulising belief is extreme in the sense that you
believe at the time one or more of the following:
Nothing could be worse.
The event in question is worse than 100 per cent bad.
No good could possibly come from this bad event.
The above arguments are generic ones and you need to adapt them
to your clients' speci®c beliefs. While it may be good if your clients
accept all these arguments, this is not necessary. What is
important is that your clients ®nd the arguments that they can
accept persuasive. Bear this point in mind when you engage your
clients in questioning their beliefs later.
In the following examples of awfulising beliefs, the rigid beliefs are listed in
parentheses:
(I must do well on the forthcoming test) . . . and it would be awful if I don't.
(You must respect my boundaries) . . . and it's the end of the world when you don't.
(The world must not give me too much hassle) . . . and it's terrible when it does.
Please bear in mind that in RECBT we do not regard words such as
`awful' or `terrible' as inherently extreme and therefore bound up
with client disturbance. Thus, when people say `It's awful that it's
raining outside', they are probably not disturbing themselves
about the weather. It is only when these words are clearly extreme
that they are examples of awfulising beliefs and when the person is
in an emotionally disturbed frame of mind. Words have to be
considered along with the meaning and context in which they are
used. Explain this point to clients who may be confused about this
issue.
Emotional problems
9
Discomfort intolerance beliefs
A discomfort intolerance belief stems from a rigid belief that things must
not be as frustrating or uncomfortable as they are. A discomfort intolerance belief is extreme in the sense that you believe at the time one or more
of the following:
I will die or disintegrate if the frustration or discomfort continues to exist.
I will lose the capacity to experience happiness if the frustration or discomfort
continues to exist.
In the following examples of discomfort intolerance beliefs, the rigid beliefs
are listed in parentheses:
(I must do well on the forthcoming test) . . . and I could not bear it if I don't.
(You must respect my boundaries) . . . and it's intolerable if you don't.
(The world must not give me too much hassle) . . . and I can't stand it if it does.
Again, terms like `I can't bear it' and `It's intolerable' may not
re¯ect the presence of extreme, irrational beliefs. Bear in mind
that there is a difference between words and their meaning and
the context in which they are used. When someone says `It's
intolerable that there are no taxis when it is raining' and is angry,
but not unhealthily so, then the term `It's intolerable' is probably
not an example of an irrational belief. However, the same words in
this example can point to the existence of an extreme irrational
belief if a person is furious and in danger of in¯icting damage on
taxi drivers when he encounters one when unhealthily angry. If
your clients appear to confuse language and meaning here, you
can use such arguments to help dispel their confusion.
Depreciation beliefs
A depreciation belief stems from the rigid belief that you, others or things
must be as you want them to be and is extreme in the sense that you believe
at the time one or more of the following:
A person (self or other) can legitimately be given a single global rating that de®nes
their essence and the worth of a person is dependent upon conditions that change
(e.g. my worth goes up when I do well and goes down when I don't do well).
10
Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
The world can legitimately be given a single rating that de®nes its essential nature
and that the value of the world varies according to what happens within it (e.g. the
value of the world goes up when something fair occurs and goes down when
something unfair happens).
A person can be rated on the basis of one of his or her aspects and the world can be
rated on the basis of one of its aspects.
In the following examples of depreciation beliefs, the rigid beliefs are listed
in parentheses:
(I must do well on the forthcoming test) . . . and I am a failure if I don't.
(You must respect my boundaries) . . . and you are bad if you don't.
(The world must not give me too much hassle) . . . and if it does, the world is a
rotten place.
Once again bear in mind the difference between words and their
meanings and the contexts in which they are used. When some
people say `I'm bad', they are not necessarily depreciating themselves, as in Mae West's famous quote: `When I'm good, I'm very
good. When I'm bad, I'm better'. However, if a person is consumed
with guilt and says `I'm bad', he probably is depreciating himself.
The healthy alternatives to the eight emotional
problems are underpinned by rational beliefs
RECBT theory argues that each of the eight healthy alternatives to the
emotional problems stems from two rational beliefs: a ¯exible belief and
three non-extreme beliefs that are derived from the ¯exible belief. Thus, a
rational belief is characterised by being ¯exible or being non-extreme. It
has three other characteristics:
it is true
it is logical
it has largely constructive consequences (e.g. in the face of an adversity it leads to a
healthy negative emotion).
Let me consider ¯exible and non-extreme beliefs separately.
Emotional problems
11
Flexible beliefs
As I pointed out earlier in this chapter, it is a basic characteristic of human
beings that we have desires. We want certain things to happen and other
things not to happen. When we keep these desires ¯exible and when we
don't get what we want, or get what we don't want, we experience one or
more of the healthy negative emotions outlined earlier. Here are a few
examples of ¯exible beliefs:
I would like to do well on the forthcoming test, but I don't have to do so.
I want you to respect my boundaries, but unfortunately you don't have to do so.
I would prefer it if the world did not give me too much hassle, but the world does not
have to be the way I want it to be.
As these examples show, you can hold ¯exible beliefs about yourself,
others and life conditions. You will note from these examples that ¯exible
beliefs have two components:
an `asserted preference' component (e.g. `I would like to do well on the forthcoming
test . . .')
a `negated rigid' component (e.g. `. . . but I don't have to do so').
It is important that you encourage your clients to use both parts of
a ¯exible belief until they truly grasp that they don't have to have
their desires met. When they fully understand this, then when they
say `I want to be loved', for example, you will both know that this
means `I want to be loved, but I don't have to be loved'. Until that
point, encourage your clients to use the full version of their ¯exible
belief, with both components (i.e. the `asserted preference' component and the `negated rigid' component) stated.
Three non-extreme beliefs
According to RECBT theory, ¯exible beliefs are paramount in explaining
the existence of healthy negative emotions and three non-extreme beliefs
tend to be derived from these ¯exible beliefs. These are
non-awfulising beliefs
discomfort tolerance beliefs
acceptance beliefs.
12
Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
Non-awfulising beliefs
A non-awfulising belief stems from the ¯exible belief that you would like
things not to be as bad as they are, but that doesn't mean that they must
not be as bad. This belief is non-extreme in the sense that you believe at the
time one or more of the following:
Things could always be worse.
The event in question is less than 100 per cent bad.
Good could come from this bad event.
In the following examples of non-awfulising beliefs, the ¯exible beliefs are
listed in parentheses:
(I would like to do well on the forthcoming test, but I don't have to do so) . . . and if I
don't do well, it would be bad, but not awful.
(I want you to respect my boundaries, but unfortunately you don't have to do so) . . .
It's disadvantageous to me if you don't, but not the end of the world.
(I would prefer it if the world did not give me too much hassle, but the world does not
have to be the way I want it to be) . . . It's bad when it's not, but not terrible.
You will note from these examples that non-awfulising beliefs have two
components:
an `asserted badness' component (e.g. `If I don't do well on the forthcoming test, it
would be bad . . .')
a `negated awfulising' component (e.g . . . `but it wouldn't be awful').
Ensure that your clients use both components of a non-awfulising
belief until you are both sure that by saying `It's bad that x happened', they truly believe that it is also not terrible that x happened.
Then, your clients can use the asserted badness component on its
own to indicate a non-awfulising belief.
Discomfort tolerance beliefs
A discomfort tolerance belief stems from the ¯exible belief that it is
undesirable when things are as frustrating or uncomfortable as they are,
but unfortunately things don't have to be different. A discomfort tolerance
Emotional problems
13
belief is non-extreme in the sense that you believe at the time one or more
of the following:
I will struggle if the frustration or discomfort continues to exist, but I will neither die
nor disintegrate.
I will not lose the capacity to experience happiness if the frustration or discomfort
continues to exist, although this capacity will be temporarily diminished.
The frustration or discomfort is worth tolerating.
In the following examples of discomfort tolerance beliefs, the ¯exible
beliefs are listed in parentheses:
(I would like to do well on the forthcoming test, but I don't have to do so) . . . It will be
a struggle for me if I don't do well, but I could bear it and it would be worth bearing.
(I want you to respect my boundaries, but unfortunately you don't have to do so) . . .
It's hard for me to bear it if you don't respect my boundaries, but I can tolerate it and
it is in my interests to do so.
(I would prefer it if the world did not give me too much hassle, but the world does not
have to be the way I want it to be) . . . When the world is not the way I want, it is
dif®cult me to tolerate it, but I can stand it and it's worthwhile for me to do so.
You will note from these examples that discomfort tolerance beliefs have
three components:
an asserted struggle component (e.g. `It will be a struggle for me if I don't do well on
the forthcoming test . . .')
a negated unbearability component (e.g. `. . . but I could bear it . . .')
a worth it component (e.g. `. . . and it would be worth bearing').
Ensure that your clients use the ®rst two components of a discomfort tolerance belief until you are both sure that by using the
®rst component (i.e. the struggle component) they understand that
it indicates a discomfort tolerance belief. The third component of
this non-extreme, rational belief stresses its pragmatic value and
as such it is a good idea to encourage your clients to use it since it
provides a reason to tolerate discomfort.
Unconditional acceptance beliefs
An unconditional acceptance belief stems from a ¯exible belief that it is
preferable, but not necessary, that you, others or things are the way you
14
Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
want them to be and is non-extreme in the sense that you believe at the time
one or more of the following:
A person cannot legitimately be given a single global rating that de®nes their
essence, and their worth, as far as they have it, is not dependent upon conditions that
change (e.g. my worth stays the same whether or not I do well).
The world cannot legitimately be given a single rating that de®nes its essential nature
and that the value of the world does not vary according to what happens within it
(e.g. the value of the world stays the same whether fairness exists at any given time
or not).
It makes sense to rate discrete aspects of a person and of the world, but it does not
make sense to rate a person or the world on the basis of these discrete aspects.
In the following examples of unconditional acceptance beliefs, the ¯exible
beliefs are listed in parentheses:
(I would like to do well on the forthcoming test, but I don't have to do so) . . . If I don't
do well, it's bad, but I am not a failure. I am an unrateable, fallible human being
capable of doing well and doing poorly on tests.
(I want you to respect my boundaries, but unfortunately you don't have to do so) . . .
If you don't, you are not a bad person; rather you are an ordinary human being
capable of doing good, bad and neutral things.
(I would prefer it if the world did not give me too much hassle, but the world does not
have to be the way I want it to be) . . . When the world does give me more hassle than
I want, it is not a rotten place; rather it is a complex mixture of good, bad and neutral
aspects.
You will note from these examples that unconditional acceptance beliefs
have three components:
an aspect evaluation component (e.g. `If I don't do well, it's bad . . .')
a negated depreciation component (e.g. `. . . but I am not a failure')
an asserted acceptance component (e.g. `. . . I am an unrateable, fallible human being
capable of doing well and doing poorly on tests').
It is useful to encourage your clients to understand that the ®rst
two components (the aspect evaluation component and the
negated depreciation component) are insuf®cient for an unconditional acceptance belief to be held, since clients can hold the ®rst
two components (e.g. `If I don't do well, it's bad, but I am not a
failure'), and still depreciate themselves (e.g. `. . . but I would be
worthier if I succeed than if I fail'). Thus, the really important
Emotional problems
15
ingredient of an unconditional acceptance belief is the asserted
acceptance component and the unconditionality of this component (e.g. `I am an unrateable, fallible human being capable of
doing well and doing poorly on tests and this is the case whether I
succeed or fail'). Help your clients grasp this point and they will
understand the core of unconditional acceptance beliefs.
INFERENCE THEMES IN RELATION TO YOUR
PERSONAL DOMAIN
While emotional problems and healthy negative emotions can be differentiated in general by the beliefs that underpin them (irrational in the ®rst
case, rational in the second), in order to distinguish between particular
emotional problems and their speci®c healthy alternatives, we need to
understand a concept known as inference themes, because these relate to
an individual's personal domain. Let me discuss the concept of `personal
domain' ®rst.
Personal domain
The concept known as the `personal domain' ®rst appeared in the psychological literature in 1976 in an excellent book entitled Cognitive Therapy and
the Emotional Disorders by Dr Aaron T. Beck, one of the grandfathers of
cognitive behaviour therapy. Your personal domain has three features:
Your personal domain contains people, objects and ideas in which you have an
involvement.
Your personal domain is like an onion in that these people, objects and ideas can
occupy a central, intermediate and peripheral place within it.
There are two basic areas within your personal domain ± an ego area and a comfort
area. As you will see, six of the eight emotional problems that I discuss in this book
can be related to one or both areas, while two of them (i.e. shame and guilt) appear to
be related only to the ego area.
Inference
An inference is an interpretation that you make about a situation that goes
beyond the data at hand and one that has personal meaning to you. An
16
Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
inference may be accurate or inaccurate and needs to tested against the
available evidence. Often you do not know for certain if an inference that
you have made is accurate or inaccurate and therefore the best you can do
is to make the `best bet' given the data at hand. The accuracy of an
inference often becomes clear after you have made it. This is particularly
the case when you make an inference about a future event. Let me illustrate
these points.
You will recall that Harry, to whom I referred earlier in this chapter, was
anxious about going to see his tutor. If someone asked him what he was anxious
about, he would reply `I am anxious about being criticised by my tutor'. The
statement `being criticised by my tutor' is an inference in that (a) it goes beyond
the data at hand; (b) it has personal meaning for Harry; (c) it may be accurate or
inaccurate. Whether it is the `best bet' in the circumstances depends on how
critical Harry's tutor is in general.
Inference theme
When Harry made his inference about his tutor's criticism, we know that he
felt anxious. When people feel anxious they tend to do so because they
infer some kind of threat to their personal domain. Therefore, we can
assume that Harry's inference about his tutor's criticism was threat based.
However, we also know that when people feel concerned (which is the
healthy alternative to anxiety), they also tend to do so because they infer
some kind of threat to their personal domain. We can conclude from this
that when you make an inference with a threat theme, you will feel either
anxious or concerned, but without knowing anything more, the inference on
its own will not help you know whether your emotion is anxiety or concern.
As you will see in the following chapters, when you experience one of the
following pairs of emotions, each emotion pairing is related to a speci®c
theme or themes concerned with your personal domain: anxiety vs. concern; depression vs. sadness; guilt vs. remorse; shame vs. disappointment;
hurt vs. sorrow; unhealthy anger vs. healthy anger; unhealthy jealousy vs.
healthy jealousy, and unhealthy envy vs. healthy envy. I will discuss and
illustrate these themes in the relevant chapters.
It is useful to remind your clients at this point that an inference
does not create feelings. Rather, your clients have an emotion
(either an unhealthy negative emotion or a healthy negative emotion) about this inference (in this case an adversity) and the
healthiness of the negative emotion is not determined by the
Emotional problems
17
adversity. The adversity is the same whether the client's negative
emotion is healthy or unhealthy. What differentiates between
unhealthy negative emotions (UNEs) and healthy negative
emotions (HNEs) are the beliefs that your clients hold about the
inferences (i.e. adversities) that they make ± rigid and extreme (i.e.
irrational) when they are disturbed (i.e. they have UNEs) and
¯exible and non-extreme when they experience HNEs.
DISTINGUISHING EMOTIONAL PROBLEMS
FROM THEIR HEALTHY ALTERNATIVES
In this section, I discuss in general how you can reliably distinguish emotional problems from their healthy alternatives. In the chapters that follow I
discuss in detail how to distinguish the emotional problem in question with
its speci®c healthy alternative.
Inference themes and beliefs
We know from the above that inference themes show you which of the eight
emotional pairings you are experiencing (e.g. when your inference theme is
threat, you experience either anxiety or concern), but on their own they do
not help you to distinguish which emotion you are experiencing within the
pairing (i.e. you cannot tell by the inference theme of threat alone whether
your emotion is anxiety or concern).
We also know that when you hold an irrational belief about an adversity
(but we do not know the inference theme of that adversity), your emotion
will be unhealthy, but we don't know which of the eight emotional problems
you experience. Conversely, we know that when you hold a rational belief
about an adversity (again we do not know the inference theme of that
adversity), your emotion will be a healthy negative one, but again we don't
know which of the eight healthy negative emotions you experience.
However, when we combine these two bits of information, we are in a
better position to distinguish speci®c emotional problems from their
healthy alternatives. For example, if we know that the theme of your adversity is threat and you hold an irrational belief about that threat, we are well
placed to conclude that you are experiencing anxiety. Similarly, if we know
that the theme of your adversity is threat and you hold a rational belief
about that threat, we are well placed to conclude that you are experiencing
concern. Putting this more succinctly:
18
Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
Inference theme
Rationality of belief
Emotion
Threat
Irrational
Anxiety
Threat
Rational
Concern
If your clients already know something about RE(C)BT and are
wondering how this ®ts with the `ABC' model, help them to see that
inferences (and inference themes) occur at `A' in the model, beliefs
at `B' and emotions at `C'.
Associated behaviour
So far, I have mentioned one way of distinguishing between an emotional
problem and its healthy negative emotion alternative is to take the theme of
what the person has feelings about with respect to the adversity that they
are facing and the belief that the person holds that accounts for the
emotion. You have learned the following:
Adversity inference theme + irrational belief = emotional problem
Adversity inference theme + rational belief = unhealthy negative emotion
Now when you hold a belief about an adversity, you don't just experience an
emotion, you also experience a tendency to act in a certain way (known as
an action tendency) which you may or may not convert into overt behaviour.
Thus, another way to tell if what you feel in a speci®c situation is an
emotional problem or a healthy negative emotion is to examine how you
acted or, if you did not take action, to examine your action tendency. Let me
illustrate this when a person is trying to ®gure out whether the anger that
they felt was negative and unhealthy, or negative but healthy.
Geraldine was angry with her boss when he did not recommend her for
promotion, an advancement which she considered that she thoroughly deserved.
Geraldine considered that her boss had acted in a very unfair manner towards
her. Geraldine was unsure whether her anger was negative and unhealthy, or
negative but healthy, so she considered how she acted in the situation. This did
not help her because she did not take any action when she discovered the news,
nor subsequently. Finally, she considered what she felt like doing, but did not do.
Geraldine's action tendency was to scream abuse at her boss and to get revenge
against him by getting him into trouble with his own boss. Such action
tendencies were clearly hostile in nature and showed Geraldine that her anger
was an emotional problem.
Emotional problems
19
When you hold an irrational belief about an adversity, your behaviour (or
action tendencies) will tend to be dysfunctional and will prevent you from
dealing with the adversity in a constructive manner. Whereas, when you
hold a rational belief about an adversity, your behaviour (or action tendencies) will tend to be functional and will help you to deal with the adversity in
a constructive manner.
In the `ABC' model of RECBT, behaviours occur at `C' and are
known as behavioural consequences of beliefs. Dysfunctional
behaviours are consequences of irrational beliefs and functional
behaviours are consequences of rational beliefs.
Associated thinking
The ®nal way of determining whether you are experiencing an emotional
problem or a healthy negative emotion about an adversity is to inspect
the thinking that is associated with the emotion. This is different from the
inference that you made about the situation that constituted your adversity.
Such thinking has not yet been processed by your beliefs. The thinking that
I am referring to here is the thinking that is associated with your emotion.
This is the thinking that has been produced when your adversity has been
processed by your beliefs. When your adversity has been processed by
irrational beliefs, the thinking that results is very likely to be highly distorted
and skewed to the negative in content and ruminative in nature. However,
when this adversity has been processed by rational beliefs, the thinking that
results is very likely to be realistic and balanced in content and nonruminative in nature. David Burns, a leading cognitive therapist, ®rst
outlined in his book Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy (Burns 1980) a
list of thinking errors ± which are by nature highly distorted and skewed to
the negative ± that people make when they have processed adversities with
irrational beliefs. I outline and illustrate some of these thinking errors and
their realistic and balanced alternatives in Appendix 1. You should consult
this list if you are unsure whether the thinking you engage in when you are
experiencing an emotion is realistic and balanced or highly distorted and
skewed to the negative.
Let me illustrate all this with reference to another person who is trying to
®gure out whether the anger that she felt was negative and unhealthy or
negative, but healthy.
20
Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
Francine (a co-worker of Geraldine) was also angry with her boss when he did
not recommend her for promotion, an advancement which she considered that
she thoroughly deserved. Francine considered that her boss had acted in a very
unfair manner towards her. Francine was unsure whether her anger was negative
and unhealthy, or negative but healthy, so she considered how she thought in the
situation. She thought about asserting herself with her boss after planning what
to say. After she had done this she made an appointment to see her boss and in
the days that followed until the meeting, she thought about the issue in passing,
but did not ruminate on the issue. Given that Francine's thinking that went along
with her anger was realistic and balanced and non-ruminative in nature, she
considered that her anger was a healthy negative emotion and not an emotional
problem.
In the `ABC' model of RECBT, thinking can occur:
At `A' where it occurs as inferences that your client focuses on. These may be
accurate or distorted. If the latter, they are less distorted than the thinking
that occurs at `C', when it stems from irrational beliefs.
At `B' where your client processes these inferences with either irrational (i.e.
rigid and extreme) beliefs or rational (i.e. ¯exible and non-extreme) beliefs.
At `C' where it is considered as thinking consequences of irrational beliefs and
is also inferential in nature. Skewed and highly distorted ruminative thoughts
are the thinking consequences of irrational beliefs, whereas realistic and
balanced non-ruminative thoughts are the thinking consequences of rational
beliefs.
This shows that thinking occurs throughout the `ABC' model. If
your clients are confused about the ubiquitous nature of thinking,
you can use the above information with an appropriate example
to clarify it for them.
Let me summarise the points that I have made in this section and the
previous one on behaviour and add it to the material that I presented on p. 15
Adversity inference theme + irrational belief = emotional problem
Unconstructive behaviour and
action tendencies
Highly distorted thinking that
is skewed to the negative and
ruminative in nature
Emotional problems
21
Adversity inference theme + rational belief = healthy negative emotion
Constructive behaviour and
action tendencies
Realistic and balanced thinking
that is non-ruminative in
nature
In the chapters that follow, I employ a similar structure. First, I outline the
major factors that need to be considered when understanding the emotional problem under focus. Second, I show you what steps you need to
take in order to change each emotional problem to an appropriate healthy
negative emotion. Finally, I discuss what you need to do make yourself less
prone to whatever emotional problems you are particularly susceptible to.
Throughout each chapter, I illustrate the major points whenever relevant.
2
Dealing with anxiety
In this chapter, I begin by presenting RECBT's way of understanding
anxiety and then address how to deal with this very common emotional
problem.
UNDERSTANDING ANXIETY
In understanding anxiety, we need to know what we tend to make ourselves
anxious about (i.e. its major inference theme), what beliefs we hold, how we
act or tend to act, and how we think when we are anxious.
A major point for practitioners who use this guide with clients to
consider concerns language and I return to this theme a number of
times in this Practitioner's Guide. Basically, it is my contention
that the working alliance between clients and RECBT therapists is
strengthened when they both use language that is most meaningful to clients rather than language that is typically used to
describe concepts in RECBT theory and practice (Dryden 2009a). If
you are a novice RECBT therapist, you are especially prone to use
`RECBT' language rather than language with which the client
resonates (see Dryden 2009b) and you should pay particular attention to this issue when you work with your clients who are using
the Client's Guide. In addition, discuss this issue when listening to
digital voice recordings of your therapy sessions with your
supervisor.
With respect to the term `anxiety', you need to be aware that not
all clients with an `anxiety' problem resonate with the term
`anxiety'. They may identify more closely with synonyms such as
`fear', `being scared', `feeling insecure' or `feeling threatened'. If so,
your task is to satisfy yourself and your client that these terms
represent the unhealthy negative emotion known in RECBT as
anxiety. Once you have done so, use the client's language and write
this down in your client's notes.
Dealing with anxiety
23
Major inference themes in anxiety
When you are anxious, you are facing or think you are facing a threat to
some aspect of your personal domain (see p. 15). There are different forms
of anxiety which I list in Table 1 together with the typical threats that feature
in them.
Some clients may not resonate with the term `threat' concerning
the theme about which they are anxious. If this is the case, you
may suggest `danger' or `risk' as possible synonyms. The important
thing here, as mentioned above, is that you and your clients use the
term that makes most sense to them and not the term that is used
most often in the `RECBT' literature.
Irrational beliefs
As I explained in Chapter 1, according to RECBT, an inference of threat that
you make does not account for your emotional problem of anxiety. It is
possible for you to make the same inference and be healthily concerned, but
Table 1 Different types of anxiety and their major inference themes
Type of anxiety
Typical threats
Social anxiety
Acting poorly in a social setting (e.g. revealing that you
are anxious; saying something stupid; not knowing what
to say)
Being judged negatively by people
Health anxiety
Being uncertain that a symptom that you have is not
malignant
Generalised anxiety
A general sense that you do not know that you are safe
A general sense that something may happen which will
result in you losing self-control in some way
Thinking that you become anxious
Public speaking
anxiety
Performing poorly while the focus of the audience is on
you (e.g. going blank; revealing that you are anxious)
Being judged negatively by people
Test anxiety
Doing poorly on the test
Going blank
Panic
Not knowing that you will regain self-control immediately
in a situation where you have begun to lose it
24
Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
not anxious. In order for you to feel anxious when you infer the presence of
threat to your personal domain, you have to hold an irrational belief. When
you think irrationally you hold a rigid belief and one or more extreme beliefs.
While the rigid belief is at the core of anxiety, the extreme beliefs that are
derived from the rigid belief often distinguish between whether you are
experiencing ego anxiety (where you depreciate yourself ) and non-ego
anxiety (where you `awfulise' or ®nd the adversity intolerable). You may, of
course, experience both ego anxiety and non-ego anxiety in a given situation.
If your clients are unsure about the mediating role that irrational
beliefs play in their anxiety, ask them how they would feel if they
really believed the rational alternatives to what RECBT holds are
their anxiety creating irrational beliefs. In using this strategy, it is
important that you formulate the rational beliefs for your clients
who cannot be expected to do this for themselves at this stage.
When you do this, ensure that you match your clients' rigid belief
with a ¯exible alternative and their main extreme belief with a
non-extreme alternative, and then ask them how they would feel if
they had strong conviction in this rational belief.
For example: `If you really believed that you wanted to pass the
test, but did not have to do so and that if you failed it, that would
be bad, but it would prove that you were fallible and not a failure,
how would you feel about the prospect of failing the test?'
Once your clients can see that they would feel differently, go back
and help them relate their irrational beliefs to anxiety and their
rational beliefs to concern.
This is quite an elegant strategy since it accomplishes a number
of things at once:
1. It addresses your clients' doubts about the mediating role of irrational beliefs
in anxiety if they have such concern.
2. It introduces rational beliefs as a meaningful alternative to these irrational
beliefs.
3. It helps your clients to see that holding rational beliefs can have bene®cial
effects.
Behaviour associated with anxiety
When you hold an irrational belief about a threat to your personal domain,
you feel anxious and you will act or tend to act in a number of ways, the
most common of which are as follows:
Dealing with anxiety
25
You avoid the threat.
You withdraw physically from the threat.
You ward off the threat (e.g. by rituals or superstitious behaviour).
You try to neutralise the threat (e.g. by being nice to people of whom you are afraid).
You distract yourself from the threat by engaging in other activity.
You keep checking on the current status of the threat hoping to ®nd that it has
disappeared or become benign.
You seek reassurance from others that the threat is benign.
You seek support from others so that if the threat happens they will handle it or be
there to rescue you.
You overprepare in order to minimise the threat happening or so that you are
prepared to meet it (NB it is the overpreparation that is the problem here).
You tranquillise your feelings so that you don't think about the threat.
You overcompensate for feeling vulnerable by seeking out an even greater threat to
prove to yourself that you can cope.
You will see from the above list that the main purpose of most of these
behaviours (and action tendencies) is to keep you safe from the threat.
However, such safety-seeking behaviour is largely responsible for the
maintenance of anxiety since it prevents you either from facing up to the
situation in which you think that the threat exists and dealing with the threat
if it does exist, or from seeing that your inference of threat is inaccurate.
Overcompensation is particularly worthy of comment. Some people are
intolerant of the feeling of vulnerability or non-coping that they experience
when they are anxious. They seek safety from the threat of non-coping by
proving to themselves in actuality that they can cope with a greater threat.
This is like a competition high jumper electing to jump a much greater
height than the one at which she has twice failed. This is still a safetyseeking measure because the person seeks safety from the smaller threat
by proving to herself that she can cope with the bigger threat.
Encouraging your clients to surrender their safety-seeking behaviour is a very important part of helping them to deal with their
anxiety effectively. Consequently, you need to enquire speci®cally if
they have any doubts, reservations or objections to doing so. When
they express such doubts, it is important that you strive to understand their sources and deal with them effectively. If you fail to do
this, their continued use of these safety-seeking measures will
26
Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
undermine the development and maintenance of their healthy
rational beliefs about threat.
You will ®nd that most clients' doubts about surrendering the
use of safety-seeking behaviours centre on their need to feel
immediately safe from threat. When some clients understand this
dynamic, they see what they need to do and this understanding is
suf®cient for them to commit themselves to the idea of tolerating
the discomfort of feeling anxious while they learn to deal with the
threat without using safety-seeking behaviours. Other clients are
much more reluctant to surrender the use of safety-seeking behaviours, and with these clients you will need to target for change the
irrational belief that underpins their reluctance (e.g. `I must feel
safe at all times and I can't bear it when I don't'). Once these
clients have begun to develop and strengthen the rational alternative to this irrational belief, they begin to become more open to
facing threat without using safety-seeking behaviour.
Thinking associated with anxiety
When you hold an irrational belief about a threat to your personal domain,
you will feel anxious and think in a number of ways. Remember what I said
in Chapter 1: the thinking that accompanies your anxiety is the result of
your threat being processed by your irrational belief and therefore it is likely
to contain a number of thinking errors that I present in Appendix 1. There
are two types of post-irrational belief thinking which are important for you
to understand:
threat-exaggerating thinking
safety-seeking thinking.
It is important to note that in both types of post-irrational belief thinking,
such thinking may be in words or in mental images.
Threat-exaggerating thinking
In the ®rst type of post-irrational belief thinking that is associated with
anxiety ± which I have called threat-exaggerating thinking ± you elaborate
and magnify the threat and its consequences in your mind as shown below:
Dealing with anxiety
27
You overestimate the probability of the threat occurring.
You underestimate your ability to cope with the threat.
You ruminate about the threat.
You create an even more negative threat in your mind.
You magnify the negative consequences of the threat and minimise its positive
consequences.
You have more task-irrelevant thoughts than in concern.
Safety-seeking thinking
The second type of post-irrational belief thinking that is associated with
anxiety is the thinking version of behaviour that is designed to keep you
safe in the moment. I call this form of thinking safety-seeking thinking. Here
are some common examples:
You withdraw mentally from the threat.
You try to persuade yourself that the threat is not imminent and that you are
`imagining' it.
You think in ways designed to reassure yourself that the threat is benign, or if not,
that its consequences will be insigni®cant.
You distract yourself from the threat, e.g. by focusing on mental scenes of safety and
well-being.
You overprepare mentally in order to minimise the threat happening or so that you
are prepared to meet it (NB once again it is the overpreparation that is the problem
here).
You picture yourself dealing with the threat in a masterful way.
You overcompensate for your feeling of vulnerability by picturing yourself dealing
effectively with an even bigger threat.
In the ®nal two forms of thinking, the person is seeking safety from the
threat of non-coping by mentally creating images of masterful coping.
One important point to note about these two forms of post-irrational
thinking is that they are quite different: in one you elaborate and magnify
the threat and in the other you are thinking of ways to protect yourself
against the threat. You can, and people often do, switch rapidly between
these different forms of thinking. The more your safety-seeking thinking
fails, the more you will mentally elaborate and magnify the threat, and the
more you do the latter, the more you will try to search mentally for safety.
28
Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
The following points are relevant to safety-seeking thinking. I will
consider threat-exaggerating thinking directly after. The points
that I made about safety-seeking behaviour are also relevant to
safety-seeking thinking. It is important for clients to understand
that such thinking is designed to keep them safe in the immediate
situation, but in doing so they do not get the experience that they
need of facing and dealing with their threat while holding
rational beliefs. However, while they can readily understand the
concept of not acting in ways that are designed to seek immediate
safety from threat, they are usually more confused concerning
what to do with safety-seeking thinking when such thoughts come
into their mind. I recommend using the following strategy:
Encourage your clients to acknowledge the existence of the thought without
trying to suppress it or to distract themselves from it. Explain that if they try
to suppress the thought, they may unwittingly make it more likely to come into
their mind and if they distract themselves from it, they are not dealing with it.
Encourage your clients not to engage with the thought. For example, if your
clients are anxious about other people doing better on an exam than them, they
may try to neutralise this by thinking: `I'm sure I will do as well as most of the
others'. If they engage with this thought, they will feel reassured. If they do not
engage with the thought, they won't feel reassured, but will have the opportunity of either rehearsing their rational belief about the threat brie¯y or
getting on with whatever they would be doing if they did not have the thought
(e.g. revising for the exam) even though they feel anxious or uncomfortable in
the moment.
If a client is unclear about what non-engagement with a thought
involves, you may need to use an analogy such as the one below,
which I present as if I am talking directly to a client.
How not to engage with a thought: an analogy
You may well ®nd it dif®cult to grasp the idea of having a thought
without engaging with it, so here is an analogy that you may ®nd
helpful. Imagine that you are walking down a high street and a
charity worker approaches you and tries to engage you in a conversation about a local charity. You know that the charity worker
wants you to sign a direct debit form whereby you pay a regular
sum every month to the charity. Now, let's suppose that you neither
want to give to the charity nor want to talk to the person. What is
the best way of stopping the person from talking to you without
Dealing with anxiety
29
being overtly rude to him? My view is that the best way to do this is
not to respond to the person. As you continue down the road, the
charity worker walks beside you and you are aware of what he is
saying but you say nothing in return. You give the person no eye
contact nor show him any recognition that he is there. If you take
this tack, after a short while the person will stop pursuing you.
This is the approach you need to take with your safety-seeking
thoughts. Acknowledge that they are present, continue with what
you are doing while not engaging with the thoughts and without
trying to get rid of them.
The following points are relevant to helping your clients deal
with threat-exaggerating thinking if they raise questions about
how to deal with this form of cognitive consequences of irrational
beliefs:
Encourage your clients to recognise the existence of such thoughts and discourage them from trying to suppress them or to distract themselves from them.
Help them to understand that these thoughts are the products of still active
irrational beliefs and are not plausible predictions about what is about to
happen, no matter what feelings accompany such thoughts.
Encourage them either to brie¯y rehearse their rational beliefs about the
threat and/or get on with whatever they would be doing if they did not have the
thought.
HOW TO DEAL WITH ANXIETY
If you are prone to anxiety, you tend to experience this emotional problem
in a variety of different settings and in response to a variety of threats. Here
is how to deal with anxiety so that you become less prone to it.
Step 1: Identify reasons why anxiety is a problem for
you and why you want to change
While anxiety is generally regarded as an emotional problem, it is useful for
you to spell out reasons why anxiety is a problem for you and why you want
to change. I suggest that you keep a written list of these reasons and refer
to it as needed as a reminder of why you are engaged in a self-help
programme. I discuss the healthy alternative to anxiety in Step 4.
30
Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
If your clients are still undecided whether or not anxiety is a
problem for them and/or whether or not they want to change, you
will need to carry out a more thorough assessment of the possible
factors involved. This is known as a cost-bene®t analysis where you
encourage your clients to detail the perceived short-term and
longer-term advantages and disadvantages of their anxiety and of
their concern (the healthy alternative to anxiety). Respond to any
perceived advantages of anxiety and perceived disadvantages of
concern, correcting any misconceptions that your clients reveal on
these issues.
Let me start with the issue of a client who is unsure if anxiety is a
problem for her. It is useful to start by asking her to spell out ways
in which anxiety is a problem for her and ways in which anxiety is
not a problem for her. In the latter case, you may well discover
that your client thinks that anxiety can be helpful to her in certain
ways (e.g. that it motivates her or that it helps her to spot the
presence of certain threats). If so, the client understands that
concern (to which the client will be introduced presently as the
healthy emotional alternative to anxiety) will do the job that the
client thinks anxiety does for her but without the detrimental
`side-effects' of anxiety. For example, I often say to clients that
anxiety is motivating in the same way that a headless chicken is
motivated to ®nd its head (i.e. with frenzied activity, but without
focus). Concern, on the other hand, motivates a client, but in a
focused manner and without the frenzy. In addition, you can help
your client to consider what for her are the positives and negatives
of concern. For example, some people say that concern is too weak
to be a plausible alternative to anxiety. In which case you need to
show the person that concern can vary in intensity and if she is
very anxious, she can be very concerned, but unanxious.
Now, what if your client acknowledges that anxiety is a problem,
but is ambivalent about targeting it for change? The main strategy
is to understand her ambivalence. It may be that she does not see a
clear alternative to anxiety, in which case you need to teach her
what RECBT has to say about concern as a healthy alternative to
anxiety. It also may be that anxiety has positive features for the
client, at least from her frame of reference. In which case, you can
respond as suggested above.
Time spent on helping your clients to be clear and unambivalent
about anxiety being a problem for them so that they can fully
commit themselves to the process of RECBT is time well spent.
Dealing with anxiety
31
Step 2: Take responsibility for your anxiety
In RECBT, we argue that people or things do not make you anxious; rather
you create these feelings by the rigid and extreme beliefs that you hold about
such people and things. You may object that this involves you blaming
yourself for creating your anxious feelings, but this objection is based on a
misconception. It assumes that taking responsibility for creating your
anxiety is synonymous with self-blame. In truth, responsibility means that
you take ownership for the irrational beliefs that underpin your anxiety while
accepting yourself for doing so. Blame, on the other hand, means that you
regard yourself as worthless for creating your anxiety.
The idea that emotional problems (including anxiety) are based
largely on the way that a person thinks about what happens to
them may be a familiar one in the professional ®eld of counselling
and psychotherapy, but it is still an eye-opener to many clients.
Thus, your clients may hold that the reason they are anxious, for
example, is that the person they are anxious about is truly scary or
that driving tests or going to the dentist are inherently frightening.
This type of thinking is known in RECBT circles as `A-C' thinking
(where events are deemed to cause feelings). By contrast, the
RECBT model stresses the `ABC' model, where the impact of events
on a person is mediated by the beliefs that they hold about these
events. The `ABC' model holds that the person needs to take
responsibility for creating their feelings of anxiety by holding a set
of irrational beliefs.
If your clients have dif®culty accepting responsibility for their
anxious feelings, it is important for you to identify and deal with
the source of this dif®culty. In the Client's Guide, I mention one
common obstacle that stops clients from accepting such responsibility (i.e. the self-blame that clients engage in if they accept
responsibility for making themselves anxious). However, there are
other obstacles to accepting responsibility, such as the following:
Hopelessness about self-help (e.g. `I can't do anything to help myself?).
Self-pity (e.g. `It's not me that makes me anxious, it's the lousy situation that I
am in and that I don't deserve to be in').
Loss of bene®ts (e.g. `If I accept that I make myself anxious then I will lose out
on the bene®ts that blaming my environment gives me ± such as being spared
from doing dif®cult or potentially threatening tasks to do at work').
32
Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
It is important to help your clients to understand the impact of
these obstacles on their emotional problems. Then, help them to
develop alternatives to these obstacles and review the impact of
these alternatives on their emotional problem-solving. This often
helps clients to deal effectively with these obstacles. If not, you may
need to do a more detailed assessment of the obstacle, which is
outside the brief of this book.
Step 3: Identify the threats you tend to be anxious
about
The best way of identifying which threats you are particularly vulnerable to
is to ask yourself whether or not such threats are to your self-esteem.
Major threats to self-esteem
The prospect of failure
The prospect of being disapproved
The prospect of being rejected
The prospect of losing status.
Major threats that do not involve your self-esteem
The prospect of losing self-control
Uncertainty that one is not safe from threat
The prospect of experiencing discomfort
The prospect of loss of order
The prospect of experiencing certain internal processes (e.g. unwanted thoughts,
feelings, images and urges).
Use the above list to identify the themes which you ®nd threatening.
If your clients ®nd it dif®cult to ®nd their threat related theme, you
can help them by assessing a few speci®c examples of their anxiety.
Have them focus on a speci®c situation in which they were anxious
and ask them what they were most anxious about or found most
threatening in the situation. If they still ®nd it dif®cult to identify
Dealing with anxiety
33
the threat in this or other speci®c situations, use the `magic question' technique. This involves you doing the following:
Have your clients focus on the situation in which they were anxious.
Ask them to nominate one ingredient that would eliminate or signi®cantly
reduce their anxiety without changing the situation.
The opposite of this nominated ingredient is what they are most anxious
about.
Hilda was struggling to identify the speci®c threat in her dental anxiety. I
helped Hilda to use the `magic question' technique as follows:
I asked Hilda to focus on the situation in which she was anxious:
`I am waiting to be called into the dentist's surgery.'
I asked Hilda to nominate one ingredient that would eliminate or signi®cantly reduce her anxiety without changing the situation:
`I would not have thoughts about the drill cutting my tongue.'
The opposite of this nominated ingredient was what she is most anxious
about:
`Having thoughts about the drill cutting my tongue.'
If you assess a number of speci®c examples of your clients' anxiety
in this way, the threat related theme should be apparent. In
Hilda's case, it was having thoughts about external dangers happening to her when she was in a vulnerable position.
Step 4: Identify the three components of your anxiety
response and set goals with respect to each
component
The next step is for you to list the three elements of your anxiety response
in the face of each of the threats listed above.
Identify the three components of your anxiety response
I use the term `anxiety response' to describe the three main components
that make up this response. The three components of your anxiety response
are the emotional, behavioural and thinking components.
34
Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
Emotional component
The emotional component is, of course, anxiety.
Behavioural component
The behavioural component concerns overt behaviour or action tendencies. These will be largely safety-seeking in nature. Consult the list that I
provided to help you identify your behaviour associated with each theme
when you are anxious (see p. 25).
Thinking component
The thinking component concerns theme-exaggerated thinking or safetyseeking thinking. These may be in words or in mental pictures. Consult the
list that I provided to help you identify your thinking associated with each
theme when you are anxious (see pp. 26±27).
Set goals with respect to each of the three components
You need to set goals so that you know what you are striving for when you
deal effectively with anxiety. The three goals are emotional, behavioural and
thinking goals.
Emotional goal
Your emotional goal is concern rather than anxiety (or whatever synonym
you prefer to the term `concern'). Concern is a healthy negative emotion
which is an appropriate response to threat, but one which helps you to
process what has happened to you and move on with your life rather than
get stuck or bogged down.
The concept that concern is the healthy alternative to anxiety in
the face of threat is based on the following idea. Threat is negative
and therefore it is realistic to have a negative emotion about it.
The choice, therefore, is between an unhealthy negative emotion
(anxiety) or a healthy negative emotion (concern). But what if
your clients specify unrealistic goals? Here are a number of such
goals and how to respond to clients who nominate them:
Dealing with anxiety
35
`I don't want to feel anxious.'
Show your clients that they have indicated what they do not want to feel in the
face of threat, but not what they do want to feel. Help them to specify an
emotion to aim for like concern!
`I want to feel less anxious.'
Show your clients that as anxiety is a disturbed emotion, wanting to feel less
anxious is still to nominate a disturbed emotion, albeit of lesser intensity.
Concern can be strong and healthy.
`I want to be cool and calm.'
Show your clients that if they are facing a threat (or think that they are), they
need to be alert, aroused and geared up to deal with it. Being cool or calm may
be attractive states for your clients, but show them that these states are not
appropriate when they are facing threat. Show them that being concerned, but
not anxious in the face of threat, will gear them up without overstimulating
them (as would be the case if they were anxious).
`I want to feel indifferent.'
Being indifferent in the face of threat will also not help your clients to be
appropriately geared up to deal with it. Help them to see this. Also show them
that the only way that they could achieve a state of indifference about threat is
to believe that it does not matter to them if the threat exists or not. In other
words, show them that they would have to lie to themselves.
`I want to be in control.'
Anxiety is a state where you are not fully in control of yourself. As a result, it
seems entirely acceptable for clients to nominate `being in control' as something to aim for when they are anxious. This seems entirely reasonable, but you
need to be on your guard when your clients nominate such a goal. Dealing with
anxiety is counterintuitive. Thus, achieving a sense of being in control in the
face of threat involves your clients tolerating not being in self-control. Some
clients hold irrational beliefs about self-control and if they bring such beliefs
to the task of dealing with anxiety, it will lead them to be more anxious. If your
clients do have such a rigid belief about self-control, you will need to target this
belief for change. In doing so, you need to help them see the difference between
self-control as a goal and self-control as a means to achieve this goal. Your
clients need to learn that tolerance of not being in self-control is the best way
of achieving self-control. Be aware though that this is likely to be an alien
concept for them and one that will need a lot of discussion and debunking of
misconceptions on your part. This is de®nitely an issue that you should
(ideally) take to supervision.
Behavioural goal
Your behavioural goal should re¯ect actions that are based on concern
about the threat rather than anxiety. The following are the most common
behaviours associated with concern rather than anxiety. You may wish to
36
Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
compare these behaviours with those associated with anxiety that I
presented on p. 25.
You face up to the threat without using any safety-seeking measures.
You take constructive action to deal with the threat.
You seek support from others to help you face up to the threat and then take
constructive action by yourself rather than rely on them to handle it for you so that
they will handle it or to be there to rescue you.
You prepare to meet the threat but do not overprepare.
You will note that this list is much shorter than the list outlining the
behaviours that are associated with anxiety. The reason is that when you
seek safety from threat there are far more ways of doing so than when you
face up to the threat.
It is important that your clients understand that as they strive to
develop healthy behavioural responses to threat, they will still feel
the urge to act in ways designed to help keep them safe from
threat. Help them to understand the reason for this. Explain to
them that as they question their beliefs and commit themselves to
strengthening their conviction in their rational beliefs and to
weakening their conviction in their irrational beliefs, their irrational beliefs will still be active and producing urges for them to
act dysfunctionally. Encourage your clients to accept these urges,
to recognise that they do not have to act on them and to use them
as cues to act in functional ways.
Thinking goal
As well as setting behavioural goals related to the feeling of concern in the
face of threat, it is important that you set thinking goals associated with this
emotion. The following are the most common forms of thinking associated
with concern rather than anxiety. Again you may wish to compare these
forms of thinking with those associated with anxiety that I presented on
pp. 26±27.
You are realistic about the probability of the threat occurring.
You view the threat realistically.
You realistically appraise your ability to cope with the threat.
Dealing with anxiety
37
You think about what to do concerning dealing with threat constructively rather than
ruminate about the threat.
You have more task-relevant thoughts than in anxiety.
As the above list shows, the dominant feature of thinking associated with
concern is that it is realistic and coping focused. Thus, when you are
concerned, but not anxious, you do not elaborate or magnify the threat and
nor do you mentally seek safety from it. Please remember that such thinking
may be in words or in mental pictures.
The point I made above with respect to clients' behavioural goals is
also relevant with respect to their thinking goals. Clients will still
have some conviction in their irrational beliefs until they have full
conviction in their rational beliefs. Given this, your clients' irrational beliefs will have some impact on their subsequent thinking
as they strive to achieve their goals. Thus, highly distorted and/or
safety-seeking thoughts will still come into your clients' minds.
Help your clients to understand why this is the case. When you
come to help them deal with these forms of post-irrational belief
thinking, do one or more of the following as indicated. Discuss this
issue with your RECBT supervisor, if necessary:
Encourage your clients to acknowledge the existence of such thoughts without
trying to suppress them, distract themselves from them or engage with them.
If relevant, use the presence of this post-irrational belief thinking to help your
clients to identify and deal with the irrational beliefs.
Question the empirical nature of these thinking `C's' once or twice and then
return to the acceptance strategy detailed above.
Step 5: Identify your general irrational beliefs and
alternative general rational beliefs
A general irrational belief is an irrational belief that you hold across
situations de®ned by the theme that you ®nd threatening. It accounts for
your anxiety response. Its rational alternative, which will also be general in
nature, will account for your concern response.
I suggest that you identify both sets of beliefs at this point for a number
of reasons (as follows). Doing so will help you to
38
Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
see quickly what the alternatives to your irrational beliefs are
see that you can achieve your goals by acquiring and developing your rational beliefs
get the most out of questioning your beliefs later.
Identify your general irrational beliefs
When you identify a general irrational belief, you take a common theme
(e.g. criticism or loss of self-control) and add to this a general rigid belief
and the main extreme belief that is derived from the rigid belief. Note the
following:
If you are particularly prone to self-esteem based anxiety, your main extreme belief
will be a self-depreciation belief.
For anxiety that is non-self-esteem based, your main extreme belief will either be an
awfulising belief or a discomfort intolerance belief, and less frequently it may be an
other-depreciation belief or a life-depreciation belief.
For example:
`I must not be criticised and if I am it would prove that I am worthless' (a general selfesteem based irrational belief ).
`I must not lose self-control and it would be awful if I do' (a general non-self-esteem
based irrational belief ).
Identify your alternative general rational beliefs
When you identify your alternative general rational belief, you take the same
common theme (e.g. criticism or loss of self-control) and add to this a
general ¯exible belief and the main non-extreme belief that is derived from
the ¯exible belief. Note the following:
If your general extreme belief is self-depreciation (when you are particularly prone to
self-esteem based anxiety), then your general non-extreme belief will be a selfacceptance belief.
If you are prone to non-self-esteem based anxiety, then your alternative general nonextreme beliefs will be a non-awfulising belief, a discomfort tolerance belief and less
frequently an other-acceptance belief or a life-acceptance belief.
For example:
`I would prefer not to be criticised, but I don't have to be immune from criticism. If I
am criticised, it would be unpleasant, but it would not prove that I am worthless. I am
the same fallible human being whether I am criticised or not' (a general selfacceptance based rational belief ).
Dealing with anxiety
39
`I would much prefer not to lose self-control, but that doesn't mean that I must not do
so. If I do lose self-control, it would be very bad, but it would not be awful' (a general
non-awfulising based rational belief ).
As you will have noticed in the Client's Guide, I encourage readers
to identify and work with their general irrational beliefs and to
develop general rational beliefs and, as you will see, when they are
facing speci®c instances of their problems, I encourage them to
focus on speci®c examples of both sets of beliefs. This will be at
variance with your RECBT practice, where you will begin with
speci®c examples of your clients' problems and then proceed to
work at a more general level with their problems and how these
relate to one another.
The reason I have chosen to go `general' rather than `speci®c'
when helping readers to deal with their emotional problems is a
pragmatic one. In this book, I aim to help people to deal with a
range of emotional problems and therefore, in my view, it is best to
give readers general guidance with respect to dealing with this
range of problems and then help them to move from the general to
the speci®c rather than vice versa. My considered view was that I
just do not have the space to help readers focus on speci®c examples
of their emotional problems and then generalise from this speci®c
level.
Consequently, one way that you can help your clients who are
using the Client's Guide is to help them to work with speci®c
examples of their emotional problem, in this case anxiety. Use the
following sequence as you do so and help your clients to
select a speci®c example of their anxiety problem
express why their anxiety constitutes a problem for them
identify what they were most anxious about in the situation
identify the three speci®c components of their anxiety response and set speci®c
goals with respect to each component
identify their speci®c irrational beliefs and alternative speci®c rational beliefs
question their speci®c beliefs.
In helping your clients to deal with a speci®c example of their
anxiety, you can teach them how to use RECBT's ABCD form,
which appears in Appendix 6.
40
Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
The following steps are the same as those that appear in Steps
7±10 later in this chapter. Thus, help your clients to
face their threat in imagery (if necessary)
face their threat in vivo (i.e. in reality), if possible, and take appropriate
action
capitalise on what they learned
generalise their learning.
Step 6: Question your general beliefs
While there are many ways of questioning your general irrational beliefs
and general rational beliefs, in the same way, in my view the most ef®cient
way involves you ®rst questioning together your general rigid belief and its
general ¯exible belief alternative and then questioning together your
general extreme belief and your general non-extreme belief.
Question your general rigid belief and its general flexible
belief alternative
First, take your general rigid belief and its general ¯exible belief alternative
and write them down next to one another on a sheet of paper. Then ask
yourself:
Which is true and which is false?
Which is sensible logically and which does not make sense?
Which has largely constructive results and which has largely unconstructive results?
Write down your answer to each of these questions on your piece of paper,
giving reasons for each answer. Consult Appendix 2 for help with the
answers to these questions, which you need to adapt and apply to the
beliefs you are questioning.
Question your general extreme belief and its general nonextreme belief alternative
Next, take your general extreme belief and its general non-extreme belief
alternative and again write them down next to one another on a sheet of
paper. Then, ask yourself the same three questions that you used with your
Dealing with anxiety
41
general rigid belief and its general ¯exible belief alternative. Again write
down your answer to each of these questions on your piece of paper, giving
reasons for each answer. I suggest that you consult Appendix 3 (for help
with questioning awfulising beliefs and non-awfulising beliefs), Appendix 4
(for help with questioning discomfort intolerance beliefs and discomfort
tolerance beliefs) and Appendix 5 (for help with questioning depreciation
beliefs and unconditional acceptance beliefs). Again, you need to adapt
and apply these arguments to the beliefs you are questioning.
You should now be ready to commit to acting and thinking in ways
consistent with your general rational belief. For unless you do so, you will
not strengthen your conviction in this belief.
I included Appendices 2±5 in the Client's Guide as general guidelines to help readers to question their irrational and rational
beliefs (reproduced in this book as Appendices 2±5. If you are
working with clients who are using the Client's Guide, you will
have a chance to look at the questioning work that your clients
have done at this point and give them feedback on that work. No
book can provide such feedback.
I have suggested that readers question their rigid belief and their
¯exible belief together and then their main extreme belief and nonextreme belief equivalent together using three criteria as shown
below:
Rigid belief vs. ¯exible belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status
Main extreme belief vs. main non-extreme belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status.
However, there are other ways of questioning beliefs as shown
below. When using the Client's Guide with your clients, outline
these other approaches in case they do not resonate with the
approach I put forward in the Client's Guide. The important point
is that your clients use all three arguments with each of their
irrational and irrational beliefs.
42
Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
Rigid belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status
Flexible belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status
Main extreme belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status
Main non-extreme belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status.
And also:
Rigid belief
empirical status
Flexible belief
empirical status
Rigid belief
logical status
Flexible belief
logical status
Rigid belief
pragmatic status
Flexible belief
pragmatic status
Main extreme belief
empirical status
Dealing with anxiety
43
Main non-extreme belief
empirical status
Main extreme belief
logical status
Main non-extreme belief
logical status
Main extreme belief
pragmatic status
Main non-extreme belief
pragmatic status.
The ®nal point I want to make about questioning beliefs concerns
the concept of persuasiveness. Perhaps the most important aspect
of the questioning process is for your clients to develop arguments
concerning the irrationality of their irrational beliefs and the
rationality of their rational beliefs that are persuasive to them. So,
encourage your clients to develop such persuasive arguments and
to make a note of these for future reference.
Step 7: Face your threat in imagery
I hope that you have made a commitment to act on your general rational
beliefs (i.e. ¯exible belief and relevant non-extreme belief ). Assuming that
you have, your basic task is to face up to your threat while not using any
of the safety-seeking behavioural measures that you employed to keep
yourself safe from the threat when you were anxious.
Up to this point you have worked at a general level with respect to the
threats you are anxious about, the general irrational beliefs that account for
this anxiety and their alternative general rational beliefs. However, when
you come to apply your general rational beliefs in dealing with your threats,
you need to bear in mind one important point. Since you make yourself
anxious about threats in speci®c situations (actual or imagined), you need
to deal with these speci®c threats by rehearsing speci®c variants of your
general rational beliefs.
While the best way to do this is in speci®c situations in which you infer
threat, you may derive bene®t from using imagery ®rst. If this is the case,
you need to do the following:
44
Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
Imagine a speci®c situation in which you felt anxious or may feel anxious and focus
on your threat.
See yourself facing the threat while rehearsing a speci®c rational belief relevant to
the situation. As you do this, try to make yourself feel concerned, rather than
anxious.
Then see yourself take action without using the safety-seeking behavioural measures
you would generally use if you were anxious. Make your picture realistic. Imagine
yourself experiencing the urge to use your safety-seeking behaviours, but not doing
so. Also, picture yourself acting functionally, but with a faltering performance rather
than a masterful one.
Recognise that some of your post-belief thinking may be distorted. Respond to it
without getting bogged down doing so. Accept the presence of any remaining
distorted thoughts without engaging with them.
Repeat the above steps until you feel suf®ciently ready to put this sequence into
practice in your life.
If you ®nd that facing your threat, in your mind's eye, is too much for you,
use a principle that I call `challenging, but not overwhelming'. This means
that instead of imagining yourself facing a threat that you ®nd `overwhelming' at the present time, choose a similar threat to face that you
would ®nd `challenging, but not overwhelming'. Then employ the same
steps that I have outlined above. Work in this way with modi®ed threats
until you ®nd your original threat `challenging, but not overwhelming' and
then use the steps again.
Some of your clients may say that they can't get very clear images
when they try to picture events in their mind's eye. While they may
get more out of imagery techniques if they can get such clear
images, they will still get something out of facing threat in
imagery if they don't. So, if clients want to face threat in imagery
before they do so in reality, encourage them to do so no matter how
clear their mental images are.
Step 8: Face your threat in reality
Whether or not you have used imagery as a preparatory step, you need to
take the following steps when you face your threat in reality.
Choose a speci®c situation in which the threat is likely to occur and about which you
would ordinarily feel anxious.
Dealing with anxiety
45
Make a plan of how you are going to deal with the threat and resolve not to use any of
your behavioural safety-seeking measures.
Rehearse a speci®c version of your general rational beliefs before entering the situation so that you can face your threat while in a rational frame of mind. In addition, it
would be useful to develop a shorthand version of your speci®c rational belief to use
while you are in the situation.
Enter the situation and accept the fact that you are likely to be uncomfortable while
doing so. Do not take any safety-seeking measures and take action as previously
planned. React to any consequences from a rational frame of mind if you can.
Recognise that even though you have got yourself into a rational frame of mind some
of your thinking may be distorted and unrealistic and some may be realistic and
balanced. Accept the presence of the former and do not engage with it. Engage with
the latter without using it to reassure yourself.
You may ®nd that your clients report various obstacles to facing
threat in reality. I list here some of the major obstacles and suggest
ways of addressing these obstacles with your clients.
`It's too frightening to face the threat.'
If your clients think that facing a threat related situation is too much for
them, suggest that they utilise the `challenging, but not overwhelming' principle discussed in the Client's Guide (see p. 44 in this book). This involves your
client selecting a threat related situation that would be a challenge for them to
face, but not overwhelming for them, at that time.
`I don't feel con®dent to face the threat.'
One of the thinking features of anxiety is that your clients hold the inference
that they think that they cannot deal with threat. In order to challenge this
limiting idea, help them to acknowledge and implement the following:
Help them to see that they do not need to feel con®dent to face a threat in
order to face it.
Help them to realise that con®dence develops from not being con®dent and
that the more they act without con®dence, the more they will develop
con®dence.
`I don't feel comfortable facing the threat.'
Help your clients to see that if they wait until they are comfortable before
facing the threat, they will wait a very long time. Show them that if they are
comfortable about facing a `threat', it is likely that they are not anxious about
it. Consequently, it is important that you help your clients realise that they are
bound to be uncomfortable about facing a `threat related situation'. Show
them that they can tolerate this discomfort and that it is worth it to them to
do so.
`I can't face the threat because I don't feel in control.'
By de®nition, when your clients feel anxious, they are not in control. So, help
them to understand that if they wait to feel in control before they face their
46
Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
threat, then they are caught in a bind. Help them to see that the way out of this
bind is for them to hold a ¯exible belief about feeling in control. If they were to
believe that it is preferable, but not essential, to feel in control before they face
the threat, they would take the unpreferable course of action because it is the
only course of action open to them. Encourage them to see that if they insist
that they have to be in control before facing the threat, they will not face it.
`I can't face the threat because I don't know what is going to happen.'
This obstacle to facing threat is based on a rigid belief about certainty. Here,
your clients believe that they have to know the outcome of facing threat before
they face it. Help your clients to see that this, of course, is not possible and that
if they wait for such certainty, it is highly likely that they will perpetuate their
anxiety problem. Show your clients that the antidote to this is to hold a ¯exible
belief about certainty. If they do this, they will acknowledge that while it
would be nice to know the outcome of facing threat, it is not necessary to have
such certainty. Help them to realise that all they have is probability and that if
they face threat, the probable outcome is that they will feel uncomfortable in
the short term, but they will probably help themselves to overcome their anxiety
problem in the longer term. By contrast, help your clients to see that if they
don't face threat, they will remain comfortable in the moment, but the probability is that they won't overcome this problem.
Step 9: Capitalise on what you learned
When you have faced your threat and dealt with it as best you could, it is
important that you re¯ect on what you did and what you learned. In particular, if you were able to face your threat, rehearse your speci®c rational
beliefs and take constructive action, then ask yourself how you can capitalise on what you achieved. If you experienced any problems, respond to the
following questions:
Did I face the threat, and if not, why not?
Did I rehearse my rational beliefs before and during facing the threat and if not,
why not?
Did I execute my plan to face the threat, and if not, why not?
Did I use safety-seeking measures, and if so, why?
Did I engage with post-belief distorted thinking, and if so, why?
Re¯ect on your experience and put into practice what you learned the next
time you face the threat.
It is useful to monitor your clients' responses to these questions and
help them to re¯ect on any issues that they have not considered.
Dealing with anxiety
47
Step 10: Generalise your learning
While you can really deal with your anxiety only in speci®c situations, you
can generalise what you have learned about dealing effectively with anxiety
across situations de®ned by a threat to which you are particularly vulnerable (e.g. disapproval) and also apply your learning to situations de®ned
by a different threat that you may have problems with (e.g. criticism).
Fiona was particularly prone to anxiety about being disapproved, so she followed
the steps outlined in this chapter. Thus:
Fiona assessed the three components of her anxiety response and set goals
with respect to all three components.
She identi®ed her relevant general irrational belief regarding disapproval (i.e.
`I must not be disapproved. If I am I am worthless') that underpinned her
anxiety response and her alternative general rational belief (i.e. `I don't want to
receive disapproval, but that does not mean I must not be disapproved. If I am
it's unfortunate, but it does not prove I'm worthless. I am a unique, unrateable
fallible human being whether I am approved or disapproved') that
underpinned her concern response.
She questioned both elements of her general irrational belief and her general
rational belief until she clearly saw that the former were false, made no sense
and were detrimental to her and that the latter were true, sensible and healthy.
She outlined situations where she particularly feared disapproval and
prepared to face them by questioning speci®c versions of these beliefs. She
®rst rehearsed relevant speci®c versions of her general rational beliefs
regarding disapproval and faced her threat in these speci®c situations while
keeping in mind a shortened version of her rational belief (i.e. `fallible
although disapproved') and without using her behavioural and thinking safetyseeking measures regarding disapproval. As she did so, she tolerated the
discomfort that she felt and accepted that some of her `threat elaborated'
thinking would still be in her mind. She let such thinking be without engaging
with it, suppressing it or distracting herself from it.
When she had made progress in dealing with her disapproval anxiety, Fiona
applied the common features to her fear of failure. She also identi®ed new
behavioural and thinking components of her anxiety response with respect to
failure and set goals accordingly.
She identi®ed her relevant general irrational belief regarding failure (i.e. `I
must not fail and if I do, I am a failure') that underpinned her anxiety response
and her alternative general rational belief (i.e. `I don't want to fail, but I don't
always have to succeed. It's bad if I fail, but that does not mean I am a failure. I
am a unique, unrateable fallible human being whether I succeed or fail') that
underpinned her concern response.
She again questioned both elements of her general irrational belief and her
general rational belief until she clearly saw that the former were false, made no
sense and were detrimental to her and that the latter were true, sensible and
healthy.
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Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
She then outlined situations which she had avoided because she particularly
feared failure and prepared to face them by questioning speci®c versions of
these beliefs. She ®rst rehearsed relevant speci®c versions of her general
rational beliefs regarding failure and faced her threat in these speci®c
situations while keeping in mind a shortened version of her rational belief (i.e.
`I don't have to succeed') and without using her behavioural and thinking
safety-seeking measures regarding failure.
As she did so she tolerated the discomfort that she felt and accepted that
some of her `threat elaborated' thinking would still be in her mind. She again
let such thinking be without engaging with it, suppressing it or distracting
herself from it.
As this section shows, you can generalise what you learn about dealing with
anxiety from situation to situation as de®ned by a speci®c threat and from
there to situations de®ned by a different threat with which you have a problem. If you do this with all the threats to which you are previously vulnerable,
you will have taken the toxicity out of the emotional problem of anxiety!
USING RECBT'S ABCD FORM TO DEAL WITH
SPECIFIC EXAMPLES OF YOUR ANXIETY
This chapter is mainly geared to help you deal with your anxiety in general
terms. However, you can also use this material to address speci®c examples
of your anxiety. I have developed a self-help form to provide the structure to
assist you in this regard. It is called the ABCD form and it appears with
instructions in Appendix 6.
In Appendix 6, I outline the major problems clients have in using
this form and how to deal with them.
OTHER IMPORTANT ISSUES IN DEALING WITH
ANXIETY
In the above section, I outlined a ten step programme to deal with anxiety.
In this section, I discuss some other important issues that may be relevant
to you in your work to become less prone to this emotional problem. If you
want to, you can incorporate them as additional steps in the above step-bystep guide at points relevant to you.
Dealing with anxiety
49
Why you overestimate threat and how to deal with it
If you are particularly prone to anxiety, you will be particularly sensitive to
seeing threat where others, who are not prone to anxiety, do not. So far in
this chapter, I have helped you deal with anxiety in situations where you
perceive threat. In this section, I help you to understand and deal with
situations where you overestimate threat in the ®rst place.
Why you overestimate threat
This is how you come to overestimate threat in your area of vulnerability. I
will illustrate this with reference to one of Fiona's general irrational beliefs:
You take the theme of your general irrational belief:
Disapproval from the general irrational belief: `I must not be disapproved. If I am I am
worthless.'
You construct a second general irrational belief that features uncertainty about the
original threat theme:
`I must be certain that I won't be disapproved. I can't bear such uncertainty.'
You bring this second general irrational belief to situations where it is possible that
you may be disapproved and you make a threat related inference in the absence of
certainty from the threat:
`Since I don't have certainty that I won't be disapproved then I will be disapproved.'
You focus on this inference and bring a speci®c version of your original general
irrational belief to this inference. For example:
Inference: `My classmates will disapprove of me.'
Speci®c irrational belief: `My classmates must not disapprove of me. If they do, I am
worthless.'
How to deal with your overestimations of threat
In order to deal with your overestimations of threat, you need to take a
number of steps, which I will illustrate again with reference to Fiona.
Construct general rational alternatives, both to your original threat focused general
irrational belief:
`I don't want to receive disapproval, but that does not mean I must not be disapproved. If I
am it's unfortunate, but it does not prove I'm worthless. I am a unique, unrateable fallible
human being whether I am approved or disapproved.'
and to your second uncertainty focused general irrational belief:
`I would like to be certain that I won't be disapproved, but I don't need such certainty. It is
dif®cult not having this uncertainty, but I can bear not having it and it is worth bearing.'
50
Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
Question both sets of beliefs until you can see the rationality of the two general
rational beliefs and the irrationality of the two general irrational beliefs and you can
commit to implementing the former.
Bring your uncertainty focused general rational belief to situations where it is
possible that you may be disapproved and make an inference based on the data at
hand:
`I am not certain if I will be approved or disapproved so let's consider the evidence.'
If there is evidence indicating there is a good chance that you will be disapproved,
use a speci®c version of your general disapproval focused rational belief to deal with
this. For example:
Inference: `My classmates will disapprove of me.'
Speci®c rational belief: `I don't want my classmates to disapprove of me, but they don't
have to do what I want. If they do disapprove of me, that is uncomfortable, but I am not
worthless. I am the same ordinary, unique, unrateable person whether they approve or
disapprove of me.'
If your clients ®nd that the above explanation is too complex,
teach them a simpler version. This involves you showing them that
when they demand that they must know that the threat they are
concerned with will not occur and they do not know this, they will
assume that the threat will occur. However, when they do not
demand such certainty, they are more objective about the presence
of threat and can examine the accuracy of their inference of threat
as shown below.
How to examine the accuracy of your inference of threat if
necessary
If you are still unsure if your inference of threat is accurate or inaccurate,
answer one or more of the following questions:
How likely is it that the threat happened (or might happen)?
Would an objective jury agree that the threat actually happened or might happen? If
not, what would the jury's verdict be?
Did I view (am I viewing) the threat realistically? If not, how could I have viewed (can I
view) it more realistically?
If I asked someone whom I could trust to give me an objective opinion about the truth
or falsity of my inference about the threat, what would the person say to me and why?
How would this person encourage me to view the threat instead?
If a friend had told me that they had faced (were facing or were about to face) the
same situation as I faced and had made the same inference of threat, what would I
say to them about the validity of their inference and why? How would I encourage the
person to view the threat instead?
Dealing with anxiety
51
Assessing and dealing with emotional problems
about anxiety
While there is quite a lot of evidence that animals get anxious in the
presence of threat, there is little evidence that they make themselves disturbed about their anxiety. However, we humans do disturb ourselves about
our anxiety and our other emotional problems. The technical term for this is
meta-disturbance (literally disturbance about disturbance) and I will be
discussing this phenomenon and how to deal with it in the following
chapters. It is important to assess carefully the nature of this metadisturbance before you can best deal with it.
The best way to start dealing with the assessment of any emotional
problems you might have about anxiety is to ask yourself the question:
`How do I feel about being anxious?' The most common emotional problems that people have about anxiety are as follows: anxiety, depression,
shame and unhealthy self-anger. I will discuss only the ®rst of these in this
chapter, i.e. anxiety about anxiety, and refer you to the respective chapters
on depression, shame and unhealthy anger for help on how to deal with
these meta-emotional problems as applied to anxiety.
Assessing anxiety about anxiety
When you are anxious about anxiety, it is clear that you think of your
original anxiety as some kind of threat. The most common of these threats
are the following:
Anxiety is emotionally painful.
Anxiety means I am losing self-control.
Anxiety is a personal weakness.
Dealing with anxiety about anxiety
Unless you deal with your anxiety about anxiety (called meta-anxiety), you
are unlikely to deal with your original anxiety, since your meta-anxiety will
lead to general avoidance of situations in which you are likely to feel
anxious. Since dealing with anxiety depends on you facing and not avoiding
threat, meta-anxiety (if you experience it) often has to be dealt with before
you deal with your original anxiety.
As I have made clear in this book, it is important that you develop rational
beliefs about threat and face up to and deal constructively with it without
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Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
making use of safety-seeking measures (both behavioural and thinking) and
while letting be (i.e. not engaging with or distracting yourself from) any
remaining threat-elaborating thoughts or images that you may have. With
these points in mind, let me give you brief advice concerning how to deal
with the three forms of anxiety about anxiety I have listed.
Dealing with the threat of the emotional pain of anxiety
First, develop a set of rational beliefs about the pain of anxiety (after
questioning both your irrational and rational beliefs as outlined in Appendices 2±4). These are likely to be non-ego in nature (e.g. `I would prefer not
to experience the emotional pain of anxiety, but I don't have to be immune
from it. It's hard tolerating such pain, but I can do so and it's worth doing
so because it will help me deal with my original anxiety'). Then, develop a
shorthand version of this rational belief (e.g. `The pain of anxiety is
tolerable and worth tolerating') and use this as you seek out situations in
which you are likely to feel anxious, employing the `challenging, but not
overwhelming' principle described earlier (see p. 44). Do this without using
safety-seeking measures until you are concerned about the pain of anxiety,
but not anxious about it.
When you have done all this, you will probably see that anxiety may not
be as emotionally painful as you previously thought.
Dealing with the threat of losing self-control when you are
anxious
When you are anxious, you do begin to lose control of your feelings,
sensations and thoughts. It is important for you to assess which aspect of
loss of self-control you are anxious about. Then do the following. First,
develop a set of rational beliefs about beginning to lose self-control (after
questioning both your irrational and rational beliefs as outlined in Appendices 2±4). These are likely to be non-ego in nature (e.g. `I would prefer not
to lose control, but I don't always have to have such self-control and I don't
have to regain it immediately when I have begun to lose it. It's unfortunate
when I begin to lose self-control, but it isn't terrible'). Then, develop a
shorthand version of this rational belief (e.g. `I don't have to be in control')
and use this as you seek out situations in which you are likely to feel
anxious and begin to lose self-control. Again employ the `challenging, but
not overwhelming' principle described earlier (see p. 44) and do so without
using safety-seeking measures until you are concerned about losing selfcontrol but not anxious about it. In particular, accept that you may have
Dealing with anxiety
53
thoughts and images where you have lost complete control of yourself.
These thoughts do not predict the future, but are the remnants of postirrational belief thinking and need to be understood and accepted as such.
Therefore, don't engage with them or distract yourself from them.
When you have taken these steps, you will probably realise that you have
more self-control when you are anxious than you previously thought and
that loss of complete self-control, while not impossible, is highly unlikely.
Dealing with the threat of anxiety being a personal weakness
The ®rst step to dealing with this anxiety is to assume temporarily that
anxiety is a personal weakness. Then, develop a set of rational beliefs
about having such a personal weakness (after questioning both your irrational and rational beliefs as outlined in Appendices 2 and 5). These are
likely to be ego in nature (e.g. `I would prefer not to have this personal
weakness, but that does not mean that I must not have it. I am not a weak
person for having this unfortunate weakness. Rather, I am a fallible human
being who has both strengths and weaknesses'). Then, develop a shorthand version of this rational belief (e.g. `Anxiety means I'm fallible') and
use this as you seek out situations in which you are likely to feel anxious,
employing the `challenging, but not overwhelming' principle described
earlier (see p. 44). Do this, once again, without using safety-seeking
measures until you are concerned about your `personal weakness' but not
anxious about it.
When you have done all this, you will probably see that anxiety may not
be as much a personal weakness as you previously thought. To help consolidate this, ask yourself if you would tell a loved one that anxiety is a
personal weakness?
Your clients will sometimes need to address their anxiety about
anxiety (i.e. their secondary anxiety) before they address their primary anxiety. They need to do this particularly when their secondary anxiety gets in the way of them dealing with their primary
anxiety. However, despite the interfering presence of secondary
anxiety, some clients still want to target their primary anxiety ®rst.
There are two ways of dealing with this situation:
Provide a rationale to help your clients target their secondary anxiety. For
example, explain to your clients that their secondary anxiety is like having a
ball and chain around their leg while they are climbing a steep hill (akin to
their primary anxiety). In the same way as climbing the hill is easier when they
54
Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
remove the ball and chain from their leg, dealing with their primary anxiety is
easier when they deal with their secondary anxiety ®rst.
Go along with your clients' wish to deal with their primary anxiety and when
they fail to do so, help them to understand that the reason why they failed is
because they had not addressed their secondary anxiety and then agree that
they will now do so.
Developing and rehearsing a non-anxious world view
People develop views of the world as it relates to them that make it more or
less likely that they will experience unhealthy negative emotions. The world
views that render you vulnerable to anxiety do so in a similar way to your
uncertainty focused general irrational beliefs about a speci®c threat theme
by making you oversensitive to the presence of threat about which you hold
anxiety related irrational beliefs. However, these anxiety based world views
have this effect on you much more widely.
It is important that you develop realistic views of the world that will help
you to deal with anxiety. In Table 2, you will ®nd an illustrative list of such
world views rather than an exhaustive one, so you can get an idea of what I
mean, which will enable you to develop your own. In Table 2, I ®rst describe
a world view that renders you vulnerable to anxiety and then I give its
healthy alternative. You will see that the latter is characterised by its complexity and non-extreme nature, whereas in the former, aspects of the world
that relate to threat are portrayed as unidimensional and extreme.
If you hold rational beliefs that are consistent with the views of the world
listed on the right hand side of Table 2 and if you act and think in ways that
are, in turn, consistent with these rational beliefs, doing all this will help
you become less prone to anxiety.
In Chapter 3, I discuss the equally common emotional problem of
depression and how to deal with it.
Dealing with anxiety
55
Table 2 World views that render you vulnerable to anxiety and help you to deal with
anxiety
Views of the world that render you
vulnerable to anxiety
Views of the world that help you
deal with anxiety
The world is a dangerous place
The world is a place where danger
exists, but where there is much safety
Uncertainty is dangerous. Knowing in
Uncertainty can indicate the presence
all probability that I am safe is not good of threat, but more often than not it is
enough
associated with the absence of threat, a
sign that I am safe from threat.
Probability of safety is all I have and is
good enough for me
Not being in control is dangerous.
Either I am in control or I am out of
control
Not being in control is unpleasant, but
is rarely dangerous. Just because I am
not in complete control, certainly does
not mean that I am out of control
People cannot be trusted
People vary enormously along a
continuum of trustworthiness. My best
stance is to trust someone unless I
have evidence to the contrary. If I am let
down that is very unfortunate, but
hardly terrible and won't unduly affect
my stance towards the next person I
meet
3
Dealing with depression
In this chapter, I begin by presenting RECBT's way of understanding
depression,1 and then address how to deal with this very common emotional problem.
UNDERSTANDING DEPRESSION
In understanding depression, we need to know what we tend to make
ourselves depressed about (i.e. its major inference themes), what beliefs
we hold, how we act or tend to act, and how we think when we are
depressed.
I mentioned in Chapter 2 that it is important that you use your
client's language when referring to emotional problems. With
respect to the term `depression', you need to be aware that not all
clients with a `depression' problem resonate with the term `depression'. They may identify more closely with terms like `feeling
down', `feeling blue, `feeling down in the dumps' or `feeling low'. If
so, your task is to satisfy yourself and your client that these terms
represent the unhealthy negative emotion known in RECBT as
depression. Once you have done so, use the client's language and
write this down in your client's notes.
The three realms of your personal domain that are
implicated in depression
The three realms of your personal domain that are implicated in your
depression are the autonomous, sociotropic and deservingness realms.
1 In this chapter, I am talking about non-clinical depression. Clinical depression is
characterised by a number of biological features such as insomnia, loss of appetite,
loss of libido and suicidal ideation. If you think you may be clinically depressed,
consult your GP in the ®rst instance.
Dealing with depression
57
The autonomous realm
Here you value such things as freedom from in¯uence, freedom from constraint, freedom to determine your fate, your independence, self-control
and effective functioning.
The sociotropic realm
Here you value such things as your relationships with people, your connection to them, being loved, being approved, being cared for by them,
being able to rely on them and also being able to look after them.
The deservingness realm
Here you value you and others being treated fairly by the world.
Major inference themes in depression
When you are depressed:
You have experienced a loss from the sociotropic and/or autonomous realms of your
personal domain.
You have experienced a failure within the sociotropic and/or autonomous realms of
your personal domain.
You or others have experienced an undeserved plight.2
Some clients may not resonate with the above schema and, in these
cases, you should encourage them to put it aside and just focus on
what they tend to feel depressed about. RECBT theory values
¯exibility and this includes the freedom not to use RECBT terms,
schemes and frameworks.
Irrational beliefs
As I explained in Chapter 1, according to RECBT, inferences on their own
do not account for emotional problems. It is possible, therefore, for you to
2 When I discuss undeserved plight in this chapter, I am referring to such plight that
can befall you and/or others.
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Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
make the same inferences as listed above and be sad, but not depressed. In
order for you to feel depressed when you infer the presence of loss, failure
or undeserved plight, you have to hold an irrational belief. When you think
irrationally you hold a rigid belief and one or more extreme beliefs. While
the rigid belief is at the core of depression, the extreme beliefs that are
derived from the rigid belief often distinguish between whether you are
experiencing ego depression (where you depreciate yourself ) and non-ego
depression (where you `awfulise' or ®nd the adversity intolerable). You
may, of course, experience both ego depression and non-ego depression in
a given situation.
If your clients are unsure about the mediating role that irrational
beliefs play in their depression, ask them how they would feel if
they really believed the rational alternatives to what RECBT holds
are their depression creating irrational beliefs. In using this strategy, it is important that you formulate the rational beliefs for
your clients, who cannot be expected to do this for themselves at
this stage. When you do this, ensure that you match your clients'
rigid belief with a ¯exible alternative and their main extreme
belief with a non-extreme alternative, and then ask them how they
would feel if they had strong conviction in this rational belief.
For example: `Let me outline two sets of beliefs about losing your
job and you tell me which leads to depression and which leads to
non-depressed sadness. The ®rst set of beliefs is as follows: ``I
absolutely should not have lost my job and I am redundant as a
human being because I did.'' The second set of beliefs is as follows:
``I would have much preferred not to have lost my job, but sadly
there was no reason why I absolutely should not have lost it and
that losing it does not make me redundant as a human being,
rather a useful human being who has lost something important.''
Now which set of beliefs would lead to depression and which set
would lead to non-depressed sadness?' Once your clients can see
that their irrational beliefs underpin depression and their rational
beliefs underpin non-depressed sadness, they have understood the
mediating role of beliefs.
This is quite an elegant strategy since it accomplishes a number
of things at once:
1. It addresses your clients' doubts about the mediating role of irrational beliefs
in depression if they have such concern.
Dealing with depression
59
2. It introduces rational beliefs as a meaningful alternative to these irrational
beliefs.
3. It helps your clients to see that holding rational beliefs can have bene®cial
effects.
Behaviour associated with depression
When you hold an irrational belief about a loss, failure or undeserved plight
within the relevant realm of your personal domain, you will feel depressed
and then act or tend to act in a number of ways, the most common of which
are as follows:
You withdraw from reinforcements.
You withdraw into yourself (particularly in autonomous depression).
You become overly dependent on and seek to cling to others (particularly in sociotropic depression).
You bemoan your fate or that of others to anyone who will listen (particularly in pitybased depression).
You create an environment consistent with your depressed feelings.
You attempt to terminate feelings of depression in self-destructive ways.
You will see from the above list that these behaviours get in the way of you
processing your loss, failure or undeserved plight so that you can grieve
appropriately, integrate it into your belief system and move on with pursuing your life's goals.
If you ask your clients whether they want to change their depression related behaviour, their response will be affected by their
mood. If they are currently depressed, they are less likely to see that
this behaviour is dysfunctional than when they are not depressed.
If they are depressed, it is useful to encourage them to imagine
that they are advising a friend who displays the same depression
related behaviour as they do. What would they say to this friend
about the functionality or dysfunctionality of such behaviour?
They are more likely to see that their own depression related
behaviour is dysfunctional after they have told this `friend' that
the same behaviour is dysfunctional.
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Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
Thinking associated with depression
When you hold an irrational belief about a loss, failure or undeserved
plight, you will feel depressed and then think in a number of ways.
Remember what I said in Chapter 1: the thinking that accompanies your
depression is the result of your loss, failure or undeserved plight being
processed by your irrational belief, and therefore it is likely to contain a
number of thinking errors that I present in Appendix 1. I list the main
features of this post±irrational belief depressed thinking below:
You see only negative aspects of the loss, failure or undeserved plight.
You think of other losses, failures and undeserved plights that you (and in the case of
the latter, others) have experienced.
You think you are unable to help yourself (helplessness).
You see only pain and blackness in the future (hopelessness).
You see yourself being totally dependent on others (in autonomous depression).
You see yourself as being disconnected from others (in sociotropic depression).
You see the world as full of undeservedness and unfairness (in plight-based
depression).
You tend to ruminate concerning the source of your depression and its
consequences.
As you can see, such thinking exaggerates the negativity of loss, failure
and undeserved plight and the consequences of each. As with postirrational belief anxiety thinking, post-irrational belief depressed thinking
may be in words or in mental images.
One of the main features of post-irrational belief thinking is that
it is compelling. As such, it is quite easy for your clients to get
caught up in this way of thinking and think that it re¯ects reality.
This is an example of `cognitive-emotive' reasoning: if a thought is
plausible and emotionally compelling, therefore it must be true. It
is important that you help your clients to understand how their
mind works with respect to the thinking consequences of irrational
beliefs and to encourage them to use such thoughts to go back to
address the irrational beliefs that spawn them. When they have
done this, you can encourage them to respond to these thinking
consequences of irrational beliefs (iBs) as the iBs will not disappear just because they have questioned these beliefs. When your
Dealing with depression
61
clients respond to these thinking consequences of iBs, they need to
do so only a few times on any one occasion. After that, they need to
accept the presence of such thinking without engaging with it.
To summarise, your clients need to
identify the presence of the thinking consequences of irrational beliefs (see
Appendix 1)
trace these back to the source of this mode of thinking (i.e. identify the underlying irrational beliefs)
challenge these irrational beliefs
respond brie¯y to the thinking consequences of such beliefs, but not get overly
involved in this process
accept the lingering presence of these thinking consequences without engaging
with them
get on with the business of living.
HOW TO DEAL WITH DEPRESSION
If you are prone to depression, you tend to experience this emotional
problem in a variety of different settings and in response to a variety of
losses, failures and undeserved plights. Here is how to deal with
depression so that you become less prone to it.
Step 1: Identify reasons why depression is a problem
for you and why you want to change
While depression is generally regarded as an emotional problem, it is useful
for you to spell out reasons why depression is a problem for you and why
you want to change. I suggest that you keep a written list of these reasons
and refer to it as needed as a reminder of why you are engaged in a self-help
programme. I discuss the healthy alternative to depression in Step 5.
If your clients are still undecided whether or not depression is a
problem for them and/or whether or not they want to change, you
will need to carry out a more thorough assessment of the possible
factors involved. This involves helping your clients to detail what
are, from their perspective, the advantages and disadvantages
(both short term and longer term) of depression and its healthy
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Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
alternative, sadness. When you have done this, you need to help
your clients understand and respond to the misconceptions that
they have about the advantages of depression and the disadvantages of sadness.
Step 2: Become active
Before you focus on the psychological work that you will need to do in
order to deal effectively with your depression, you need to become active.
As I pointed out earlier in this chapter, when you are depressed you tend to
become inactive quite quickly and if you allow this to continue, such
inactivity leads to more negative thinking which, in turn, leads to decreased
activity.
Therefore, the sooner you can go against your tendency to be inactive the
better. If your inactivity has not become ingrained, increased activity will
help you in two ways. First, such activity can be an antidepressant, particularly if it involves taking exercise. Indeed, running has shown to be
an effective way to deal with mild depression. Second, increased activity
enables you to concentrate better on the psychological work that the
remaining steps that I will discuss call for.
However, what can you do if you have become very inactive and just don't
think that you can become more active or, if you did, that it wouldn't make
any difference? You need to see such resistance to becoming active as
depressed thinking which stems from the irrational beliefs that led to your
depression in the ®rst place. Rather than respond to it, it is important that
you test these thoughts out behaviourally. Thus, if you think that you can't
become active, test it out by seeing if you can walk to the end of the road. If
you can do that, then take another step and proceed, bit by bit, until you
have become more active. At that point you can judge whether or not
becoming more active has had any impact on your mood. A pound to a
penny it has.
When you have improved your mood to the point that you can concentrate, then you are ready to take responsibility for your depression in Step 3.
Step 3: Take responsibility for your depression
In RECBT, we argue that people or things do not make you depressed;
rather you create these feelings by the rigid and extreme beliefs that you
hold about such people and things. You may object that this involves you
Dealing with depression
63
blaming yourself for creating your depressed feelings, but this objection is
based on a misconception. It assumes that taking responsibility for creating
your depression is synonymous with self-blame. In truth, responsibility
means that you take ownership for the irrational beliefs that underpin your
depression while accepting yourself for doing so. Blame, on the other hand,
means that you regard yourself as being bad or worthless for creating your
depression.
The idea that emotional problems (including depression) are based
largely on the way that a person thinks about what happens to
them is, as you know, a central plank in RECBT. However, for
many clients it will be a new idea. Thus, your clients may hold that
the reason they are depressed, for example, is that it is inherently
depressing to be made redundant or to be dumped by one's partner
of longstanding. This type of thinking is known in RECBT circles as
`A-C' thinking (where events are deemed to cause feelings). By
contrast, the RECBT model stresses the `ABC' model, where the
impact of events on a person is mediated by the beliefs that they
hold about these events. The `ABC' model holds that the person
needs to take responsibility for creating their feelings of depression
by holding a set of irrational beliefs.
If your clients have dif®culty accepting responsibility for their
depressed feelings, it is important for you to identify the source of
this dif®culty. In the Client's Guide, I mention one common
obstacle that stops clients from accepting such responsibility (i.e.
the self-blame that clients engage in if they accept responsibility for
making themselves depressed). However, there are other obstacles to
accepting responsibility, such as the folllowing:
Hopelessness about self-help (e.g. `I can't do anything to help myself'). This is
particularly the case if the person is depressed.
Self-pity (e.g. `It's not me that makes me depressed, it's the lousy situation that
I am in and that I don't deserve to be in'). If the client's original depression is
self-pity based, the person can be said to have `meta' self-pity.
Loss of bene®ts (e.g. `If I accept that I make myself depressed then I will lose
out on the bene®ts that blaming my environment gives me ± such as getting
sympathy from other people').
It is important to help your clients to understand the impact of
these obstacles on their emotional problems. Then, help them to
develop alternatives to these obstacles and review the impact of
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Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
these alternatives on their emotional problem-solving. This often
helps clients to deal effectively with these obstacles. If not, you may
need to do a more detailed assessment of the obstacle, which is
outside the brief of this book.
Step 4: Identify the themes you tend to be depressed
about
The best way of identifying depression related inference themes to which
you are particularly vulnerable is by understanding the themes associated
with sociotropic depression, autonomous depression and pity based
depression, and seeing which are present when you feel depressed.
Common themes in sociotropic depression
Themes in sociotropic depression include the following:
disapproval
rejection
criticism
loss of love
negative evaluation from others
losing connection with signi®cant others
being on one's own
loss of reputation or social standing
not being looked after or cared for
not having anyone to look after or care for.
Common themes in autonomous depression
Themes in autonomous depression include the following:
failure
goals blocked
loss of status
loss of autonomy
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65
inability to do prized activities (e.g. because of sudden disability)
being dependent on others
loss of choice
loss of self-control
freedom curtailed.
The theme in pity-based depression
An undeserved plight has (or you think that it has) happened to you or to
others. Here are some examples:
You may have been made redundant by a company after working very hard for it for
many years.
A major catastrophe happens to people who are already struggling with their lives.
If your clients ®nd it dif®cult to ®nd their depression related
theme, you can help them by assessing a few speci®c examples of
their depression. Have them focus on a speci®c situation in which
they were depressed and ask them what they were most depressed
about. If they still ®nd it dif®cult to identify the theme in this or
other speci®c situations, use the `magic question' technique. This
involves you doing the following:
Have your clients focus on the situation in which they were depressed.
Ask them to nominate one ingredient that would eliminate or signi®cantly
reduce their depression without changing the situation.
The opposite of this nominated ingredient is what they are most depressed
about.
Jack was struggling to identify the speci®c theme in his depression about
being made redundant. I helped Jack to use the `magic question' technique
as follows:
I asked Jack to focus on the situation in which he was depressed:
`I am sitting alone in a coffee bar with groups of laughing friends.'
I asked Jack to nominate one ingredient that would eliminate or signi®cantly reduce his depression without changing the situation:
`Knowing that I had a group of friends with whom I could laugh.'
The opposite of this nominated ingredient was what he was most depressed
about:
`Not having a group of friends with whom I could laugh.'
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Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
If you assess a number of speci®c examples of your clients' depression this way, the depression related theme should be apparent. In
Jack's case, it was being aware that he did not belong to a group of
good friends.
It may be that there are two depression related themes present
in your client's depression. For example, your client may feel
depressed about sociotropic related loss and the presence of an
undeserved plight. If this is the case, deal with them one at a time
and have your client nominate the theme which they want to focus
on ®rst.
Step 5: Identify the three components of your
depression response and set goals with respect to
each component
The next step is for you to list the three elements of your depression
response in the face of each of the threats listed above.
Identify the three components of your depression
response
I use the term `depression response' to describe the three main components
that make up this response. The three components of your depression
response are the emotional, behavioural and thinking components.
Emotional component
The emotional component here is, of course, depression.
Behavioural component
The behavioural component concerns overt behaviour or action tendencies. These will largely re¯ect your withdrawal from key aspects of life.
Consult the list that I provided to help you identify your behaviour associated with each theme when you are depressed (see p. 59).
Thinking component
The thinking component associated with depression concerns magni®cation of the negative features of the situation you are in and its future
implications. These may be in words or in mental pictures. Consult the list
Dealing with depression
67
that I provided to help you identify your thinking associated with each
theme when you are depressed (see p. 60).
Set goals with respect to each of the three components
You need to set goals so that you know what you are striving for when you
deal effectively with depression. The three goals are emotional, behavioural
and thinking goals.
Emotional goal
Your emotional goal is sadness rather than depression (or whatever synonym you prefer to the term `sadness'). Sadness is a healthy negative
emotion which is an appropriate response to loss, failure or undeserved
plight, but one which helps you to process what has happened to you (or
others in the case of undeserved plight) and move on with your life rather
than get stuck or bogged down.
The concept that sadness is the healthy alternative to depression in
the face of loss, failure or undeserved plight is based on the
following idea. These adversities are negative and therefore it is
realistic to have a negative emotion about them. The choice, therefore, is between an unhealthy negative emotion (depression) or a
healthy negative emotion (sadness). But what if your clients specify
unrealistic goals? Here are a number of such goals and how to
respond to clients who nominate them:
`I don't want to feel depressed.'
Show your clients that they have indicated what they do not want to feel in the
face of loss, failure or undeserved plight, but not what they do want to feel.
Help them to specify an emotion to aim for, like sadness!
`I want to feel less depressed.'
Show your clients that as depression is a disturbed emotion, wanting to feel less
depressed is still to nominate a disturbed emotion, albeit of lesser intensity.
Show them that sadness can be strong and healthy.
`I want to be strong.'
If your clients say that they want to be strong in the face of loss, failure or
undeserved plight, discover what they mean by being strong. Do they mean
feeling sad, processing the adversity and moving on or do they mean getting on
with life without feel sad, for example? If, by being strong, they mean the
former, this is a healthy emotional goal. However, if, by being strong, they
mean the latter, you need to help them to see that this kind of strength is not a
healthy emotional goal. Show them that it does not help them to process the
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Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
adversity, integrate it into their overall experiences history and move on.
Rather, it will soon lead your clients to become stuck in their depressed feelings,
since they will not have processed or integrated this experience.
`I want to feel indifferent.'
Being indifferent in the face of depression-related adversity will not help your
clients to be appropriately geared up to deal with it. Help them to see this. Also
show them that the only way that they could achieve a state of indifference
about loss, failure or undeserved plight is to believe that it does not matter to
them whether or not they experienced these adversities. In other words, show
your clients that they would have to lie to themselves.
Behavioural goal
Your behavioural goal should re¯ect actions that are based on sadness
about your inferential theme rather than depression. The following are
the most common behaviours associated with sadness. You may wish to
compare these behaviours with those associated with depression that I
presented on p. 59.
You seek out reinforcements after a period of mourning (particularly when your
inferential theme is loss).
You create an environment inconsistent with depressed feelings.
You express your feelings about the loss, failure or undeserved plight and talk in a
non-complaining way about your feelings to signi®cant others.
It is important that your clients understand that as they strive
to develop healthy behavioural responses to loss, failure and
undeserved plight, they will still feel the urge to act in ways
designed to help them withdraw from these adversities. Help them
to understand the reason for this. Explain to them that as they
question their beliefs and commit themselves to strengthening
their conviction in their rational beliefs and to weakening their
conviction in their irrational beliefs, their irrational beliefs will
still be active and producing urges for them to act dysfunctionally.
Encourage your clients to accept these urges, to recognise that they
do not have to act on them and to use them as cues to act in
functional ways.
Thinking goal
As well as setting behavioural goals related to the feeling of sadness in the
face of loss, failure and undeserved plight, it is important that you set
Dealing with depression
69
thinking goals associated with this emotion. The following are the most
common forms of thinking associated with sadness rather than depression.
Again you may wish to compare these forms of thinking with those
associated with depression that I presented on p. 60.
You are able to recognise both negative and positive aspects of the loss or failure.
You think you are able to help yourself.
You look to the future with hope.
As the above list shows, the dominant feature of thinking associated with
sadness is that it is realistic and optimistic. Please remember that such
thinking may be in words or in mental pictures.
The point I made above with respect to clients' behavioural goals is
also relevant with respect to their thinking goals. Clients will still
have some conviction in their irrational beliefs until they have full
conviction in their rational beliefs. Given this, your clients' irrational beliefs will have some impact on their subsequent thinking
as they strive to achieve their goals. Thus, highly distorted thoughts
will still come into your clients' minds. Help your clients to understand why this is the case. When you come to help them deal with
these forms of post-irrational belief thinking, do one or more of the
following as indicated. Discuss this issue with your RECBT supervisor, if necessary:
Encourage your clients to acknowledge the existence of such thoughts without
trying to suppress them, distract themselves from them or engage with them.
If relevant, use the presence of this post-irrational belief thinking to help your
clients to identify and deal with the irrational beliefs.
Question the empirical nature of these thinking `C's' once or twice and then
return to the acceptance strategy detailed above.
Step 6: Identify your general irrational beliefs and
alternative general rational beliefs
A general irrational belief leading to your depression response is an irrational belief that you hold across situations de®ned by a loss theme, a
failure theme or an undeserved plight theme. Its rational alternative, which
will also be general in nature, will account for your sadness response.
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Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
Identify your general irrational beliefs
When you identify a general irrational belief, you take a common theme (e.g.
rejection, loss of autonomy or unfair suffering) and add to this a general
rigid belief and the main extreme belief that is derived from the rigid belief.
When you are particularly prone to self-esteem based depression, then your
main extreme belief will be a self-depreciation belief. For non-self-esteem
based depression, your main extreme belief may be either an awfulising
belief or a discomfort intolerance belief, and less frequently it may be an
other-depreciation belief or a life-depreciation belief. For example:
`I must not be rejected and if I am it would prove that I am unlovable' (a general selfesteem based irrational belief ).
`I must not be dependent on others and it would be awful if I were' (a general nonself-esteem based irrational belief ).
Identify your alternative general rational beliefs
When you identify your alternative general rational belief, you take the same
common theme (e.g. rejection, loss of autonomy or unfair suffering) and add
to this a general ¯exible belief and the main non-extreme belief that is derived
from the ¯exible belief. If your general extreme belief is self-depreciation
(when you are particularly prone to self-esteem based depression), your
general non-extreme belief will be an unconditional self-acceptance belief. If
you are prone to non-self-esteem based depression, your alternative general
non-extreme beliefs will be a non-awfulising belief, a discomfort tolerance
belief and less frequently an other-acceptance belief or a life-acceptance
belief. For example:
`I would prefer not to be rejected, but I don't have to be immune from rejection. If I am
rejected, it would be painful, but it would not prove that I am unlovable. I am the same
person whether I am rejected or accepted' (a general unconditional self-acceptance
based rational belief ).
`I would much prefer not to be dependent on others, but that doesn't mean that I
must not be so. If I do have to be dependent on others, it would be very bad, but it
would not be awful' (a general non-awfulising based rational belief ).
As you will have noticed in the Client's Guide, I encourage readers
to identify and work with their general irrational beliefs and to
develop general rational beliefs and, as you will see, when they are
facing speci®c instances of their problems, I encourage them to
Dealing with depression
71
focus on speci®c examples of both sets of beliefs. This will be at
variance with your RECBT practice, where you will begin with
speci®c examples of your clients' problems and then proceed to
work at a more general level with their problems and how these
relate to one another.
The reason I have chosen to go `general' rather than `speci®c'
when helping readers to deal with their emotional problems is a
pragmatic one. In this book, I aim to help people to deal with a
range of emotional problems and therefore, in my view, it is best to
give readers general guidance with respect to dealing with this
range of problems and then help them to move from the general to
the speci®c rather than vice versa. My considered view was that I
just do not have the space to help readers focus on speci®c
examples of their emotional problems and then generalise from
this speci®c level.
Consequently, one way that you can help your clients who are
using the Client's Guide is to help them to work with speci®c
examples of their emotional problem, in this case depression. Use
the following sequence as you do so and help your clients to
select a speci®c example of their depression problem
express why their depression constitutes a problem for them
identify what they were most depressed about in the situation
identify the three speci®c components of their depression response and set
speci®c goals with respect to each component
identify their speci®c irrational beliefs and alternative speci®c rational beliefs
question their speci®c beliefs.
In helping your clients to deal with a speci®c example of their
depression, you can teach them how to use RECBT's ABCD form,
which appears in Appendix 6.
The following steps are the same as those that appear in Steps 8±
11 later in this chapter. Thus, help your clients to
face their loss, failure or undeserved plight in imagery (if necessary)
face their loss, failure or undeserved plight in reality (if possible) and take
appropriate action
capitalise on what they learned
generalise their learning.
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Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
Step 7: Question your general beliefs
I recommended in Chapter 2 that you ®rst question together your general
rigid belief and your alternative general ¯exible belief and then question
together your general extreme belief and your general non-extreme belief.
Question your general rigid belief and its general flexible
belief alternative
First, take your general rigid belief and its general ¯exible belief alternative
and write them down next to one another on a sheet of paper. Then ask
yourself:
Which is true and which is false?
Which is sensible logically and which does not make sense?
Which has largely constructive results and which has largely unconstructive results?
Write down your answer to each of these questions on your piece of paper,
giving reasons for each answer. Consult Appendix 2 for help with the
answers to these questions, which you need to adapt and apply to the
beliefs you are questioning.
Question your general extreme belief and its general nonextreme belief alternative
Next, take your general extreme belief and its general non-extreme belief
alternative and again write them down next to one another on a sheet of
paper. Then, ask yourself the same three questions that you used with your
general rigid belief and its general ¯exible belief alternative. Again write
down your answer to each of these questions on your piece of paper, giving
reasons for each answer. I suggest that you consult Appendix 3 (for help
with questioning awfulising beliefs and non-awfulising beliefs), Appendix 4
(for help with questioning discomfort intolerance beliefs and discomfort
tolerance beliefs) and Appendix 5 (for help with questioning depreciation
beliefs and unconditional acceptance beliefs). Again, you need to adapt
and apply these arguments to the beliefs you are questioning.
You should now be ready to commit to acting and thinking in ways
consistent with your general rational belief.
Dealing with depression
73
I included Appendices 2±5 in the Client's Guide as general guidelines to help readers to question their irrational and rational
beliefs (reproduced in this book as Appendices 2±5). If you are
working with clients who are using the Client's Guide, you will
have a chance to look at the questioning work that your clients
have done at this point and give them feedback on that work. No
book can provide such feedback.
I have suggested that readers question their rigid belief and their
¯exible belief together and then their main extreme belief and
non-extreme belief equivalent together using three criteria as
shown below:
Rigid belief vs. ¯exible belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status
Main extreme belief vs. main non-extreme belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status.
However, there are other ways of questioning beliefs as shown
below. When using the Client's Guide with your clients, outline
these other approaches in case they do not resonate with the
approach I put forward in the Client's Guide. The important point
is that your clients use all three arguments with each of their
rational and irrational beliefs.
Rigid belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status
Flexible belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status
Main extreme belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status
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Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
Main non-extreme belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status.
And also:
Rigid belief
empirical status
Flexible belief
empirical status
Rigid belief
logical status
Flexible belief
logical status
Rigid belief
pragmatic status
Flexible belief
pragmatic status
Main extreme belief
empirical status
Main non-extreme belief
empirical status
Main extreme belief
logical status
Main non-extreme belief
logical status
Main extreme belief
pragmatic status
Main non-extreme belief
pragmatic status.
The ®nal point I want to make about questioning beliefs concerns
the concept of persuasiveness. Perhaps the most important aspect
Dealing with depression
75
of the questioning process is for your clients to develop arguments
concerning the irrationality of their irrational beliefs and the
rationality of their rational beliefs that are persuasive to them. So,
encourage your clients to develop such persuasive arguments and
to make a note of these for future reference.
Step 8: Face your loss, failure and undeserved plight
in imagery
I hope that you have made a commitment to act on your general rational
beliefs (i.e. ¯exible belief and relevant non-extreme belief ). Assuming that
you have, your basic task is for you to face up to your loss, failure or
undeserved plight and to learn to think rationally about it without withdrawing from life.
Up to this point you have worked at a general level with respect to the
losses, failures or undeserved plights you are depressed about, the general
irrational beliefs that account for this depression and their alternative
general rational beliefs. However, when you come to apply your general
rational beliefs in dealing with your loss, failure or undeserved plight, you
need to bear in mind one important point. Since you make yourself
depressed about speci®c losses, failures or undeserved plights (actual or
imagined), you need to deal with these speci®c losses by rehearsing
speci®c variants of your general rational beliefs.
While the best way to do this is in speci®c situations in which you infer
loss, failure or undeserved plight, you may derive bene®t by using imagery
®rst. If this is the case, you need to do the following:
Imagine a speci®c situation in which you felt depressed or may feel depressed and
focus on your loss, failure or undeserved plight.
See yourself facing the loss, failure or undeserved plight while rehearsing a speci®c
rational belief relevant to the situation. As you do this, try to make yourself feel sad,
rather than depressed.
Then see yourself getting on with your life after an appropriate period of mourning.
As you picture yourself getting on with your life, recognise that it is healthy to feel
sad, even well after the event. The main thing is that your sadness does not stop you
from reconnecting with life and pursuing your goals.
Recognise that some of your post-belief thinking may be distorted, Respond to it
without getting bogged down doing so. Accept the presence of any remaining
distorted thoughts without engaging with them.
Repeat the above steps until you feel suf®ciently ready to put this sequence into
practice in your life.
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Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
If you ®nd that facing your loss, failure or undeserved plight, in your mind's
eye, is too much for you, use the `challenging, but not overwhelming'
principle that I introduced in Chapter 1. This means that instead of imagining
yourself facing a loss, failure or undeserved plight that you ®nd `overwhelming' at the present time, choose a similar loss, failure or undeserved
plight that you would ®nd `challenging, but not overwhelming'. Then employ
the same steps that I have outlined above. Work in this way with modi®ed
losses, failures or undeserved plights until you ®nd your original one
`challenging, but not overwhelming' and then use the steps again.
Some of your clients may say that they can't get very clear images
when they try to picture events in their mind's eye. While they may
get more out of imagery techniques if they can get such clear
images, they will still get something out of facing loss, failure or
undeserved plight in imagery if they don't. So, if clients want to
face their particular adversity in imagery before they do so in
reality, encourage them to do so no matter how clear their mental
images are.
Step 9: Face your loss, failure and undeserved plight
in reality
Whether or not you have used imagery as a preparatory step, you need to
take the following steps when you face situations that remind you of your
loss, failure, undeserved plight or threat in reality.
Choose a speci®c situation in which you will be reminded of your loss, failure or
undeserved plight and about which you would ordinarily feel depressed.
Rehearse a speci®c version of your general rational beliefs before entering the
situation so that you can face your loss, failure or underserved plight while in a
rational frame of mind. In addition, it would be useful to develop a shorthand version
of your speci®c rational belief to use while you are in the situation.
Enter the situation and accept the fact that you are likely to be uncomfortable while
doing so. React to any consequences from a rational frame of mind if you can.
Recognise that even though you have got yourself into a rational frame of mind, some
of your thinking may be distorted and unrealistic and some may be realistic and
balanced. Accept the presence of the former and do not engage with it. Engage with
the latter without using it to reassure yourself.
You may ®nd that your clients report various obstacles to facing
loss, failure or undeserved plight in reality. I list here some of the
Dealing with depression
77
major obstacles and suggest ways of addressing these obstacles
with your clients.
`It's too depressing to face the loss/failure/undeserved plight.'
If your clients think that facing a loss/failure/undeserved plight situation is
too depressing for them, suggest that they utilise the `challenging, but not
overwhelming' principle discussed in the Client's Guide (see p. 44). This involves
your client selecting a loss/failure/undeserved plight situation that would be a
challenge for them to face, but not overwhelming for them, at that time.
`I don't have the capacity to face the loss/failure/undeserved plight.'
One of the thinking features of depression is that your clients hold the
inference that they are helpless in the face of adversity. In order to challenge
this limiting idea, help them to acknowledge and implement the following:
Help them to understand that this inference stems from an irrational belief
and does not re¯ect reality.
Help them to see that they do not need to feel capable to face loss/failure/
undeserved plight in order to face it.
Help them to realise that such capability develops over time and that the more
they act without this `feeling', the more they will develop actual capability.
`There is no point in facing loss/failure/undeserved plight.'
Another major thinking feature of depression is a sense of hopelessness in the
face of adversity. In order to challenge this limiting idea, help your client to
acknowledge and implement the following:
Help them to understand that this inference stems from an irrational belief
and does not re¯ect reality.
Ask them how they would advise a loved one who said something similar. Help
them to see that they can act on this advice (as long as it is constructive!).
Help them to see that they do not have to have hope before facing adversity
and that hope may develop as a result of facing it.
`I don't feel comfortable facing the threat.'
Help your clients to see that if they wait until they are comfortable before
facing loss/failure/underserved plight, they will wait a very long time. Show
them that if they are comfortable about facing a loss, failure or underserved
plight, then it is likely that they are not depressed about it. Consequently, it is
important that you help your clients realise that they are bound to be
uncomfortable about facing a depression related situation even after they have
disputed their depression creating irrational beliefs. Show them that they can
tolerate this discomfort and that it is worth it to them to do so.
Step 10: Capitalise on what you learned
When you have faced the situation that reminded you of your loss, failure
or undeserved plight and dealt with it as best you could, it is important that
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Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
you re¯ect on what you did and what you learned. In particular, if you were
able to face the situation, rehearse your speci®c rational beliefs until you
felt sad, then ask yourself how you can capitalise on what you achieved. If
you experienced any problems, respond to the following questions:
Did I face the situation, and if not, why not?
Did I rehearse my rational beliefs before and during facing the situation, and if not,
why not?
Did I execute my plan to face the situation, and if not, why not?
Did I engage with post-belief distorted thinking, and if so, why?
Re¯ect on your experience and put into practice what you learned the next
time you face a situation that reminds you of your loss, failure or undeserved
plight.
It is useful to monitor your clients' responses to these questions
and help them to re¯ect on any issues that they have not
considered.
Step 11: Generalise your learning
Once you have dealt with your depression in a speci®c situation, you can
generalise what you have learned about dealing effectively with depression
across situations de®ned by a loss, failure or undeserved plight to which
you are particularly vulnerable to (e.g. failure) and also apply your learning
to situations de®ned by a different theme that you may have problems with
(e.g. having to rely on others).
James was particularly prone to depression about failure, so he followed the
steps outlined in this chapter. Thus:
James assessed the three components of his depression response and set
goals with respect to all three components.
He identi®ed his relevant general irrational belief regarding failure (i.e. `I must
not fail and if I do, I'm a failure') that underpinned his depression response
and his alternative general rational belief (i.e. `I don't want to fail, but I am not
immune from doing so and nor do I have to. If I do fail it is bad, but I am not a
failure. I am an unrateable, fallible human being capable of failing and
succeeding') that underpinned his sadness response.
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79
He questioned both elements of his general irrational belief and his general
rational belief until he clearly saw that the former were false, made no sense
and were detrimental to him and that the latter were true, sensible and healthy.
He outlined situations which particularly reminded him of his failures and
prepared to face them by questioning speci®c versions of these beliefs. He
®rst rehearsed relevant speci®c versions of his general rational beliefs
regarding failure and then faced speci®c situations which reminded him of
failing while keeping in mind a shortened version of his rational belief (i.e. `I
don't have to succeed'). As he did so he tolerated the discomfort that he felt
and accepted that some of his distorted and skewed negative thinking would
still be in his mind. He let such thinking be without engaging with it,
suppressing it or distracting himself from it.
When he had made progress in dealing with his failure-related depression, he
applied common features to his depression about being dependent on others.
He also identi®ed new behavioural and thinking components of his depression
response with respect to being dependent on others and set goals accordingly.
He identi®ed his relevant general irrational belief regarding being dependent
on others (i.e. `I must not be dependent on others and if I am, I am a pathetic
individual') that underpinned his depression response and his alternative
general rational belief (i.e. `I don't want to be dependent on others, but that
does not mean that this must not happen. If it does it is really unpleasant, but
it does not prove that I am a pathetic individual. It means that I am a fallible,
ordinary person and my temporary dependent state does not de®ne me' ) that
underpinned his sadness response.
He again questioned both elements of his general irrational belief and his
general rational belief until he clearly saw that the former were false, made no
sense and were detrimental to him and that the latter were true, sensible and
healthy.
He then outlined situations which he had avoided because he would be
dependent on others and would depress himself about that and prepared to
face them by questioning speci®c versions of these beliefs. He ®rst rehearsed
relevant speci®c versions of his general rational beliefs regarding being
dependent and faced speci®c situations in which he would be dependent on
others while keeping in mind a shortened version of his rational belief (i.e.
`Being dependent does not taint me').
As he did so he tolerated the discomfort that he felt and accepted that some of
his distorted and skewed negative thinking would still be in his mind as he did
so. He again let such thinking be without engaging with it, suppressing it or
distracting himself from it.
As this section shows, you can generalise what you learn about dealing
with depression from situation to situation as de®ned by a speci®c loss,
failure or undeserved plight and from there to situations de®ned by a
different theme related to depression with which you have a problem. If you
do this with all losses, failures and undeserved plights to which you are
particularly vulnerable, you will take the toxicity out of the emotional problem of depression!
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USING RECBT'S ABCD FORM TO DEAL WITH
SPECIFIC EXAMPLES OF YOUR DEPRESSION
This chapter is mainly geared to help you deal with your depression in
general terms. However, you can also use this material to address speci®c
examples of your depression. I have developed a self-help form to provide
the structure to assist you in this regard. It is called the ABCD form and it
appears with instructions in Appendix 6.
In Appendix 6, I outline the major problems that clients have in
using this form and how to deal with them.
OTHER IMPORTANT ISSUES IN DEALING WITH
DEPRESSION
In the above section, I outlined an eleven step programme to deal with
depression. In this section, I discuss some other important issues that may
be relevant to you in your work to become less prone to this emotional
problem. If you want to, you can incorporate them as additional steps in the
above step-by-step guide at points relevant to you.
Why you focus so much on loss, failure and
undeserved plight and how to deal with this
If you are particularly prone to depression, you will be particularly sensitive
to focusing on the losses, failures and undeserved plights of your life (and
in the lives of others in the case of the latter). You may see losses without
seeing gains, you may see as failures in what others regard as successes
and you may fail to see the good in your life and in the lives of others. So
far in this chapter, I have helped you deal with depression in situations
where you perceive loss, failure and undeserved plight. In this section, I
help you to understand and deal with situations where you overly focus on
loss, failure or undeserved plight in the ®rst place.
Why you focus so much on loss, failure and undeserved
plight
The following explains why you focus so much on loss, failure and
undeserved plight. I will illustrate this with reference to one of James's
general irrational beliefs:
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81
You take your general irrational belief:
`I must do perfectly well and if I do not, I'm a failure.'
You add the concept of uncertainty to this belief so that you create a second general
irrational belief that features this uncertainty:
`I must be sure that I have done perfectly well and I can't bear not knowing this.'
You bring this second general irrational belief to situations where you have not done
perfectly well and make an inference coloured by this second general irrational belief:
`Since I don't know that I have done perfectly well, I have failed.'
You focus on this inference and bring a speci®c version of your original general
irrational belief to this inference. For example:
Inference: `I got 90 per cent on that test. As I could have done better, I have failed.'
Speci®c irrational belief: `I absolutely should not have failed on the test. I am a failure
for not doing better.'
How to deal with your selective focus on loss, failure and
undeserved plight
In order to deal with your selective focus on loss, failure or undeserved
plight, you need to take a number of steps, which I illustrate with reference
to James.
Construct general rational alternatives, both to your original loss based, failure based
or undeserved plight based irrational belief:
`I want to do perfectly well, but I don't have to do so. If I don't do perfectly well, it is bad,
but I am not a failure. I am an unrateable, fallible human being capable of failing and
succeeding.'
and to your second general irrational belief about uncertainty related to your
performance:
`I would like to be sure that I have done perfectly well, but I really don't have to know this. If
I don't, it is hard to bear, but I can bear such uncertainty and it's worth it for me to do so.'
Question both sets of beliefs until you can see the rationality of the two general
rational beliefs and the irrationality of the two general irrational beliefs and you can
commit to implementing the former.
Bring your two general rational beliefs about your performance and uncertainty
related to your performance to situations where you failed to do perfectly well and
consider what you did achieve as well as what you did not achieve:
`Although I originally thought I failed, I can see that achieving 90 per cent is actually
evidence that I have done very well.'
If you did actually fail, use a speci®c version of your general failure based rational
belief to deal with this. For example:
Inference: `I actually failed the test.'
Speci®c rational belief: `I did not want to fail this test, but that does not mean that I
absolutely should not have done so. Failing the test is bad, but I am not a failure. I am an
unrateable, fallible human being capable of failing and succeeding.'
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If your clients ®nd that the above explanation is too complex, you
can help them to see that rigid beliefs about the presence or
absence of depression related adversities means that if it is not
clear that the loss/failure/undeserved plight has not occurred, they
will assume that it has occurred. When their beliefs are ¯exible,
they can be more objective about the presence of these adversities.
How to examine the accuracy of your inference of loss,
failure or undeserved plight if necessary
If you are still unsure if you have experienced a loss, failure or undeserved
plight, answer one or more of the following questions (which focus on
failure to exemplify the points made):
How valid is my conclusion that I failed (for example)?
Would an objective jury agree that I failed? If not, what would the jury's verdict be?
Is my conclusion that I failed realistic? If not, what is a more realistic conclusion?
If I asked someone whom I could trust to give me an objective opinion about my
conclusion that I failed, what would the person say to me and why? What conclusion
would this person encourage me to make instead?
If a friend had told me that they had made the same conclusion that they had failed,
what would I say to them about the validity of their conclusion and why? What
conclusion would I encourage this friend to make instead?
Assessing and dealing with emotional problems
about depression
In Chapter 2, I discussed the concept of meta-disturbance (literally disturbance about disturbance). It is important to assess carefully the nature
of this meta-disturbance about depression before you can best deal with it.
The best way to start dealing with the assessment of any emotional
problems you might have about depression is to ask yourself the question:
`How do I feel about being depressed?' The most common emotional problems that people have about depression are as follows: anxiety, depression,
guilt, shame and unhealthy self-anger. I discuss only the second of these in
this chapter, i.e. depression about depression, and refer you to the respective chapters on anxiety, guilt, shame and unhealthy anger for how to deal
with these emotional problems as applied to depression.
Dealing with depression
83
Assessing depression about depression
When you are depressed about depression, it is clear that you think of your
original depression as a loss, failure or undeserved plight. The most
common of these inferences are as follows:
Depression means that I have lost connection with people (in the sociotropic realm).
Depression means that I have to rely on others (in the autonomic realm).
Depression is an additional undeserved burden I have to deal with (in the
undeservingness realm).
Dealing with depression about depression
Unless you deal with your depression about depression (called metadepression), you are unlikely to deal with your original depression, since
your meta-depression will lead to you focus on themes about which you
are likely to feel even more depressed. Thus, meta-depression (if you
experience it) often has to be dealt with before you deal with your original
depression.
As I have made clear in this book, it is important that you develop and
apply rational beliefs about loss, failure and undeserved plight, while
becoming more active and while letting be (i.e. not engaging with or distracting yourself from) any remaining post-irrational belief negative
thoughts or images you may have. With these points in mind, let me give
you brief advice of how to deal with the three forms of depression about
depression I have listed.
Dealing with the loss of connection with others
This is an issue that you are more likely to have if your depression is in the
sociotropic realm than in the autonomous or undeservingness realms. In
order to deal with this issue you need to do the following. First, develop a
set of rational beliefs about the loss of connection with others (after
questioning both your irrational and rational beliefs as outlined in Appendices 2±5). These may be ego in nature (e.g. `I would prefer not to lose
connection with others, but that does not mean it must not happen. If it
does, that is unfortunate, but it does not prove I am unlovable. I am an
unrateable person who is capable of being loved whether I am connected to
others or not') or non-ego in nature (e.g. `I would prefer not to lose connection with others, but that does not mean it must not happen. If it does, it
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is a struggle for me to put up with this uncomfortable situation, but I can
tolerate it and it is worth it to me to do so').Then, it's useful for you develop
a shorthand version of these rational beliefs (e.g. `Connection with others
is good, but not necessary') and use this before seeking to reconnect with
others and as you do so.
Dealing with relying on others
When you are depressed, you may lose some autonomy and be forced to
rely on others. This is a particular problem for those who are rigid about
having autonomy. If you are likely to make yourself depressed about having
to rely on others, this is what you need to do. First, develop a set of rational
beliefs about having to rely on others (after questioning both your irrational
and rational beliefs as outlined in Appendices 2±5). Again, these may be
ego in nature (e.g. `I would prefer not to rely on others, but I do not always
have my wish ful®lled on this issue. If I do have to rely on others this does
not prove I am a weak person. I am a fallible person whose worth does not
change if I have to rely on others') or non-ego in nature (e.g. `I would prefer
not to rely on others, but I do not always have to have my wish ful®lled on
this issue. If I do have to rely on others that's unfortunate, but it isn't
terrible'). Then, it's again useful to develop a shorthand version of these
rational beliefs (e.g. `I am fallible, not weak, if I have to rely on others') and
use this before seeking help from others and as you do so.
Dealing with the additional burden of depression
The ®rst step to dealing with this depression is to assume temporarily that
depression is an additional burden. Then, develop a set of rational beliefs
about having such undeserved plight (after questioning both your irrational
and rational beliefs as outlined in Appendices 2±4). These are likely to be
non-ego in nature (e.g. `I would prefer not to have this additional undeserved
burden on me, but that does not mean that I must not have it. It is
unfortunate that I have it, but not terrible and I am not a poor person as a
result. I am a non-poor person in a poor situation'). Once again it's useful to
develop a shorthand version of this rational belief (e.g. `Depression is poor,
but I'm not') and use this before tackling your original depression.
Your clients will sometimes need to address their depression about
depression (i.e. their secondary depression) before they address their
primary depression. They need to do this particularly when their
secondary depression gets in the way of them dealing with their
Dealing with depression
85
primary depression. However, despite the interfering presence of
secondary depression, some clients still want to target their primary
depression ®rst. There are two ways of dealing with this situation:
Provide a rationale to help your clients target their secondary depression. For
example, explain to your clients that their secondary depression is like having a
ball and chain around their leg while they are climbing a steep hill (akin to
their primary depression). In the same way as climbing the hill is easier when
they remove the ball and chain from their leg, dealing with their primary
depression is easier when they deal with their secondary depression ®rst.
Go along with your clients' wish to deal with their primary depression and
when they fail to do so, help them to understand that the reason why they
failed is because they had not addressed their secondary depression and then
agree that they will now do so.
Developing and rehearsing a non-depressed world
view
People develop views of the world as it relates to them that make it more or
less likely that they will experience unhealthy negative emotions. The world
views that render you vulnerable to depression do so in a similar way to
your perfectionistic general irrational beliefs about a speci®c loss, failure or
undeserved plight theme by making you focus unduly on the presence of
loss, failure or undeserved plight about which you hold depression related
irrational beliefs. However, these depression based world views have this
effect on you much more widely.
It is important that you develop realistic views of the world that will help
you to deal with depression. In Table 3, you will ®nd an illustrative list of
such world views rather than an exhaustive one, so you can get an idea of
what I mean, which will enable you to develop your own. In Table 3, I ®rst
describe a world view that renders you vulnerable to depression and then I
give its healthy alternative. You will see that the latter is characterised by its
complexity and non-extreme nature, whereas in the former, aspects of the
world that relate to loss, failure and undeserved plight are portrayed as
unidimensional and extreme.
If you hold rational beliefs that are consistent with the views of the world
listed on the right hand side of Table 3 and if you act and think in ways that
are, in turn, consistent with these rational beliefs, then doing all this will
help you become less prone to depression.
In Chapter 4, I discuss guilt and how to deal with it.
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Table 3 World views that render you vulnerable to depression and help you to deal with
depression
Views of the world that render you
vulnerable to depression
Views of the world that help you
deal with depression
The world is a bad place
The world is a place where bad, good
and neutral things happen
Life is ultimately meaningless
Life neither has meaning nor is
meaningless. I can ®nd and actively
pursue a number of meaningful
projects over my life span
People will ultimately reject me,
therefore it is best not be get involved
with them
Some people will reject me, others will
not. I can actively involve myself in
relationships in light of this fact
People cannot be trusted
People vary enormously along a
continuum of trustworthiness. My best
stance is to trust someone unless I
have evidence to the contrary. If I am let
down that is very unfortunate, but
hardly terrible and won't unduly affect
my stance towards the next person I
meet
The world is made up of strong and
weak people
The world is made up of people who all
have their strengths and weaknesses
4
Dealing with guilt
In this chapter, I begin by presenting RECBT's way of understanding guilt
and then address how to deal with this emotional problem.
UNDERSTANDING GUILT
In understanding guilt, we need to know what we tend to make ourselves
guilty about (i.e. its major inference themes), what beliefs we hold, how we
act or tend to act, and how we think when we are feeling guilty.
I mentioned in previous chapters that it is important that you use
your client's language when referring to emotional problems. With
respect to the term `guilt', the main issue is that clients often confuse the emotion of `guilt' at `C' with being guilty of something at
`A'. Here, you need to help them to see that the two are different and
just because they were `guilty' of something at `A', it does not follow
that they felt guilty about it at `C'. Thus, they could have felt
remorseful about it which, in RECBT, is seen as the healthy alternative to guilt. However, other clients say that they feel `remorseful'
when they do actually experience `guilt'. Your task is to satisfy
yourself and your clients that they do have a `guilt' problem and to
use whatever term the client resonates with in therapy. When you
have done so, write this term down in your client's notes.
Major inference themes in guilt
There are three major themes in relation to your personal domain that are
implicated in guilt:
You have broken your moral code (i.e. you have done the wrong thing).
You have failed to live up to your moral code (i.e. you failed to do the right thing).
You have hurt someone's feelings.
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Some clients may not resonate to the above schema and, in these
cases, you should encourage them to put it aside and just focus on
what they tend to feel guilty about. RECBT theory values ¯exibility
and this includes the freedom not to use RECBT terms, schemes
and frameworks.
Irrational beliefs
As I explained in Chapter 1, according to RECBT, inferences on their own
do not account for emotional problems. It is possible, therefore, for you to
make the same inferences as listed above and be remorseful, but not guilty.
In order for you to feel guilty when you think that you have done the wrong
thing, failed to do the right thing or hurt someone's feelings, you have to
hold an irrational belief. In guilt, this will involve you holding a rigid belief
and an extreme self-depreciation belief.
If your clients are unsure about the mediating role that irrational
beliefs play in their guilt, ask them how they would feel if they
really believed the rational alternatives to what RECBT holds are
their guilt creating irrational beliefs. In using this strategy, it is
important that you formulate the rational beliefs for your clients,
who cannot be expected to do this for themselves at this stage.
When you do this, ensure that you match your clients' rigid belief
with a ¯exible alternative and their extreme self-depreciation
belief with a non-extreme unconditional self-acceptance alternative, and then ask them how they would feel if they had strong
conviction in this rational belief.
For example: `Let me outline two sets of beliefs about hurting
your friend's feelings and you tell me which leads to guilt and
which leads to remorse without guilt. The ®rst set of beliefs is as
follows: ``I absolutely should not have hurt my friend's feelings
and I am a bad person for doing so.'' The second set of beliefs is: ``I
would have much preferred not to have hurt my friend's feelings,
but sadly I'm not immune from doing so and neither do I have to
be so immune. I am not a bad person for hurting my friend's
feelings, rather I am a fallible human being who is capable of
doing right and wrong.'' Now which set of beliefs would lead to
guilt and which set would lead to remorse without guilt?'
Once your clients can see that their irrational beliefs underpin
guilt and their rational beliefs underpin remorse, they have understood the mediating role of beliefs.
Dealing with guilt
89
This is quite an elegant strategy since it accomplishes a number
of things at once:
It addresses your clients' doubts about the mediating role of irrational beliefs
in guilt if they have such concern.
It introduces rational beliefs as a meaningful alternative to these irrational
beliefs.
It helps your clients to see that holding rational beliefs can have bene®cial
effects.
Behaviour associated with guilt
When you hold an irrational belief about doing the wrong thing, failing to
do the right thing or hurting someone's feelings, you will act or tend to act
in a number of ways, the most common of which are as follows:
You escape from the unhealthy pain of guilt in self-defeating ways.
You beg forgiveness from the person you have wronged.
You promise unrealistically that you will not `sin' again.
You punish yourself physically or by deprivation.
You defensively disclaim responsibility for wrongdoing.
You reject offers of forgiveness.
You will see from the above list that these behaviours get in the way of you
thinking clearly about you did or what you failed to do and the reasons for
this so that you can understand and learn from the situation.
If you ask your clients whether they want to change their guilt
related behaviour, their response will be affected by their mood. If
they are currently feeling guilty, they are less likely to see that this
behaviour is dysfunctional than when they are not feeling guilty.
Also, if they do feel guilty, they may think that they warrant being
punished or punishing themselves. In these circumstances, it may
be useful to encourage them to imagine that they are advising a
friend who displays the same guilt related behaviour as they do.
What would they say to this friend about the functionality or
dysfunctionality of such behaviour? They are more likely to see
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Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
that their own guilt related behaviour is dysfunctional after they
have told this `friend' that the same behaviour is dysfunctional.
Thinking associated with guilt
When you hold an irrational belief about doing the wrong thing, failing to
do the right thing or hurting someone's feelings, you will tend to think in a
number of ways. Remember what I said in Chapter 1: the thinking that
accompanies your guilt is the result of your inference (i.e. that you did the
wrong thing, failed to do the right thing or hurt others in some way) being
processed by your irrational belief and therefore it is likely to contain a
number of thinking errors that I present in Appendix 1. I list the main
features of this post-irrational belief guilty thinking below:
You conclude that you have de®nitely committed the sin.
You assume more personal responsibility than the situation warrants.
You assign far less responsibility to others than is warranted.
You dismiss possible mitigating factors for your behaviour.
You see your behaviour only in a guilt-related context and fail to put it into an overall
context.
You think that you will receive retribution.
As you can see, such thinking exaggerates the degree of responsibility you
have, and the negative consequences of your behaviour and also ignores
the role of context. As with post-irrational belief anxiety thinking and
depressed thinking, post-irrational belief guilty thinking may be in words or
in mental images.
One of the main features of post-irrational belief thinking is that
it is compelling. As such, it is quite easy for your clients to get
caught up in this way of thinking and think that it re¯ects reality.
This is an example of `cognitive-emotive' reasoning: if a thought is
plausible and emotionally compelling, therefore it must be true. It
is important that you help your clients to understand how their
mind works with respect to the thinking consequences of irrational
beliefs and to encourage them to use such thoughts to go back to
address the irrational beliefs that spawn them. When they have
done this, you can encourage them to respond to these thinking
consequences of irrational beliefs as the iBs will not disappear just
Dealing with guilt
91
because they have questioned these beliefs. When your clients
respond to these thinking consequences of iBs, they need to do so
only a few times on any one occasion. After that, they need to
accept the presence of such thinking without engaging with it.
To summarise, your clients need to
identify the presence of the thinking consequences of irrational beliefs (see
Appendix 1)
trace these back to the source of this mode of thinking (i.e. identify the
underlying irrational beliefs)
challenge these irrational beliefs
respond brie¯y to the thinking consequences of such beliefs, but not get overly
involved in this process
accept the lingering presence of these thinking consequences without engaging
with them
get on with the business of living.
HOW TO DEAL WITH GUILT
If you are prone to guilt, you tend to experience this emotional problem in a
variety of different settings and in response to a variety of perceived moral
code violations and failures as well as times when you in¯icted hurt on
others. Here is how to deal with guilt so that you become less prone to it.
Step 1: Identify reasons why guilt is a problem for you
and why you want to change
While guilt is generally regarded as an emotional problem, it is useful for
you to spell out reasons why guilt is a problem for you and why you want to
change. I suggest that you keep a written list of these reasons and refer to it
as needed as a reminder of why you are engaged in a self-help programme.
I discuss the healthy alternative to guilt in Step 4.
It is important to remember that people who feel guilty a lot of the
time think that `feeling guilty' is an appropriate response to acts of
moral commission or omission or hurting the feelings of others.
In these circumstances, it is important to introduce the idea of
feeling remorseful as the healthy alternative to guilt a little earlier
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Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
than you would normally do (see Step 4). When you have done so,
you can then carry out a cost-bene®t analysis of guilt and its
healthy alternative, remorse. This involves helping your clients to
spell out the perceived advantages and disadvantages of both emotions. Respond to any perceived advantages of guilt and perceived
disadvantages of remorse, correcting any misconceptions that your
clients reveal on these issues.
For example, imagine that your clients think that feeling guilty
will help stop them from breaking their moral code in the future
and that feeling remorseful would not achieve the same end. In
this case, help them to see that precisely the reverse is true. The selfdepreciation belief that your clients hold when they experience
guilt is some variant of `I am a bad person'. If that is the way that
they think of themselves, they are more, rather than less, likely to
break their code since bad people do bad things. The unconditional
self-accepting belief that underpins remorse is likely to protect the
person from breaking their code since it does the following:
It helps the client to distinguish right from wrong.
It articulates that it is better to do the right thing than the wrong thing since it
is based on a ¯exible belief about moral code violation.
It helps the person see that they are more likely to do the right thing if they see
themselves as fallible than if they see themselves as bad.
Step 2: Take responsibility for your guilt
In RECBT, we argue that what you do or don't do does not make you feel
guilty; rather you create these feelings by the rigid and extreme beliefs that
you hold about what you do or don't do. Unless you accept this point, you
will not address your guilt productively. Rather, you will think that the only
way not to feel guilty is by always acting morally and never hurting people's
feelings. This will perpetuate your guilt rather than deal with it.
The idea that emotional problems (including guilt) are based
largely on the way that a person thinks about what happens to
them is, as you know, a central plank in RECBT. However, for
many clients it will be a new idea. Thus, your clients may hold that
the reason they are guilty, for example, is that it is inherently
wrong to hurt someone's feelings and that guilt is caused by such a
Dealing with guilt
93
wrongdoing. It may seem that the client is taking responsibility
for this emotion of guilt and is taking responsibility for their
wrongdoing.
However, on closer inspection this is not the case. In RECBT, we
don't say that wrongdoing causes guilt. This is an example of `A-C'
thinking where `A' is the person's action of wrongdoing and `C' is
the emotion of guilt. Rather, we argue that the reason that the
person experiences guilt is largely due to the fact that they hold a
set of irrational beliefs about such wrongdoing. If the person held
a set of rational beliefs about the wrongdoing, they would experience remorse rather than guilt.
What you need to do, then, is to help your client see that they
create their guilty emotion by holding a set of irrational beliefs
about the wrongdoing. In this way, you can help them take two
types of responsibility, not only for their actions but also for the
irrational beliefs that underpin their guilt.
If your clients continue to have dif®culty accepting responsibility
for their guilty feelings, it is important for you to identify the
source of this dif®culty. In the Client's Guide, I mention one
common obstacle that stops clients from accepting such responsibility (i.e. the self-blame that clients would engage were they to
assume responsibility for making themselves guilty). However, there
are other obstacles to accepting responsibility such as the following:
Hopelessness about change (e.g. `I am a bad person. I don't just think I am').
Here the person is reluctant to see his guilt as a belief problem. He considers
that he is bad because of his actions or inactions. The best intervention here
involves invoking the client's empathy by asking if he would tell a loved one
who did exactly the same thing that he did, for example, that they were bad
through and through for doing so. If the client can assume the role of compassionate observer (rather than self-punitive experiencer) it often helps this
person to see that his guilt is a belief problem (e.g. `I think I am bad') for which
he can take responsibility and thereby change rather than an identity problem
(e.g. `I am bad. I don't just think I am') which he can't do anything about if it
were true.
The need for divine forgiveness (e.g. `I cannot forgive myself for what I have
done. Only God can forgive me'). If your client holds to this position, there are
four ways of responding:
If he is a Christian show him that Christ advises that we accept the sinner,
but not the sin (a position similar to unconditional self-acceptance).
Ask the client how he knows that divine forgiveness does not work through
self-forgiveness.
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Ask him how he knows when God forgives him? Also enquire how long does
he have to condemn himself for God to forgive him? What would he say to a
child who asks him these questions?
If all else fails, ®nd and use a religious representative whose views complement that of RECBT since such a person may be a more acceptable authority.
It is important to help your clients to understand the impact of
these obstacles on their emotional problems. Then, help them to
develop alternatives to these obstacles and review the impact of
these alternatives on their emotional problem-solving. This often
helps clients to deal effectively with these obstacles. If not, you may
need to do a more detailed assessment of the obstacle, which is
outside the brief of this book.
Step 3: Identify the themes you tend to be guilty
about
The best way of identifying guilt related inference themes to which you are
particularly vulnerable is by understanding the themes associated with
guilt, and seeing which are present when you feel guilty. As I outlined
above, there are three such themes:
You have broken your moral code (i.e. you have done the wrong thing).
You have failed to live up to your moral code (i.e. you have failed to do the right
thing).
You have hurt someone's feelings.
If your clients ®nd it dif®cult to ®nd their guilt related theme, you
can help them by assessing a few speci®c examples of their guilt.
Have them focus on a speci®c situation in which they felt guilty
and ask them what they were most guilty about. If they still ®nd it
dif®cult to identify the theme in this or other speci®c situations,
use the `magic question' technique. This involves you doing the
following:
Have your clients focus on the situation in which they felt guilt.
Ask them to nominate one ingredient that would eliminate or signi®cantly
reduce their guilt without changing the situation.
The opposite of this nominated ingredient is what they are most guilty about.
Dealing with guilt
95
Lara was struggling to identify the speci®c theme in her guilt about not
visiting her mother, with whom she had a stormy relationship. Lara's
therapist helped Lara to use the `magic question' technique as follows:
He asked Lara to focus on the situation in which she felt guilty:
`I am watching a woman my age and her mother having a coffee.'
He asked Lara to nominate one ingredient that would eliminate or signi®cantly reduce her guilt without changing the situation:
`Making more of an effort to understand my mother when I was younger.'
The opposite of this nominated ingredient was what she is most guilty
about:
`Not making more of an effort to understand my mother when I was
younger.'
If you assess a number of speci®c examples of your clients' guilt
this way, the guilt related theme should be apparent. In Lara's
case, it was being aware that she had acted sel®shly toward her
mother when she was growing up.
It may be that there are two guilt related themes present in your
client's guilt. For example, your client may feel guilty about doing
the wrong thing and about failing to do the right thing. If this is
the case, deal with them one at a time and have your client
nominate the theme which they want to focus on ®rst.
Step 4: Identify the three components of your guilt
response and set goals with respect to each
component
The next step is for you to list the three elements of your guilt response in
the face of each of the relevant themes listed above.
Identify the three components of your guilt response
I use the term `guilt response' to describe the three main components that
make up this response. The three components of your guilt response are
the emotional, behavioural and thinking components.
Emotional component
The emotional component here is, of course, guilt.
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Behavioural component
The behavioural component concerns overt behaviour or action tendencies
that you engage in or `feel like' engaging in when you feel guilty. Consult
the list that I provided to help you identify your behaviour associated with
each relevant theme when you are guilty (see p. 89).
Thinking component
The thinking component associated with guilt is listed on p. 90. Again these
may be in words or in mental pictures. Consult the list if necessary.
Set goals with respect to each of the three components
You need to set goals so that you know what you are striving for when you
deal effectively with guilt. The three goals are emotional, behavioural and
thinking goals.
Emotional goal
Your emotional goal is remorse rather than guilt (or whatever synonym you
prefer to the term `remorse'). Remorse is a healthy negative emotion which
is an appropriate response to doing the wrong thing, not doing the right
thing or hurting someone's feelings. It helps you to think objectively about
the situation and your response to it and helps you to move on with your
life rather than get stuck or bogged down.
The concept that remorse is the healthy alternative to guilt in the
face of doing the wrong thing, failing to do the right thing or
hurting someone's feelings is based on the following idea. These
adversities are negative and therefore it is realistic to have a negative emotion about them. The choice, therefore, is between an
unhealthy negative emotion (guilt) or a healthy negative emotion
(remorse). However, what if your clients specify unrealistic goals?
Here are a number of such goals and how to respond to clients who
nominate them:
`I don't want to feel guilt.'
Show your clients that they have indicated what they do not want to feel in the
face of doing the wrong thing, failing to do the right thing or hurting
Dealing with guilt
97
someone's feelings, but not what they do want to feel. Help them to specify an
emotion to aim for like remorse!
`I want to feel less guilty.'
Show your clients that as guilt is a disturbed emotion, wanting to feel less
guilty is still to nominate a disturbed emotion, albeit of lesser intensity. Show
them that remorse can be strong and healthy.
`I don't want to feel anything.'
Not feeling anything in the face of doing the wrong thing, failing to do the right
thing or hurting someone's feelings will not help your clients to be appropriately geared up to deal with it. Help them to see this. Also show them that the
only way that they could achieve a state of not feeling anything is to feel
completely indifferent about doing the wrong thing, failing to do the right
thing or hurting someone's feelings. This could be called the psychopathic
option ± believing that you just don't care whether or not you have done the
wrong thing, failed to do the right thing or hurt someone's feelings. In order to
do this, your clients (assuming that they are not psychopathic) would have to
lie to themselves. Show them this and discourage them from setting such a goal.
Behavioural goal
Your behavioural goal should re¯ect actions that are based on remorse
about doing the wrong thing, not doing the right thing or hurting someone's
feelings rather than guilt. The following are the most common behaviours
associated with remorse. You may wish to compare these behaviours with
those associated with guilt that I presented on p. 89.
You face up to the healthy pain that accompanies the realisation that you have sinned.
You ask, but do not beg, for forgiveness.
You understand the reasons for your wrongdoing and act on your understanding.
You atone for the sin by taking a penalty.
You make appropriate amends.
You do not make excuses for your behaviour or enact other defensive behaviour.
You accept offers of forgiveness.
It is important that your clients understand that as they strive to
develop healthy behavioural responses to doing the wrong thing,
failing to do the right thing or hurting someone's feelings, they will
still feel the urge to act in ways that are dysfunctional, as listed on
p. 89. Help them to understand the reason for this. Explain to them
that as they question their beliefs and commit themselves to
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strengthening their conviction in their rational beliefs and to
weakening their conviction in their irrational beliefs, their irrational beliefs will still be active and producing urges for them to
act dysfunctionally. Encourage your clients to accept these urges,
to recognise that they do not have to act on them and to use them
as cues to act in functional ways.
Thinking goal
As well as setting behavioural goals related to the feeling of remorse about
doing the wrong thing, not doing the right thing or hurting someone's
feelings, it is important that you set thinking goals associated with this
emotion. The following are the most common forms of thinking associated
with remorse rather than guilt. Again you may wish to compare these forms
of thinking with those associated with guilt that I presented on p. 90.
You take into account all relevant data when judging whether or not you have
`sinned'.
You assume an appropriate level of personal responsibility.
You assign an appropriate level of responsibility to others.
You take into account mitigating factors.
You put your behaviour into overall context.
You think you may be penalised rather than receive retribution.
As the above list shows, the dominant feature of thinking associated with
remorse is that it is realistic and balanced. Please remember that such
thinking may be in words or in mental pictures.
The point I made above with respect to clients' behavioural goals is
also relevant with respect to their thinking goals. Clients will still
have some conviction in their irrational beliefs until they have full
conviction in their rational beliefs. Given this, your clients' irrational beliefs will have some impact on their subsequent thinking
as they strive to achieve their goals. Thus, highly distorted thoughts
will still come into your clients' minds. Help your clients to understand why this is the case. When you come to help them deal with
these forms of post-irrational belief thinking, do one or more of
the following as indicated. Discuss this issue with your RECBT
supervisor, if necessary:
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99
Encourage your clients to acknowledge the existence of such thoughts without
trying to suppress them, distract themselves from them or engage with them.
If relevant, use the presence of this post-irrational belief thinking to help your
clients to identify and deal with the irrational beliefs.
Question the empirical nature of these thinking `C's' once or twice and then
return to the acceptance strategy detailed above.
Step 5: Identify your general irrational beliefs and
alternative general rational beliefs
A general irrational belief leading to your guilt response is an irrational
belief that you hold across situations de®ned by one of the following
themes: breaking your moral code, failing to live up to your moral code or
hurting someone's feelings. Its rational alternative, which will also be
general in nature, will account for your remorse response.
Identify your general irrational beliefs
When you identify a general irrational belief, you take a common guilt
related theme (i.e. doing the wrong thing, failing to do the right thing or
hurting someone's feelings) and add to this a general rigid belief and the
main extreme belief that is derived from the rigid belief. In guilt, your main
extreme belief will be a self-depreciation belief. For example:
`I must not hurt my family's feelings and if I do, I am bad.'
Identify your alternative general rational beliefs
When you identify your alternative general rational belief, you take the same
common theme (i.e. doing the wrong thing, failing to do the right thing or
hurting someone's feelings) and add to this a general ¯exible belief and the
main non-extreme belief that is derived from the ¯exible belief. In remorse,
your main non-extreme belief will be an unconditional self-acceptance
belief. For example:
`I really don't want to hurt my family's feelings, but that does not mean that I must
never do so. If I do, that would be bad, but it would not prove that I am bad. I am
fallible and capable of doing good and bad things.'
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As you will have noticed in the Client's Guide, I encourage readers
to identify and work with their general irrational beliefs and to
develop general rational beliefs and, as you will see, when they are
facing speci®c instances of their problems, I encourage them to
focus on speci®c examples of both sets of beliefs. This will be at
variance with your RECBT practice, where you will begin with
speci®c examples of your clients' problems and then proceed to
work at a more general level with their problems and how these
relate to one another.
The reason I have chosen to go `general' rather than `speci®c'
when helping readers to deal with their emotional problems is a
pragmatic one. In this book, I aim to help people to deal with
a range of emotional problems and therefore, in my view, it is best
to give readers general guidance with respect to dealing with this
range of problems and then help them to move from the general
to the speci®c rather than vice versa. My considered view was that
I just do not have the space to help readers focus on speci®c
examples of their emotional problems and then generalise from
this speci®c level.
Consequently, one way that you can help your clients who are
using the Client's Guide is to help them to work with speci®c
examples of their emotional problem, in this case guilt. Use the
following sequence as you do so and help your clients to
select a speci®c example of their guilt problem
express why their guilt constitutes a problem for them
identify what they felt most guilty about in the situation
identify the three speci®c components of their guilt response and set speci®c
goals with respect to each component
identify their speci®c irrational beliefs and alternative speci®c rational beliefs
question their speci®c beliefs.
In helping your clients to deal with a speci®c example of their
guilt, you can teach them how to use RECBT's ABCD form, which
appears in Appendix 6.
The following steps are the same as those that appear in Steps
8±11 later in this chapter. Thus, help your clients to
face up to what they did that was wrong, what they failed to do that would
have been right or hurting someone's feelings in imagery (if necessary)
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101
face the person who they wronged, failed to do right by or whose feelings they
hurt in reality (if possible) and take appropriate action
capitalise on what they learned
Generalise their learning.
Step 6: Question your general beliefs
I recommended in Chapters 2 and 3 that you ®rst question together your
general rigid belief and its general ¯exible belief alternative and then question together your general extreme belief and your general non-extreme
belief.
Question your general rigid belief and its general flexible
belief alternative
First, take your general rigid belief and its general ¯exible belief alternative
and write them down next to one another on a sheet of paper. Then ask
yourself:
Which is true and which is false?
Which is sensible logically and which does not make sense?
Which has largely constructive results and which has largely unconstructive results?
Write down your answer to each of these questions on your piece of paper,
giving reasons for each answer. Consult Appendix 2 for help with the
answers to these questions, which you need to adapt and apply to the
beliefs you are questioning.
Question your general self-depreciation belief and its
general unconditional self-acceptance belief alternative
Next, take your general self-depreciation belief and its general unconditional self-acceptance belief alternative and again write them down next to
one another on a sheet of paper. Then, ask yourself the same three questions that you used with your general rigid belief and its general ¯exible
belief alternative. Again write down your answer to each of these questions
on your piece of paper, giving your reasons for each answer. I suggest that
you consult Appendix 5 (for help with questioning self-depreciation beliefs
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and unconditional self-acceptance beliefs). Again, you need to adapt and
apply these arguments to the beliefs you are questioning.
You should now be ready to commit to acting and thinking in ways
consistent with your general rational belief.
I included Appendices 2±5 in the Client's Guide as general guidelines to help readers to question their irrational and rational
beliefs (reproduced in this book as Appendices 2±5). If you are
working with clients who are using the Client's Guide, you will
have a chance to look at the questioning work that your clients
have done at this point and give them feedback on that work. No
book can provide such feedback.
I have suggested that readers question their rigid belief and their
¯exible beliefs together and then their self-depreciation belief and
their unconditional self-acceptance belief equivalent together
using three criteria as shown below:
Rigid belief vs. ¯exible belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status
Self-depreciation belief vs. unconditional self-acceptance belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status.
However, there are other ways of questioning beliefs as shown
below. When using the Client's Guide with your clients, outline
these other approaches in case they do not resonate with the
approach I put forward in the Client's Guide. The important point
is that your clients use all three arguments with each of their
rational and irrational beliefs.
Rigid belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status
Flexible belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status
Dealing with guilt
Self-depreciation belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status
Unconditional self-acceptance belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status
And also:
Rigid belief
empirical status
Flexible belief
empirical status
Rigid belief
logical status
Flexible belief
logical status
Rigid belief
pragmatic status
Flexible belief
pragmatic status
Self-depreciation belief
empirical status
Unconditional self-acceptance belief
empirical status
Self-depreciation belief
logical status
Unconditional self-acceptance belief
logical status
Self-depreciation belief
pragmatic status
Unconditional self-acceptance belief
pragmatic status.
103
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The ®nal point I want to make about questioning beliefs concerns
the concept of persuasiveness. Perhaps the most important aspect
of the questioning process is for your clients to develop arguments
concerning the irrationality of their irrational beliefs and the
rationality of their rational beliefs that are persuasive to them. So,
encourage your clients to develop such persuasive arguments and
to make a note of these for future reference.
Step 7: Take an appropriate amount of responsibility
and understand your behaviour in context
Once you have committed yourself to your general rational belief, it is
important that you look again at events about which you have made yourself
guilty, but this time you need to view them through the eyes of your general
rational beliefs (i.e. ¯exible and unconditional self-acceptance beliefs).
This basically involves you taking responsibility for your behaviour, but
recognising that others have responsibility too. It also involves you understanding your behaviour in context. This means that you need to consider
the factors involved in the situation. When you feel guilt, you see things in
black and white and tend to take far too much responsibility and edit out the
impact of other factors which are external to you. In remorse, you recognise
the complexity of the situation and the fact that there are many in¯uences
on your behaviour.
As such, remorse helps you to learn from situations in which you think
you have broken or failed to live up to your moral code or that you have hurt
someone's feelings and to use this learning in future situations.
In other forms of CBT, therapists tend to help their clients to
consider the extent of their responsibility and that of others much
earlier in the therapy process than do RECBT therapists. When
your clients indicate clear distortions of personal responsibility in
the early phase of discussing their guilt problem, it is tempting to
intervene and help them to consider this issue. It is important that
you refrain from doing so for the following reason. RECBT theory
argues that such clear distortions of personal responsibility and
dif®culty in considering one's behaviour in an overall context stem
largely from irrational beliefs and unless your clients address their
irrational beliefs ®rst, they will re¯ect on matters to do with personal responsibility and with placing their behaviour in its proper
context through the distorting lens of their irrational beliefs. Thus,
Dealing with guilt
105
help your clients to understand the importance of dealing with
their irrational beliefs before re¯ecting on these other matters.
Step 8: Face your guilt related theme in imagery
I hope that you have made a commitment to act on your general rational
beliefs (i.e. ¯exible belief and unconditional self-acceptance belief ).
Assuming that you have, your basic task is to face up to doing the wrong
thing, failing to do the right thing or hurting someone's feelings and to learn
to think rationally about it.
Up to this point you have worked at a general level with respect to your
guilt related theme, dealing with the general irrational beliefs that account
for your guilt and developing your alternative general rational beliefs.
However, when you come to apply your general rational beliefs in dealing
with breaking or failing to live up to your moral code or hurting someone,
you need to bear in mind one important point. Since you make yourself
guilty about speci®c events (actual or imagined), you need to deal with
these by rehearsing speci®c variants of your general rational beliefs.
While the best way to do this is in speci®c situations with people who
were involved when you broke your moral code, failed to live up to your
moral code or whose feelings you hurt, you may derive bene®t by using
imagery ®rst. If this is the case, you need to do the following:
Imagine a speci®c situation in which you felt guilty or may feel guilty about breaking
or failing to live up to your moral code or hurting someone's feelings and focus, in
your mind's eye, on what you felt most guilty about (i.e. your `A').
Focus on this `A' while rehearsing a speci®c rational belief relevant to the situation.
As you do this, try to make yourself feel remorseful, rather than guilty.
Then see yourself acting in ways consistent with your rational belief, e.g. apologise,
make amends and engage the other in a productive dialogue.
Recognise that some of your post-belief thinking may be distorted. Respond to it
without getting bogged down doing so. Accept the presence of any remaining
distorted thoughts without engaging with them.
Repeat the above steps until you feel suf®ciently ready to put this sequence into
practice in your life.
If you ®nd that facing your guilt related `A', in your mind's eye, is too much
for you, use the `challenging, but not overwhelming' principle. This means
that instead of imagining yourself facing a moral code violation (commission
or omission) or hurting someone's feelings that you ®nd `overwhelming' at
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Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
the present time, choose a similar guilt related `A' that you would ®nd
`challenging, but not overwhelming'. Then employ the same steps that I have
outlined above. Work in this way with modi®ed guilt related `A's' until you
®nd your original one `challenging, but not overwhelming' and then use the
steps again.
Some of your clients may say that they can't get very clear images
when they try to picture events in their mind's eye. While they may
get more out of imagery techniques if they can get such clear images,
they will still get something out of facing shame related situations
in imagery if they don't. So, if your clients want to face their particular adversity in imagery before they do so in reality, encourage
them to do so no matter how clear their mental images are.
Step 9: Apologise, make amends and talk things
through
Once you have understood your behaviour in context and taken responsibility for what you are in fact responsible for, you are in a position to act
on this. This may mean apologising to relevant others for your behaviour
and/or making amends to them in some way. Whatever action you need to
take, you ®rst need to get into a rational frame of mind. When you feel
remorseful, but not guilty, you are encouraged to engage others in a
productive dialogue about the situation in question, if they are amenable to
doing so. The purpose of this dialogue is mutual understanding and
reconciliation.
It is particularly helpful to encourage your clients to utilise the
language of their ¯exible and unconditional self-acceptance beliefs
when implementing this step, although your clients need to put this
into their own words. For example, your client may say: `I am sorry
that I hurt your feelings and I hope you can forgive me for doing so.
I was angry and while it was bad that I expressed myself in the way
that I did, I hope you can see that I am not a bad person for doing
so. Can we talk about this as two fallible human beings?'
Step 10: Capitalise on what you learned
When you have faced a situation in which you experienced guilt and dealt
with it as best you could, it is important that you re¯ect on what you did and
Dealing with guilt
107
what you learned. In particular, if you were able to face the situation,
rehearse your speci®c rational beliefs until you felt remorse, then ask
yourself how you can capitalise on what you achieved. If you experienced
any problems, respond to the following questions:
Did I face the situation, and if not, why not?
Did I rehearse my rational beliefs before, during or after facing the situation, and if
not, why not?
Did I execute my plan to face the situation, and if not, why not?
Did I engage with post-belief distorted thinking, and if so, why?
Re¯ect on your experience and put into practice what you learned the next
time you face a situation in which you considered that you did the wrong
thing, failed to do the right thing or hurt someone's feelings.
It is useful to monitor your clients' responses to these questions
and help them to re¯ect on any issues that they have not
considered.
Step 11: Generalise your learning
Once you have dealt with your guilt in a speci®c situation by holding the
relevant speci®c version of your general rational belief, and by acting and
thinking in ways that are consistent with it, you can generalise this learning
to situations de®ned by you breaking or failing to live up to your moral code
or hurting others' feelings.
Billy was particularly prone to guilt about hurting others' feelings, so he followed
the steps outlined in this chapter. Thus:
Billy assessed the three components of his guilt response and set goals with
respect to all three components.
He identi®ed his relevant general irrational belief regarding hurting others'
feelings (i.e. `I must not hurt people's feelings and if I do, I'm a bad person')
that underpinned his guilt response and his alternative general rational belief
(i.e. `I don't want to hurt people's feelings, but I am not immune from doing so
and nor do I have to be so immune. If I do hurt others' feelings it is bad, but I
am not a bad person. I am an ordinary fallible person who has done something
bad') that underpinned his remorse response.
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He questioned both elements of his general irrational belief and his general
rational belief until he clearly saw that the former were false, made no sense
and were detrimental to him and that the latter were true, sensible and healthy.
He thought about what he was actually responsible for and what others were
responsible for and saw that there were other factors involved which he did
not take into account when he felt guilty, which needed to be factored in and
understood. Then he met with these others, apologised and made amends
when he needed to and talked things through with them.
As he did so he tolerated the discomfort that he felt and accepted that some of
his distorted and skewed negative thinking would still be in his mind as he did
so. He let such thinking be without engaging with it, suppressing it or
distracting himself from it.
As this section shows, you can generalise what you learn about dealing
with guilt from situation to situation as de®ned by your moral code violation, failure to live up to that code or by hurting others' feelings. If you do
this, you will take the toxicity out of the emotional problem of guilt!
USING RECBT'S ABCD FORM TO DEAL WITH
SPECIFIC EXAMPLES OF YOUR GUILT
This chapter is mainly geared to help you deal with your guilt in general
terms. However, you can also use this material to address speci®c examples
of your guilt. I have developed a self-help form to provide the structure to
assist you in this regard. It is called the ABCD form and it appears with
instructions in Appendix 6.
In Appendix 6, I outline the major problems that clients have in
using this form and how to deal with them.
OTHER IMPORTANT ISSUES IN DEALING WITH
GUILT
In the above section, I outlined an eleven step programme to deal with guilt.
In this section, I discuss some other important issues that may be relevant
to you in your work to become less prone to this emotional problem. If you
want to, you can incorporate them as additional steps in the above step-bystep guide at points relevant to you.
Dealing with guilt
109
Dealing with your safety-seeking measures to avoid
guilt
I mentioned in Chapter 2 that people use safety-seeking measures to
protect themselves from threat. You may use similar measures to protect
yourself from feeling guilty. Here is how this works from your perspective.
You reason that since you feel guilty about (a) doing the wrong thing, (b)
failing to do the right thing and (c) hurting people's feelings, you will take
steps to avoid guilt by always doing the right thing and never hurting
people's feelings. Taking this decision means that you will not take risks in
life (in case you do the wrong thing or upset others, for example), always
put others ®rst (so that others are not upset) and go out of your way to get
people to like you (again to ensure that you do not upset them).
However, this behaviour and the reasoning that leads you to take it are
¯awed and will serve only to perpetuate your chronic guilt. This is due to
the fact that your guilt is based not on you (a) doing the wrong thing, (b)
failing to do the right thing and (c) hurting people's feelings, but on your
irrational beliefs about these three inferences. So, if you want to deal
effectively with guilt, you need to do the following.
Take healthy risks, put yourself ®rst again in a healthy way, and stop going out of
your way to get people to like you and see what happens. You will probably ®nd that
people are not upset as much as you think and that you have not broken any of your
moral codes.
However, if as a result of your behaviour, you do break one of your moral codes, fail
to live up to them or upset others, then you can deal with such situations by holding
a set of rational beliefs about them so that you feel healthy remorse and not
unhealthy guilt about these consequences.
It is one of the major themes of both the Client's Guide and this
Practitioner's Guide that when your clients come to change their
behaviour from dysfunctional to functional, they will still experience urges to act dysfunctionally. This is why it is so important to
help your clients understand the difference between overt actions
and action tendencies. In the present context, this means stressing
to your clients as they strive to act in ways that address their guilt
feelings constructively and thus desist from using guilt related
safety-seeking strategies, they will still feel the urge to use them.
Help them to develop ways of accepting, but not necessarily liking
such urges and to implement their healthy remorse based behaviour, even though such aforementioned behaviour may be present
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Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
for some time. You may have to help certain clients identify and
respond to irrational beliefs such as: `If I feel the urge to do
something to get rid of my guilt quickly, then I have to act on that
urge'. Developing and strengthening rational beliefs about these
urges is particularly important for such clients.
Why you feel guilty much of the time and how to deal
with this
If you are particularly prone to guilt, you will think that you often do the
wrong thing, fail to do the right thing or hurt the feelings of others. You do
this because you hold the following belief, which I call a `chronic guilt
based general irrational belief':
`Whenever I am involved, I must make sure that nothing bad happens or others'
feelings are not hurt. If I don't and bad things happen and others are upset, then it is
all my fault and I am a bad person.'
You then take this belief to relevant situations and, even where your
involvement is minimal, you think that you are at fault if there is a bad
outcome. As a result you constantly think that you are responsible for any
negative outcomes that happen or might happen and end up by blaming
yourself.
How to deal with chronic guilt
In order to deal with this chronic sense of guilt, you need to develop and
apply an alternative general rational belief which protects you from such
guilt:
`Whenever I am involved, I want to make sure that nothing bad happens or that
others' feelings are not hurt, but I don't have to succeed in doing so. If I don't and
bad things happen and others are upset, then I will take the appropriate level of
responsibility, assign appropriate responsibility to others and consider the impact of
situational factors. I will accept myself for failing to adhere to my code and for any
hurt that I inadvertently cause.'
Such a belief will lead you to think that you have broken your moral code,
failed to adhere to the code or hurt someone's feelings only when there is
Dealing with guilt
111
clear evidence for making such an inference. When there is, you will feel
remorse rather than guilt because you will be processing this with a
speci®c rational belief.
If your clients ®nd that the above explanation is too complex, you
can help them to see that rigid beliefs about the presence or
absence of guilt related adversities means that if it is not clear that
they have not broken their moral code, for example, they will
assume that they have done so. When their beliefs are ¯exible, they
can be more objective about the presence of these adversities.
How to examine the accuracy of your guilt related
inference if necessary
If you are still unsure if you have broken your moral code, failed to live up to it
or hurt someone's feelings, answer one or more of the following questions:
How valid is my inference that I broke my moral code (for example)?
Would an objective jury agree that I broke my moral code? If not, what would the
jury's verdict be?
Is my inference that I broke my moral code realistic? If not, what is a more realistic
inference?
If I asked someone whom I could trust to give me an objective opinion about my
inference that I broke my moral code, what would the person say to me and why?
What inference would this person encourage me to make instead?
If a friend had told me that they had made the same inference about breaking their
moral code in the same situation, what would I say to them about the validity of their
inference and why? What inference would I encourage this friend to make instead?
Dealing with failure to practise healthy self-care
People who have a chronic problem with guilt ®nd it very hard to practise
healthy self-care. The reason for this is as follows. Healthy self-care
involves you putting yourself ®rst unless others' needs are truly more
important than your own. People with a chronic guilt problem generally
think that others' needs are more important than their own and that to put
oneself ®rst is being sel®sh, which if you have a chronic problem you will
seek to avoid. Putting others ®rst helps you both to avoid considering
yourself a bad person if you do put yourself ®rst and to feel virtuous.
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How to practise healthy self-care
In order to practise healthy self-care, you need to do the following:
Develop a healthy general rational belief that underpins the practice of healthy selfcare (e.g. `I am a fallible human being and if I don't look after myself, then nobody
will. I am not a bad person if I put myself ®rst even though doing this is uncomfortable').
Put this into practice and rehearse shortened speci®c versions of this general
rational belief before you take self-caring action, while you do so and after you have
done so.
Recognise that this will feel very uncomfortable because it will be unfamiliar.
However, if you tolerate this discomfort and keep acting in ways that are consistent
with your healthy general rational belief, then this discomfort will subside and
eventually practising healthy self-care will become the familiar position for you.
As you help your clients implement a philosophy of healthy selfcare, you may well ®nd that some of them may not do so, not for
guilt-related reasons, but because they have self-discipline issues. If
this is the case, you may want to suggest that they read and follow
the guidelines outlined in my book on the subject (Dryden 2009c).
Identifying and dealing with the hidden conceit in
guilt
It may sound strange, but when you think about guilt from a particular
perspective, an attitude of hidden conceit is revealed. Such conceit is
revealed when you are asked to judge someone who has acted in a situation in the same way as you. Let me give an example to make this clear.
June felt guilty whenever she said `No' to her mother, even when the latter made
unreasonable requests on June, as she increasingly did. June's general
irrational belief with respect to her mother was: `I must make my mother happy
and I am bad if I don't.' June's friend Harriet also had a problem saying `No' to
her own mother and whenever she discussed her guilt and helplessness with
June, June advised Harriet to think more of herself and lay down boundaries with
her mother. This was precisely what June did not do for herself. June's view of
Harriet was that she was a fallible human being with limitations who had to lay
down healthy boundaries to deal with this complex situation. June's view of
herself was that she should be a good daughter, strong enough to cope with the
demands of her mother, and that she was bad if she did not. June's hidden
conceit is thus revealed in her differential expectations of herself and Harriet.
Dealing with guilt
113
She sees Harriet as fallible with limitations. She sees herself as someone who
should be able to cope with a situation that she does not expect Harriet to be
able to cope with. This `holier than thou' attitude is common in guilt: `I must be
thoroughly good and if I'm not I'm bad.'
It is very important that you deal with this hidden conceit if you want to
become less prone to guilt. You do this in ways which should now be
familiar to you:
By all means have high standards of yourself in the moral realm of the personal
domain, but remind yourself that you don't always have to achieve these standards.
Accept yourself as a fallible human being with limitations in the same way as you
would others. Self-compassion is crucial here and I recommend the writings of my
friend and colleague, Professor Paul Gilbert, on this subject (e.g. The Compassionate
Mind, 2009).
Please bear in mind that some of your clients may not resonate
with the term `hidden conceit'. If this is the case, help them to
suggest a term that is more acceptable to them, but which accurately represents the concept.
Can you hurt the feelings of others?
Throughout this chapter I have used terms such as `hurting people's
feelings'. I have done so because this is how people prone to guilt tend to
think. When you think that you have hurt someone's feelings, this is an
inference and, as we have seen in this book, people's emotional problems
are not determined by inferences alone, they are largely determined by the
irrational beliefs that they hold about these inferences. Thus, you don't feel
guilty because you think you have hurt someone's feelings, you feel guilty
because you hold an irrational belief about this inference. So in order to
deal with guilt, you need to assume temporarily that you did, in fact, hurt
someone's feelings so that you can identify and deal effectively with your
guilt-inducing irrational beliefs.
When you have done this and are looking back at the event with your
rational mind, it is useful to consider the question: `Can I, in reality, hurt the
feelings of others?' From the perspective of rational-emotive cognitive
behaviour therapy, the answer is `No'. As I will explain in Chapter 6, when a
person feels hurt about someone's behaviour, they do so because they hold
an irrational belief about that person's behaviour. So when you say that you
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have hurt someone's feelings, you are working on the assumption that your
behaviour directly makes the other person feel hurt. You are implying that
the person's beliefs play no part in this, which is patently false. So, it is
important that you don't take responsibility for the other person's feelings.
That does not mean that you can treat another person badly, safe in the
knowledge that you aren't responsible for that person's feelings. Far from it!
What I am suggesting is that while you should not take responsibility for
the feelings of others, you should take full responsibility for the way you
treat others. However, taking full responsibility for your behaviour does not
mean that you have to blame yourself if you do treat someone badly, for
responsibility is not synonymous with blame. If you do treat someone
badly, it is healthy for you to feel remorse about that, an emotion based on
a rational belief which will help you to stand back and learn from the
experience so you are less likely to act that way in future.
While it is important that your clients address their irrational
beliefs about hurting people's feelings before helping them to
reconsider the question of whether you can, in fact, hurt people's
feelings, occasionally you will need to reverse this order. This will be
when a client won't deal with their irrational beliefs about hurting
others' feelings, no matter what strategy you use, until they have
achieved some symptom relief by realising that they did not hurt
the other person's feelings. When they have done so, they become
more open to the issue of belief change about hurting people's
feelings. In RECBT, we call this changing `A' before changing `B'.
Additionally, you can help some clients deal with this form of
guilt only by encouraging them to see that while they may have
acted badly towards others, which they can take responsibility for
and accept themselves for, this does not mean that they have hurt
the feelings of these others. What you are doing here is switching
the `A' from `I have hurt the feelings of others' to `I have acted
badly towards others' and then helping them develop rational
beliefs about this new `A'.
Assessing and dealing with emotional problems
about guilt
In previous chapters, I discussed the concept of meta-disturbance (literally
disturbance about disturbance). It is important to assess carefully the
nature of this meta-disturbance about guilt before you can best deal with it.
Dealing with guilt
115
The best way to start dealing with the assessment of any emotional
problems you might have about guilt is to ask yourself the question: `How
do I feel about my feeling of guilt?' The most common emotional problems
that people have about guilt are as follows: anxiety, depression, shame and
unhealthy self-anger. As it is unlikely that you will feel guilty about feeling
guilty, I refer you to the chapters on anxiety, depression, shame and
unhealthy anger for help on how to deal with these meta-emotional problems about guilt.
Your clients will sometimes need to address their emotional problems about guilt before they address their guilt. They need to do
this particularly when their secondary emotional problem gets in
the way of them dealing with their primary guilt. However, despite
the interfering presence of their secondary problem, some clients
still want to target their primary guilt. There are two ways of
dealing with this situation:
Provide a rationale to help your clients target their secondary problem. For
example, explain to your clients that their secondary problem is like having a
ball and chain around their leg while they are climbing a steep hill (akin to
their primary feelings of guilt). In the same way as climbing the hill is easier
when they remove the ball and chain from their leg, dealing with their primary
guilt is easier when they deal with their secondary problem ®rst.
Go along with your clients' wish to deal with their primary guilt and when they
fail to do so, help them to understand that the reason why they failed is
because they had not addressed their secondary problem and then agree that
they will now do so.
Developing and rehearsing a non-guilty world view
People develop views of the world as it relates to them that make it more or
less likely that they will experience unhealthy negative emotions. The world
views that render you vulnerable to guilt do so in a similar way to the
chronic guilt-based general irrational belief discussed above (i.e. `Whenever I am involved, I must make sure that nothing bad happens or others'
feelings are not hurt. If I don't, it is all my fault and I am a bad person') by
making you focus unduly on things you have done that you think are wrong,
your failures to do the right thing and the hurt you think you have caused
others. However, these guilt based world views have this effect on you
much more widely.
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Table 4 World views that render you vulnerable to guilt and help you to deal with guilt
Views of the world that render you
vulnerable to guilt
Views of the world that help you
deal with guilt
Other people's desires are more
important than my own
My desires are no less important to me
than others' desires are to them. I can
¯exibly and healthily prioritise my
desires in the same way as others can
¯exibly and healthily prioritise theirs
When I am involved I have
responsibility for the hurt feelings of
others
When I am involved, I have
responsibility for my actions, but
ultimately I am not responsible for the
feelings of others. They are responsible
In the moral domain, I expect more of
myself than I do of others
In the moral domain, I can expect the
same of myself as I can expect of others
It is possible to always act morally
It is rarely possible to always act
morally since if you do the right thing
from one perspective you may be doing
the wrong thing from another
perspective
Saying `No' to others is a sign of
sel®shness
Saying `No' to others may be sel®sh,
but is more likely to be a sign of healthy
self-care
It is important that you develop realistic views of the world that will help
you to deal with guilt. In Table 4, you will ®nd an illustrative list of such
world views rather than an exhaustive one, so you can get an idea of what I
mean, which will enable you to develop your own. In Table 4, I ®rst describe
a world view that renders you vulnerable to guilt and then I give its healthy
alternative. You will see that the latter is characterised by the idea that you
are as important and as fallible as others, whereas in the former, you are
less important and more responsible than others.
If you hold rational beliefs that are consistent with the views of the world
listed on the right hand side of Table 4 and if you act and think in ways that
are, in turn, consistent with these rational beliefs, then doing all this will
help you become less prone to guilt.
In Chapter 5, I discuss shame and how to deal with it.
5
Dealing with shame
In this chapter, I begin by presenting RECBT's way of understanding
shame and then address how to deal with this emotional problem.
UNDERSTANDING SHAME
In understanding shame, we need to know what we tend to make ourselves
feel ashamed about (i.e. its major inference themes), what beliefs we hold,
how we act or tend to act, and how we think when we feel ashamed. While
shame and guilt are often seen as similar emotions (and they both involve
self-depreciation), they differ in the following respects:
The inference themes are different, as we shall see.
In guilt, you tend only to depreciate yourself about your own behaviour and its
consequences, while you can feel ashamed not only about your own behaviour, but
also about the behaviour of members of a social group with whom you closely
identify. Thus, while you may talk about bringing shame on your family, you tend not
to talk about bringing guilt on your family.
You tend to act and think in different ways when you feel shame than when you
feel guilt.
I mentioned in previous chapters that it is important that you use
your client's language when referring to emotional problems. With
respect to the term `shame', the main issue is that clients often
confuse the emotion of `shame' with the emotion of `guilt'. While I
have spelled out the differences between the two in the Client's
Guide, if a client prefers to use the term `guilt' rather than
`shame', then go along with this to preserve the working alliance,
but write this in the client's notes for reference so that you
remember the client's preference. Trying to persuade clients to use
a term standing for `shame' that does not make sense to them is
counterproductive, even when this term is a more accurate representation of the client's experience at `C'.
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Major inference themes in shame
There are three major themes in relation to your personal domain that are
implicated in shame:
Something highly negative has been revealed about you (or about a group with whom
you identify) by yourself or by others.
You have acted in a way that falls very short of your ideal.
Others look down on or shun you (or a group with whom you identify) or you think
that they do.
Some clients may not resonate to the above schema and, in these
cases, you should encourage them to put it aside and just focus on
what they tend to feel ashamed about. RECBT theory values ¯exibility and this includes the freedom not to use RECBT terms,
schemes and frameworks.
Irrational beliefs
As I explained in Chapter 1, according to RECBT, inferences on their own
do not account for emotional problems. It is possible, therefore, for you to
make the same inferences as listed above and be disappointed, but not
ashamed.1 In order for you to feel ashamed when you think that (a) something highly negative has been revealed about you (or about a group with
whom you identify) by yourself or by others, (b) you have acted in a way
that falls very short of your ideal and/or (c) others look down on or shun
you (or a group with whom you identify) or you think that they do, you have
to hold an irrational belief. As with guilt (see Chapter 3), in shame when
you think irrationally you hold a rigid belief and an extreme selfdepreciation belief.
If your clients are unsure about the mediating role that irrational
beliefs play in their shame, ask them how they would feel if they
really believed the rational alternatives to what RECBT holds are
their shame creating irrational beliefs. In using this strategy, it is
1 I regard disappointment as the healthy negative emotion alternative to shame and I
use this term throughout this chapter. However, as we do not have agreed terms for
healthy negative emotions, feel free to use your own term to denote the healthy
alternative to shame.
Dealing with shame
119
important that you formulate the rational beliefs for your clients,
who cannot be expected to do this for themselves at this stage.
When you do this, ensure that you match your clients' rigid belief
with a ¯exible alternative and their extreme self-depreciation
belief with a non-extreme unconditional self-acceptance alternative, and then ask them how they would feel if they had strong
conviction in this rational belief.
For example: `Let me outline two sets of beliefs about revealing
what you consider to be a weakness and you tell me which leads to
shame and which leads to disappointment without shame. The
®rst set of beliefs is as follows: ``I absolutely should not have
revealed this weakness and I am a weak person for doing so.'' The
second set of beliefs is as follows: ``I would have much preferred
not to have revealed this weakness, but sadly I'm not immune from
doing so and neither do I have to be so immune. I am not a weak
person for revealing this weakness, rather I am a fallible human
being who is capable of acting weakly and strongly.'' Now which
set of beliefs would lead to shame and which set would lead to
disappointment without shame?'
Once your clients can see that their irrational beliefs underpin
shame and their rational beliefs underpin disappointment, they
have understood the mediating role of beliefs.
This is quite an elegant strategy since it accomplishes a number
of things at once:
1. It addresses your clients' doubts about the mediating role of irrational beliefs
in shame if they have such concern.
2. It introduces rational beliefs as a meaningful alternative to these irrational
beliefs.
3. It helps your clients to see that holding rational beliefs can have bene®cial
effects.
Behaviour associated with shame
When you hold an irrational belief about (a) something highly negative
being revealed about you (or about a group with whom you identify) by
yourself or by others, (b) acting in a way that falls very short of your ideal
and/or (c) others looking down on or shunning you (or a group with whom
you identify), you will act or tend to act in a number of ways, the most
common of which are as follows:
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You remove yourself from the `gaze' of others.
You isolate yourself from others.
You save face by attacking other(s) who have `shamed' you.
You defend your threatened self-esteem in self-defeating ways.
You ignore attempts by others to restore social equilibrium.
If you ask your clients whether they want to change their shame
based behaviour, their response will be affected by their state of
mind or mood. If they are currently experiencing shame, they are
less likely to see that this behaviour is dysfunctional than when
they are not experiencing shame. If they are feeling ashamed, it is
useful to encourage them to imagine that they are advising a
friend who displays the same shame based behaviour as they do.
What would they say to this friend about the functionality or
dysfunctionality of such behaviour? They are more likely to see
that their own shame based behaviour is dysfunctional after they
have told their `friend' that the same behaviour is dysfunctional.
Thinking associated with shame
When you hold an irrational belief about (a) something highly negative
being revealed about you (or a group with whom you identify) by yourself or
by others, (b) acting in a way that falls very short of your ideal and/or (c)
others looking down on or shunning you (or a group with whom you
identify), you will tend to think in a number of ways. Remember what I said
in Chapter 1: the thinking that accompanies your shame is the result of your
shame based inference being processed by your irrational belief and
therefore it is likely to contain a number of thinking errors that I present in
Appendix 1. I list the main features of this post±irrational belief shame
based thinking below:
You overestimate the negativity of the information revealed.
You overestimate the likelihood that the judging group will notice or be interested in
the information.
You overestimate the degree of disapproval you (or your reference group) will
receive.
You overestimate how long any disapproval will last.
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121
As you can see, such thinking exaggerates the negative social consequences of your behaviour (or that of the member of your identi®ed social
group) and also ignores the role of context. Such thinking may be in words
or in mental images.
One of the main features of post-irrational belief thinking is that
it is compelling. As such, it is quite easy for your clients to get
caught up in this way of thinking and think that it re¯ects reality.
This is an example of `cognitive-emotive' reasoning: if a thought is
plausible and emotionally compelling, therefore it must be true. It
is important that you help your clients to understand how their
mind works with respect to the thinking consequences of irrational
beliefs and to encourage them to use such thoughts to go back to
address the irrational beliefs that spawn them. When they have
done this, you can encourage them to respond to these thinking
consequences of irrational beliefs as the iBs will not disappear just
because they have questioned these beliefs. When they respond to
these thinking consequences of iBs, they need to do so only a few
times on any one occasion. After that, they need to accept the
presence of such thinking without engaging with it.
To summarise, your client needs to:
identify the presence of the thinking consequences of irrational beliefs (see
Appendix 1)
trace these back to the source of this mode of thinking (i.e. identify the
underlying irrational beliefs)
challenge these irrational beliefs
respond brie¯y to the thinking consequences of such beliefs, but not get overly
involved in this process
accept the lingering presence of these thinking consequences without engaging
with them
get on with the business of living.
HOW TO DEAL WITH SHAME
If you are prone to shame, you tend to experience this emotional problem in
a variety of different settings and in response to a variety of situations
where something highly negative has been revealed about you (or about a
group with whom you identify) by yourself or by others; you have acted in
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a way that falls very short of your ideal and/or others look down on or shun
you (or a group with whom you identify) or you think that they do. Here is
how to deal with shame so that you become less prone to it.
Step 1: Identify reasons why shame is a problem for
you and why you want to change
While shame is generally regarded as an emotional problem, it is useful for
you to spell out reasons why shame is a problem for you and why you want
to change. I suggest that you keep a written list of these reasons and refer
to it as needed as a reminder of why you are engaged in a self-help
programme. I discuss the healthy alternative to shame in Step 4.
When people experience shame, they are already in an avoidant
frame of mind, so it may well be that they are ashamed of feeling
ashamed. This will lead them to deny that they are experiencing
shame. In helping your clients to acknowledge that they have a
shame problem, it is important that you don't do anything that,
from their perspective, `shames' them further. You can do this by
doing the following:
Refraining from using language that may be construed by your client as
pejorative (here the terms `irrational' or `rigid' are problematic in this regard).
Also, the term `shame' is dif®cult for people experiencing this emotion to
acknowledge and thus ®nding a more acceptable synonym should be a priority
when this is the case.
`Normalising' the experience of shame. While `shame' is an unhealthy negative
emotion, it is commonly experienced and helping your client to see this may
help them become unashamed about their feelings of shame.
Showing your client that you accept them unconditionally for their fall from
grace, as they see it, can provide a particularly powerful model for unconditional self-acceptance, which is the antidote to shame.
Some people who feel shame and acknowledge that they do think
that `feeling ashamed' is an appropriate response to situations
where (a) something highly negative has been revealed about them
(or about a group with whom they identify) by themselves or by
others, (b) they have acted in a way that falls very short of their
ideal or (c) others look down on or shun them (or a group with
whom they identify) or they think that they do.
Dealing with shame
123
In these circumstances, it is important to introduce the idea of
feeling disappointed as the healthy alternative to shame a little
earlier than you would normally do (see Step 4). When you have
done so, you can then carry out a cost-bene®t analysis of shame
and its healthy alternative, disappointment. This involves helping
your clients to spell out the perceived advantages and disadvantages of both emotions. Respond to any perceived advantages of
shame and perceived disadvantages of disappointment, correcting
any misconceptions that your clients reveal on these issues.
For example, imagine that your clients think that feeling
ashamed will help motivate them to achieve their ideal in the
future and that feeling disappointment would not achieve the
same end. In this case, help them to see that precisely the reverse is
true. The self-depreciation belief that your clients hold when they
experience shame is some variant of `I am defective'. If that is the
way that they think of themselves they are more, rather than less,
likely to fail to achieve their ideal in the future since `defective
people' are doomed to continue to fall short of their ideals. The
unconditional self-accepting belief that underpins disappointment
is likely to help the person concentrate on what they are doing
rather than how well or poorly they are doing it and this focus
increases rather than decreases the chances of them achieving their
ideals (or at least getting closer to achieving them).
Step 2: Take responsibility for your shame
In RECBT, we argue that what you do or what people think of you do not
make you feel ashamed; rather you create these feelings by the rigid and
extreme beliefs that you hold about what you do and what people think of
you. Unless you accept this point, you will not address your shame
productively. Rather, you will think that the only way not to feel ashamed is
by always achieving your ideal standards that you have for yourself or
ensuring that others think well of you. This view will perpetuate your shame
rather than help you deal with it.
The idea that emotional problems (including shame) are based
largely on the way that a person thinks about what happens to
them is, as you know, a central plank in RECBT. However, for
many clients it will be a new idea. Thus, your clients may hold that
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the reason they are ashamed, for example, is that it is inherently
shameful to let down your reference group and that shame is
caused by such behaviour. It may seem that the client is taking
responsibility for this emotion of shame and is taking responsibility for their behaviour.
However, on closer inspection this is not the case. In RECBT, we
don't say that letting down one's reference group causes shame.
This is an example of `A-C' thinking where `A' is the person's letting
down the reference group and `C' is the emotion of shame. Rather,
we argue that the reason that the person experiences shame is
largely due to the fact that they hold a set of irrational beliefs
about them letting down the group. If they held a set of rational
beliefs about the `letting down', they would experience disappointment rather than shame.
What you need to do, then, is to help your clients see that they
create their emotion of shame by holding a set of irrational beliefs
about the `letting down'. In this way, you can help them take two
types of responsibility, not only for their actions but also for the
irrational beliefs that underpin their shame.
If your clients continue to have dif®culty accepting responsibility
for their shame, it is important for you to identify the source of
this dif®culty. In the Client's Guide, I mention one common
obstacle that stops clients from accepting such responsibility (i.e.
the self-depreciation that clients would engage in were they to
assume responsibility for making themselves ashamed). However,
there are other obstacles to accepting responsibility such as the
following:
Hopelessness about change (e.g. `I am a defective person. I don't just think I
am'). Here your client is reluctant to see their shame as a belief problem. They
consider that they are defective for what they did or failed to do. The best
intervention here involves invoking your client's empathy by asking if they
would tell a loved one who did exactly the same thing that they did, for
example, that their loved one was defective for doing so. If your client can
assume the role of compassionate observer (rather than self-punitive experiencer) it often helps the person to see that their shame is a belief problem (e.g.
`I think I am defective') for which they can take responsibility and thereby
change, rather than an identity problem (e.g. `I am defective. I don't just think
I am') which they can't do anything about if it were true.
Taking responsibility for shame means admitting a weakness: here the block
is the irrational belief that your client holds about having and/or admitting
having a weakness (e.g. `I cannot take responsibility for shame because it
means admitting that I have a weakness that I must not have or must not
Dealing with shame
125
admit to publicly'). If your client holds to this position, help them to understand that having a weakness is quintessentially human and does not mean
that they are defective. Ironically, this is the very rational belief that they need
to develop about whatever it is that they are ashamed about in the ®rst place.
It is important to help your clients to understand the impact of
these obstacles on their emotional problems. Then, help them to
develop alternatives to these obstacles and review the impact of
these alternatives on their emotional problem-solving. This often
helps clients to deal effectively with these obstacles. If not, you may
need to do a more detailed assessment of the obstacle, which is
outside the brief of this book.
Step 3: Identify the themes you tend to be ashamed
about
The best way of identifying shame related inference themes to which you
are particularly vulnerable is by understanding the themes associated with
shame, and seeing which are present when you feel ashamed. As I outlined
above, there are three such themes:
Something highly negative has been revealed about you (or about a group with whom
you identify) by yourself or by others.
You have acted in a way that falls very short of your ideal.
Others look down on or shun you (or a group with whom you identify) or you think
that they do.
If your clients ®nd it dif®cult to ®nd their shame related theme,
you can help them by assessing a few speci®c examples of their
shame. Have them focus on a speci®c situation in which they felt
ashamed and ask them what they were most ashamed about. If
they still ®nd it dif®cult to identify the theme in this or other
speci®c situations, use the `magic question' technique. This
involves you doing the following:
Have your clients focus on the situation in which they felt shame.
Ask them to nominate one ingredient that would eliminate or signi®cantly
reduce their shame without changing the situation.
The opposite of this nominated ingredient is what they are most ashamed
about.
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Hugh was struggling to identify the speci®c theme in his shame about
failing his driving test. Hugh used the `magic question' technique as
follows:
Hugh focused on the situation in which he felt ashamed:
`I failed my driving test.'
He nominated one ingredient that would eliminate or signi®cantly reduce
his shame without changing the situation:
`My father would not feel let down by my failure.'
The opposite of this nominated ingredient was what he is most ashamed
about:
`My father will feel let down by me failing my driving test.'
If you assess a number of speci®c examples of your clients' shame
this way, the shame related theme should be apparent. In Hugh's
case, it was letting down the men in his family.
It may be that there are two shame related themes present in
your client's shame. For example, your client may feel ashamed
about not living up to their ideals and about letting their peer
group down. If this is the case, deal with them one at a time and
have your client nominate the theme which they want to focus on
®rst.
Step 4: Identify the three components of your shame
response and set goals with respect to each
component
The next step is for you to list the three elements of your shame response
in the face of each of the relevant themes listed above.
Identify the three components of your shame response
I use the term `shame response' to describe the three main components
that make up this response. The three components of your shame response
are the emotional, behavioural and thinking components.
Emotional component
The emotional component here is, of course, shame.
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127
Behavioural component
The behavioural component concerns overt behaviour or action tendencies
that you engage in or `feel like' engaging in when you feel shame. Consult
the list that I provided to help you identify your behaviour associated with
each relevant theme when you feel shame (see p. 120).
Thinking component
The thinking component associated with shame is listed on p. 120. Again
these may be in words or in mental pictures. Consult this list if necessary.
Set goals with respect to each of the three components
You need to set goals so that you know what you are striving for when you
deal effectively with shame. The three goals are emotional, behavioural and
thinking goals.
Emotional goal
Your emotional goal is disappointment rather than shame (or whatever
synonym you prefer to the term `disappointment'). Disappointment is a
healthy negative emotion which is an appropriate response to the three
shame related themes detailed above. It helps you to think objectively about
the situation and your response to it and helps you to move on with your
life rather than get stuck or bogged down.
The concept that disappointment is the healthy alternative to
shame: (a) when something highly negative has been revealed
about your clients (or about a group with whom they identify) by
themselves or by others, (b) when they have acted in a way that
falls very short of their ideal and (c) when others look down on or
shun them (or a group with whom they identify) or they think that
they do is based on the following idea. These adversities are negative and therefore it is realistic to have a negative emotion about
them. The choice, therefore, is between an unhealthy negative
emotion (shame) or a healthy negative emotion (disappointment).
However, what if your clients specify unrealistic goals? Here are a
number of such goals and how to respond to clients who nominate
them:
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`I don't want to feel shame.'
Show your clients that they have indicated what they do not want to feel in the
face of (a) something highly negative having been revealed about them (or
about a group with whom they identify) by themselves or by others, (b) their
acting in a way that falls very short of their ideal and (c) others looking down
on or shunning them (or a group with whom they identify) or them thinking
that they do. They need to specify how they do want to feel instead of shame.
`I want to feel less ashamed.'
Show your client that as shame is a disturbed emotion, wanting to feel less
ashamed is still to nominate a disturbed emotion, albeit of lesser intensity.
Show them that disappointment can be strong and healthy.
`I don't want to feel anything.'
Not feeling anything in the face of something highly negative being revealed
about them (or about a group with whom they identify) by themselves or by
others, or falling very short of their ideal or others looking down on or shunning them (or a group with whom they identify) will not help your clients to be
appropriately geared up to deal with it. Help them to see this. Also show them
that the only way that they could achieve a state of not feeling anything is to
feel completely indifferent about (a) something highly negative being revealed
about them (or about a group with whom they identify) by themselves or by
others; about (b) acting in a way that falls very short of their ideal; and about
(c) others looking down on or shunning them (or a group with whom they
identify) or them thinking that they do. This could be called the asocial option
± believing that they just don't care whether or not they have had something
highly negative revealed about them etc. In order to do this, your client
(assuming that they are not asocial) would have to lie to themselves. Show
them this and discourage them from setting such a goal.
Behavioural goal
Your behavioural goal should re¯ect actions that are based on disappointment rather than shame. The following are the most common behaviours
associated with disappointment. You may wish to compare these behaviours with those associated with shame that I presented on p. 120.
You continue to participate actively in social interaction.
You respond positively to attempts of others to restore social equilibrium.
It is important that your clients understand that as they strive to
develop healthy behavioural responses to (a) when something
highly negative has been revealed about them (or about a group
with whom they identify) by themselves or by others, (b) when they
have acted in a way that falls very short of their ideals and (c) when
others look down on or shun them (or a group with whom they
Dealing with shame
129
identify) or they think that they do, they will still feel the urge to
act in ways that are dysfunctional, as listed on p. 120. Help them to
understand the reason for this. Explain to them that as they
question their beliefs and commit themselves to strengthening their
conviction in their rational beliefs and to weakening their
conviction in their irrational beliefs, their irrational beliefs will
still be active and producing urges for them to act dysfunctionally.
Encourage your clients to accept these urges, to recognise that they
do not have to act on them and to use them as cues to act in
functional ways.
Thinking goal
As well as setting behavioural goals related to the feeling of disappointment about (a) something highly negative being revealed about you (or
about a group with whom you identify) by yourself or by others, (b) acting
in a way that falls very short of your ideal and/or (c) others looking down on
or shunning you (or a group with whom you identify), it is important that
you set thinking goals associated with this emotion. The following are the
most common forms of thinking associated with disappointment rather
than shame. Again you may wish to compare these forms of thinking with
those associated with shame that I presented on p. 120.
You see the information revealed in a compassionate self-accepting context.
You are realistic about the likelihood that the judging group will notice or be
interested in the information revealed.
You are realistic about the degree of disapproval self (or reference group) will
receive.
You are realistic about how long any disapproval will last.
As the above list shows, the dominant feature of thinking associated with
disappointment is that it is realistic and balanced. Please remember that
such thinking may be in words or in mental pictures.
The point I made above with respect to clients' behavioural goals is
also relevant with respect to their thinking goals. Clients will still
have some conviction in their irrational beliefs until they have full
conviction in their rational beliefs. Given this, your clients' irrational beliefs will have some impact on their subsequent thinking
as they strive to achieve their goals. Thus, highly distorted thoughts
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will still come into your clients' minds. Help your clients to understand why this is the case. When you come to help them deal with
these forms of post-irrational belief thinking, do one or more of
the following as indicated. Discuss this issue with your RECBT
supervisor, if necessary:
Encourage your clients to acknowledge the existence of such thoughts without
trying to suppress them, distract themselves from them or engage with them.
If relevant, use the presence of this post-irrational belief thinking to help your
clients to identify and deal with the irrational beliefs.
Question the empirical nature of these thinking `C's' once or twice and then
return to the acceptance strategy detailed above.
Step 5: Identify your general irrational beliefs and
alternative general rational beliefs
A general irrational belief leading to your shame response is an irrational
belief that you hold across situations de®ned by one of the following
themes:
Something highly negative has been revealed about you (or about a group with whom
you identify) by yourself or by others.
You have acted in a way that falls very short of your ideal.
Others look down on or shun you (or a group with whom you identify) or you think
that they do.
Its rational alternative, which will also be general in nature, will account for
your disappointment response.
Identify your general irrational beliefs
When you identify a general irrational belief, you take a common shame
related theme (see above) and add to this a general rigid belief and the
main extreme belief that is derived from the rigid belief. In shame, your
main extreme belief will be a self-depreciation belief. For example:
`I must not fall short of my high social standards and I am defective if I do.'
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131
Identify your alternative general rational beliefs
When you identify your alternative general rational belief, you take the same
common theme ± (a) something highly negative has been revealed about
you (or about a group with whom you identify) by yourself or by others, (b)
you have acted in a way that falls very short of your ideal and (c) others look
down on or shun you (or a group with whom you identify) or you think that
they do ± and add to this a general ¯exible belief and a general unconditional self-acceptance belief. For example:
`I really don't want to fall very short of my high social standards, but that does not
mean that I must not do so. If I do that it would be unfortunate, but it would not prove
that I am defective. Rather it proves that I am fallible.'
As you will have noticed in the Client's Guide, I encourage readers
to identify and work with their general irrational beliefs and to
develop general rational beliefs and, as you will see, when they are
facing speci®c instances of their problems, I encourage them to
focus on speci®c examples of both sets of beliefs. This will be at
variance with your RECBT practice, where you will begin with
speci®c examples of your clients' problems and then proceed to
work at a more general level with their problems and how these
relate to one another.
The reason I have chosen to go `general' rather than `speci®c' when
helping readers to deal with their emotional problems is a
pragmatic one. In this book, I aim to help people to deal with a
range of emotional problems and therefore, in my view, it is best to
give readers general guidance with respect to dealing with this range
of problems and then help them to move from the general to the
speci®c rather than vice versa. My considered view was that I just do
not have the space to help readers focus on speci®c examples of their
emotional problems and then generalise from this speci®c level.
Consequently, one way that you can help your clients who are
using the Client's Guide is to help them to work with speci®c
examples of their emotional problem, in this case shame. Use the
following sequence as you do so and help your clients to
select a speci®c example of their shame problem
express why their shame constitutes a problem for them
identify what they felt most ashamed about in the situation
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identify the three speci®c components of their shame response and set speci®c
goals with respect to each component
identify their speci®c irrational beliefs and alternative speci®c rational beliefs
question their speci®c beliefs
In helping your clients to deal with a speci®c example of their
shame, you can teach them how to use RECBT's ABCD form, which
appears in Appendix 6.
The following steps are the same as those that appear in Steps
8±11 later in this chapter. Thus, help your clients to
face up to in imagery (if necessary) (a) what has been revealed about them (or
about a group with whom they identify) that is highly negative either by
themselves or by others, (b) what they did that fell very short of their ideal and
(c) others looking down on or shunning them (or a group with whom they
identify)
face the same things in reality (if possible) and take appropriate action
capitalise on what they learned
generalise their learning.
Step 6: Question your general beliefs
I recommended in previous chapters that you ®rst question together your
general rigid belief and its general ¯exible belief alternative and then
question together your general extreme belief and your general nonextreme belief.
Question your general rigid belief and its general flexible
belief alternative
First, take your general rigid belief and its general ¯exible belief alternative
and write them down next to one another on a sheet of paper. Then ask
yourself:
Which is true and which is false?
Which is sensible logically and which does not make sense?
Which has largely constructive results and which has largely unconstructive results?
Write down your answer to each of these questions on your piece of paper,
giving reasons for each answer. Consult Appendix 2 for help with the
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133
answers to these questions, which you need to adapt and apply to the
beliefs you are questioning.
Question your general self-depreciation belief and its
general unconditional self-acceptance belief alternative
Next, take your general self-depreciation belief and its general unconditional self-acceptance belief alternative and again write them down next to
one another on a sheet of paper. Then, ask yourself the same three questions that you used with your general rigid belief and its general ¯exible
belief alternative. Again write down your answer to each of these questions
on your piece of paper, giving reasons for each answer. I suggest that you
consult Appendix 5 (for help with questioning self-depreciation beliefs and
unconditional self-acceptance beliefs). Again, you need to adapt and apply
these arguments to the beliefs you are questioning.
You should now be ready to commit to acting and thinking in ways
consistent with your general rational belief.
I included Appendices 2±5 in the Client's Guide as general guidelines to help readers to question their irrational and rational
beliefs (reproduced in this book as Appendices 2±5). If you are
working with clients who are using the Client's Guide, you will
have a chance to look at the questioning work that your clients
have done at this point and give them feedback on that work. No
book can provide such feedback.
I have suggested that readers question their rigid belief and their
¯exible belief together and then their self-depreciation belief and
their unconditional self-acceptance belief equivalent together
using three criteria as shown below:
Rigid belief vs. ¯exible belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status
Self-depreciation belief vs. unconditional self-acceptance belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status.
However, there are other ways of questioning beliefs, as shown
below. When using the Client's Guide with your clients, outline
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Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
these other approaches in case they do not resonate with the
approach I put forward in the Client's Guide. The important point
is that your clients use all three arguments with each of their
rational and irrational beliefs.
Rigid belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status
Flexible belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status
Self-depreciation belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status
Unconditional self-acceptance belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status.
And also:
Rigid belief
empirical status
Flexible belief
empirical status
Rigid belief
logical status
Flexible belief
logical status
Rigid belief
pragmatic status
Flexible belief
pragmatic status
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135
Self-depreciation belief
empirical status
Unconditional self-acceptance belief
empirical status
Self-depreciation belief
logical status
Unconditional self-acceptance belief
logical status
Self-depreciation belief
pragmatic status
Unconditional self-acceptance belief
pragmatic status.
The ®nal point I want to make about questioning beliefs concerns
the concept of persuasiveness. Perhaps the most important aspect
of the questioning process is for your clients to develop arguments
concerning the irrationality of their irrational beliefs and the
rationality of their rational beliefs that are persuasive to them. So,
encourage your clients to develop such persuasive arguments and
to make a note of these for future reference.
Step 7: Adopt a healthy orientation towards your high
standards
Once you have committed yourself to strengthening your conviction in your
general rational belief, it is useful for you to develop what I call a healthy
orientation towards your high standards. This involves you doing the
following:
Recognise that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with having high standards.
View these standards as signposts to aim for rather than as yardsticks that you must
achieve. As such, your high standards are similar to self-actualisation in that you can
never achieve them once and for all. Rather you can work steadily to achieve them.
Accept that when you fail to live up to your high standards, the best way of dealing
with this situation is to learn from it and to apply your learning on future occasions
having ®rst accepted yourself unconditionally for your failure.
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In other forms of CBT, therapists tend to help their clients to question the utility of their high standards much earlier in the therapy
process than do RECBT therapists. When your clients indicate that
they have very high standards in the early phase of discussing their
shame problem, it is tempting to intervene and help them to consider this issue. It is important that you refrain from doing so for
the following reason. RECBT theory argues that it is not having very
high standards that is the clients' problem. Rather it is their rigid
and extreme beliefs about falling short of these standards that is
the problem and unless your clients address their irrational beliefs
®rst, they will re¯ect on matters to do with the utility of high
standards through the distorting lens of their irrational beliefs.
Thus, help your clients to understand the importance of dealing
with their irrational beliefs before re¯ecting on these other matters.
Step 8: Face your shame related theme in imagery
I hope that you have made a commitment to act on your general rational
beliefs (i.e. ¯exible belief and unconditional self-acceptance belief ).
Assuming that you have, your basic task is face up to (a) something
highly negative being revealed about you (or about a group with whom you
identify) by yourself or by others, (b) acting in a way that falls very short of
your ideal and/or (c) others looking down on or shunning you (or a group
with whom you identify) or you think that they do and to learn to think
rationally about it.
Up to this point you have worked at a general level with respect to your
shame related theme, dealing with the general irrational beliefs that
account for your shame and developing your alternative general rational
beliefs. However, when you come to apply your general rational beliefs in
dealing with shame related themes, you need to bear in mind one important
point. Since you make yourself ashamed about speci®c events (actual or
imagined), you need to deal with these by rehearsing speci®c variants of
your general rational beliefs.
While the best way to do this is in speci®c shame related situations, you
may derive bene®t by using imagery ®rst. If this is the case, you need to do
the following:
Imagine a speci®c situation in which you felt shame or may feel shame about: (a)
something highly negative being revealed about you (or about a group with whom
you identify) by yourself or by others, (b) acting in a way that falls very short of your
Dealing with shame
137
ideal or (c) others looking down on or shunning you (or a group with whom you
identify) or you think that they do and focus, in your mind's eye, on what you felt most
ashamed about (i.e. your `A').
Focus on this `A' while rehearsing a speci®c rational belief relevant to the situation.
As you do this, try to make yourself feel disappointed, rather than ashamed.
Then see yourself acting in ways consistent with your rational belief, e.g. holding
your head up high and admitting publicly to any pratfalls.
Recognise that some of your post-belief thinking may be distorted. Respond to it
without getting bogged down doing so. Accept the presence of any remaining
distorted thoughts without engaging with them.
Repeat the above steps until you feel suf®ciently ready to put this sequence into
practice in your life.
If you ®nd that facing your shame related `A', in your mind's eye, is too
much for you, use the `challenging, but not overwhelming' principle. This
means that instead of imagining yourself facing a shame related situation
that you ®nd `overwhelming' at the present time, choose a similar shame
related `A' that you would ®nd `challenging, but not overwhelming'. Then
employ the same steps that I have outlined above. Work in this way with
modi®ed shame related `A's' until you ®nd your original one `challenging,
but not overwhelming' and then use the steps again.
Some of your clients may say that they can't get very clear images
when they try to picture events in their mind's eye. While they may
get more out of imagery techniques if they can get such clear
images, they will still get something out of facing moral code
violations or hurting someone's feelings in imagery if they don't.
So, if clients want to face their particular adversity in imagery
before they do so in reality, encourage them to do so, no matter
how clear their mental images are.
Step 9: Face situations and people with your head
held high
Having learned the lessons from previous shame based episodes, you are
ready to go back to the social milieu and hold your head up as you do so.
Choose a speci®c situation in which you will be reminded of your `fall from grace'
and about which you would ordinarily feel ashamed.
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Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
Rehearse a speci®c version of your general rational beliefs before entering the
situation so that you can be prepared to face the music while in a rational frame of
mind.
Develop a shortened version of this rational belief in mind as you enter the situation
(e.g. `I'm still fallible even though I have fallen from grace') and accept the fact that
you are likely to be uncomfortable while doing so. React to any consequences from a
rational frame of mind if you can.
Recognise that even though you have got yourself into a rational frame of mind some
of your thinking may be distorted and unrealistic and some may be realistic and
balanced. Accept the presence of the former and do not engage with it. Engage with
the latter as much as you can.
At this stage it is very important to encourage your clients to face
these situations without using obvious or subtle safety-seeking
manoeuvres. Otherwise they will not derive as much therapeutic
bene®t from facing relevant situations with their head held high.
Step 10: Capitalise on what you learned
When you have faced a situation in which you experienced shame and dealt
with it as best you could, it is important that you re¯ect on what you did and
what you learned. In particular, if you were able to face the situation,
rehearse your speci®c rational beliefs until you felt disappointment, then
ask yourself how you can capitalise on what you achieved. If you experienced any problems, respond to the following questions:
Did I face the situation, and if not, why not?
Did I rehearse my rational beliefs before, during or after facing the situation, and if
not, why not?
Did I execute my plan to face the situation, and if not, why not?
Did I engage with post-belief distorted thinking, and if so, why?
Re¯ect on your experience and put into practice what you learned the next
time you face a situation in which (a) something highly negative was
revealed about you (or about a group with whom you identify) by yourself or
by others, (b) you acted in a way that falls very short of your ideal, or (c)
others looked down on or shunned you (or a group with whom you identify)
or you think that they did.
Dealing with shame
139
It is useful to monitor your clients' responses to these questions and
help them to re¯ect on any issues that they have not considered.
Step 11: Generalise your learning
Once you have dealt with your shame in a speci®c situation by holding the
relevant speci®c version of your general rational belief and by acting and
thinking in ways that are consistent with it, you can generalise this learning
to situations de®ned by your shame based theme.
Miranda was particularly prone to shame about falling very short of her ideal of
acting with decorum. Thus:
Miranda assessed the three components of her shame response and set goals
with respect to all three components,
She identi®ed her relevant general irrational belief regarding falling very short
of her standards (i.e. `I must achieve my high behavioural standards and I am
a disgrace if I don't') that underpinned her shame response and her alternative
general rational belief (i.e. `I want to achieve my high behavioural standards,
but I don't always have to do so. If I do not achieve my high standards, it is
bad, but I am not a disgrace. I am an ordinary fallible person who has done
something unfortunate') that underpinned her disappointment response.
She questioned both elements of her general irrational belief and her general
rational belief until she clearly saw that the former were false, made no sense
and were detrimental to her, and that the latter were true, sensible and healthy.
She acted on her rational beliefs in speci®c situations, held her head up and
engaged in eye contact as she did so, even though people tended to look down
on her.
As she did so she tolerated the discomfort that she felt and accepted that
some of her distorted and skewed negative thinking would still be in her mind
as she did so. She let such thinking be without engaging with it, suppressing
it or distracting herself from it.
As this section shows, you can generalise what you learn about dealing
with shame from situation to situation as de®ned by your shame based
inference.
USING RECBT'S ABCD FORM TO DEAL WITH
SPECIFIC EXAMPLES OF YOUR SHAME
This chapter is mainly geared to help you deal with your shame in general
terms. However, you can also use this material to address speci®c
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Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
examples of your shame. I have developed a self-help form to provide the
structure to assist you in this regard. It is called the ABCD form and it
appears with instructions in Appendix 6.
In Appendix 6, I outline the major problems that clients have in
using this form and how to deal with them.
OTHER IMPORTANT ISSUES IN DEALING WITH
SHAME
In the above section, I outlined an eleven step programme to deal with
shame. In this section, I discuss some other important issues that may be
relevant to you in your work to become less prone to this emotional
problem. If you want to, you can incorporate them as additional steps in the
above step-by-step guide at points relevant to you.
Dealing with your safety-seeking measures to avoid
shame
I mentioned in Chapter 2 that people use safety-seeking measures to
protect themselves from threat. You may use similar measures to protect
yourself from feeling shame. Here is how this works from your perspective.
You reason that since you feel ashamed about (a) something highly
negative being revealed about you (or about a group with whom you
identify) by yourself or by others, (b) you acting in a way that falls very short
of your ideal and/or (c) others looking down on or shunning you (or a
group with whom you identify), you will take two major steps to avoid
shame. First, you will always act in ways that are socially acceptable and
get those with whom you are connected to do the same thing as well.
Second, you will avoid situations where you may fall very short of your
ideal. Taking this decision means that you will not take risks in life (in case
you do socially unacceptable things or fall very short of your ideal) and you
will curtail the autonomy of others in case they `shame' you.
However, this behaviour and the reasoning that leads you to take it are
¯awed and will serve only to perpetuate your chronic shame. This is due to
the fact that your shame is not based on (a) something highly negative
being revealed about you (or about a group with whom you identify) by
yourself or by others, (b) you acting in a way that falls very short of your
ideal and/or (c) others looking down on or shunning you (or a group with
Dealing with shame
141
whom you identify), but on your irrational beliefs about these three inferences. So, if you want to deal effectively with shame you need to do the
following:
Take healthy risks and let others with whom you are connected do the same and see
what happens. You will probably ®nd that people do not disapprove as much as you
think and that while you may fall short of your ideal, this fall from grace will not be as
dramatic as you predicted.
However, if as a result of your behaviour or that of others something highly negative
is revealed, you do fall very short of your ideal and that others do highly disapprove
or shun you (or others with whom you are connected), then you can deal with such
situations by holding a set of rational beliefs about them so that you feel healthy
disappointment and not shame about these consequences.
It is one of the major themes of both the Client's Guide and this
Practitioner's Guide that when your clients come to change their
behaviour from dysfunctional to functional, they will still experience urges to act dysfunctionally. This is why it is so important to
help your clients understand the difference between overt actions
and action tendencies. In the present context, this means stressing
to your clients as they strive to act in ways that address their
shame feelings constructively and thus desist from using shame
related safety-seeking strategies, they will still feel the urge to use
them. Help them to develop ways of accepting, but not necessarily
liking such urges and to implement their healthy disappointment
based behaviour even though such aforementioned behaviour may
be present for some time. You may have to help certain clients
identify and respond to irrational beliefs such as: `If I feel the urge
to do something to get rid of my shame quickly, I have to act on
that urge'. Developing and strengthening rational beliefs about
these urges is particularly important for such clients.
Why you feel shame much of the time and how to deal
with this
If you are particularly prone to shame, you will often focus on times where
(a) something highly negative has been revealed about you (or about a
group with whom you identify) by yourself or by others, (b) you have acted
in a way that falls very short of your ideal and (c) others look down on or
shun you (or a group with whom you identify) or you think that they do. You
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do this because you hold the following belief, which I call a `chronic shame
based general irrational belief':
I must ensure that I and people with whom I am closely connected must always
achieve the highest of standards and be socially approved and if not it proves that we
are defective, disgusting or diminished.'
You then take this belief to situations where it is possible that you and
others will fall short or be socially disapproved, and you attempt to protect
all involved from the predicted negative outcomes by getting all to maintain
standards or withdraw so that social approval is maintained. However, in
doing so, you are keeping alive the three inferences of shame. For you are
saying to yourself that if I did not take the appropriate steps, the following
would have happened:
Something highly negative would be revealed about you (or about a group with whom
you identify) by yourself or by others.
You would act in a way that falls very short of your ideal.
Others would look down on or shun you (or a group with whom you identify).
How to deal with chronic shame
In order to deal with this chronic sense of shame, you need to develop and
apply an alternative general rational belief which protects you from such
shame:
`I would like to ensure that I and people with whom I am closely connected always
achieve the highest standards and be socially approved, but I do not have to do so. If
I do not it would be unfortunate, but it would prove that we are not defective,
disgusting or diminished. Rather, it would prove that we are fallible human beings
and that does not change whether or not we fall from grace and are disapproved.'
Such a belief will lead you to think that the following occurred only when
there is clear evidence for making such an inference:
Something highly negative has been revealed about you (or about a group with whom
you identify) by yourself or by others.
You have acted in a way that falls very short of your ideal.
Others look down on or shun you (or a group with whom you identify) or you think
that they do.
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143
When there is such evidence, you will feel disappointment rather than
shame because you will be processing this with a speci®c rational belief.
If your clients ®nd that the above explanation is too complex, you
can help them to see that rigid beliefs about the presence or
absence of shame related adversities means that unless they are
clear that they have not put their reference group in a bad light,
for example, then they think that they have done so. When their
beliefs are ¯exible, they can be more objective about the presence of
these adversities.
How to examine the accuracy of your shame-related
inference if necessary
If you are still unsure that (a) something highly negative has been revealed
about you (or about a group with whom you identify) by yourself or by
others, (b) you have acted in a way that falls very short of your ideal and (c)
others looked down on or shunned you (or a group with whom you
identify), answer one or more of the following questions:
How valid is my inference that I have fallen very short of my ideal (for example)?
Would an objective jury agree that I have fallen very short of my ideal? If not, what
would the jury's verdict be?
Is my inference that I have fallen very short of my ideal realistic? If not, what is a more
realistic inference?
If I asked someone whom I could trust to give me an objective opinion about my
inference that I have fallen very short of my ideal, what would the person say to me
and why? What inference would this person encourage me to make instead?
If a friend had told me that they had made the same inference about falling very short
of their ideal in the same situation, what would I say to them about the validity of their
inference and why? What inference would I encourage the person to make instead?
The Individual `I' and the Socially Defined `I'
If you have a problem with shame, you probably ®nd it dif®cult to conceive
that you can hold a belief about yourself (i.e. the Individual `I') that is
radically different from how others see you (i.e. the Socially De®ned `I'). Yet
this is your task if it does transpire that people consider you defective,
disgusting or diminished either for falling very short of your ideal or for
acting in a way that is greatly at variance from the mores of the judging
social group.
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In RECBT we argue that it is possible for you to accept yourself as a
fallible human being in the face of others considering you defective,
disgusting or diminished. Let me show you how Shireen used a technique
that I call Dryden's Invitation Technique.
Shireen came from a close knit religious Muslim family, but was not religious
herself. When she went to college, she met and fell in love with a young Hindu
man. When her family and community discovered this, they put her under
enormous pressure to end the relationship, which she refused to do. Then they
told her that because she was defective, they did not want to have anything to do
with her. Initially, Shireen felt intense shame when they told her that she was
defective. Then, she helped herself by using Dryden's Invitation Technique in
the following way:
Shireen recognised that when her family considered her defective, they were
in fact issuing her with an invitation saying in effect: `We regard you as
defective for going against your family and social group and we invite you to
de®ne yourself as defective.'
Shireen then recognised that, as with a wedding invitation, she had a choice
to accept or decline the invitation. Thus, she could say:
or
`Thank you for your invitation for me to agree with you. I accept'
`Thank you for your invitation for me to agree with you. I decline'
Shireen chose to decline the invitation and felt disappointed, but not
ashamed, about going against her family and social group.
Had Shireen accepted the invitation. she would have felt ashamed.
As Shireen has shown, it is possible to hold on to a healthy de®nition of
yourself (i.e. the Individual `I') in the face of others' unhealthy de®nition of
you (i.e. the Socially De®ned `I').
Assessing and dealing with emotional problems
about shame
In previous chapters, I discussed the concept of meta-disturbance (literally
disturbance about disturbance). It is important to assess carefully the
nature of this meta-disturbance about shame before you can best deal
with it.
The best way to start dealing with the assessment of any emotional
problems you might have about shame is to ask yourself the question:
`How do I feel about my feeling of shame?' The most common emotional
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145
problems that people have about shame are as follows: anxiety, depression,
shame and unhealthy self-anger. I refer you to the chapters on anxiety,
depression and unhealthy anger for help on how to deal with these metaemotional problems about shame. Here I will help you to deal with your
meta-shame.
Dealing with shame about shame
When you experience shame about shame, you take your original feelings
of shame and regard them as evidence of you falling very short of your
ideal. Then you hold the following rigid and self-depreciation beliefs about
this `fall from grace' and experience meta-shame:
`I must not fall from grace by experiencing shame and I am defective for so doing.'
First, you need to develop a healthy alternative to these beliefs, such as:
`I would much prefer not to fall from grace by experiencing shame, but that doesn't
mean that I must not have this feeling. If I do, it's unfortunate, but does not prove I
am defective. It proves that I am an ordinary, fallible human being capable of
experiencing a range of healthy and unhealthy emotions including shame. Shame
does not and cannot de®ne me!'
Question both sets of beliefs (referring to Appendices 2 and 5 for guidance) and do so until you can fully commit yourself to your rational beliefs.
Then you can openly admit to yourself and to others that you sometimes
feel ashamed. In doing so, you are coming out of your shame closet and as
shame hates the light and disclosure to others you will feel disappointed,
but ashamed of your original shame. When you have done this, you are
best placed to deal effectively with this original feeling of shame.
Your clients will sometimes need to address their emotional problems about shame before they address their shame. They need to do
this particularly when their secondary emotional problem gets in
the way of them dealing with their primary shame. However,
despite the interfering presence of their secondary problem, some
clients still want to target their primary shame. There are two
ways of dealing with this situation:
Provide a rationale to help your clients target their secondary problem. For
example, explain to your clients that their secondary problem is like having a
ball and chain around their leg while they are climbing a steep hill (akin to
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their primary feelings of shame). In the same way as climbing the hill is easier
when they remove the ball and chain from their leg, dealing with their primary
shame is easier when they deal with their secondary problem ®rst.
Go along with your clients' wish to deal with their primary shame and when
they fail to do so, help them to understand that the reason why they failed is
because they had not addressed their secondary problem and then agree that
they will now do so.
Developing and rehearsing a non-shame world view
People develop views of the world as it relates to them that make it more or
less likely that they will experience unhealthy negative emotions. The world
views that render you vulnerable to shame do so in a similar way to the
chronic shame-based general irrational belief discussed above (i.e. `I must
ensure that I and people that I am closely connected with must always
achieve the highest standards and be socially approved and if not it proves
that we are defective, disgusting or diminished'), by making you focus
unduly on times when you fell very short of your ideal standards and times
when you or others acted against important social mores and by leading
you to overestimate the frequency of such events happening. However,
these shame based world views have this effect on you much more widely.
It is important that you develop realistic views of the world that will help
you to deal with shame. In Table 5, you will ®nd an illustrative list of such
Table 5 World views that render you vulnerable to shame and help you to deal with
shame
Views of the world that render you
vulnerable to shame
Views of the world that help you
deal with shame
There is always the danger that I will
not achieve my ideal standards
There is always this danger, but these
standards are there to guide me, not to
be achieved all the time
Social situations are dangerous
because other people will judge me
negatively if I put a foot wrong
Social situations can be dangerous, but
they can also be benign. If I put a foot
wrong, people may judge me negatively,
but they may also show me
understanding and compassion
Social situations are dangerous
because I may be exposed as defective,
disgusting or diminished at any
moment
If I fall short of my ideal or go against a
social custom, I am revealing my
fallibility and my humanity. This makes
social situations far less dangerous
Dealing with shame
147
world views rather than an exhaustive one, so you can get an idea of what I
mean, which will enable you to develop your own. In Table 5, I ®rst describe
a world view that renders you vulnerable to shame and then I give its healthy
alternative. You will see that the former is characterised by a conception of
the social world as highly dangerous in which if you slip up, you will be
revealed to the harsh judging group as defective, disgusting or diminished.
In the latter a more forgiving picture of others is revealed and a variety of
responses to your `shameful' behaviour can be expected.
If you hold rational beliefs that are consistent with the views of the world
listed on the right hand side of Table 5 and if you act and think in ways that
are, in turn, consistent with these rational beliefs, then doing all this will
help you become less prone to shame.
In Chapter 6 , I discuss hurt and how to deal with it.
6
Dealing with hurt
In this chapter, I begin by presenting RECBT's way of understanding hurt
and then address how to deal with this emotional problem.
UNDERSTANDING HURT
In understanding hurt, we need to know what we tend to make ourselves
feel hurt about (i.e. its major inference themes), what beliefs we hold, how
we act or tend to act, and how we think when we feel ashamed.
I mentioned in previous chapters that it is important that you use
your client's language when referring to emotional problems. With
respect to the term `hurt', you need to be aware that not all clients
with a `hurt' problem resonate with the term `hurt'. They may
identify more closely with terms like `upset'. In addition, since hurt
often coexists with anger, some clients can relate better to a term
such as `angry hurt', rather than just `hurt'. If such is the case,
your task is to satisfy yourself and your client that these terms
represent the unhealthy negative emotion known in RECBT as
hurt. Once you have done so, use the client's language and write
this down in your client's notes.
Major inference themes in hurt
There are two major themes in relation to your personal domain that are
implicated in hurt:
Others treat you badly (and you think you do not deserve such treatment).
You think that the other person has devalued your relationship (i.e. someone
indicates that their relationship with you is less important to them than the relationship is to you).
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149
Some clients may not resonate to the above schema and, in these
cases, you should encourage them to put it aside and just focus on
what they tend to feel hurt about. RECBT theory values ¯exibility
and this includes the freedom not to use RECBT terms, schemes
and frameworks.
Irrational beliefs
As I explained in Chapter 1, according to RECBT, inferences on their own
do not account for emotional problems. It is possible, therefore, for you to
make the same inferences as listed above and feel sorrowful and not hurt.
In order for you to feel hurt, you have to hold an irrational belief. When you
think irrationally, you hold a rigid belief and an extreme belief. While
the rigid belief is at the core of hurt, the extreme beliefs that are derived
from the rigid belief often distinguish between whether you are experiencing ego `less me' hurt (where you depreciate yourself ) and non-ego
`poor me' hurt (where you `awfulise', ®nd the adversity intolerable or
depreciate life).
If your clients are unsure about the mediating role that irrational
beliefs play in their hurt, ask them how they would feel if they
really believed the rational alternatives to what RECBT holds are
their hurt creating irrational beliefs. In using this strategy, it is
important that you formulate the rational beliefs for your clients
who cannot be expected to do this for themselves at this stage.
When you do this, ensure that you match your clients' rigid belief
with a ¯exible alternative and their extreme belief with a nonextreme alternative, and then ask them how they would feel if they
had strong conviction in this rational belief.
For example: `Let me outline two sets of beliefs about being
neglected by your friend and you tell me which leads to hurt and
which leads to sorrow without shame. The ®rst set of beliefs is as
follows: ``My friend absolutely should not have neglected me and
it's terrible that they did. Poor me!'' The second set of beliefs is as
follows: ``I would have much preferred it if my friend had not
neglected me, but they do not have to act in the way that I prefer.
It's not terrible that they neglected me and while it is a poor state
of affairs, I am not a poor person because it happened to me''. Now
which set of beliefs would lead to hurt and which set would lead to
sorrow without hurt?'
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Once your clients can see that their irrational beliefs underpin
hurt and their rational beliefs underpin sorrow, they have understood the mediating role of beliefs.
This is quite an elegant strategy since it accomplishes a number
of things at once:
1. It addresses your clients' doubts about the mediating role of irrational beliefs
in hurt if they have such concern.
2. It introduces rational beliefs as a meaningful alternative to these irrational
beliefs.
3. It helps your clients to see that holding rational beliefs can have bene®cial
effects.
Behaviour associated with hurt
When you hold an irrational belief about one of the two major inference
themes, you will act or tend to act in a number of ways, the most common
of which are as follows:
You stop the communicating channel with the other person.
You sulk and make obvious you feel hurt without disclosing details of the matter.
You indirectly criticise or punish the other person for their offence.
If you ask your clients whether they want to change their hurt
based behaviour, their response will be affected by their state of
mind or mood. If they are currently experiencing hurt, they are less
likely to see that this behaviour is dysfunctional than when they
are not feeling hurt. If they are feeling hurt, it is useful to encourage them to imagine that they are advising a friend who displays
the same hurt based behaviour as they do. What would they say to
this friend about the functionality or dysfunctionality of such
behaviour? They are more likely to see that their own hurt based
behaviour is dysfunctional after they have told their `friend' that
the same behaviour is dysfunctional.
Thinking associated with hurt
When you hold an irrational belief about being unfairly treated by someone
close to you, or about another indicating that their relationship to you is
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151
less important to them than it is to you, you will tend to think in a number of
ways. Remember what I said in Chapter 1: the thinking that accompanies
your hurt is the result of your hurt based inference being processed by your
irrational belief and therefore it is likely to contain a number of thinking
errors that I present in Appendix 1. I list the main features of this post±
irrational belief hurt based thinking below:
You overestimate the unfairness of the other person's behaviour.
You think that the other person does not care for you or is indifferent to you.
You see yourself as alone, uncared for or misunderstood.
You tend to think of past `hurts'.
You expect the other to make the ®rst move toward repairing the relationship.
As you can see, such thinking exaggerates the negative consequences of
being treated unfairly or having your relationship devalued by others. Such
thinking may be in words or in mental images.
One of the main features of post-irrational belief thinking is that
it is compelling. As such, it is quite easy for your clients to get
caught up in this way of thinking and think that it re¯ects reality.
This is an example of `cognitive-emotive' reasoning: if a thought is
plausible and emotionally compelling, therefore it must be true. It
is important that you help your client to understand how their
mind works with respect to the thinking consequences of irrational
beliefs and to encourage them to use such thoughts to go back to
address the irrational beliefs that spawn them. When they have
done this, you can encourage them to respond to these thinking
consequences of irrational beliefs as the iBs will not disappear just
because they have questioned these beliefs. When they respond to
these thinking consequences of iBs, they need to do so only a few
times on any one occasion. After that, they need to accept the
presence of such thinking without engaging with it.
To summarise, your clients need to
identify the presence of the thinking consequences of irrational beliefs (see
Appendix 1)
trace these back to the source of this mode of thinking (i.e. identify the
underlying irrational beliefs)
challenge these irrational beliefs
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Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
respond brie¯y to the thinking consequences of such beliefs, but not get overly
involved in this process
accept the lingering presence of these thinking consequences without engaging
with them
get on with the business of living.
HOW TO DEAL WITH HURT
If you are prone to hurt, you tend to experience this emotional problem in a
variety of different settings and in response to a variety of situations where
someone thinks less of their relationship with you than you do or where
someone treats you badly when you don't deserve it. Here is how to deal
with hurt so that you become less prone to it.
Step 1: Identify reasons why hurt is a problem for you
and why you want to change
While hurt is generally regarded as an emotional problem, it is useful for
you to spell out reasons why hurt is a problem for you and why you want to
change. I suggest that you keep a written list of these reasons and refer to it
as needed as a reminder of why you are engaged in a self-help programme.
I discuss the healthy alternative to hurt in Step 4.
Some people who feel hurt think that `feeling hurt' is an appropriate response to situations where (a) others have treated them
badly (and they think that they do not deserve such treatment) and
(b) where they think that others have devalued their relationship
(i.e. someone indicates that their relationship with your client is
less important to them than the relationship is to your client).
In these circumstances, it is important to introduce the idea of
feeling sorrow as the healthy alternative to hurt a little earlier
than you would normally do (see Step 4). When you have done so,
you can then carry out a cost-bene®t analysis of hurt and its
healthy alternative, sorrow. This involves helping your client to
spell out the perceived advantages and disadvantages of both
emotions. Respond to any perceived advantages of hurt and perceived disadvantages of sorrow, correcting any misconceptions that
your client reveals on these issues.
Dealing with hurt
153
For example, imagine that your client thinks that feeling hurt
will lead the other person to apologise for their bad behaviour and
that sorrow would not achieve the same end. In this case, help your
client to see that precisely the reverse is true. Hurt tends to lead to
sulking and, as such, the other person is not clear that they have
anything to apologise for. By contrast, sorrow is more likely to lead
the person to communicate clearly and respectfully, thus increasing
the chances that they will apologise for their behaviour if they see
things from your client's perspective.
Step 2: Take responsibility for your hurt
In RECBT, we argue that people do not hurt you; rather you create these
hurt feelings by the rigid and extreme beliefs that you hold about how
people treat you. You may object that this view condones other people's
behaviour, but this objection is based on a misconception. You can take
responsibility for creating your hurt and still not condone others' bad
behaviour.
The idea that emotional problems (including hurt) are based
largely on the way that a person thinks about what happens to
them is, as you know, a central plank in RECBT. However, for
many clients it will be a new idea. Thus, your clients may hold that
the reason they are hurt, for example, is that it is inherently
hurtful to be treated badly by someone that you care for and treat
well. This is an example of `A-C' thinking where `A' is the person
being treated badly by someone that they care for and `C' is the
emotion of hurt. Rather, we argue that the reason that the person
experiences hurt is largely due to the fact that they hold a set of
irrational beliefs about this bad treatment. If they held a set of
rational beliefs about the bad treatment, they would experience
sorrow rather than hurt.
If your clients continue to have dif®culty accepting responsibility
for their hurt, it is important for you to identify the source of this
dif®culty. Here are two common obstacles and how to respond
to them:
The double penalty: this obstacle is expressed like this: `If I accept responsibility for my feelings of hurt, it is as if I am being punished twice. First, I have
been treated badly by someone I care for, and second, I am being told that I am
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responsible for these feelings. This lets the other person off the hook.' If your
clients hold to this view, help them to see that while they have been penalised
by being treated badly (which they need to be held responsible for), they are
actually penalising themselves by making themselves feel hurt. Show your
clients that you want to spare them this second penalty by helping them to
experience a healthy negative emotion (sorrow) rather than an unhealthy
negative emotion (hurt).
Taking responsibility for hurt means admitting a weakness: here the block is
the irrational belief that your clients hold about having and/or admitting
having a weakness (e.g. `I cannot take responsibility for my hurt feelings
because it means admitting that I have a weakness that I must not have or
must not admit to publicly'). If your clients hold to this position, help them to
understand that having a weakness is quintessentially human and does not
mean that they are defective.
It is important to help your clients to understand the impact of
these obstacles on their emotional problems. Then, help them to
develop alternatives to these obstacles and review the impact of
these alternatives on their emotional problem-solving. This often
helps clients to deal effectively with these obstacles. If not, you may
need to do a more detailed assessment of the obstacle, which is
outside the brief of this book.
Step 3: Identify themes you tend to feel hurt about
The best way of identifying hurt related inference themes to which you are
particularly vulnerable is by understanding the themes associated with
hurt, and seeing which are present when you feel hurt. As I outlined above,
there are two such themes:
Others treat you badly (and you think you do not deserve such treatment).
You think that the other person has devalued your relationship (i.e. someone indicates that their relationship with you is less important to them than the relationship is
to you).
If your clients ®nd it dif®cult to ®nd their hurt related theme, you
can help them by assessing a few speci®c examples of their hurt.
Have them focus on a speci®c situation in which they felt hurt and
ask them what they were most hurt about. If they still ®nd it
dif®cult to identify the theme in this or other speci®c situations,
use the `magic question' technique. This involves you doing the
following:
Dealing with hurt
155
Have your clients focus on the situation in which they felt hurt.
Ask them to nominate one ingredient that would eliminate or signi®cantly
reduce their feelings of hurt without changing the situation.
The opposite of this nominated ingredient is what they are most hurt about.
Lisa was struggling to identify the speci®c theme in her hurt about her best
friend not returning her calls. Lisa used the `magic question' technique as
follows:
Lisa focused on the situation in which she felt hurt:
`My friend is not returning my calls.'
She nominated one ingredient that would eliminate or signi®cantly reduce
her shame without changing the situation:
`My friend still cares for me.'
The opposite of this nominated ingredient was what she was most hurt
about:
`My friend no longer cares for me.'
If you assess a number of speci®c examples of your clients' hurt in
this way, the hurt related theme should be apparent. In Lisa's case
it was being uncared for by people close to her.
It may be that there are two hurt related themes present in your
client's hurt. For example, your client may feel hurt about being
treated badly by others or that they care more about someone than
that person cares about your client. If this is the case, deal with
them one at a time and have your client nominate the theme
which they want to focus on ®rst.
Step 4: Identify the three components of your hurt
response and set goals with respect to each
component
The next step is for you to list the three elements of your hurt response in
the face of each of the relevant themes listed above.
Identify the three components of your hurt response
I use the term `hurt response' to describe the three main components that
make up this response. The three components of your hurt response are
emotional, behavioural and thinking components.
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Emotional component
The emotional component here is, of course, hurt.
Behavioural component
The behavioural component concerns overt behaviour or action tendencies
that you engage in or `feel like' engaging in when you feel hurt. Consult the
list that I provided to help you identify your behaviour associated with each
relevant theme when you feel hurt (see p. 150).
Thinking component
The thinking component associated with hurt is listed on p. 151. Again
these may be in words or in mental pictures. Consult this list if necessary.
Set goals with respect to each of the three components
You need to set goals so that you know what you are striving for when you
deal effectively with hurt. The three goals are emotional, behavioural and
thinking goals.
Emotional goal
Your emotional goal is sorrow rather than hurt (or whatever synonym you
prefer to the term `sorrow'). Sorrow is a healthy negative emotion which is
an appropriate response to the two hurt related themes detailed above. It
helps you to think objectively about the situation and your response to
it and helps you to move on with your life rather than get stuck or bogged
down.
The concept that sorrow is the healthy alternative to hurt when (a)
others treat you badly (and you think you do not deserve such
treatment) and (b) you think that the other person has devalued
your relationship (i.e. someone indicates that their relationship
with you is less important to them than the relationship is to you)
is based on the following idea. These adversities are negative and
therefore it is realistic to have a negative emotion about them. The
choice, therefore, is between an unhealthy negative emotion (hurt)
or a healthy negative emotion (sorrow). However, what if your
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157
clients specify unrealistic goals? Here are a number of such goals
and how to respond to clients who nominate them:
`I don't want to feel hurt.'
Show your client that they have indicated what they do not want to feel in the
face of (a) others treating them (when they do think they deserve such
treatment) or when (b) they think that the other person has devalued their
relationship. Your client needs to specify how they want to feel instead of hurt.
`I want to feel less hurt.'
Show your client that as hurt is a disturbed emotion, wanting to feel less hurt
is still to nominate a disturbed emotion, albeit of lesser intensity. Show them
that sorrow can be strong and healthy.
`I don't want to feel anything.'
Not feeling anything in the face of being treated badly by someone close to your
client when they don't deserve it or in the face of having someone devalue their
relationship with them will not help your client to be appropriately geared up
to deal with it. Help them to see this. Also show them that the only way that
they could achieve a state of not feeling anything is to feel completely indifferent about being treated badly by someone close or when someone devalues their
relationship with your client. This can be achieved only if your client lies to
themselves. Show them this and discourage them from setting such a goal.
Behavioural goal
Your behavioural goal should re¯ect actions that are based on sorrow
rather than hurt. The following are the most common behaviours associated with sorrow. You may wish to compare these behaviours with those
associated with hurt that I presented on p. 150.
You communicate your feelings to the other directly.
You request that the other person acts in a fairer manner towards you.
It is important that your clients understand that as they strive to
develop healthy behavioural responses to being treated badly or
having their relationship with a person devalued by that person,
they will still feel the urge to act in ways that are dysfunctional, as
listed on p. 150. Help them to understand the reason for this.
Explain to them that as they question their beliefs and commit
themselves to strengthening their conviction in their rational
beliefs and to weakening their conviction in their irrational beliefs,
their irrational beliefs will still be active and producing urges for
them to act dysfunctionally. Encourage your clients to accept these
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urges, to recognise that they do not have to act on them and to use
them as cues to act in functional ways.
Thinking goal
As well as setting behavioural goals related to the feeling of sorrow about
(a) being unfairly treated by someone close to you or about (b) another
indicating that their relationship to you is less important to them than it is
to you, it is important that you set thinking goals associated with this
emotion. The following are the most common forms of thinking associated
with sorrow rather than hurt. Again you may wish to compare these forms
of thinking with those associated with hurt that I presented on p. 151.
You are realistic about the degree of unfairness in the other person's behaviour.
You think that the other person has acted badly rather than as demonstrating lack of
caring or indifference.
You see yourself as being in a poor situation, but still connected to, cared for by and
understood by others not directly involved in the situation.
If you think of past hurts, you do so with less frequency and less intensity than when
you feel hurt.
You are open to the idea of making the ®rst move towards the other person.
As the above list shows, the dominant feature of thinking associated with
sorrow is that it is realistic and balanced. Please remember that such
thinking may be in words or in mental pictures.
The point I made above with respect to clients' behavioural goals is
also relevant with respect to their thinking goals. Clients will still
have some conviction in their irrational beliefs until they have full
conviction in their rational beliefs. Given this, your clients' irrational beliefs will have some impact on their subsequent thinking
as they strive to achieve their goals. Thus, highly distorted thoughts
will still come into your clients' minds. Help your clients to understand why this is the case. When you come to help them deal with
these forms of post-irrational belief thinking, do one or more of
the following as indicated. Discuss this issue with your RECBT
supervisor, if necessary:
Encourage your clients to acknowledge the existence of such thoughts without
trying to suppress them, distract themselves from them or engage with them.
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159
If relevant, use the presence of this post-irrational belief thinking to help your
clients to identify and deal with the irrational beliefs.
Question the empirical nature of these thinking `C's' once or twice and then
return to the acceptance strategy detailed above.
Step 5: Identify your general irrational beliefs and
alternative general rational beliefs
A general irrational belief leading to your hurt response is an irrational
belief that you hold across situations de®ned by one of the following
themes:
Others treat you badly (and you think you do not deserve such treatment).
Relationship devaluation (i.e. someone indicates that their relationship with you is
less important to them than the relationship is to you).
Its rational alternative, which will also be general in nature, will account for
your sorrow response.
Identify your general irrational beliefs
When you identify a general irrational belief, you take a common hurt
related theme (see above) and add to this a general rigid belief and the
main extreme belief that is derived from the rigid belief. In hurt, your main
extreme belief will be either a discomfort intolerance belief with an accompanying sense of `self-pity' (I call this `poor me' hurt) or a self-depreciation
belief (I call this `less me' hurt).
Here is an example of each type of hurt:
`Poor me' hurt:
`I must not be treated unfairly by people close to me when I don't deserve to be and I
can't stand it when this happens. Poor me!'
`Less me' hurt:
`When my relationship with people is important to me, they must ®nd the relationship
equally important to them. If they don't, it proves that I am less worthy.'
Identify your alternative general rational beliefs
When you identify your alternative general rational belief, you take the same
common theme ± i.e. others treat you badly (and you think you do not
deserve such treatment) and relationship devaluation (i.e. someone indicates that their relationship with you is less important to them than the
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relationship is to you) ± and add to this a general ¯exible belief and a
general discomfort tolerance belief or a general self-acceptance belief. For
example:
Non-self-pity based sorrow:
`I don't want to be treated unfairly by people close to me when I don't deserve to be,
but they don't have to treat me the way I want them to. When this happens, it is a
struggle, but I can stand it and I am not a poor person, even though I have been
treated poorly.'
Unconditional self-acceptance based sorrow
`When my relationship with people is important to me, I want them to ®nd the
relationship equally important to them, but they don't have to do so. If they don't, it
would be bad, but it would not prove that I am less worthy. I am the same person
whether or not they value our relationship as much as I do.'
As you will have noticed in the Client's Guide, I encourage readers
to identify and work with their general irrational beliefs and to
develop general rational beliefs and, as you will see, when they are
facing speci®c instances of their problems, I encourage them to
focus on speci®c examples of both sets of beliefs. This will be at
variance with your RECBT practice, where you will begin with
speci®c examples of your clients' problems and then proceed to
work at a more general level with their problems and how these
relate to one another.
The reason I have chosen to go `general' rather than `speci®c'
when helping readers to deal with their emotional problems is a
pragmatic one. In this book, I aim to help people to deal with a
range of emotional problems and therefore, in my view, it is best to
give readers general guidance with respect to dealing with this
range of problems and then help them to move from the general to
the speci®c rather than vice versa. My considered view was that I
just do not have the space to help readers focus on speci®c
examples of their emotional problems and then generalise from
this speci®c level.
Consequently, one way that you can help your clients who are
using the Client's Guide is to help them to work with speci®c
examples of their emotional problem, in this case hurt. Use the
following sequence as you do so and help your clients to
select a speci®c example of their hurt problem
express why their hurt constitutes a problem for them
identify what they felt most hurt about in the situation
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161
identify the three speci®c components of their hurt response and set speci®c
goals with respect to each component
identify their speci®c irrational beliefs and alternative speci®c rational beliefs
question their speci®c beliefs.
In helping your clients to deal with a speci®c example of their
hurt, you can teach them how to use RECBT's ABCD form, which
appears in Appendix 6.
The following steps are the same as those that appear in Steps
8±11 later in this chapter. Thus, help your clients to
face up to what they are most hurt about in imagery (if necessary)
face the same things in reality (if possible) and take appropriate action
capitalise on what they learned
generalise their learning.
Step 6: Question your general beliefs
I recommended in previous chapters that you ®rst question together your
general rigid belief and its general ¯exible belief alternative and then
question together your general extreme belief and its general non-extreme
belief alternative.
Question your general rigid belief and its general flexible
belief alternative
First, take your general rigid belief and its general ¯exible belief alternative
and write them down next to one another on a sheet of paper. Then ask
yourself:
Which is true and which is false?
Which is sensible logically and which does not make sense?
Which has largely constructive results and which has largely unconstructive results?
Write down your answer to each of these questions on your piece of paper,
giving reasons for each answer. Consult Appendix 2 for help with the
answers to these questions, which you need to adapt and apply to the
beliefs you are questioning.
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Question your general extreme belief and its general nonextreme belief alternative
Next, take your general extreme belief and its general non-extreme belief
alternative and again write them down next to one another on a sheet of
paper. Then, ask yourself the same three questions that you used with your
general rigid belief and its general ¯exible belief alternative. Again write
down your answer to each of these questions on your piece of paper, giving
reasons for each answer. I suggest that you consult Appendix 3 (for help
with questioning awfulising beliefs and non-awfulising beliefs), Appendix 4
(for help with questioning discomfort intolerance beliefs and discomfort
tolerance beliefs) and Appendix 5 (for help with questioning depreciation
beliefs and unconditional acceptance beliefs). Again, you need to adapt
and apply these arguments to the beliefs you are questioning.
You should now be ready to commit to acting and thinking in ways
consistent with your general rational belief.
I included Appendices 2±5 in the Client's Guide as general guidelines to help readers to question their irrational and rational
beliefs (reproduced in this book as Appendices 2±5). If you are
working with clients who are using the Client's Guide, you will
have a chance to look at the questioning work that your clients
have done at this point and give them feedback on that work. No
book can provide such feedback.
I have suggested that readers question their rigid belief and their
¯exible belief together and then their main extreme belief and
non-extreme belief equivalent together using three criteria as
shown below:
Rigid belief vs. ¯exible belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status
Main extreme belief vs. main non-extreme belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status.
However, there are other ways of questioning beliefs as shown
below. When using the Client's Guide with your clients, outline
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163
these other approaches in case they do not resonate with the
approach I put forward in the Client's Guide. The important point
is that your clients use all three arguments with each of their
rational and irrational beliefs.
Rigid belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status
Flexible belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status.
Main extreme belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status
Main non-extreme belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status.
And also:
Rigid belief
empirical status
Flexible belief
empirical status
Rigid belief
logical status
Flexible belief
logical status
Rigid belief
pragmatic status
Flexible belief
pragmatic status
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Main extreme belief
empirical status
Main non-extreme belief
empirical status
Main extreme belief
logical status
Main non-extreme belief
logical status
Main extreme belief
pragmatic status
Main non-extreme belief
pragmatic status.
The ®nal point I want to make about questioning beliefs concerns
the concept of persuasiveness. Perhaps the most important aspect
of the questioning process is for your clients to develop arguments
concerning the irrationality of their irrational beliefs and the
rationality of their rational beliefs that are persuasive to them. So,
encourage your clients to develop such persuasive arguments and
to make a note of these for future reference.
Step 7: Adopt a healthy orientation towards
reciprocity in close relationships and its absence
Once you have committed yourself to strengthening your conviction in your
general rational belief, it is useful for you to develop what I call a healthy
orientation towards reciprocity in relationships and, in particular, its
absence. This involves you doing the following;
Recognise that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with wanting reciprocity in relationships. However, it is also important to acknowledge that what you want from a
relationship with a person may not be the same as what they want from a relationship
with you.
Recognise that most of the time when you act fairly towards others, they will act fairly
towards you. In other words, fair treatment tends to yield fair treatment. However, this
is certainly not a universal rule and sometimes people close to you will take advantage of your good nature and betray your trust and otherwise treat you unfairly. It is
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165
important that you don't add disturbance to this adversity by demanding that the
reciprocity effect must exist in such situations. It doesn't and no amount of
demanding that it must will make it so. Rather, look at the situation from your rational
¯exible and non-extreme mind. When you do so you will still feel very badly about it
(i.e. sorrow), but you won't be disturbed (i.e. hurt).
It is very important that you discuss this healthy orientation
about reciprocity in close relationships only when you have helped
clients adopt a set of rational beliefs about relationship reciprocity and its violations. Otherwise, your clients will bring their
irrational beliefs to the discussion and it is probable that they
will not be in the best frame of mind to consider your arguments
carefully.
In the course of this discussion, don't forget that the main purpose of helping your clients to adopt a healthy orientation towards
reciprocity in relationships (and its absence) is so that your clients
deal healthily when others do not reciprocate their care and concern. It is worth periodically reminding clients of the pragmatic
nature of your discussion, particularly if the discussion is becoming overly philosophical.
Step 8: Face your hurt related theme in imagery
I hope that you have made a commitment to act on your general rational
beliefs (i.e. ¯exible belief and non-extreme belief ). Assuming that you have,
your basic task is to face up to others treating you badly (where you think
you do not deserve such treatment) and relationship devaluation (where
someone indicates that their relationship with you is less important to them
than the relationship is to you) and to learn to think rationally about it.
Up to this point you have worked at a general level with respect to your
hurt related theme, dealing with the general irrational beliefs that account
for your hurt and developing your alternative general rational beliefs.
However, when you come to apply your general rational beliefs in dealing
with others treating you badly (where you think you do not deserve such
treatment) and with relationship devaluation (where someone indicates
that their relationship with you is less important to them than the relationship is to you), you need to bear in mind one important point. Since
you make yourself hurt about speci®c events (actual or imagined), you
need to deal with these by rehearsing speci®c variants of your general
rational beliefs.
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While the best way to do this is in speci®c situations where others treat
you badly (where you think you do not deserve such treatment) and where
your relationship is devalued (where someone indicates that their relationship with you is less important to them than the relationship is to you,
you may derive bene®t by using imagery ®rst). If this is the case, you need
to do the following:
Imagine a speci®c situation in which you felt hurt or may feel hurt about (a) others
treating you badly (where you think you do not deserve such treatment) or (b) where
someone indicates that their relationship with you is less important to them than
the relationship is to you and focus, in your mind's eye, on what you felt most hurt
about (i.e. your `A'). Focus on this `A' while rehearsing a speci®c rational belief
relevant to the situation. As you do this, try to make yourself feel sorrowful, rather
than hurt.
Then see yourself acting in ways consistent with your rational belief, e.g. expressing
your sorrow, asking the other person for their perspective and engaging the other
person in a productive dialogue.
Recognise that some of your post-belief thinking may be distorted. Respond to it
without getting bogged down doing so. Accept the presence of any remaining
distorted thoughts without engaging with them.
Repeat the above steps until you feel suf®ciently ready to put this sequence into
practice in your life.
If you ®nd that facing your hurt related `A', in your mind's eye, is too much
for you, use the `challenging, but not overwhelming' principle. This means
that instead of imagining yourself facing a hurt related situation that you
®nd `overwhelming' at the present time, choose a similar hurt related `A'
that you would ®nd `challenging, but not overwhelming'. Then employ the
same steps that I have outlined above. Work in this way with modi®ed hurt
related `A's' until you ®nd your original one `challenging, but not overwhelming' and then use the steps again.
Some of your clients may say that they can't get very clear images
when they try to picture events in their mind's eye. While they may
get more out of imagery techniques if they can get such clear
images, they will still get something out of facing others treating
them badly or devaluing their relationship with them in imagery if
they don't. So, if clients want to face their particular adversity in
imagery before they do so in reality, encourage them to do so, no
matter how clear their mental images are.
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167
Step 9: Face people who have treated you unfairly,
disclose your sorrow and have a constructive
conversation about the experience
Once you have got yourself into a rational frame of mind about situations
about which you felt hurt so that you now feel sorrowful about it, you are in
a position to tell people how you healthily feel about what they did or did
not do. As you do so, it is important that you don't blame them for the
feelings of hurt that you initially felt when you held irrational beliefs about
their behaviour or its lack. Once you do this, be ready to listen to their
response and try to understand them from their perspective. If you do so,
they may well let go of their defensiveness and they also may, and I stress
the word `may' here, apologise for their behaviour. However, even if they
don't apologise, once you hold rational beliefs about their unfair behaviour
(for example) rather than irrational beliefs, you have more of a chance of
having a constructive dialogue over the episode and of coming to a
constructive resolution.
You may ®nd that your clients report various obstacles to facing
those who have treated them unfairly even after they hold rational
beliefs about such unfair treatment. I list here some of the major
obstacles and suggest ways of addressing these obstacles with your
clients.
`If I tell them how they feel, they will take advantage and that would be
terrible.'
If your client thinks that facing someone has, in common parlance, hurt them
and will result in the person taking advantage of them, it is important that
you help them to specify the nature of this `taking advantage' and then help
them to take the horror out of it. Your client may think that feeling hurt
places them in a weaker position with respect to the other person. In this case,
you can help your client to see that handling such `hurtful' behaviour well and
communicating feelings of sorrow places them in an emotionally strong
position with respect to the other person in that they are showing the other
that they can communicate as an equal.
`I may get upset when I face the other person and that is shameful.'
Here you can use the material in Chapter 5 on `shame' and help your client to
do two things. First, help them to accept themselves unconditionally for
showing `weakness' (here you accept that such emotional expression does constitute a weakness). Then help them to reconsider the inference that showing
upset is weak.
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`I don't feel comfortable facing the person who has ``hurt'' me.'
Help your client to see that if they wait until they are comfortable before
facing the person, they will wait a very long time. Show them that if they are
comfortable about facing the person, it is likely that they are not hurt about
what the other person did or failed to do. Consequently, it is important that
you help your client realise that they are bound to be uncomfortable about
facing a hurt related situation even after they have disputed their hurtcreating irrational beliefs. Show your client that they can tolerate this discomfort and that it is worth it to them to do so.
Step 10: Capitalise on what you learned
When you have faced a situation in which you experienced hurt and dealt
with it as best you could, it is important that you re¯ect on what you did and
what you learned. In particular, if you were able to face the situation, and
rehearse your speci®c rational beliefs until you felt sorrow, ask yourself
how you can capitalise on what you achieved. If you experienced any
problems, respond to the following questions:
Did I face the situation, and if not, why not?
Did I rehearse my rational beliefs before, during or after facing the situation, and if
not, why not?
Did I execute my plan to face the situation, and if not, why not?
Did I engage with post-belief distorted thinking, and if so, why?
Re¯ect on your experience and put into practice what you learned the next
time you face a situation in which someone treats you badly (and you think
you do not deserve such treatment) and where someone has devalued your
relationship by indicating that their relationship with you is less important
to them than the relationship is to you.
It is useful to monitor your clients' responses to these questions
and help them to re¯ect on any issues that they have not
considered.
Step 11: Generalise your learning
Once you have dealt with your hurt in a speci®c situation by holding the
relevant speci®c version of your general rational belief and by acting and
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169
thinking in ways that are consistent with it, you can generalise this learning
to situations de®ned by your hurt based theme.
Gina was particularly prone to hurt about others with whom she was close
neglecting her. Thus:
Gine assessed the three components of her hurt response and set goals with
respect to all three components.
She identi®ed her relevant general irrational belief regarding being neglected
(i.e. 'I must not be neglected, by those close to me and if I am, I am unlovable')
that underpinned her hurt response and her alternative general rational belief
(i.e. `I don't want to be neglected by those close to me, but that does not mean
that it must not happen. If it does, it is unfortunate, but it does not prove that I
am unlovable. I am the same person whether or not they neglect me') that
underpinned her sorrow response.
She questioned both elements of her general irrational belief and her general
rational belief until she clearly saw that the former were false, made no sense
and were detrimental to her, and that the latter were true, sensible and healthy.
She acted on shortened versions of her rational beliefs in speci®c situations
and disclosed her feelings of sorrow about being neglected. This resulted in a
useful discussion with the other, which sometimes resulted in them
apologising to her and taking her less for granted in the future.
As she acted on her rational beliefs, she tolerated the discomfort that she felt
and accepted that some of her distorted and skewed negative thinking would
still be in her mind as she did so. She let such thinking be without engaging
with it, suppressing it or distracting herself from it.
As this section shows, you can generalise what you learn about dealing
with hurt from situation to situation as de®ned by your hurt based inference.
USING RECBT'S ABCD FORM TO DEAL WITH
SPECIFIC EXAMPLES OF YOUR HURT
This chapter is mainly geared to help you deal with your hurt in general
terms. However, you can also use this material to address speci®c examples
of your hurt. I have developed a self-help form to provide the structure to
assist you in this regard. It is called the ABCD form and it appears with
instructions in Appendix 6.
In Appendix 6, I outline the major problems that clients have in
using this form and how to deal with them.
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OTHER IMPORTANT ISSUES IN DEALING WITH
HURT
In the above section, I outlined an eleven step programme to deal with hurt.
In this section, I discuss some other important issues that may be relevant
to you in your work to become less prone to this emotional problem. If you
want to, you can incorporate them as additional steps in the above step-bystep guide at points relevant to you.
Dealing with your safety-seeking measures to avoid
hurt
I mentioned in Chapter 2 that people use safety-seeking measures to protect themselves from threat. You may use similar measures to protect
yourself from feeling hurt. Here is how this works from your perspective.
You reason that since you feel hurt about (a) others treating you unfairly
and (b) relationship devaluation (where someone indicates that their
relationship with you is less important to them than the relationship is to
you), you will take one major step to avoid hurt. This involves you keeping
yourself at a distance from others to whom you would like to get close and
not putting yourself in a position where you feel vulnerable to be taken
advantage of. Adopting this position means that you will have super®cial
relationships with people and will thus be unhappy and frustrated since you
ideally want to be closer to them.
However, this stance and the reasoning that leads you to take it are
¯awed and will only serve to perpetuate your tendency to feel hurt. This is
due to the fact that your hurt is not based on (a) others treating you badly
(when you think you do not deserve such treatment) and (b) relationship
devaluation (where someone indicates that their relationship with you is
less important to them than the relationship is to you), but on your irrational beliefs about these two inferences. So, if you want to deal effectively
with hurt you need to do the following:
Take healthy risks and allow yourself to get close to people and to feel vulnerable.
However, do this while holding rational beliefs about the above inferences.
If it transpires that some people do treat you badly or show that they do not value the
relationship as much as you do, deal with this by bringing to such situations
appropriate speci®c versions of your general rational beliefs so that you feel sorrow
and not hurt about these episodes. Also, act and think in ways that are consistent
with these speci®c rational beliefs as far as you can.
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171
If you do this, you will be less likely to keep your distance from those to
whom you would like to get close.
It is one of the major themes of both the Client's Guide and this
Practitioner's Guide that when your clients come to change their
behaviour from dysfunctional to functional, they will still experience urges to act dysfunctionally. This is why it is so important to
help your clients understand the difference between overt actions
and action tendencies. In the present context, this means stressing
to your clients as they strive to act in ways that address their hurt
feelings constructively and thus desist from using hurt related
safety-seeking strategies, they will still feel the urge to use them.
Help them to develop ways of accepting, but not necessarily liking
such urges and to implement their healthy sorrow based behaviour, even though such aforementioned behaviour may be present
for some time. You may have to help certain clients identify and
respond to irrational beliefs such as: `If I feel the urge to do something to get rid of my hurt quickly, then I have to act on that urge'.
Developing and strengthening rational beliefs about these urges is
particularly important for such clients.
Why you feel hurt much of the time and how to deal
with this
If you are particularly prone to hurt, you hold the following belief, which I
call a `chronic hurt based general irrational belief':
`Once I invest in people close to me, I must get, and see clearly that I am getting, a
fair return on that investment and if I don't it's terrible and proves that I am unworthy
or to be pitied.'
Holding this belief you will do the following:
You will often focus on past relationships where (a) others have treated you unfairly
or (b) where their investment in your relationship was not as strong as yours.
You scan your current relationships certain to ®nd evidence that others are treating
you badly or that they don't care for you as much as you care for them. If there is any
ambiguity about this, you err on the side of undeserved treatment and relationship
devaluation.
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Finally, as we have seen, you will avoid getting close to people because you are sure
that, in your terms, they will hurt you.
How to deal with chronic hurt
In order to deal with this chronic sense of hurt, you need to develop and
apply an alternative general rational belief which protects you from such
hurt:
`Once I invest in people close to me, I really want to get, and see clearly that I am
getting, a fair return on that investment, but I don't have to do so. If I don't, it's bad.
But not terrible and it neither proves that I am unworthy nor to be pitied. Rather, I am
a non-poor, fallible human being who has been treated poorly.'
Such a belief will lead you to think that the following occurred only when
there is clear evidence for making such an inference:
Someone did take advantage of your good nature and treated you unfairly.
The other person does not value your relationship with you as much as you value
your relationship with them.
When there is such evidence you will feel sorrow rather than hurt because
you will be processing this with a speci®c rational belief.
In addition, this belief will help you to think of times in the past when
others did treat you fairly and reciprocated your positive feelings about the
relationship as well as helping you to see the potential for good in future
relationships as well as the potential for bad.
If your clients ®nd that the above explanation is too complex, you
can help them to see that holding rigid beliefs about the presence
or absence of hurt related adversities means that unless they are
clear that they have not been treated badly, for example, then they
think they have been treated badly. When their beliefs are ¯exible,
they can be more objective about the presence of these adversities.
How to examine the accuracy of your hurt related
inference if necessary
If you are still unsure that people have treated you badly or do not reciprocate the value you put on your relationship with them, answer one or more
of the following questions:
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173
How valid is my inference that the other person has betrayed me (for example)?
Would an objective jury agree that the other person betrayed has me? If not, what
would the jury's verdict be?
Is my inference that the other person has betrayed me realistic? If not, what is a more
realistic inference?
If I asked someone whom I could trust to give me an objective opinion about my
inference that the other person has betrayed me, what would that person say to me
and why? What inference would this person encourage me to make instead?
If a friend had told me that they had made the same inference about being betrayed in
the same situation, what would I say to them about the validity of their inference and
why? What inference would I encourage the person to make instead?
Assessing and dealing with emotional problems
about hurt
In previous chapters, I discussed the concept of meta-disturbance (literally
disturbance about disturbance). It is important to assess carefully the
nature of this meta-disturbance about hurt before you can best deal with it.
The best way to start dealing with the assessment of any emotional
problems you might have about hurt is to ask yourself the question: `How
do I feel about my feeling of hurt?' The most common emotional problems
that people have about hurt are as follows: anxiety, depression, shame and
unhealthy self-anger. I refer you to the relevant chapters on these emotional
problems in this book for help on how to deal with meta-emotional problems about hurt.
Your clients will sometimes need to address their emotional problems about hurt before they address their hurt feelings. They need
to do this particularly when their secondary emotional problem
gets in the way of them dealing with their primary hurt. However,
despite the interfering presence of their secondary problem, some
clients still want to target their primary hurt. There are two ways
of dealing with this situation:
Provide a rationale to help your clients target their secondary problem. For
example, explain to your client that their secondary problem is like having a
ball and chain around their leg while they are climbing a steep hill (akin to
their primary feelings of hurt). In the same way as climbing the hill is easier
when they remove the ball and chain from their leg, dealing with their primary
hurt is easier when they deal with their secondary problem ®rst.
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Go along with your clients' wish to deal with their primary hurt and when they
fail to do so, help them to understand that the reason why they failed is
because they had not addressed their secondary problem and then agree that
they will now do so.
Developing and rehearsing a non-hurt world view
People develop views of the world as it relates to them that make it more or
less likely that they will experience unhealthy negative emotions. The world
views that render you vulnerable to hurt do so in a similar way to the
chronic hurt based general irrational belief discussed above (i.e. `Once I
invest in people close to me, I must get a fair return on that investment and
if I don't it's terrible and proves that I am unworthy or to be pitied') by
making you focus unduly on times when you have been, are or will be
treated unfairly by others or when your feelings were not, are not or will not
be reciprocated in your relationships with others. However, these hurt
based world views have this effect on you much more widely.
It is important that you develop realistic views of the world that will help
you to deal with hurt. In Table 6, you will ®nd an illustrative list of such
world views rather than an exhaustive one, so you can get an idea of what I
mean, which will enable you to develop your own. In Table 6, I ®rst describe
Table 6 World views that render you vulnerable to hurt and help you to deal with hurt
Views of the world that render you
vulnerable to hurt
Views of the world that help you
deal with hurt
When I do a lot for those close to me,
they will fail to reciprocate and will
abuse my generosity
When I do a lot for people, most will
reciprocate, but some won't and some
may even abuse my generosity
If I trust those close to me they will
If I trust those close to me, most won't
often betray me while I would not betray betray me, but some may well do so
them
Signi®cant others will act unfairly
Some signi®cant others will indeed act
towards me while I would not be unfair unfairly to me, but not all will. Can I
to them
really be sure that I would not act
unfairly to them?
Those close to me will often exclude or Those close to me may sometimes
neglect me for no good reason
exclude or neglect me, but most won't.
When they do, I may not understand
why, but this does not mean that they
have done so for no good reason
Dealing with hurt
175
a world view that renders you vulnerable to hurt and then I give its healthy
alternative. You will see that the former is characterised by a conception of
signi®cant others as being basically malevolent (e.g. withholding, unfair,
excluding, neglectful) individuals who will betray your trust. In the latter, a
more benign, balanced, but realistic picture of others is revealed and thus a
healthier response to their unfair treatment can be expected.
If you hold rational beliefs that are consistent with the views of the world
listed on the right hand side of Table 6 and if you act and think in ways that
are, in turn, consistent with these rational beliefs, then doing all this will
help you become less prone to hurt.
In Chapter 7, I discuss unhealthy anger and how to deal with it.
7
Dealing with unhealthy anger
In this chapter, I begin by presenting RECBT's way of understanding
unhealthy anger and then address how to deal with this very common
emotional problem.
UNDERSTANDING UNHEALTHY ANGER
In understanding unhealthy anger, we need to know what we tend to make
ourselves unhealthily angry about (i.e. its major inference themes), what
beliefs we hold, how we act or tend to act, and how we think when we are
unhealthily angry.
I mentioned in previous chapters that it is important that you use
your client's language when referring to emotional problems. With
respect to the term `unhealthy anger', you need to be aware that
not all clients with an `anger' problem resonate with the term
`unhealthy anger'. Indeed, as we will see, people who have a problem with anger are often quite reluctant to see their `anger' as a
problem. However, even those who do see their anger as a problem
may baulk at using the term `unhealthy anger' as a way of referring to it. They may identify more closely with terms like `upset',
`feeling hostile' or `rage'. If so, your task is to satisfy yourself and
your client that these terms represent the unhealthy negative emotion known in RECBT as unhealthy anger. Once you have done so,
use your client's language and write this down in your client's notes.
Major inference themes in unhealthy anger
When you are unhealthily angry, your anger is about one or more of the
following:
You have been frustrated in some way.
Your movement towards an important goal has been obstructed in some way.
Dealing with unhealthy anger
177
Someone has transgressed one of your personal rules.
You have transgressed one of your own personal rules.
Someone has shown you disrespect.
Someone or something has threatened your self-esteem.
Some clients may not resonate with the above schema and, in these
cases, you should encourage them to put it aside and just focus on
what they tend to feel unhealthily angry about. RECBT theory
values ¯exibility and this includes the freedom not to use RECBT
terms, schemes and frameworks.
Irrational beliefs
As I explained in Chapter 1, according to RECBT, an inference on its own
does not account for your emotional problem of unhealthy anger. It is
possible for you to make the same inference and be healthily rather than
unhealthily angry. In order for you to feel unhealthily angry when you make
one of the ®ve inferences listed above, you have to hold an irrational belief.
When you think irrationally, you hold a rigid belief and one or more extreme
beliefs. While the rigid belief is at the core of unhealthy anger, the extreme
beliefs that are derived from the rigid belief often distinguish between
whether you are experiencing ego unhealthy anger (where you depreciate
yourself ) or non-ego unhealthy anger (where you `awfulise' or ®nd the
adversity intolerable). You may, of course, experience both ego unhealthy
anger and non-ego unhealthy anger in a given situation.
If your clients are unsure about the mediating role that irrational
beliefs play in their unhealthy anger, ask them how they would
feel if they really believed the rational alternatives to what RECBT
holds are their unhealthy anger creating irrational beliefs. In
using this strategy, it is important that you formulate the rational
beliefs for your clients, who cannot be expected to do this for
themselves at this stage. When you do this, ensure that you match
your clients' rigid belief with a ¯exible alternative and their main
extreme belief with a non-extreme alternative, and then ask them
how they would feel if they had strong conviction in this rational
belief.
For example: `Let me outline two sets of beliefs about being
disrespected and you tell me which leads to unhealthy anger and
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which leads to healthy anger. The ®rst set of beliefs is as follows:
``Others must not show me disrespect and if they do they are
scum.'' The second set of beliefs is as follows: ``I really don't want
others to show me disrespect, but sadly and regretfully, this does
not mean that they must not do so. If they do they are not scum;
they are fallible humans who are acting `scummily'.'' Now which
set of beliefs would lead to unhealthy anger and which would lead
to healthy anger?'
Be aware that this question often leads to a lengthy discussion of
the behavioural and thinking correlates of the two forms of anger
(which I outline later in the Client's Guide) and you should be
prepared to help your clients list these and see the differences
between the two. Once your clients can see that their irrational
beliefs underpin unhealthy anger and their rational beliefs underpin healthy anger, they have understood the mediating role of
beliefs.
This is quite an elegant strategy since it accomplishes a number
of things at once:
1. It addresses your clients' doubts about the mediating role of irrational beliefs
in unhealthy anger if they have such concern.
2. It introduces rational beliefs as a meaningful alternative to these irrational
beliefs.
3. It helps your clients to see that holding rational beliefs can have bene®cial
effects.
Behaviour associated with unhealthy anger
When you hold an irrational belief about one of the six things that people
make themselves angry about (see pp. 176±177), you feel unhealthy anger
and you will act or tend to act in a number of ways, the most common of
which are as follows:
You attack the other(s) physically.
You attack the other(s) verbally.
You attack the other(s) passive-aggressively.
You displace the attack on to another person, animal or object.
You withdraw aggressively.
You recruit allies against the other(s).
Dealing with unhealthy anger
179
You will see from the above list that the main purpose of most of these
behaviours (and action tendencies) is to destroy or avoid the person who
you think (albeit wrongly) has made you angry. However, such destructive
or avoidance behaviour is largely responsible for the maintenance of
unhealthy anger, since it prevents you from facing up to the situation in
which you make yourself unhealthily angry and from dealing with the issues
involved in a healthy manner.
If you ask your clients whether they want to change their
unhealthy anger related behaviour, their response will be affected
by whether or not they are in an unhealthily angry mood. If they
are, they will be far less likely to see that this behaviour is
dysfunctional than when they are not unhealthily angry. In other
chapters, I suggest that you ask your clients how they would advise
a friend who displays the same behaviour as they do when they are
emotionally disturbed. With these other unhealthy negative emotions, your clients can usually see that even though they are
currently emotionally disturbed, they would advise their friend not
to act as they would when in that disturbed frame of mind.
However, this is less likely the case with unhealthy anger and as
such I suggest that you use this strategy with great care. It is best
used after your client has made some progress in thinking rationally about the provocation at `A'.
Thinking associated with unhealthy anger
When you hold an irrational belief about an anger-related inference, you
will feel unhealthily angry and think in a number of ways. Remember what I
said in Chapter 1: the thinking that accompanies your unhealthy anger is
the result of your inference being processed by your irrational belief and
therefore it is likely to contain a number of thinking errors that I present in
Appendix 1. I list the main features of this post-irrational belief unhealthy
anger based thinking below:
You overestimate the extent to which the other(s) acted deliberately.
You see malicious intent in the motives of the other(s).
You see yourself as de®nitely right and the other(s) as de®nitely wrong.
You are unable to see the point of view of the other(s).
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You plot to exact revenge.
You ruminate about the other's behaviour and imagine coming out on top.
It is important to note that such post-irrational belief thinking in unhealthy
anger may be in words or in mental images.
One of the main features of post-irrational belief thinking is that
it is compelling. As such, it is quite easy for your clients to get
caught up in this way of thinking and think that it re¯ects reality.
This is an example of `cognitive-emotive' reasoning: if a thought is
plausible and emotionally compelling, therefore it must be true. It
is important that you help your client to understand how their
mind works with respect to the thinking consequences of irrational
beliefs and to encourage them to use such thoughts to go back to
address the irrational beliefs that spawn them. When they have
done this, you can encourage them to respond to these thinking
consequences of irrational beliefs as the iBs will not disappear just
because they have questioned these beliefs. When they respond to
these thinking consequences of iBs, they need to do so only a few
times on any one occasion. After that, they need to accept the
presence of such thinking without engaging with it.
To summarise, your clients need to
identify the presence of the thinking consequences of irrational beliefs (see
Appendix 1)
trace these back to the source of this mode of thinking (i.e. identify the
underlying irrational beliefs)
challenge these irrational beliefs
respond brie¯y to the thinking consequences of such beliefs, but not get overly
involved in this process
accept the lingering presence of these thinking consequences without engaging
with them
get on with the business of living.
HOW TO DEAL WITH UNHEALTHY ANGER
If you are prone to unhealthy anger, you tend to experience this emotional
problem in a variety of different settings and in response to a variety of
anger related inferences. Here is how to deal with unhealthy anger so that
you become less prone to it.
Dealing with unhealthy anger
181
Step 1: Identify reasons why unhealthy anger is a
problem for you and why you want to change
While most unhealthy negative emotions are generally regarded as problematic, this is less so when it comes to unhealthy anger. Indeed, often
people whose anger meets the criteria for unhealthy anger (i.e. it leads to
largely unconstructive results and leaves them preoccupied with whatever it
is that they are unhealthily angry about) are ambivalent about seeing their
anger as a problem and thus targeting it for change. If this is true for you,
this may be due to two major factors:
You may not understand what constitutes healthy anger.
Even when you understand the differences between healthy and unhealthy anger, you
may construe unhealthy anger positively and/or healthy anger negatively.
Let me now discuss these two points more fully.
Understanding the differences between unhealthy anger
and healthy anger
In this book, I have consistently made the point that the differences
between unhealthy negative emotions (UNEs) and healthy negative emotions (HNEs) reside not in the inferences that you make about situations in
which you ®nd yourself, but in the beliefs that you make about these
inferences and in the way you subsequently think and act. With respect to
anger, then, it is particularly important that you have a clear idea what
constitutes healthy anger and, in particular, what are the behaviours and
modes of thinking that accompany this healthy form of anger. I refer you to
p. 189 and p. 190 for a review. Then compare these responses to those that
accompany unhealthy anger (see p. 178 and pp. 179±180). You should
ideally see that, in the main, healthy anger is more constructive for you in
the longer term than unhealthy anger. If not, you may need to identify and
investigate your positive connotations of unhealthy anger and negative
connotations of healthy anger.
Identifying and responding to your positive connotations
of unhealthy anger and your negative connotations of
healthy anger
Having understood the differences between unhealthy anger and healthy
anger, you may ®nd yourself drawing back from making a commitment to
working towards becoming healthily rather than unhealthily angry. The
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reasons for this may be due to how you construe both types of anger.
These constructions are likely to be based on misconceptions of these
different anger types.
Common positive connotations of unhealthy anger
Here are two examples of commonly found positive connotations of
unhealthy anger that people tend to make which stop them from committing
to healthy anger as a constructive alternative to their unhealthy anger. I list
each positive connotation and then brie¯y discuss how to respond to it.
`When I feel unhealthy anger, I feel powerful and I don't want to lose that feeling.'
Response: the power that you experience is based on the attitude of a tyrant (e.g.
`Things have to be my way'). You can experience a different form of power related to
being assertive and ¯exible with healthy anger.
`My unhealthy anger is an appropriate strong response to someone breaking one of my
most important rules.'
Response: healthy anger can be strong without the destructive effects of unhealthy
anger.
Common negative connotations of healthy anger
Here are two examples of commonly found negative connotations of
healthy anger that again stop people from committing to healthy anger. As
before I list each negative connotation and then brie¯y discuss how to
respond to it
`Healthy anger is weak and wishy-washy.'
Response: while never as strong as blind rage, healthy anger can be very strong and
can be based on ®rmness.
`If you are healthily angry, you let people get away with acting badly.'
Response: no, you don't. You tell them in no uncertain terms how you feel about their
bad behaviour and you apply the necessary consequences, but without damning
them.
It is important that you take time to elicit and deal effectively
with all your client's doubts, reservations and objections to seeing
unhealthy anger as a problem and healthy anger as a solution to
this problem. Time spent on taking care over this issue will be
rewarded later. If you rush matters at this point, you increase the
risk that your client will remain uncommitted to seeing their
unhealthy anger as a problem for them and/or seeing healthy
anger as a constructive alternative to this problem.
Dealing with unhealthy anger
183
Step 2: Take responsibility for your unhealthy anger
In RECBT, we argue that people or things do not make you unhealthily
angry; rather you create these feelings by the rigid and extreme beliefs that
you hold about such people and things. You may object that this involves
you blaming yourself for creating your feelings of unhealthy anger, but this
objection is based on a misconception. It assumes that taking responsibility for creating your unhealthy anger is synonymous with self-blame. In
truth, responsibility means that you take ownership for the irrational beliefs
that underpin your unhealthy anger while accepting yourself for doing so.
Blame, on the other hand, means that you regard yourself as being bad for
creating your own unhealthy anger.
The idea that emotional problems (including unhealthy anger) are
based largely on the way that a person thinks about what happens
to them is, as you know, a central plank in RECBT. However, for
many clients it will be a new idea. Thus, your clients may hold that
the reason they are unhealthily angry, for example, is that it is
inherently unhealthy anger making to be shown disrespect or when
another transgresses one of the cardinal rules for living held by
your client. This type of thinking is known in RECBT circles as `A-C'
thinking (where events are deemed to cause feelings) and it is very
prevalent in people with an unhealthy anger problem. By contrast,
the RECBT model stresses the `ABC' model, where the impact of
events on a person is mediated by the beliefs that they hold about
these events. The `ABC' model holds that the person needs to take
responsibility for creating their feelings of unhealthy anger by
holding a set of irrational beliefs.
If your clients have dif®culty accepting responsibility for their
unhealthy anger, it is important for you to identify the source of
this dif®culty. This source is most frequently evidenced in your
clients' negative connotations of what accepting such responsibility means. Here are a number of common negative connotations
and how to respond to them:
`Accepting responsibility for my unhealthy anger means that I will be blamed
for doing this.'
Response: even if you will be blamed for this, it is how you think about such
blame that is important. If you demand that you should not be blamed, you
will disturb yourself further. However, if you prefer but do not demand that
you are not blamed, you will react to this situation more healthily. Additionally, whether or not you are blamed for accepting responsibility for your
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unhealthy anger, you do not have to blame yourself for doing so. Adopting an
attitude of unconditional self-acceptance will help you accept full responsibility for your unhealthy anger and will help you to work on dealing with this
problem in a committed way.
`Accepting responsibility for my unhealthy anger means letting the other
person off the hook.' (This is a very common misconception that unless
addressed and readdressed throughout therapy will constitute an ongoing
obstacle to effective therapy.)
Response: you can accept responsibility for creating your unhealthy anger,
while still holding the other person to full account for his behaviour towards
you. The one does not preclude the other. Also, whether or not you disturb
yourself about the other person's behaviour is not relevant to whether they
should take responsibility for their behaviour towards you. In RECBT we argue
that the person should do so, which does not mean that they necessarily will.
We do know however that they are less likely to do so when they receive an
unhealthy response from you. While expressing healthy anger towards the
other person will not guarantee that they will hold themselves to account for
their behaviour, it will increase the chances that they will do so.
`Accepting responsibility for my unhealthy anger means that I am being
punished twice.'
Response: this view is based on the idea that accepting responsibility for
unhealthy anger is a form of punishment. Actually, it is the ®rst step that you
need to take to deal with your emotional problem. Indeed, if you consider that
unhealthy anger is an emotional problem, you are being penalised twice: ®rst,
with respect to the negative way you were treated by the other person, and
second, by needlessly disturbing yourself about such treatment. Dealing with
your unhealthy anger will still leave you with the problem of the other person's
behaviour, but it will remove the optional self-punishment known as
unhealthy anger.
It is important to help your clients to understand the impact of
these obstacles on their emotional problems. Then, help them to
develop alternatives to these obstacles and review the impact of
these alternatives on their emotional problem-solving. This often
helps clients to deal effectively with these obstacles. If not, you may
need to do a more detailed assessment of the obstacle, which is
outside the brief of this book.
Step 3: Identify the themes about which you tend to
feel unhealthy anger
You should now be in a position to commit yourself to working towards
experiencing healthy anger rather than unhealthy anger. As the object of
your unhealthy anger may be yourself, others or aspects of life that do not
Dealing with unhealthy anger
185
relate to yourself or others, your anger related inferences exist in each of
these realms of your personal domain. I will group them as such.
Anger-related inferences concerning self
When you are unhealthily angry with yourself, you consider that you either
have broken or failed to live up to one of your own personal rules concerning your behaviour. What differentiates unhealthy self-anger from
depression is that in unhealthy anger you want to attack yourself angrily
more than you do in depression. What differentiates unhealthy self-anger
from shame and guilt is that in the latter your rules concern your moral and
socially acceptable behaviour, while in the former they tend to be less
concerned with the social or moral world.
Anger-related inferences concerning others
As with anxiety, it is useful to ask yourself when you are unhealthily angry
with others whether they are, in your mind, threatening your self-esteem or
not. Let me ®rst outline the inferences that you make that are relevant to
self-esteem when you are unhealthily angry. These threats are experienced
more in the here and now than is the case with anxiety.
Common threats to self-esteem in unhealthy anger towards others
Here you infer that the other person
has disrespected you
criticised you
made you look stupid
rejected you.
Common anger related inferences about others that do not involve
threats to your self-esteem
Another person breaks your personal rule concerning how people are to behave.
Another person fails to live up to your personal rule about how others are to behave.
Another person blocks your path towards an important goal.
Another person frustrates you.
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Common anger related inferences about inanimate
objects
The object frustrates you (e.g. it does not work properly).
The object blocks your path towards an important goal (e.g. a ticket machine does
not issue you with a ticket so that you can't travel and get to an important meeting).
If your clients ®nd it dif®cult to ®nd their unhealthy anger related
theme, you can help them by assessing a few speci®c examples of
their unhealthy anger. Have them focus on a speci®c situation in
which they were unhealthily angry and ask them why they were
unhealthily angry. If they still ®nd it dif®cult to identify the
theme in this or other speci®c situations, use the `magic question'
technique. This involves you doing the following:
Have your clients focus on the situation in which they were unhealthily angry.
Ask them to nominate one ingredient that would eliminate or signi®cantly
reduce their unhealthy anger in the situation.
The opposite of this nominated ingredient is what they are most unhealthily
angry about.
Harriet was struggling to identify the speci®c theme in her unhealthy anger
about others being late. I helped Harriet to use the `magic question'
technique as follows:
I asked Harriet to focus on the situation in which she was unhealthily angry:
`I have arranged to meet a friend after work and she is late.'
I asked Harriet to nominate one ingredient that would eliminate or signi®cantly reduce her unhealthy anger without changing the situation:
`Her showing me respect by calling ahead of time to tell me that she would
be late.'
The opposite of this nominated ingredient was what she is most unhealthily
angry about:
`Her not showing me respect by calling ahead of time to tell me that she
would be late.'
If you assess a number of speci®c examples of your clients'
unhealthy anger in this way, the unhealthy anger related theme
should be apparent. In Harriet's case, being shown disrespect by
others was the dominant theme in her unhealthy anger.
Dealing with unhealthy anger
187
It may be that there are two unhealthy anger related themes
present in your client's unhealthy anger. For example, your client
may feel unhealthily angry about being shown disrespect and also
about breaking their personal rule of living. If this is the case, deal
with them one at a time and have your client nominate the theme
which they want to focus on ®rst.
Step 4: Identify the three components of your
unhealthy anger response and set goals with respect
to each component
The next step is for you to list the three elements of your unhealthy anger
response in the face of each of the themes listed above.
Identify the three components of your unhealthy anger
response
I use the term `unhealthy anger response' to describe the three main
components that make up this response. The three components of your
unhealthy anger response are the emotional, behavioural and thinking
compenents.
Emotional component
The emotional component is, of course, unhealthy anger.
Behavioural component
The behavioural component concerns overt behaviour or action tendencies. These will be largely attacking in nature. Consult the list that I provided to help you identify your behaviour associated with each theme when
you are unhealthily angry (see p. 178). It is important to note that we are
often taught to suppress our tendency to act in ways that are consistent
with our unhealthy anger. This is why identifying such suppressed behavioural tendencies is often a more reliable guide to the fact that your anger
is unhealthy than your actual behaviour will be.
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Thinking component
The thinking component of your unhealthy anger often concerns fantasies
of getting even and gaining revenge. Such behaviour re¯ects how you
would like to respond if you did not suppress your actual behaviour and
your action tendencies. Whereas in unhealthy behaviour you can frequently
said to be prosocial in your actual behaviour in that you will not give full
behavioural expression to what you would like to do, in your thinking you
are antisocial in that your thoughts and images often express the full extent
of your wish to get back at the person or object that, in your mind, has
angered you.
Set goals with respect to each of the three components
You need to set goals so that you know what you are striving for when you
deal effectively with unhealthy anger. The three goals are emotional, behavioural and thinking goals.
Emotional goal
Your emotional goal is healthy anger rather than unhealthy anger (or
whatever synonym you prefer to the term `healthy anger'). Healthy anger is
a healthy negative emotion, which is an appropriate response to the anger
related inferences I outlined earlier, but one which helps you to process
what has happened to you and move on with your life rather than get stuck
or bogged down.
The concept that healthy anger is the healthy alternative to
unhealthy anger in the face of being frustrated, having your
movement towards an important goal obstructed in some way,
someone transgressing a personal rule, you transgressing one of
your own personal rules, someone showing you disrespect or someone otherwise threatening your self-esteem is based on the following idea. These adversities are negative and therefore it is realistic
to have a negative emotion about them. The choice, therefore, is
between an unhealthy negative emotion (unhealthy anger) or a
healthy negative emotion (healthy anger). But what if your clients
specify unrealistic goals? Here are a number of such goals and how
to respond to clients who nominate them:
Dealing with unhealthy anger
189
`I don't want to feel unhealthily angry.'
Show your clients that they have indicated what they do not want to feel in the
face of anger related themes, but not what they do want to feel. Help them to
specify an emotion to aim for, like healthy anger!
`I want to feel less unhealthily angry.'
Show your clients that as unhealthy anger is a disturbed emotion, wanting to
feel less unhealthily angry is still to nominate a disturbed emotion, albeit of
lesser intensity. Show them that healthy anger can be strong (but not in
response to blind rage) and healthy.
`I want to feel calm.'
Being calm in the face of unhealthy anger related adversity will not help your
clients to be appropriately geared up to deal with it. Help them to see this. Also
show them that the only way that they could achieve a state of calmness about
such adversity is to believe that it does not matter to them whether or not they
experienced these adversities. In other words, show them that they would have
to lie to themselves!
Behavioural goal
Your behavioural goal should re¯ect actions that are based on healthy
anger rather than unhealthy anger. The following are the most common
behaviours associated with healthy anger. You may wish to compare these
behaviours with those associated with unhealthy anger that I presented on
p. 178.
You assert yourself with the other(s).
You request, but do not demand, behavioural change from the other(s).
You leave an unsatisfactory situation non-aggressively after taking steps to deal
with it.
It is important that your clients understand that as they strive to
develop healthy behavioural responses to anger related themes,
they will still feel the urge to act in ways designed to help them
aggress against these adversities. Help them to understand the
reason for this. Explain to them that as they question their beliefs
and commit themselves to strengthening their conviction in their
rational beliefs and to weakening their conviction in their irrational beliefs, their irrational beliefs will still be active and producing urges for them to act dysfunctionally. Encourage your
clients to accept these urges, to recognise that they do not have to
act on them and to use them as cues to act in functional ways.
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Thinking goal
As well as setting behavioural goals related to the feeling of healthy anger
in the face of anger related inferences, it is important that you set thinking
goals associated with this emotion. The following are the most common
forms of thinking associated with healthy anger rather than unhealthy
anger. Again you may wish to compare these forms of thinking with those
associated with unhealthy anger that I presented on pp. 179±180.
You think that the other(s) may have acted deliberately, but you also recognise that
this may not have been the case.
You are able to see the point of view of the other(s).
You have ¯eeting rather than sustained thoughts to exact revenge.
You think that other(s) may have had malicious intent in their motives, but you also
recognise that this may not have been the case.
You think that you are probably rather than de®nitely right and the other(s) as
probably rather than de®nitely wrong.
As the above list shows, the dominant feature of thinking associated with
concern is that it is realistic and balanced. Please remember that such
thinking may be in words or in mental pictures.
The point I made above with respect to clients' behavioural goals is
also relevant with respect to their thinking goals. Clients will still
have some conviction in their irrational beliefs until they have full
conviction in their rational beliefs. Given this, your clients' irrational beliefs will have some impact on their subsequent thinking
as they strive to achieve their goals. Thus, highly distorted thoughts
will still come into your clients' minds. Help your clients to understand why this is the case. When you come to help them deal with
these forms of post-irrational belief thinking, do one or more of
the following as indicated. Discuss this issue with your RECBT
supervisor, if necessary:
Encourage your clients to acknowledge the existence of such thoughts without
trying to suppress them, distract themselves from them or engage with them.
If relevant, use the presence of this post-irrational belief thinking to help your
clients to identify and deal with the irrational beliefs.
Question the empirical nature of these thinking `C's' once or twice and then
return to the acceptance strategy detailed above.
Dealing with unhealthy anger
191
Step 5: Identify your general irrational beliefs and
alternative general rational beliefs
A general irrational belief is an irrational belief that you hold across
situations de®ned by the anger related inference theme(s) to which you are
vulnerable. It accounts for your unhealthy anger response. Its rational alternative, which will also be general in nature, will account for your healthy
anger response.
Identify your general irrational beliefs
When you identify a general irrational belief, you take a common anger
related theme (e.g. threat to your self-esteem or someone breaking your
personal rule) and add to this a general rigid belief and the main extreme
belief that is derived from the rigid belief.
When you are particularly prone to self-esteem based unhealthy anger,
your main extreme belief will be an other-depreciation belief when your
focus is on the other person who threatened your self-esteem, but you will
also have an underlying self-depreciation belief.
For non-self-esteem based unhealthy anger, your main extreme belief will
frequently be an other-depreciation belief (when the focus of your
unhealthy anger is others) or it may be a discomfort intolerance or even
a life-depreciation belief (particular when the focus of your unhealthy anger
is inanimate objects or frustrating life conditions). For example:
`People must not put me down and make me feel inadequate. They are bad for
doing so' (a general self-esteem based irrational belief ).
`People must keep their promises and they are bad if they don't' (a general non-selfesteem based irrational belief ).
Identify your alternative general rational beliefs
When you identify your alternative general rational belief, you take the same
common theme (e.g. the threat to your self-esteem or someone breaking
your personal rule) and add to this a general ¯exible belief and the main
non-extreme belief that is derived from the ¯exible belief.
If your general non-extreme belief was self-depreciation (when you are
particularly prone to self-esteem based unhealthy anger), your general nonextreme belief will be an unconditional self-acceptance belief. If you are
prone to non-self-esteem based unhealthy anger, your alternative general
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non-extreme beliefs will be an other-acceptance belief, a discomfort tolerance belief or an unconditional life-acceptance belief. For example:
`I don't want people to put me down, but that does not mean that they must not do
so. If they do, I am not inadequate and they are not bad. We are both fallible human
beings who can act in a myriad of different ways, both good and bad. They are bad
for doing so' (a general unconditional self-acceptance based rational belief ).
`I want people to keep their promises, but unfortunately they don't have to do so. If
they don't, it's bad, but they are not. They are fallible and capable of acting well and
badly' (a general unconditional other-acceptance based rational belief ).
As you will have noticed in the Client's Guide, I encourage readers
to identify and work with their general irrational beliefs and to
develop general rational beliefs and, as you will see, when they are
facing speci®c instances of their problems, I encourage them to
focus on speci®c examples of both sets of beliefs. This will be at
variance with your RECBT practice, where you will begin with
speci®c examples of your clients' problems and then proceed to
work at a more general level with their problems and how these
relate to one another.
The reason I have chosen to go `general' rather than `speci®c'
when helping readers to deal with their emotional problems is a
pragmatic one. In this book, I aim to help people to deal with a
range of emotional problems and therefore, in my view, it is best to
give readers general guidance with respect to dealing with this
range of problems and then help them to move from the general to
the speci®c rather than vice versa. My considered view was that I
just do not have the space to help readers focus on speci®c
examples of their emotional problems and then generalise from
this speci®c level.
Consequently, one way that you can help your clients who are
using the Client's Guide is to help them to work with speci®c
examples of their emotional problem, in this case unhealthy anger.
Use the following sequence as you do so and help your clients to
select a speci®c example of their unhealthy anger problem
express why their unhealthy anger constitutes a problem for them
identify what they were most unhealthily angry about in the situation
identify the three speci®c components of their unhealthy anger and set speci®c
goals with respect to each component
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193
identify their speci®c irrational beliefs and alternative speci®c rational beliefs
question their speci®c beliefs.
In helping your clients to deal with a speci®c example of their
unhealthy anger, you can teach them how to use RECBT's ABCD
form, which appears in Appendix 6.
The following steps are the same as those that appear in Steps 7±
10 later in this chapter. Thus, help your clients to
face being frustrated (e.g. having their movement towards an important goal
being obstructed in some way, someone transgressing a personal rule, your
client transgressing one of their own personal rules, someone showing them
disrespect or someone threatening their self-esteem in reality, if possible) and
take appropriate action
capitalise on what they learned
generalise their learning.
Step 6: Question your general beliefs
While there are many ways of questioning your general irrational beliefs
and general rational beliefs, in my view the most ef®cient way involves you
®rst questioning together your general rigid belief and its general ¯exible
belief alternative, and then questioning together your general extreme belief
and its general non-extreme belief alternative.
Question your general rigid belief and its general flexible
belief alternative
First, take your general rigid belief and its general ¯exible belief alternative
and write them down next to one another on a sheet of paper. Then ask
yourself:
Which is true and which is false?
Which is sensible logically and which does not make sense?
Which has largely constructive results and which has largely unconstructive results?
Write down your answer to each of these questions on your piece of paper,
giving reasons for each answer. Consult Appendix 2 for help with the
answers to these questions, which you need to adapt and apply to the
beliefs you are questioning.
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Question your general extreme belief and its general nonextreme belief alternative
Next, take your general extreme belief and its general non-extreme belief
alternative and again write them down next to one another on a sheet of
paper. Then, ask yourself the same three questions that you used with your
general rigid belief and its general ¯exible belief alternative. Again write
down your answer to each of these questions on your piece of paper, giving
reasons for each answer. I suggest that you consult Appendix 3 (for help
with questioning awfulising and non-awfulising beliefs), Appendix 4 (for
help with questioning discomfort intolerance beliefs and discomfort tolerance beliefs) and Appendix 5 (for help with questioning depreciation beliefs
and unconditional acceptance beliefs). Again, you need to adapt and apply
these arguments to the beliefs you are questioning.
You should now be ready to commit to acting and thinking in ways
consistent with your general rational belief.
I included Appendices 2±5 in the Client's Guide as general guidelines to help readers to question their irrational and rational
beliefs (reproduced in this book as Appendices 2±5). If you are
working with clients who are using the Client's Guide, you will
have a chance to look at the questioning work that your clients
have done at this point and give them feedback on that work. No
book can provide such feedback.
I have suggested that readers question their rigid belief and their
¯exible belief together and then their main extreme belief and
non-extreme belief equivalent together using three criteria as
shown below:
Rigid belief vs. ¯exible belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status
Main extreme belief vs. main non-extreme belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status.
However, there are other ways of questioning beliefs as shown
below. When using the Client's Guide with your clients, outline
these other approaches in case they do not resonate with the
Dealing with unhealthy anger
195
approach I put forward in the Client's Guide. The important point
is that your clients use all three arguments with each of their
rational and irrational beliefs.
Rigid belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status
Flexible belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status
Main extreme belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status
Main non-extreme belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status.
And also:
Rigid belief
empirical status
Flexible belief
empirical status
Rigid belief
logical status
Flexible belief
logical status
Rigid belief
pragmatic status
Flexible belief
pragmatic status
Main extreme belief
empirical status
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Main non-extreme belief
empirical status
Main extreme belief
logical status
Main non-extreme belief
logical status
Main extreme belief
pragmatic status
Main non-extreme belief
pragmatic status.
The ®nal point I want to make about questioning beliefs concerns
the concept of persuasiveness. Perhaps the most important aspect
of the questioning process is for your clients to develop arguments
concerning the irrationality of their irrational beliefs and the
rationality of their rational beliefs that are persuasive to them. So,
encourage your clients to develop such persuasive arguments and
to make a note of these for future reference.
Step 7: Face your anger related theme in imagery
I hope that you have made a commitment to act on your general rational
beliefs (i.e. ¯exible belief and relevant non-extreme belief ). Assuming that
you have, your basic task is to face up to your anger related theme while
rehearsing your rational beliefs.
Up to this point you have worked at a general level with respect to the anger
related themes about which you are unhealthily angry, the general irrational
beliefs that account for this unhealthy anger and their alternative general
rational beliefs. However, when you come to apply your general rational
beliefs in dealing with your response to these themes, you need to bear in
mind one important point. Since you make yourself unhealthily angry in
speci®c situations (actual or imagined), you need to deal with these speci®c
situations by rehearsing speci®c variants of your general rational beliefs.
While the best way to do this is in speci®c situations in which you infer
threat to your self-esteem or where others have broken your personal rules,
you may derive bene®t from using imagery ®rst. If this is the case with you,
you need to do the following:
Dealing with unhealthy anger
197
Imagine a speci®c situation in which you felt unhealthily angry and focus on what you
were most angry about.
See yourself facing what you were most angry about while rehearsing a speci®c
rational belief relevant to the situation. As you do this, try to make yourself feel
healthily angry, rather than unhealthily angry.
Then see yourself take assertive action. Make your picture realistic. Picture a faltering
performance rather than a masterful one.
Recognise that some of your post-belief thinking may be distorted. Respond to it
without getting bogged down doing so. Accept the presence of any remaining
distorted thoughts without engaging with them.
Repeat the above steps until you feel suf®ciently ready to put this sequence into
practice in your life.
If you ®nd that facing your anger related inference theme, in your mind's
eye, is too much for you, use a principle that I call `challenging, but not
overwhelming'. This means that instead of imagining yourself facing a
situation about which you would make yourself overwhelmingly angry,
choose a similar situation in which you would make yourself unhealthily
angry, but not overwhelmingly so. Then employ the same steps that I have
outlined above. Work in this way until you feel able to face what you were
previously overwhelmingly angry about and then use the steps again.
Some of your clients may say that they can't get very clear images
when they try to picture events in their mind's eye. While they may
get more out of imagery techniques if they can get such clear
images, they will still get something out of facing threat in
imagery if they don't. So, if clients want to face threat in imagery
before they do so in reality, encourage them to do so no matter how
clear their mental images are.
Step 8: Act assertively in relevant anger related
situations
Whether or not you have used imagery as a preparatory step, you need to
take the following steps when you assert yourself in anger related situations.
Choose a speci®c situation which contains the theme about which you are likely to
make yourself unhealthily angry.
Make a plan of how you are going to assert yourself in the situation.
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Rehearse a speci®c version of your general rational beliefs before entering the
situation so that you can face what you are angry about while in a rational frame of
mind. In addition, it would be useful to develop a shorthand version of your speci®c
rational belief to use while you are in the situation.
Enter the situation and accept the fact that you are likely to be uncomfortable while
doing so. Assert yourself as previously planned. React to any consequences from a
rational frame of mind if you can.
Recognise that even though you have got yourself into a rational frame of mind, some
of your thinking may be distorted and unrealistic and some may be realistic and
balanced. Accept the presence of the former and do not engage with it. Engage with
the latter as much as you can.
You may ®nd that your clients report various obstacles to facing
being frustrated, such as having their movement towards an
important goal obstructed in some way, someone transgressing a
personal rule, a client transgressing one of their own personal
rules, someone showing them disrespect or someone threatening
their self-esteem in reality. I list here some of the major obstacles
and suggest ways of addressing these obstacles with your clients.
`It's easier to avoid the object of my anger than to face it.'
Help your clients to see that avoiding the source of their anger will not help
them in the long term to deal with this problem. They may spare themselves in
the short term, but overcoming anger involves facing the object of their anger
and rehearsing rational beliefs as they do so.
`I will lose control if I face the object of my anger.'
As clients often feel out of control when they experience unhealthy anger, they
may be reluctant to face the object of their anger. If this is the case, help your
clients to understand that if they rehearse their rational beliefs, they may
think that they will lose control, but probably won't. Show your clients that
avoiding the object of their anger will increase the sense that they will lose
control of their anger since they are not dealing with the source of their angry
feelings, namely their irrational beliefs. If this does bear therapeutic fruit, you
may need to help your clients develop a rational belief about losing self-control
before proceeding.
`I don't feel comfortable facing the object of my anger.'
Help your clients to see that if they wait until they are comfortable before
facing the object of their anger, they will wait a very long time. Show them that
if they are comfortable about facing the object of their anger, it is likely that
they are unhealthily angry about it. Consequently, it is important that you
help your clients realise that they are bound to be uncomfortable about facing
the object of their anger even after they have disputed their unhealthy anger
creating irrational beliefs. Show your clients that they can tolerate this discomfort and that it is worth it to them to do so.
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199
Step 9: Capitalise on what you learned
When you have faced the situation and dealt with it as best you could, it is
important that you re¯ect on what you did and what you learned. In particular, if you were able to face the relevant theme, rehearse your speci®c
rational beliefs and asserted yourself, ask yourself how you can capitalise
on what you achieved. If you experienced any problems, respond to the
following questions:
Did I focus on the aspect of the situation that I was unhealthily angry about, and if
not, why not?
Did I rehearse my rational beliefs before and during facing what I was unhealthily
angry about, and if not, why not?
Did I assert myself, and if not, why not?
Did I engage with post-belief distorted thinking, and if so, why?
Re¯ect on your experience and put into practice what you learned the next
time you face what you are unhealthily angry about.
It is useful to monitor your clients' responses to these questions and
help them to re¯ect on any issues that they have not considered.
Step 10: Generalise your learning
While you can really deal with your unhealthy anger only in speci®c situations, you can generalise what you have learned about dealing effectively
with unhealthy anger across situations de®ned by an anger related theme
to which you are particularly vulnerable (e.g. people breaking your personal
rules) and also apply your learning to situations de®ned by a different
theme that you may have problems with (e.g. frustration).
Clare was particularly prone to unhealthy anger about other people cancelling
arrangements at the last minute, so she followed the steps outlined in this
chapter. Thus:
Clare assessed the three components of her unhealthy anger response and
set goals with respect to all three components.
She identi®ed her relevant general irrational belief regarding her rule for
people keeping arrangements with her (i.e. `People must not cancel
arrangements with me at the last minute and if they do, they are bad people')
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Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
that underpinned her unhealthy anger response and her alternative general
rational belief (i.e. `I don't want people to cancel arrangements with me at the
last minute, but they don't have to do what I want them to do. It's bad that they
have done the wrong thing, but they are not bad for doing so. They are fallible
human beings who are acting badly') that underpinned her healthy anger
response.
She questioned both elements of her general irrational belief and her
general rational belief until she clearly saw that the former were false, made
no sense and were detrimental to her and that the latter were true, sensible
and healthy.
She outlined situations where she thought other people were likely to cancel
on her and used imagery to practise speci®c versions of her rational beliefs
while focusing on the other person cancelling on her. She did this until she
felt healthily angry. She then used these skills in actual relevant situations.
She used shortened versions of her rational belief (i.e. `It's bad, but they are
fallible') as she asserted herself with the other person and told them that she
did not like their behaviour and hoped that they would not cancel late again.
As she used her assertive skills, she tolerated the discomfort that she felt and
accepted that some of her `post-irrational belief ' thinking would still be in her
mind as she did so. She let such thinking be without engaging with it,
suppressing it or distracting herself from it.
When she had made progress in dealing with her unhealthy anger about such
cancellations, she applied these skills to dealing with her discomfort related
unhealthy anger with respect to people frustrating her in shops and other
public settings.
She identi®ed her relevant general irrational belief regarding frustration (i.e.
`They must not frustrate me and I can't bear it when they do') that
underpinned her unhealthy anger response and her alternative general
rational belief (i.e. `I don't want others to frustrate me, but they don't have to
do what I want. It's dif®cult for me to put up with such frustration, but I can do
so and it's worth it to me to do so') that underpinned her healthy anger
response.
She again questioned both elements of her general irrational belief and her
general rational belief until she clearly saw that the former were false, made no
sense and were detrimental to her and that the latter were true, sensible and
healthy.
She then outlined situations which she found particularly frustrating and
prepared to face them by questioning speci®c versions of these beliefs She
®rst rehearsed relevant speci®c versions of her general rational beliefs
regarding frustration and faced this in these speci®c situations while keeping
in mind a shortened version of her rational belief (i.e. `I can bear being
frustrated').
As she did so she stayed in the situation and allowed herself to experience her
feeling of healthy anger. She accepted that some of her `unhealthy anger'
thinking would still be in her mind as she did so. She again let such
thinking be without engaging with it, suppressing it or distracting herself
from it.
Dealing with unhealthy anger
201
As this section shows, you can generalise what you learn about dealing
with unhealthy anger from situation to situation as de®ned by a speci®c
anger related theme threat and from there to situations de®ned by a
different anger related theme. If you do this consistently, you will eventually
take the toxicity out of the emotional problem of unhealthy anger.
USING RECBT'S ABCD FORM TO DEAL WITH
SPECIFIC EXAMPLES OF YOUR UNHEALTHY
ANGER
This chapter is mainly geared to help you deal with your unhealthy anger in
general terms. However, you can also use this material to address speci®c
examples of your unhealthy anger. I have developed a self-help form to
provide the structure to assist you in this regard. It is called the ABCD
form and it appears with instructions in Appendix 6.
In Appendix 6, I outline the major problems that clients have in
using this form and how to deal with them.
OTHER IMPORTANT ISSUES IN DEALING WITH
UNHEALTHY ANGER
In the above section, I outlined a ten step programme to deal with unhealthy
anger. In this section, I discuss some other important issues that may be
relevant to you in your work to become less prone to this emotional problem.
If you want to, you can incorporate them as additional steps in the above
step-by-step guide at points relevant to you.
Why you overestimate the presence of anger related
themes and how to deal with it
If you are particularly prone to unhealthy anger, you will be particularly
sensitive to seeing the presence of anger related themes (such as others
showing you disrespect) where others, who are not prone to unhealthy
anger, do not. So far in this chapter, I have helped you to deal with unhealthy
anger in situations where you infer the presence of anger related themes. In
this section, I help you to understand and deal with situations where you
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Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
overestimate their presence in the ®rst place. I will use the example where
you are particularly prone to infer disrespect in the behaviour of others.
Why you overestimate the presence of disrespect
This is how you come to overestimate the presence of disrespect in the
behaviour of others.
You take the theme of your general irrational belief:
Disrespect from the general irrational belief: `I must not be shown disrespect. Others
are bad if they do not respect me.'
You construct a second general irrational belief that features ambiguity about the
theme:
`It must be clear that others respect me. I can't tolerate such ambiguity.'
You bring this second general irrational belief to situations where it is possible that
you may be or have been disrespected and you make an inference about the presence
of disrespect because you cannot convince yourself that you haven't been:
`Since it is not clear that you have shown me disrespect, you have disrespected me.'
You focus on this inference and bring a speci®c version of your original general
irrational belief to this inference. For example:
Inference: `My boss disrespected me.'
Speci®c irrational belief: `My boss must not show me disrespect. He is bad for doing so.'
How to deal with your overestimations of the presence of
disrespect
In order to deal with your overestimations of the presence of disrespect,
you need to take a number of steps which I will illustrate.
Construct general rational alternatives to your original disrespect focused general
irrational belief:
`I don't want to be disrespected, but that does not mean I must not be disrespected. If I
am, it's bad but the person is not bad for doing so. They are fallible.'
and to your second ambiguity focused general irrational belief:
`I would like to have clear evidence that I am respected, but I don't need such clarity. It is
dif®cult not having this clarity, but I can bear not having it and it is worth bearing.'
Question both sets of beliefs until you can see the rationality of the two general
rational beliefs and the irrationality of the two general irrational beliefs and you can
commit to implementing the former.
Bring your ambiguity focused general rational belief to situations where it is possible
that you may be or have been disrespected and make an inference based on the data
at hand:
`It's not clear if I have been disrespected or not, so let's consider the evidence.'
Dealing with unhealthy anger
203
If there is evidence indicating there is a good chance that you will be or have been
disrespected, use a speci®c version of your general disrespect focused rational belief
to deal with this. For example:
Inference: `My boss has disrespected me.'
Speci®c rational belief: `I don't want my boss to disrespect me, but sadly he does not
have to do what I want him to do. It is bad that he did so, but he is not bad. He is a fallible
human being who is capable of showing respect and disrespect.'
If your clients ®nd that the above explanation is too complex, you
can help them to see that rigid beliefs about the presence or absence
of unhealthy anger related adversities means that if it is not clear
that the frustration, goal obstruction, personal rule transgression,
disrespect or threat to their self-esteem was absent, they will
assume that it is present. When their beliefs are ¯exible, they can be
more objective about the presence of these adversities.
How to examine the accuracy of your inference of threat if
necessary
If you are still unsure if your inference of disrespect is accurate or inaccurate, answer one or more of the following questions:
How likely is it that I was disrespected (or might be disrespected)?
Would an objective jury agree that I was (or might be) disrespected? If not, what
would the jury's verdict be?
Did I view (am I viewing) the situation in which I inferred disrespect realistically? If
not, how could I have viewed (can I view) it more realistically?
If I asked someone whom I could trust to give me an objective opinion about the truth
or falsity of my inference about being disrespected, what would the person say to me
and why? What inference would this person encourage me to make instead?
If a friend had told me that they had faced (were facing or were about to face) the
same situation as I faced and had made the same inference of disrespect, what would
I say to them about the validity of their inference and why? What inference would I
encourage the person to make instead?
Assessing and dealing with emotional problems
about unhealthy anger
As I have already pointed out, we have the unique ability to disturb ourselves about our emotional problems. It is important to assess carefully the
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nature of this meta-disturbance about unhealthy anger before you can best
deal with it.
The best way to start dealing with the assessment of any emotional
problems you might have about unhealthy anger is to ask yourself the
question: `How do I feel about my feeling of unhealthy anger?' The most
common emotional problems that people have about unhealthy anger are as
follows: anxiety, depression, shame, guilt and unhealthy self-anger. I
discuss only unhealthy self-anger about unhealthy anger in this chapter and
refer you to the respective chapters on anxiety, depression, shame and guilt
for help on how to deal with meta-emotional problems about unhealthy
anger.
Assessing unhealthy self-anger about unhealthy anger
When you are unhealthily angry with yourself about your unhealthy anger, it
is clear that you think that you have broken your own rule about experiencing unhealthy anger. This may be about the whole response itself or
one or more of its components (i.e. the feeling component, the behavioural
component or the thinking component). In my experience, you are most
likely to be unhealthily angry with yourself for what you did (or felt like
doing) when you were originally unhealthily angry.
Dealing with unhealthy self-anger about unhealthy anger
Unless you deal with your unhealthy self-anger about unhealthy anger, you
are unlikely to deal with your original unhealthy anger. This is because your
focus will be on blaming yourself for your anger problem, which will take
you away from dealing with this problem.
The best way of dealing with your unhealthy self-anger about your
original unhealthy anger is to accept yourself unconditionally for having a
problem with unhealthy anger. Yes, you may be breaking one of your personal rules by being unhealthily angry and expressing it in unconstructive
ways, but sadly there is no reason why you must not break your rule about
being angry or expressing your unhealthy anger. You are human and
humans do break their rules. That does not mean that you should not take
responsibility for making yourself unhealthily angry in the ®rst place and
expressing it unconstructively in the second place. Far from it! Indeed
unless you take responsibility for your unhealthy anger, you won't deal with
it. But, you can take responsibility without the self-blame that is a central
feature of your unhealthy self-anger about your original anger problem.
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205
Your clients will sometimes need to address their disturbance
about their unhealthy anger (i.e. their secondary disturbance)
before they address their primary unhealthy anger. They need to do
this particularly when their secondary emotional problem gets in
the way of them dealing with their primary problem. However,
despite the interfering presence of their secondary disturbance,
some clients still want to target their primary unhealthy anger
®rst. There are two ways of dealing with this situation:
Provide a rationale to help your clients target their secondary disturbance. For
example, explain to your client that their secondary problem is like having a
ball and chain around their leg while they are climbing a steep hill (akin to
their primary problem). In the same way as climbing the hill is easier when
they remove the ball and chain from their leg, dealing with their primary
unhealthy anger is easier when they deal with their secondary disturbance ®rst.
Go along with your clients' wish to deal with their primary unhealthy anger
and when they fail to do so, help them to understand that the reason why they
failed is because they had not addressed their secondary disturbance and then
agree with them that they will now do so.
Developing and rehearsing a non-unhealthy anger
world view
People develop views of the world as it relates to them that make it more or
less likely that they will experience unhealthy negative emotions. The world
views that render you vulnerable to unhealthy anger do so in a similar way
to your ambiguity focused general irrational beliefs about a speci®c anger
related theme ± by making you oversensitive to the presence of the theme
about which you hold unhealthy anger related irrational beliefs. However,
these unhealthy anger based world views have this effect on you much
more widely.
It is important that you develop realistic views of the world that will help
you to deal with unhealthy anger. In Table 7, you will ®nd an illustrative list
of such world views rather than an exhaustive one, so you can get an idea
of what I mean, which will enable you to develop your own. In Table 7, I ®rst
describe a world view that renders you vulnerable to unhealthy anger and
then I give its healthy alternative. You will see that the latter is characterised by its complexity and non-extreme nature, whereas in the former,
aspects of the world that relate to threat are portrayed as unidimensional
and extreme.
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Table 7 World views that render you vulnerable to unhealthy anger and help you to deal
with unhealthy anger
Views of the world that render you
vulnerable to unhealthy anger
Views of the world that help you
deal with unhealthy anger
It's a dog eat dog world
The world is very complex and varied. It
can be dog eat dog, but it can also be
dog look after dog!
People only sel®shly look after
themselves and their own
People look after themselves and their
own, but in a self-caring way as well as
sel®shly. They also look after others as
well
There's no such thing as an accident. People can act with malicious intent,
People always act with malicious intent but certainly not all the time and
accidents do happen
People are out to get me, so I need to
get them before they get me
People may be out to get me, but they
also may be out to help me and be
friendly. I don't need to go on the attack
unless there is clear evidence that they
are out to harm me
If you hold rational beliefs that are consistent with the views of the world
listed on the right hand side of Table 7 and if you act and think in ways that
are, in turn, consistent with these rational beliefs, then doing all this will
help you become less prone to unhealthy anger.
In Chapter 8, I discuss unhealthy jealousy and how to deal with it.
8
Dealing with unhealthy jealousy
In this chapter, I begin by presenting RECBT's way of understanding
unhealthy jealousy and then address how to deal with this emotional
problem.
UNDERSTANDING UNHEALTHY JEALOUSY
In understanding unhealthy jealousy, we need to know what we tend to
make ourselves unhealthily jealous about (i.e. its major inference themes),
what beliefs we hold, how we act or tend to act, and how we think when we
are unhealthily jealous.
I mentioned in previous chapters that it is important that you use
your client's language when referring to emotional problems. With
respect to the term `unhealthy jealousy', you need to be aware that
not all clients with a `jealousy' problem resonate with the term
`unhealthy jealousy'. Indeed, people who have a problem with
jealousy may be quite reluctant to see their `jealousy' as a problem,
seeing it instead as a sign that they really care for the other person.
However, even those who do see their jealousy as problematic may
baulk at using the term `unhealthy jealousy' as a way of referring
to their problem. They may identify more closely with terms like
`over-possessiveness' or `insecurity'. If so, your task is to satisfy
yourself and your client that these terms represent the unhealthy
negative emotion known in RECBT as unhealthy jealousy. Once
you have done so, use the client's language and write this down in
your client's notes.
Major inference themes in unhealthy jealousy
There are two major themes in relation to your personal domain that are
implicated in unhealthy jealousy:
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A threat is posed to your relationship with your partner from a third person. While
you may experience unhealthy jealousy in relationships that are not romantic in
nature, in this chapter I focus on unhealthy jealousy within the context of romantic
relationships since it is the most common form of jealousy and it brings out quite
vividly how your mind works in this emotional problem.
A threat is posed by the uncertainty you face concerning your partner's whereabouts,
behaviour, thoughts and feelings in the context of the ®rst threat.
Some clients may not resonate to the above schema and, in these
cases, you should encourage them to put it aside and just focus on
what they tend to feel unhealthily jealous about. RECBT theory
values ¯exibility and this includes the freedom not to use RECBT
terms, schemes and frameworks.
Irrational beliefs
As I explained in Chapter 1, according to RECBT, inferences on their own
do not account for emotional problems. It is possible, therefore, for you to
make the same inferences as listed above and feel healthy jealousy and not
unhealthy jealousy.1 In order for you to feel unhealthy jealousy, you have to
hold an irrational belief. When you think irrationally, you hold a rigid belief
and one or more extreme beliefs. While the rigid belief is at the core of
unhealthy jealousy, the extreme beliefs that are derived from the rigid belief
often distinguish between where you depreciate yourself (usually when you
compare yourself to your `rival' or if you were to lose your partner) and
where you ®nd the uncertainty of not knowing key aspects to do with your
partner intolerable. In chronic unhealthy jealousy, you often hold both a
threat related self-depreciation belief and an uncertainty related discomfort
intolerance belief in a given situation.
If your clients are unsure about the mediating role that irrational
beliefs play in their unhealthy jealousy, ask them how they would
feel if they really believed the rational alternatives to what RECBT
holds are their unhealthy jealousy creating irrational beliefs. In
1 As I have mentioned before, we don't have agreed terms for healthy negative
emotions. Therefore, if you don't resonate with the term `healthy jealousy', use a term
that makes more sense to you.
Dealing with unhealthy jealousy
209
using this strategy, it is important that you formulate the rational
beliefs for your clients who cannot be expected to do this for
themselves at this stage. When you do this, ensure that you match
their rigid belief with a ¯exible alternative and their main extreme
belief with a non-extreme alternative, and then ask them how they
would feel if they had strong conviction in this rational belief.
For example: `Let me outline two sets of beliefs about being
uncertain that your partner is cheating on you, and you tell me
which leads to unhealthy jealousy and which leads to healthy
jealousy. The ®rst set of beliefs is as follows: ``I must know for
certain that my partner is not cheating on me and I can't bear not
knowing this.'' The second set of beliefs is as follows: ``I really
would like to know for certain that my partner is not cheating on
me, but I don't need such certainty. I can bear not knowing this,
although it is tough not to have certainty.'' Now which set of
beliefs would lead to unhealthy jealousy and which would lead to
healthy jealousy?'
Be aware that this question often leads to a lengthy discussion
of the behavioural and thinking correlates of the two forms of
jealousy (which I outline later in the Client's Guide) and you
should be prepared to help your clients list these and see the
differences between the two. Once your clients can see that their
irrational beliefs underpin unhealthy jealousy and their rational
beliefs underpin healthy jealousy, they have understood the
mediating role of beliefs.
This is quite an elegant strategy since it accomplishes a number
of things at once:
1. It addresses your clients' doubts about the mediating role of irrational beliefs
in unhealthy jealousy if they have such concern.
2. It introduces rational beliefs as a meaningful alternative to these irrational
beliefs.
3. It helps your clients to see that holding rational beliefs can have bene®cial
effects.
Behaviour associated with unhealthy jealousy
When you hold an irrational belief about a threat that you think is posed by
someone else to your relationship and by the uncertainty involved in this
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threat, you will act or tend to act in a number of ways, the most common of
which are as follows:
You seek constant reassurance that you are loved.
You monitor the actions and feelings of your partner.
You search for evidence that your partner is involved with someone else.
You attempt to restrict the movements or activities of your partner.
You set tests which your partner has to pass.
You retaliate for your partner's presumed in®delity.
You sulk.
If you ask your clients whether they want to change their unhealthy
jealousy related behaviour, their response will be affected by
whether or not they are in an unhealthily jealous frame of mind.
If they are, they are less likely to see that this behaviour is dysfunctional than when they are not unhealthily jealous. If they
are feeling unhealthily jealous, it is useful to encourage them to
imagine that they are advising a friend who displays the same
unhealthily jealousy based behaviour as they do. What would they
say to their friend about the functionality or dysfunctionality
of such behaviour? They are more likely to see that their own
unhealthy jealousy based behaviour is dysfunctional after they
have told their `friend' that the same behaviour is dysfunctional.
Thinking associated with unhealthy jealousy
When you hold an irrational belief about a threat that you think is posed by
someone else to your relationship, and you face uncertainty concerning
your partner's whereabouts, behaviour or thinking, you will tend to think
in a number of ways. Remember what I said in Chapter 1: the thinking that
accompanies your unhealthy jealousy is the result of your inference being
processed by your irrational belief and therefore it is likely to contain a
number of thinking errors that I present in Appendix 1. I list the main
features of this post±irrational belief unhealthy jealousy based thinking
below:
You exaggerate any threat to your relationship that does exist.
You think the loss of your relationship is imminent.
Dealing with unhealthy jealousy
211
You misconstrue your partner's ordinary conversations with relevant others as
having romantic or sexual connotations.
You construct visual images of your partner's in®delity.
If your partner admits to ®nding another person attractive, you think that your partner
®nds that person more attractive than you and that your partner will leave you for this
other person.
As you can see, such thinking exaggerates the negative consequences of
the perceived threat to your relationship. Such thinking may be in words or
in mental images.
One of the main features of post-irrational belief thinking is that
it is compelling. As such, it is quite easy for your clients to get
caught up in this way of thinking and think that it re¯ects reality.
This is an example of `cognitive-emotive' reasoning: if a thought is
plausible and emotionally compelling, therefore it must be true. It
is important that you help your clients to understand how their
mind works with respect to the thinking consequences of irrational
beliefs and to encourage them to use such thoughts to go back to
address the irrational beliefs that spawn them. When they have
done this, you can encourage them to respond to these thinking
consequences of irrational beliefs as they will not disappear just
because they have questioned these beliefs. When they respond to
these thinking consequences of iBs, they need to do so only a few
times on any one occasion. After that, they need to accept the
presence of such thinking without engaging with it.
To summarise, your clients need to
identify the presence of the thinking consequences of irrational beliefs (see
Appendix 1)
trace these back to the source of this mode of thinking (i.e. identify the
underlying irrational beliefs)
challenge these irrational beliefs
respond brie¯y to the thinking consequences of such beliefs, but not get overly
involved in this process
accept the lingering presence of these thinking consequences without engaging
with them
get on with the business of living.
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HOW TO DEAL WITH UNHEALTHY JEALOUSY
If you are prone to unhealthy jealousy, you tend to experience this emotional problem in a variety of different settings and in response to a variety
of situations where you think someone poses a threat to your relationship.
Here is how to deal with unhealthy jealousy so that you become less prone
to it.
Step 1: Identify reasons why unhealthy jealousy is a
problem for you and why you want to change
While unhealthy jealousy is generally regarded as an emotional problem, it
is useful for you to spell out reasons why unhealthy jealousy is a problem
for you and why you want to change. I suggest that you keep a written list of
these reasons and refer to it as needed as a reminder of why you are
engaged in a self-help programme. I discuss the healthy alternative to
unhealthy jealousy in Step 4.
Some people who feel unhealthily jealous think that it is an
appropriate response to situations where they think that others
pose a threat to their relationship and where they are not certain
that this is the case.
In these circumstances, it is important to introduce the idea of
feeling healthily jealous as the healthy alternative to unhealthy
jealousy a little earlier than you would normally do (see Step 4).
When you have done so, you can then carry out a cost-bene®t
analysis of unhealthy jealousy and its constructive alternative,
healthy jealousy. This involves helping your clients to spell out the
perceived advantages and disadvantages of both emotions.
Respond to any perceived advantages of unhealthy jealousy and
perceived disadvantages of unhealthy jealousy, correcting any
misconceptions that your clients reveal on these issues.
For example, imagine that your clients think that feeling
unhealthy jealousy is a sign to their partner and to others that
they love their partner very deeply and that healthy jealousy does
not communicate the depths of their loving feelings. In this case,
help your clients to see that they can love their partner deeply
without being unhealthily jealous and that rather than being a
sign of deep love, unhealthy jealousy is a sign of deep disturbance.
Also, demonstrations of unhealthy jealousy after a while tend to
Dealing with unhealthy jealousy
213
alienate the partner, which is not the case with expressions of
healthy jealousy.
Step 2: Take responsibility for your unhealthy
jealousy
In RECBT, we argue that people do not make you unhealthily jealous; rather
you create these feelings by the rigid and extreme beliefs that you hold
about what such people do or do not do. You may object that this view
condones other people's behaviour, but this objection is based on a
misconception. You can take responsibility for creating your unhealthy
jealousy and still not condone others' behaviour when it is clear that they
have posed a threat to your relationship.
You may object that this view involves you blaming yourself for creating
your feelings, but this objection is also based on a misconception. It
assumes that taking responsibility for creating your unhealthy jealousy
is synonymous with self-blame. In truth, responsibility means that you
take ownership for the irrational beliefs that underpin your unhealthy
jealousy while accepting yourself for doing so. Blame, on the other hand,
means that you regard yourself as being bad for creating your own
unhealthy jealousy.
The idea that emotional problems (including unhealthy jealousy)
are based largely on the way that a person thinks about what
happens to them is, as you know, a central plank in RECBT. However, for many clients it will be a new idea. Thus, your clients may
hold that the reason they are unhealthily jealous is that their
partner seems interested in other men or women. This is an
example of `A-C' thinking where `A' is the client's partner appearing to be interested in other men or women and `C' is the emotion
of unhealthy jealousy. Rather, we argue that the reason that the
person experiences unhealthy jealousy is largely due to the fact
that they hold a set of irrational beliefs about this actual or
perceived threat to their relationship. If they held a set of rational
beliefs about the threat, they would experience healthy jealousy
rather than unhealthy jealousy.
If your clients continue to have dif®culty accepting responsibility
for their unhealthy jealousy, it is important for you to identify the
source of this dif®culty. Here are two common obstacles and how
to respond to them:
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The double penalty: this obstacle is expressed like this: `If I accept responsibility for my feelings of unhealthy jealousy, it is as if I am being punished
twice. First, my partner is threatening our relationship, and second, I am being
told that I am responsible for these feelings. This lets the other person off the
hook.' If your clients hold to this view, help them to see that while they may be
being penalised by their partner threatening their relationship (and remember
that in RECBT, we assume that this inference is true until investigating this
much later in the process) they are actually penalising themselves by making
themselves feel unhealthily jealous. Show your clients that you want to spare
them this second penalty by helping them to experience a healthy negative
emotion (healthy jealousy) rather than an unhealthy negative emotion
(unhealthy jealousy).
Taking responsibility for unhealthy jealousy means admitting a weakness:
here the block is the irrational belief that your clients hold about having and/
or admitting having a weakness (e.g. `I cannot take responsibility for my
unhealthy jealousy because it means admitting that I have a weakness that I
must not have or must not admit to publicly'). If your clients hold to this
position, help them to understand that having a weakness is quintessentially
human and does not mean that they are defective. Rather it means that they
are fallible human beings with strengths and weaknesses.
It is important to help your clients to understand the impact of
these obstacles on their emotional problems. Then, help them to
develop alternatives to these obstacles and review the impact of
these alternatives on their emotional problem-solving. This often
helps clients to deal effectively with these obstacles. If not, you may
need to do a more detailed assessment of the obstacle, which is
outside the brief of this book.
Step 3: Identify themes about which you tend to feel
unhealthy jealousy
The best way of identifying what you tend to feel unhealthy jealousy about
is to understand the major themes associated with unhealthy jealousy and
how this theme is manifest with respect to your personal domain. As I
outlined, one major theme in unhealthy jealousy is when you perceive a risk
posed by a third person to your relationship. Such threat might be manifest
in the following ways:
You think that your partner will leave you.
You think that you are not the most important person in your partner's life.
Here you think that your partner ®nds the another person more attractive than you
and that you will be displaced as the most important person in your partner's life
(even though you don't think that your partner will go off with the other person).
Dealing with unhealthy jealousy
215
You think that you are not your partner's one and only.
Here, it is important to you that your partner is interested only in you and that your
partner's interest in another person means that you are no longer his or her one and
only.
You think that someone is showing an interest in your partner.
Here, it is important to you that no one (who has the potential to be a love rival)
shows an interest in your partner so when someone does you deem this to be a
threat.
The second major inference theme in your unhealthy jealousy concerns the
threat posed by the uncertainty you face concerning your partner's whereabouts, behaviour or thinking in the context of the ®rst threat.
If your clients ®nd it dif®cult to ®nd their unhealthy jealousy
related theme, you can help them by assessing a few speci®c
examples of their unhealthy jealousy. Have them focus on a
speci®c situation in which they felt unhealthily jealous and ask
them what they were most unhealthily jealous about. If they still
®nd it dif®cult to identify the theme in this or other speci®c
situations, use the `magic question' technique. This involves you
doing the following:
Have your clients focus on the situation in which they felt unhealthily jealous.
Ask them to nominate one ingredient that would eliminate or signi®cantly
reduce their feelings of unhealthy jealousy without changing the situation.
The opposite of this nominated ingredient is what they are most hurt about.
Bill was ®nding it dif®cult to pinpoint the speci®c theme with respect to his
feelings of unhealthy jealousy about his girlfriend's friendliness to other
men. Bill used the `magic question' technique as follows:
Bill focused on the situation in which he felt unhealthily jealous:
`My girlfriend is being friendly to other men.'
He nominated one ingredient that would eliminate or signi®cantly reduce
his unhealthy jealousy without changing the situation:
`Knowing that I am number one in my girlfriend's affections.'
The opposite of this nominated ingredient was what he is most unhealthily
jealous about:
`Not knowing that I am number one in my girlfriend's affections.'
If you assess a number of speci®c examples of your clients'
unhealthy jealousy in this way, the relevant unhealthy jealousy
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Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
related theme should be apparent. In Bill's case, it was being
unsure that he was the most important person in his girlfriend's
life.
It may be that there are two unhealthy jealousy related themes
present in your client's unhealthy jealousy. For example, your
client may feel unhealthily jealous about being second best and
about not knowing what their partner is doing at any given time.
If this is the case, deal with them one at a time and have your
client nominate the theme which they want to focus on ®rst.
Step 4: Identify the three components of your
unhealthy jealousy response and set goals with
respect to each component
The next step is for you to list the three elements of your unhealthy jealousy
response in the face of each of the relevant themes listed above.
Identify the three components of your unhealthy jealousy
response
I use the term `unhealthy jealousy response' to describe the three main
components that make up this response. The three components of your
unhealthy jealousy response are the emotional, behavioural and thinking
compenents.
Emotional component
The emotional component here is, of course, unhealthy jealousy.
Behavioural component
The behavioural component concerns overt behaviour or action tendencies
that you engage in or `feel like' engaging in when you feel unhealthy
jealousy. Consult the list that I provided to help you identify your behaviour
associated with each relevant theme when you feel unhealthy jealousy (see
p. 210).
Dealing with unhealthy jealousy
217
Thinking component
The thinking component associated with unhealthy jealousy is listed on
pp. 210±211. Again these may be in words or in mental pictures. Consult
this list if necessary.
Set goals with respect to each of the three components
You need to set goals so that you know what you are striving for when you
deal effectively with unhealthy jealousy. The three goals are emotional,
behavioural and thinking goals.
Emotional goal
Your emotional goal is healthy jealousy rather than unhealthy jealousy (or
whatever synonym you prefer to the term `healthy jealousy'). Healthy jealousy is a healthy negative emotion, which is an appropriate response to the
threat that you think is being posed to your relationship by a third person
and to the threat of uncertainty related to your partner in the context of the
®rst threat. It helps you to think objectively about the situation and your
response to it and helps you to move on with your life rather than get stuck
or bogged down.
The idea that healthy jealousy is the healthy alternative to
unhealthy jealousy when there is a perceived threat to your clients'
relationship with their partner and when your clients are in a
state of uncertainty about salient aspects of their thoughts, feelings, behaviour and whereabouts is based on the following idea.
These adversities are negative and therefore it is realistic to have a
negative emotion about them. The choice, therefore, is between an
unhealthy negative emotion (unhealthy jealousy) or a healthy
negative emotion (healthy jealousy). However, what if your clients
specify unrealistic goals? Here are a number of such goals and how
to respond to clients who nominate them:
`I don't want to feel unhealthily jealous.'
Show your clients that they have indicated what they do not want to feel in the
face of a perceived threat to their relationship with their partner and when
they are in a state of uncertainty about salient aspects of their partner's
thoughts, feelings, behaviour and whereabouts. Your clients need to specify
how they do want to feel instead of unhealthy jealousy.
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`I want to feel less unhealthily jealous.'
Show your clients that as unhealthy jealousy is a disturbed emotion, wanting
to feel less unhealthily jealous is still to nominate a disturbed emotion, albeit
of lesser intensity. Show your clients that healthy jealousy can be strong and
healthy.
`I don't want to feel anything.'
Not feeling anything in the face of a perceived threat to your clients' relationship with their partner and when they are in a state of uncertainty about
salient aspects of their thoughts, feelings, behaviour and whereabouts will not
help your clients to be appropriately geared up to deal with these situations.
Help them to see this. Also show them that the only way that they could achieve
a state of not feeling anything is to feel completely indifferent about a perceived threat to their relationship with their partner and about being in a state
of uncertainty about salient aspects of their partner's thoughts, feelings,
behaviour and whereabouts. This can be achieved only if your clients lie to
themselves. Show them this and discourage them from setting such a goal.
Behavioural goal
Your behavioural goal should re¯ect actions that are based on healthy
jealousy rather than unhealthy jealousy. The following are the most
common behaviours associated with healthy jealousy. You may wish to
compare these behaviours with those associated with unhealthy jealousy
that I presented on p. 210.
You allow your partner to initiate expressing love for you without prompting him or
her or seeking reassurance once your partner has done so.
You allow your partner freedom without monitoring his or her feelings, actions and
whereabouts.
You allow your partner to show natural sexual interest in others without setting tests.
It is important that your clients understand that as they strive to
develop healthy behavioural responses to actual or perceived
threats to their relationship or being in a state of uncertainty
about salient aspects of their partner's behaviour, feeling, thoughts
and whereabouts, they will still feel the urge to act in ways that are
dysfunctional, as listed on p. 210. Help them to understand the
reason for this. Explain to them that as they question their beliefs
and commit themselves to strengthening their conviction in their
rational beliefs and to weakening their conviction in their
irrational beliefs, their irrational beliefs will still be active and
producing urges for them to act dysfunctionally. Encourage your
Dealing with unhealthy jealousy
219
clients to accept these urges, to recognise that they do not have to
act on them and to use them as cues to act in functional ways.
Thinking goal
As well as setting behavioural goals related to the feeling of healthy
jealousy about a threat posed by a third person to your relationship, it is
important that you set thinking goals associated with this emotion. The
following are the most common forms of thinking associated with healthy
jealousy rather than unhealthy jealousy. Again you may wish to compare
these forms of thinking with those associated with unhealthy jealousy that I
presented on pp. 210±211.
You tend not to exaggerate any threat to your relationship that does exist.
You do not misconstrue ordinary conversations between your partner and another
man or woman.
You do not construct visual images of your partner's in®delity.
You accept that your partner will ®nd others attractive but you do not see this as a
threat.
As the above list shows, the dominant feature of thinking associated with
healthy jealousy is that it is realistic and balanced. Please remember that
such thinking may be in words or in mental pictures.
The point I made above with respect to clients' behavioural goals is
also relevant with respect to their thinking goals. Clients will still
have some conviction in their irrational beliefs until they have full
conviction in their rational beliefs. Given this, your clients' irrational beliefs will have some impact on their subsequent thinking
as they strive to achieve their goals. Thus, highly distorted thoughts
will still come into your clients' minds. Help your clients to understand why this is the case. When you come to help them deal with
these forms of post-irrational belief thinking, do one or more of
the following as indicated. Discuss this issue with your RECBT
supervisor, if necessary:
Encourage your clients to acknowledge the existence of such thoughts without
trying to suppress them, distract themselves from them or engage with them.
If relevant, use the presence of this post-irrational belief thinking to help your
clients to identify and deal with the irrational beliefs.
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Question the empirical nature of these thinking `C's' once or twice and then
return to the acceptance strategy detailed above.
Step 5: Recognise that your symptoms of unhealthy
jealousy are evidence of disturbance and not
necessarily of the existence of threat to your
relationship
Once you have identi®ed your unhealthily jealous response and its healthy
alternative, it is important that you realise one important point. If you feel
jealous a lot, your feelings and the thoughts that accompany them are most
likely to be evidence that you have a jealousy problem rather than proof that
there truly exists a threat to your relationship.
When you think that there is a threat to your relationship because you
have jealous feelings and jealous thoughts, you are succumbing to two
thinking errors known as emotional reasoning and cognitive reasoning. In
emotional reasoning, you assume that because you feel jealous, your
relationship is under threat. In cognitive reasoning, you think that your
jealous thoughts are proof that again your relationship is under threat (e.g.
`Because I think that my partner would much prefer to be with the woman
he is talking to rather than with me, then he would, in reality, rather have a
relationship with her than me').
If your unhealthy jealousy is chronic, when you have jealous feelings and
thoughts, your task is to remind yourself that these are, in all probability,
signs that you are thinking irrationally and that you need to identify and
deal with the irrational beliefs that underpin your unhealthy jealousy
response rather than to act on them. You may well ®nd this dif®cult,
because when you have jealous feelings and thoughts, you will also
experience an urge to act on them. Refraining from doing so will go against
the grain and will thus be uncomfortable, but if you do so you will put
yourself in the position of dealing effectively with your unhealthy jealousy.
If you don't, you will maintain this emotional problem.
Step 6: Identify your general irrational beliefs and
alternative general rational beliefs
A general irrational belief leading to your unhealthy jealousy response is an
irrational belief that you hold across situations de®ned by one of the
following two themes:
Dealing with unhealthy jealousy
221
The threat posed by a third person to your relationship:
You
You
You
You
think
think
think
think
that
that
that
that
your partner will leave you.
you are not the most important person in your partner's life.
you are not your partner's one and only.
someone is showing an interest in your partner.
The threat posed by the uncertainty you face concerning your partner's whereabouts,
behaviour or thinking in the context of the ®rst threat.
Its rational alternative, which will also be general in nature, will account for
your healthy jealousy response.
Identify your general irrational beliefs
When you identify a general irrational belief, you take a common unhealthy
jealousy related theme (see above) and add to this a general rigid belief and
the main extreme belief that is derived from the rigid belief. In unhealthy
jealousy, your main extreme belief will be either a discomfort intolerance
belief or a self-depreciation belief.
Here is an example of an irrational belief related to each theme in
unhealthy jealousy:
`Third person threat' unhealthy jealousy:
`My partner must not ®nd any other person attractive. If they do then it proves that I
am unlovable.'
`Uncertainty threat' unhealthy jealousy:
`I must know what my partner is thinking when we are in the company of attractive
people and I can't bear not knowing.'
Identify your alternative general rational beliefs
When you identify your alternative general rational belief, you take the same
common theme (e.g. the threat posed by a third person to your relationship
and the threat posed by the uncertainty you face concerning your partner's
whereabouts, behaviour or thinking in the context of the ®rst threat) and
add to this a general ¯exible belief and a general discomfort tolerance belief
or a general unconditional self-acceptance belief. For example:
`Third person threat' healthy jealousy:
`I don't want my partner to ®nd any other person attractive, but that does not mean
that they must not do so. If they do then it is unfortunate, but it does not prove that I
am unlovable. I can accept myself as a fallible, unrateable human being whose worth
is not changed by my partner ®nding another person attractive.'
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`Uncertainty threat' healthy jealousy:
`I would like to know what my partner is thinking when we are in the company of
attractive people, but I don't have to know this. It's a struggle not knowing, but I can
bear not knowing and it is worth it to me to do so.'
As you will have noticed in the Client's Guide, I encourage readers
to identify and work with their general irrational beliefs and to
develop general rational beliefs and, as you will see, when they are
facing speci®c instances of their problems, I encourage them to
focus on speci®c examples of both sets of beliefs. This will be at
variance with your RECBT practice, where you will begin with
speci®c examples of your clients' problems and then proceed to
work at a more general level with their problems and how these
relate to one another.
The reason I have chosen to go `general' rather than `speci®c'
when helping readers to deal with their emotional problems is a
pragmatic one. In this book, I aim to help people to deal with
a range of emotional problems and therefore, in my view, it is best
to give readers general guidance with respect to dealing with this
range of problems and then help them to move from the general to
the speci®c rather than vice versa. My considered view was that I
just do not have the space to help readers focus on speci®c
examples of their emotional problems and then generalise from
this speci®c level.
Consequently, one way that you can help your clients who are
using the Client's Guide is to help them to work with speci®c
examples of their emotional problem, in this case unhealthy
jealousy. Use the following sequence as you do so and help your
clients to
select a speci®c example of their unhealthy jealousy problem
express why their unhealthy jealousy constitutes a problem for them
identify what they felt most unhealthily jealous about in the situation
identify the three speci®c components of their unhealthily jealous response and
set speci®c goals with respect to each component
identify their speci®c irrational beliefs and alternative speci®c rational beliefs
question their speci®c beliefs.
In helping your clients to deal with a speci®c example of their
unhealthy jealousy, you can teach them how to use RECBT's ABCD
form, which appears in Appendix 6.
Dealing with unhealthy jealousy
223
The following steps are the same as those that appear in Steps
8±11 later in this chapter. Thus, help your clients to
face up to what they are most jealous about in imagery (if necessary)
face the same things in reality (if possible) and take appropriate action
capitalise on what they learned
generalise their learning.
Step 7: Question your general beliefs
I recommended in previous chapters that you ®rst question together your
general rigid belief and its general ¯exible belief alternative and then
question together your general extreme belief and its general non-extreme
belief alternative.
Question your general rigid belief and its general flexible
belief alternative
First, take your general rigid belief and its general ¯exible belief alternative
and write them down next to one another on a sheet of paper. Then ask
yourself:
Which is true and which is false?
Which is sensible logically and which does not make sense?
Which has largely constructive results and which has largely unconstructive results?
Write down your answer to each of these questions on your piece of paper,
giving reasons for each answer. Consult Appendix 2 for help with the
answers to these questions, which you need to adapt and apply to the
beliefs you are questioning.
Question your general extreme belief and its general nonextreme belief alternative
Next, take your general extreme belief and its general non-extreme belief
alternative and again write them down next to one another on a sheet of
paper. Then, ask yourself the same three questions that you used with your
general rigid belief and its general ¯exible belief alternative. Again write
down your answer to each of these questions on your piece of paper, giving
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reasons for each answer. I suggest that you consult Appendix 3 (for help
with questioning awfulising beliefs and non-awfulising beliefs), Appendix 4
(for help with questioning discomfort intolerance beliefs and discomfort
tolerance beliefs) and Appendix 5 (for help with questioning depreciation
beliefs and unconditional acceptance beliefs). Again, you need to adapt
and apply these arguments to the beliefs you are questioning.
You should now be ready to commit to acting and thinking in ways
consistent with your general rational belief.
I included Appendices 2±5 in the Client's Guide as general guidelines to help readers to question their irrational and rational
beliefs (reproduced in this book as Appendices 2±5). If you are
working with clients who are using the Client's Guide, you will
have a chance to look at the questioning work that your clients
have done at this point and give them feedback on that work. No
book can provide such feedback.
I have suggested that readers question their rigid belief and their
¯exible belief together and then their main extreme belief and
non-extreme belief equivalent together using three criteria as
shown below:
Rigid belief vs. ¯exible belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status
Main extreme belief vs. main non-extreme belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status.
However, there are other ways of questioning beliefs as shown
below. When using the Client's Guide with your clients, outline
these other approaches in case they do not resonate with the
approach I put forward in the Client's Guide. The important point
is that your clients use all three arguments with each of their
rational and irrational beliefs.
Rigid belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status
Dealing with unhealthy jealousy
Flexible belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status
Main extreme belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status
Main non-extreme belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status.
And also:
Rigid belief
empirical status
Flexible belief
empirical status
Rigid belief
logical status
Flexible belief
logical status
Rigid belief
pragmatic status
Flexible belief
pragmatic status
Main extreme belief
empirical status
Main non-extreme belief
empirical status
Main extreme belief
logical status
Main non-extreme belief
logical status
225
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Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
Main extreme belief
pragmatic status
Main non-extreme belief
pragmatic status.
The ®nal point I want to make about questioning beliefs concerns
the concept of persuasiveness. Perhaps the most important aspect
of the questioning process is for your clients to develop arguments
concerning the irrationality of their irrational beliefs and the
rationality of their rational beliefs that are persuasive to them. So,
encourage your clients to develop such persuasive arguments and
to make a note of these for future reference.
Step 8: Face your unhealthy jealousy related theme in
imagery
I hope that you have made a commitment to act on your general rational
beliefs (i.e. ¯exible belief and unconditional self-acceptance belief ).
Assuming that you have, your basic task is for you to face up to threats
posed to your relationship with your partner from another person and to
uncertainty about the whereabouts, behaviour, thoughts and feelings of
your partner and to learn to think rationally about it.
Up to this point you have worked at a general level with respect to your
unhealthy jealousy related theme, dealing with the general irrational beliefs
that account for your unhealthy jealousy and developing your alternative
general rational beliefs. However, when you come to apply your general
rational beliefs in dealing with threats posed to your relationship with your
partner from another person and to uncertainty about the whereabouts,
behaviour, thoughts and feelings of your partner, you need to bear in mind
one important point. Since you make yourself unhealthily jealous about
speci®c instances of this threat (actual or imagined) and related uncertainty, you need to deal with these by rehearsing speci®c variants of your
general rational beliefs.
While the best way to do this is in speci®c threat and uncertainty related
situations, you may derive bene®t by using imagery ®rst. If this is the case,
you need to do the following:
Imagine a speci®c situation in which you felt or may feel unhealthily jealous about a
threat being posed to your relationship with your partner from another person or
related to uncertainty about the whereabouts, behaviour, thoughts and feelings of
Dealing with unhealthy jealousy
227
your partner and focus, in your mind's eye, on what you felt most unhealthily jealous
about (i.e. your `A').
Focus on this `A' while rehearsing a speci®c rational belief relevant to the situation.
As you do this, try to make yourself feel healthily jealous, rather than unhealthily
jealous.
Then see yourself acting in ways consistent with your rational belief, e.g. expressing
your concern to your partner and listening with an open mind to what he or she has
to say in response.
Recognise that some of your post-belief thinking may be distorted. Respond to it
without getting bogged down doing so. Accept the presence of any remaining
distorted thoughts without engaging with them.
Repeat the above steps until you feel suf®ciently ready to put this sequence into
practice in your life.
If you ®nd that facing your unhealthily jealousy related `A', in your mind's
eye, is too much for you, use the `challenging, but not overwhelming'
principle. This means that instead of imagining yourself facing a threat to
your relationship or an instance of uncertainty about your partner's whereabouts that you ®nd `overwhelming' at the present time, choose a similar
unhealthy jealousy related `A' that you would ®nd `challenging, but not
overwhelming'. Then employ the same steps that I have outlined above.
Work in this way with modi®ed unhealthy jealousy related `A's' until you
®nd your original one `challenging, but not overwhelming' and then use the
steps again.
Some of your clients may say that they can't get very clear images
when they try to picture events in their mind's eye. While they may
get more out of imagery techniques if they can get such clear images,
they will still get something out of facing threats posed to their
relationship with their partner from another person and to uncertainty about the whereabouts, behaviour, thoughts and feelings of
their partner in imagery if they don't. So, if clients want to face their
particular adversity in imagery before they do so in reality, encourage them to do so no matter how clear their mental images are.
Step 9: Act in ways that are consistent with your
general rational belief
As I mentioned earlier, when you experience the emotional problem of
unhealthy jealousy and the thoughts that accompany it, you will also
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Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
experience a strong urge to act on them. If you do, you will serve only to
strengthen the irrational beliefs that underpin such behaviour. So after you
have questioned your irrational and rational beliefs in the way I suggested
above and committed yourself to strengthening your conviction in your
rational beliefs, it is very important that you act in ways that will do this and
to refrain from acting in ways that will do the opposite.
This is perhaps the most important principle involved in dealing
effectively with unhealthy jealousy. I have seen many people in my practice
who have had ineffective therapy where the focus was on helping them to
identify the childhood roots of these feelings. I am not against this practice,
but the reason such therapy often fails is that while the person is engaged
in such an exploration they are acting, in the present, in ways that stem
from their irrational beliefs and serve only to reinforce these beliefs.
So, it is crucial that you act according to the behavioural goals that you
identi®ed in Step 4 and accept that while you do so, you will still have the
urge to act and think in unhealthy ways. Accept that this is an almost
inevitable and natural part of the change process and that these unhealthy
urges and thoughts will eventually subside if you do not engage with them.
I stress that this is dif®cult, but if you are clear about what you need to do
and act accordingly, you will stack the odds in favour of, rather than
against, dealing effectively with your unhealthy jealousy.
You may ®nd that your clients report various obstacles to facing
situations about which they have felt unhealthily jealous while
acting in ways that are consistent with their general rational
beliefs. I list here some of the major obstacles and suggest ways of
addressing them with your clients.
`If I face jealousy related situations, I will become too upset.'
Here, your client may have a discomfort intolerance belief about feeling upset.
This is evidenced in the phrase `I will become too upset'. Help your client to see
that if they do become upset, they can tolerate this and still act in ways that
are consistent with their rational beliefs.
`If I face jealousy related situations, I will ®nd the urge to act dysfunctionally
too tempting.'
Here your client considers that the urge to act in ways that have previously
maintained their unhealthy jealousy may be too powerful for them to resist.
Consequently, your client is reluctant to face jealousy related situations while
rehearsing their developing rational beliefs and acting constructively. Help
your client to develop a greater sense of control over their urges by allowing
them to be there and showing themselves that they do not have to act on such
urges
Dealing with unhealthy jealousy
229
`I don't feel comfortable facing jealousy related situations.'
Help your client to see that if they wait until they are comfortable before
facing jealousy related situations, they will wait a very long time. Show your
client that if they are comfortable about facing such situations, it is likely that
they are not unhealthily jealous about them. Consequently, it is important
that you help your client realise that they are bound to be uncomfortable
about facing a jealousy related situation even after they have disputed their
unhealthy jealousy creating irrational beliefs. Show them that they can
tolerate this discomfort and that it is worth it to them to do so.
Step 10: Capitalise on what you learned
When you have faced a situation in which you experienced unhealthy
jealousy and dealt with it as best you could, it is important that you re¯ect
on what you did and what you learned. In particular, if you were able to face
the situation, rehearse your speci®c rational beliefs until you felt sorrow,
ask yourself how you can capitalise on what you achieved. If you
experienced any problems, respond to the following questions:
Did I face the situation, and if not, why not?
Did I rehearse my rational beliefs before, during or after facing the situation, and if
not, why not?
Did I execute my plan to face the situation, and if not, why not?
Did I engage with post-belief distorted thinking, and if so, why?
Re¯ect on your experience and put into practice what you learned the next
time you face a situation in which someone poses a threat to your
relationship or where a threat is posed to you by uncertainty concerning
your partner's whereabouts, behaviour or thinking in the context of the ®rst
threat.
It is useful to monitor your clients' responses to these questions and
help them to re¯ect on any issues that they have not considered.
Step 11: Generalise your learning
Once you have dealt with your unhealthy jealousy in a speci®c situation by
holding the relevant speci®c version of your general rational belief and by
acting and thinking in ways that are consistent with it, you can generalise
this learning to situations de®ned by your unhealthy jealousy based theme.
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Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
Donald was particularly prone to unhealthy jealousy about women he was going
out with. Thus:
Donald assessed the three components of his unhealthy jealousy response
and set goals with respect to all three components.
He identi®ed his relevant general irrational beliefs regarding what he saw as
threats to his relationship with his current girlfriend (i.e. `I must be the only
person that my girlfriend is attracted to and if I'm not I am less worthy than my
rival') and uncertainty about her whereabouts (`I must know where my
girlfriend is and what she is doing at all times and I can't bear not knowing
this') that underpinned his unhealthy jealousy response. He then identi®ed his
alternative general rational beliefs about the third person threat (i.e. `I would
like to be the only person that my girlfriend is attracted to, but I don't have to
be. If I'm not, I am not less worthy than my rival. I am equal in worth to him')
and the uncertainty threat (i.e. `I would like to know where my girlfriend is and
what she is doing at all times, but I do not need to know this. I can bear not
knowing this even though it is dif®cult and it is worth it to me to do so') that
underpinned his healthy jealousy response.
He questioned both elements of his general irrational beliefs and his general
rational beliefs until he clearly saw that the former were false, made no sense
and were detrimental to her and that the latter were true, sensible and healthy.
He acted on shortened versions of his rational beliefs in speci®c situations
and did not keep checking on his girlfriend, either when she was talking to
other men or when he did not know where she was or what she was doing.
Instead he acted as if he trusted her to be faithful to him, even though she
might ®nd other men attractive. However, he did disclose his feelings of
displeasure towards her if it was clear that she was being overly ¯irtatious
towards other men at social gatherings.
As he acted on his rational beliefs, he tolerated the discomfort that she felt
and accepted that some of his distorted and skewed negative thinking would
still be in his mind as she did so. He let such thinking be without engaging
with it, suppressing it or distracting himself from it.
As this section shows, you can generalise what you learn about dealing
with unhealthy jealousy from situation to situation as de®ned by your
unhealthy jealousy based inference.
USING RECBT'S ABCD FORM TO DEAL WITH
SPECIFIC EXAMPLES OF YOUR UNHEALTHY
JEALOUSY
This chapter is mainly geared to help you deal with your unhealthy jealousy
in general terms. However, you can also use this material to address
speci®c examples of your unhealthy jealousy. I have developed a self-help
Dealing with unhealthy jealousy
231
form to provide the structure to assist you in this regard. It is called the
ABCD form and it appears with instructions in Appendix 6.
In Appendix 6, I outline the major problems that clients have in
using this form and how to deal with them.
OTHER IMPORTANT ISSUES IN DEALING WITH
UNHEALTHY JEALOUSY
In the above section, I outlined an eleven step programme to deal with
unhealthy jealousy. In this section, I discuss some other important issues
that may be relevant to you in your work to become less prone to this
emotional problem. If you want to, you can incorporate them as additional
steps in the above step-by-step guide at points relevant to you.
Dealing with your safety-seeking measures to avoid
unhealthy jealousy
I mentioned in Chapter 2 that people use safety-seeking measures to
protect themselves from threat. You may use similar measures to protect
yourself from feeling unhealthy jealousy. Here is how this works from your
perspective. You reason that since you feel unhealthy jealousy about `third
person' and `uncertainty' threats to your relationship with your partner, you
will take steps to avoid unhealthy jealousy. This involves you ensuring that
your partner does not interact with potential rivals and that you know where
your partner is and what he or she is doing.
However, this stance and the reasoning that leads you to take it are
¯awed and will serve only to perpetuate your tendency to feel unhealthy
jealousy. This is due to the fact that your unhealthy jealousy is not based
on `third person' and `uncertainty' threats to your relationship, but on your
irrational beliefs about such threats. So, if you want to deal effectively with
unhealthy jealousy, you need to do the following.
Do not attempt to prevent your partner from interacting with potential rivals.
Do not keep tabs on your partner. Allow your partner to do what he or she wants
without you knowing exactly where your partner is, what he or she is doing and with
whom he or she is interacting.
If you actually face threats to your relationship as a result, deal with these by bringing
to such situations appropriate speci®c versions of your general rational beliefs so
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Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
that you feel healthily jealous and not unhealthy jealousy about these episodes. Also,
act and think in ways that are consistent with these speci®c rational beliefs as far as
you can.
It is one of the major themes of both the Client's Guide and this
Practitioner's Guide that when your clients come to change their
behaviour from dysfunctional to functional, they will still experience urges to act dysfunctionally. This is why it is so important to
help your clients understand the difference between overt actions
and action tendencies. In the present context, this means stressing
to your clients as they strive to act in ways that address their
unhealthily jealous feelings constructively and thus desist from
using unhealthy jealousy related safety-seeking strategies, they will
still feel the urge to use them. Help them to develop ways of accepting, but not necessarily liking such urges and to implement their
healthy jealousy based behaviour, even though such aforementioned behaviour may be present for some time. You may have to
help certain clients identify and respond to irrational beliefs such
as: `If I feel the urge to do something to get rid of my unhealthily
jealous feelings quickly, then I have to act on that urge'. Developing
and strengthening rational beliefs about such urges is particularly
important for these clients.
Why you feel unhealthy jealousy much of the time
and how to deal with this
If you are particularly prone to unhealthy jealousy, you hold the following
belief, which I call a `chronic unhealthy jealousy based general irrational
belief':
`I must know for sure that my relationship is not under threat and I can't stand not
knowing this. If I don't have such certainty, then my relationship is under threat and I
will lose my partner because I am not good enough to hold any partner in the face of
such threat.'
As you can see, this belief has a number of elements:
It relates to the threat of uncertainty and you ®nding not knowing intolerable.
It relates to the threat to your relationship and the self-depreciation belief you
implicitly hold.
Dealing with unhealthy jealousy
233
Holding this belief you will do the following:
You will assume that uncertainty means that your relationship is under threat. Thus,
you will see threat in ordinary exchanges between your partner and others where
none objectively exists.
You will think that you will lose out to any rival because they have more to offer your
partner than you do.
You will focus on past relationships where you thought your partner was unfaithful
to you.
You will scan your current relationship hoping not to ®nd, but certain that you will
®nd evidence that your partner is interested in someone else and is making plans to
leave you. If there is any ambiguity about this, you err on the side of threat to and loss
of your relationship.
You will employ all the thinking and behavioural strategies that you use to keep
yourself safe from threat. This serves only to strengthen your conviction that you are
under threat.
How to deal with chronic unhealthy jealousy
In order to deal with this chronic sense of unhealthy jealousy, you need to
develop and apply an alternative general rational belief which protects you
from such unhealthy jealousy.
`I would like to know for sure that my relationship is not under threat, but although it
is a struggle, I can stand not knowing this and it is worth it to me to do so. If I don't
have such certainty, it does not follow that my relationship is under threat, unless
there is objective evidence that it is. If there is such a threat then it not does follow
that I will lose my partner. I am fallible and good enough to hold any partner in the
face of such threat.'
When you hold this belief and there exists objective evidence that your
relationship is under threat, you will feel healthy jealousy rather than
unhealthy jealousy because you will be processing this with a speci®c
rational belief.
In addition, this belief will help you to
revisit your past and see that past partners were more trustworthy than you thought
at the time
see that your current partner is more trustworthy than you think when you hold your
set of speci®c and general irrational beliefs
see that any future partners will be trustworthy unless you ®nd objective evidence to
the contrary.
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Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
If your clients ®nd that the above explanation is too complex, you
can help them to see that holding rigid beliefs about the presence
or absence of unhealthy jealousy related threats means that unless
they are clear that these threats do not exist, then they assume that
they are present. When your clients' beliefs are ¯exible then they
can be more objective about the presence of these adversities.
How to examine the accuracy of your unhealthy jealousy
related inference if necessary
If you are still unsure that a threat exists to your relationship or not, answer
one or more of the following questions:
How valid is my inference that there is a threat to my relationship?
Would an objective jury agree that there is a threat to my relationship? If not, what
would the jury's verdict be?
Is my inference that there is a threat to my relationship realistic? If not, what is a
more realistic inference?
If I asked someone whom I could trust to give me an objective opinion about my
inference that there is a threat to my relationship, what would that person say to me
and why? What inference would this person encourage me to make instead?
If a friend had told me that they had made the same inference about them facing a
threat to their relationship, what would I say to this friend about the validity of their
inference and why? What inference would I encourage this friend to make instead?
Assessing and dealing with emotional problems
about unhealthy jealousy
In previous chapters, I discussed the concept of meta-disturbance (literally
disturbance about disturbance). It is important to assess carefully the
nature of this meta-disturbance about unhealthy jealousy before you can
best deal with it.
The best way to start dealing with the assessment of any emotional
problems you might have about unhealthy jealousy is to ask yourself the
question: `How do I feel about my feeling of unhealthy jealousy?' The most
common emotional problems that people have about unhealthy jealousy are
as follows: anxiety, depression, shame and unhealthy self-anger. I refer you
to the relevant chapters on these emotional problems in this book for help
on how to deal with meta-emotional problems about unhealthy jealousy.
Dealing with unhealthy jealousy
235
Your clients will sometimes need to address their emotional problems about unhealthy jealousy before they address their unhealthy
jealousy. They need to do this particularly when their secondary
emotional problem gets in the way of them dealing with their
primary unhealthy jealousy. However, despite the interfering
presence of their secondary problem, some clients still want to
target their primary jealousy. There are two ways of dealing with
this situation:
Provide a rationale to help your clients target their secondary problem. For
example, explain to your clients that their secondary problem is like having a
ball and chain around their leg while they are climbing a steep hill (akin to
their primary feelings of unhealthy jealousy). In the same way as climbing the
hill is easier when they remove the ball and chain from their leg, dealing with
their primary unhealthy jealousy is easier when they deal with their secondary
problem ®rst.
Go along with your clients' wish to deal with their primary unhealthy jealousy
and when they fail to do so, help them to understand that the reason why they
failed is because they had not addressed their secondary problem and then
agree that they will now do so.
Developing and rehearsing a non-unhealthy jealousy
world view
People develop views of the world as it relates to them that make it more or
less likely that they will experience unhealthy negative emotions. The world
views that render you vulnerable to unhealthy jealousy do so in a similar
way to the chronic unhealthy jealousy based general irrational belief discussed above (i.e. `I must know for sure that my relationship is not under
threat and I can't stand not knowing this. If I don't have such certainty then
my relationship is under threat and I will lose my partner because I am not
good enough to hold any partner in the face of such threat') by making you
focus unduly on times when you have, are or will face threats to your
relationship. However, these unhealthy jealousy based world views have
this effect on you much more widely.
It is important that you develop realistic views of the world that will help
you to deal with unhealthy jealousy. In Table 8, you will ®nd an illustrative list
of such world views rather than an exhaustive one, so you can get an idea of
what I mean, which will enable you to develop your own. In Table 8, I ®rst
describe a world view that renders you vulnerable to unhealthy jealousy and
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Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
Table 8 World views that render you vulnerable to unhealthy jealousy and help you to
deal with unhealthy jealousy
Views of the world that render you
vulnerable to unhealthy jealousy
Views of the world that help you
deal with unhealthy jealousy
My partners are ultimately
untrustworthy
Some of my partners may be
untrustworthy, but most will probably
be trustworthy
My partners will ultimately leave me
Some of my partners may leave me, but
others won't. However, I may drive away
people in this last group through my
jealous behaviour
If I trust someone they will make a fool If I trust someone, it is possible that the
of me. So I need to always be on my
person may betray my trust, but it is
guard
also possible that they won't. If they do,
they can't make a fool out of me ± only I
can do this with my rigid and selfdepreciation beliefs about their
behaviour
Not knowing what my partner is feeling, Not knowing what my partner is feeling,
thinking and doing is very dangerous
thinking and doing is not inherently
dangerous
Every attractive person is my rival
Some attractive people may be my
rivals, but most won't be
Attractive people are predatory and will A few attractive people are predatory
seek to displace me in the affections of and will seek to displace me in the
my partner
affections of my partner, but most
certainly will not
then I give its healthy alternative. You will see that the former is characterised by a conception of your partners as being basically untrustworthy
and potential rivals as being basically predatory. In the latter, a more benign,
balanced, but realistic picture of others is revealed and thus a healthier
response to the possible existence of relationship threat can be expected.
If you hold rational beliefs that are consistent with the views of the world
listed on the right hand side of Table 8 and if you act and think in ways that
are, in turn, consistent with these rational beliefs, then doing all this will
help you become less prone to unhealthy jealousy.
In Chapter 9, I discuss unhealthy envy and how to deal with it.
9
Dealing with unhealthy envy
In this chapter, I begin by presenting RECBT's way of understanding
unhealthy envy and then address how to deal with this emotional problem.
UNDERSTANDING UNHEALTHY ENVY
In understanding unhealthy envy, we need to know what we tend to make
ourselves feel unhealthily envious about (i.e. its major inference themes),
what beliefs we hold, how we act or tend to act, and how we think when we
are unhealthily envious.
I mentioned in previous chapters that it is important that you use
your client's language when referring to emotional problems. With
respect to the term `unhealthy envy', you need to be aware that
not all clients with an `envy' problem resonate with the term
`unhealthy envy'. Indeed, people who have a problem with envy
may be quite reluctant to see their `envy' as a problem, seeing it
instead as a sign of healthy competition. However, even those who
do see their envy as problematic may baulk at using the term
`unhealthy envy' as a way of referring to their problem. They may
identify more closely with terms like `covetousness', `greed' or
`insecurity'. If so, your task is to satisfy yourself and your client
that these terms represent the unhealthy negative emotion known
in RECBT as unhealthy envy. Once you have done so, use the client's
language and write this down in your client's notes.
Major inference theme in unhealthy envy
The major theme in relation to your personal domain which is implicated in
unhealthy envy is that someone has something that you prize, but don't
have. In unhealthy envy your focus may be on the object,1 that is you think
1 I am using the word `object' here very broadly to include anything that you prize.
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you really want the object for its own sake (I call this object focused
unhealthy envy) or on the person who has the object, i.e. you prize the
object only because the particular person has it (I call this person-focused
unhealthy envy). The common denominator in these different types of envy
is that you consider yourself to be in a state of deprivation.
Some clients may not resonate to the above schema and, in these
cases, you should encourage them to put it aside and just focus on
what they tend to feel unhealthily envious about. RECBT theory
values ¯exibility and this includes the freedom not to use RECBT
terms, schemes and frameworks.
Irrational beliefs
As I explained in Chapter 1, according to RECBT, inferences on their own
do not account for emotional problems. It is possible, therefore, for you to
make the same inference as listed above and feel healthy envy and not
unhealthy envy.2 In order for you to feel unhealthy envy, you have to hold an
irrational belief. When you think irrationally, you hold a rigid belief and one
or more extreme beliefs. While the rigid belief is at the core of unhealthy
envy, the extreme beliefs that are derived from the rigid belief often distinguish between whether you are experiencing unhealthy ego envy (where
you depreciate yourself ) and unhealthy non-ego envy (where you `awfulise'
or ®nd the deprivation or inequality involved intolerable). You may, of
course, experience both unhealthy ego envy and unhealthy non-ego envy in
a given situation.
If your clients are unsure about the mediating role that irrational
beliefs play in their unhealthy envy, ask them how they would feel
if they really believed the rational alternatives to what RECBT
holds are their unhealthy envy creating irrational beliefs. In using
this strategy, it is important that you formulate the rational beliefs
for your clients, who cannot be expected to do this for themselves at
this stage. When you do this, ensure that you match your clients'
rigid belief with a ¯exible alternative and their main extreme belief
with a non-extreme alternative, and then ask them how they would
feel if they had strong conviction in this rational belief.
2 As I have mentioned before, we don't have agreed terms for healthy negative
emotions. Therefore, if you don't resonate with the term `healthy envy', use a term that
makes more sense to you.
Dealing with unhealthy envy
239
For example: `Let me outline two sets of beliefs about your
friends having what you don't have but prize, and you tell me
which leads to unhealthy envy and which leads to healthy envy.
The ®rst set of beliefs is as follows: ``I must have what my friends
have and I can't bear the deprivation of not having it.'' The second
set of beliefs is as follows: ``I really would like to have what my
friends have, but it isn't necessary that I have it. It's dif®cult
putting up with the deprivation, but I can do so and it's worth it to
me to do so.'' Now which set of beliefs would lead to unhealthy
envy and which would lead to healthy envy?'
Be aware that this question often leads to a lengthy discussion of
the behavioural and thinking correlates of the two forms of envy
(which I outline later in the Client's Guide) and you should be
prepared to help your clients list these and see the differences
between the two. Once your clients can see that their irrational
beliefs underpin unhealthy envy and their rational beliefs underpin healthy envy, they have understood the mediating role of
beliefs.
This is quite an elegant strategy since it accomplishes a number
of things at once:
1. It addresses your clients' doubts about the mediating role of irrational beliefs
in unhealthy envy if they have such concern.
2. It introduces rational beliefs as a meaningful alternative to these irrational
beliefs.
3. It helps your clients to see that holding rational beliefs can have bene®cial
effects.
Behaviour associated with unhealthy envy
When you hold an irrational belief about someone having something that
you prize, but don't have, you will act or tend to act in a number of ways, the
most common of which are as follows:
You disparage verbally the person who has the desired possession to others.
You disparage verbally the desired possession to others.
If you had the chance, you would take away the desired possession from the other
(either so that you will have it or so that the other is deprived of it).
If you had the chance you would spoil or destroy the desired possession so that the
other person does not have it.
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If you ask your clients whether they want to change their
unhealthy envy related behaviour, their response will be affected
by whether or not they are in an unhealthily envious frame of
mind. If they are, they are far less likely to see that this behaviour
is dysfunctional than when they are not unhealthily envious. If
they are feeling unhealthily envious, it is useful to encourage them
to imagine that they are advising a friend who displays the same
unhealthily envious based behaviour as they do. What would they
say to this friend about the functionality or dysfunctionality of
such behaviour? They are more likely to see that their own
unhealthy envy based behaviour is dysfunctional after they have
told their `friend' that the same behaviour is dysfunctional.
Thinking associated with unhealthy envy
When you hold an irrational belief about someone having something that
you prize, but don't have, you will tend to think in a number of ways.
Remember what I said in Chapter 1: the thinking that accompanies your
unhealthy envy is the result of your inference being processed by your
irrational belief and therefore it is likely to contain a number of thinking
errors that I present in Appendix 1. I list the main features of this post±
irrational belief unhealthy envy based thinking below:
You tend to denigrate in your mind the value of the desired possession and/or the
person who possesses it.
You try to convince yourself that you are happy with your possessions (although you
are not).
You think about how to acquire the desired possession regardless of its usefulness.
You think about how to deprive the other person of the desired possession.
You think about how to spoil or destroy the other's desired possession.
As you can see, such thinking deepens the sense of deprivation that you
experience and exaggerates the inequality that there is between you and the
other person or persons involved. Once again, such thinking may be in
words or in mental images.
One of the main features of post-irrational belief thinking is that
it is compelling. As such, it is quite easy for your clients to get
caught up in this way of thinking and think that it re¯ects reality.
Dealing with unhealthy envy
241
This is an example of `cognitive-emotive' reasoning: if a thought is
plausible and emotionally compelling, therefore it must be true. It
is important that you help your clients to understand how their
mind works with respect to the thinking consequences of irrational
beliefs and to encourage them to use such thoughts to go back to
address the irrational beliefs that spawn them. When your clients
have done this, you can encourage them to respond to these thinking consequences of irrational beliefs as they will not disappear
just because they have questioned these beliefs. When they respond
to these thinking consequences of iBs, they need to do so only a few
times on any one occasion. After that, they need to accept the
presence of such thinking without engaging with it.
To summarise, your clients need to
identify the presence of the thinking consequences of irrational beliefs (see
Appendix 1)
trace these back to the source of this mode of thinking (i.e. identify the
underlying irrational beliefs)
challenge these irrational beliefs
respond brie¯y to the thinking consequences of such beliefs, but not get overly
involved in this process
accept the lingering presence of these thinking consequences without engaging
with them
get on with the business of living.
HOW TO DEAL WITH UNHEALTHY ENVY
If you are prone to unhealthy envy, you tend to experience this emotional
problem in a variety of different settings and in response to a variety of
situations where you think someone poses a threat to your relationship.
Here is how to deal with unhealthy envy so that you become less prone to it.
Step 1: Identify reasons why unhealthy envy is a
problem for you and why you want to change
While unhealthy envy is generally regarded as an emotional problem, it is
useful for you to spell out reasons why unhealthy envy is a problem for you
and why you want to change. I suggest that you keep a written list of these
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reasons and refer to it as needed as a reminder of why you are engaged in a
self-help programme. I discuss the healthy alternative to unhealthy envy in
Step 4.
What makes it harder for you to admit that you have an envy problem is
that it is often an `ugly' emotion (in that you seek to destroy or spoil what
others have), you often feel ashamed of the malevolence that often accompanies unhealthy envy and thus, to cope with your shame, you deny having
an envy problem. If you suspect that this is the case, I suggest that you deal
with your shame about your envy ®rst (see Chapter 5) and then come back
to dealing with your unhealthy envy once you are disappointed, but not
ashamed, about your unhealthy envy response.
Some people who feel unhealthily envious think that it is an
appropriate response to situations where others have what they
prize, but lack. In these circumstances, it is important to introduce
the idea of feeling healthily envious as the healthy alternative to
unhealthy envy a little earlier than you would normally do (see
Step 4). When you have done so, you can then carry out a costbene®t analysis of unhealthy envy and its constructive alternative,
healthy envy. This involves helping your clients to spell out the
perceived advantages and disadvantages of both emotions.
Respond to any perceived advantages of unhealthy envy and perceived disadvantages of healthy envy, correcting any misconceptions that your clients reveal on these issues.
For example, imagine that your clients think that feeling
unhealthily envious motivates them to get what others have, but
lack, whereas healthy envy lacks that motivational thrust. In this
case, help your client to see that unhealthy envy leads them to seek
blindly what they think they desire, irrespective of their true longterm want. Far from being motivational, unhealthy envy is
evidence that the person is in a disturbed state of mind.
Step 2: Take responsibility for your unhealthy envy
In RECBT, we argue that people or things do not make you unhealthily
envious; rather you create these feelings by the rigid and extreme beliefs
that you hold about such people and things. You may object that this
involves you blaming yourself for creating your feelings of unhealthy envy,
but this objection is based on a misconception. It assumes that taking
responsibility for creating your unhealthy envy is synonymous with self-
Dealing with unhealthy envy
243
blame. In truth, responsibility means that you take ownership for the irrational beliefs that underpin your unhealthy envy while accepting yourself for
doing so. Blame, on the other hand, means that you regard yourself as
being bad for creating your own unhealthy envy.
The idea that emotional problems (including unhealthy envy) are
based largely on the way that a person thinks about what happens
to them is, as you know, a central plank in RECBT. However, for
many clients it will be a new idea. Thus, your clients may hold that
the reason why they are unhealthily envious is that their friends
have new clothes and they don't. This is an example of `A-C' thinking where `A' is others having what I want, but lack and `C' is the
emotion of unhealthy envy. Rather, we argue that the reason that
the person experiences unhealthy envy is largely due to the fact that
they hold a set of irrational beliefs about this state of inequality. If
they held a set of rational beliefs about the deprivation, they would
experience healthy envy rather than unhealthy envy.
If your clients continue to have dif®culty accepting responsibility
for their unhealthy envy, it is important for you to identify the
source of this dif®culty. The most common obstacle is shame. You
will recall that shame in this context involves inferring that one
has fallen from grace and that correspondingly the person's selfesteem plummets. If shame is a signi®cant block, it will mean that
your clients will not admit that they do have an unhealthy envy
problem or if they do admit this, they will blame other people.
Consult Chapter 5 for a full overview concerning how to respond to
shame based problems.
It is important to help your clients to understand the impact of
this as well as other obstacles on their emotional problems. Then,
help them to develop alternatives to these obstacles and review the
impact of these alternatives on their emotional problem-solving.
This often helps clients to deal effectively with these obstacles. If
not, you may need to do a more detailed assessment of the obstacle,
which is outside the brief of this book.
Step 3: Identify the themes about which you tend to
feel unhealthy envy
The best way of identifying what you tend to feel unhealthy envy about is to
understand the major theme associated with unhealthy envy and how this
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theme is manifest with respect to your personal domain. As I outlined, the
major theme in unhealthy envy is when someone else has something that
you prize, but don't have. It is also important that you distinguish between
unhealthy envy that is mainly object focused (in which case keep a list of
the objects that you tend to covet) or person focused (in which case keep a
list of the people about whom you tend to be envious).
If your clients ®nd it dif®cult to ®nd their unhealthy envy related
theme, you can help them by assessing a few speci®c examples of
their unhealthy envy. Have them focus on a speci®c situation in
which they felt unhealthily envious and ask them what they were
most unhealthily envious about. If they still ®nd it dif®cult to
identify the theme in this or other speci®c situations, use the
`magic question' technique. This involves you doing the following:
Have your clients focus on the situation in which they felt unhealthily envious.
Ask them to nominate one ingredient that would eliminate or signi®cantly
reduce their feelings of unhealthy envy without changing the situation.
The opposite of this nominated ingredient is what they are most hurt about.
Lionel was ®nding it dif®cult to pinpoint the speci®c theme with respect to
his feelings of unhealthy envy about his friends. Thus, he used the `magic
question' technique as follows:
Lionel focused on the situation in which he felt unhealthily envious:
`My friends are out playing when I have to study.'
He nominated one ingredient that would eliminate or signi®cantly reduce
his unhealthy envy without changing the situation:
`Not being in a deprived situation.'
The opposite of this nominated ingredient was what he is most unhealthily
envious about:
`Being in a deprived situation.'
If you assess a number of speci®c examples of your clients'
unhealthy envy in this way, the relevant unhealthy envy related
theme should be apparent. In Lionel's case, it was being deprived of
so many good things which his friends all enjoyed.
If your client is envious about two `deprivations', it may be that
there are two unhealthy envy related themes present in your client's
unhealthy envy. For example, your client may feel unhealthily
envious about the deprivation of time which they had so little of
Dealing with unhealthy envy
245
and others had in greater abundance. In addition, they may feel
envious of the quality of friendships that others demonstrated
which they lacked. If this is the case, deal with them one at a time
and have your client nominate the theme which they want to focus
on ®rst.
Step 4: Identify the three components of your
unhealthy envy response and set goals with respect
to each component
The next step is for you to list the three elements of your unhealthy envy
response in the face of each of the relevant themes listed above.
Identify the three components of your unhealthy envy
response
I use the term `unhealthy envy response' to describe the three main components that make up this response. The three components of your
unhealthy envy response are the emotional, behavioural and thinking
components.
Emotional component
The emotional component here is, of course, unhealthy envy.
Behavioural component
The behavioural component concerns overt behaviour or action tendencies
that you engage in or `feel like' engaging in when you feel unhealthy envy.
Consult the list that I provided to help you identify your behaviour associated with each relevant theme when you feel unhealthy envy (see p. 239).
Thinking component
The thinking component associated with unhealthy envy is listed on p. 240.
Again these may be in words or in mental pictures. Consult this list if
necessary.
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Set goals with respect to each of the three components
You need to set goals so that you know what you are striving for when you
deal effectively with unhealthy envy. The three goals are emotional, behavioural and thinking goals.
Emotional goal
Your emotional goal is healthy envy rather than unhealthy envy (or whatever
synonym you prefer to the term `healthy envy'). Healthy envy is a healthy
negative emotion which is an appropriate response to someone having
something that you prize, but don't have. It helps you to think objectively
about the situation and your response to it and helps you to move on with
your life rather than get stuck or bogged down.
The concept that healthy envy is the healthy alternative to
unhealthy envy when someone has what your client desires but
lacks is based on the following idea. Such an adversity is negative
and therefore it is realistic to have a negative emotion about it.
The choice, therefore, is between an unhealthy negative emotion
(unhealthy envy) or a healthy negative emotion (healthy envy).
However, what if your clients specify unrealistic goals? Here are a
number of such goals and how to respond to clients who nominate
them:
`I don't want to feel unhealthily envious.'
Show your clients that they have indicated what they do not want to feel in the
face of someone having something that they covet, but do not have. Your
clients need to specify how they do want to feel instead of unhealthy envy.
`I want to feel less unhealthily envious.'
Show your clients that as unhealthy envy is a disturbed emotion, wanting to
feel less unhealthily envious is still to nominate as a goal a disturbed emotion,
albeit of lesser intensity. Show your clients that healthy envy can be strong and
healthy.
`I don't want to feel anything.'
Not feeling anything in the face of someone having something that your clients
covet, but do not have, will not help your clients to decide if they genuinely
want what they covet and if it is truly what they want, it will not motivate
them to take appropriate action to get it. Help your clients to see this. Also
show them that the only way that they could achieve a state of not feeling
Dealing with unhealthy envy
247
anything is to feel completely indifferent about not having what they covet.
This can be achieved only if your clients lie to themselves. Show them this and
discourage them from setting such a goal.
Behavioural goal
Your behavioural goal should re¯ect actions that are based on healthy envy
rather than unhealthy envy. The following are the most common behaviours
associated with healthy envy. You may wish to compare these behaviours
with those associated with unhealthy envy that I presented on p. 239.
You strive to obtain the desired possession if it is truly what you want.
It is important that your clients understand that as they strive to
develop healthy behavioural responses to not having what they
prize that someone else has, they will still feel the urge to act in
ways that are dysfunctional, as listed on p. 239. Help them to
understand the reason for this. Explain to them that as they
question their beliefs and commit themselves to strengthening
their conviction in their rational beliefs and to weakening their
conviction in their irrational beliefs, their irrational beliefs will
still be active and producing urges for them to act dysfunctionally.
Encourage your clients to accept these urges, to recognise that they
do not have to act on them and to use them as cues to act in
functional ways.
Thinking goal
As well as setting behavioural goals related to the feeling of healthy envy
about a threat posed by a third person to your relationship, it is important
that you set thinking goals associated with this emotion. The following are
the most common forms of thinking associated with healthy envy rather than
unhealthy envy. Again you may wish to compare these forms of thinking with
those associated with unhealthy envy that I presented on p. 240.
You honestly admit to yourself that you desire the desired possession.
You are honest with yourself if you are not happy with your possessions, rather
than defensively trying to convince yourself that you are happy with them when you
are not.
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You think about how to obtain the desired possession because you desire it for
healthy reasons.
You can allow the other person to have and enjoy the desired possession without
denigrating that person or the possession.
As the above list shows, the dominant feature of thinking associated with
healthy envy is that it is realistic and balanced. Please remember that such
thinking may be in words or in mental pictures.
The point I made above with respect to clients' behavioural goals is
also relevant with respect to their thinking goals. Clients will still
have some conviction in their irrational beliefs until they have full
conviction in their rational beliefs. Given this, your clients' irrational beliefs will have some impact on their subsequent thinking
as they strive to achieve their goals. Thus, highly distorted thoughts
will still come into your clients' minds. Help your clients to understand why this is the case. When you come to help them deal with
these forms of post-irrational belief thinking, do one or more of
the following as indicated. Discuss this issue with your RECBT
supervisor, if necessary:
Encourage your clients to acknowledge the existence of such thoughts without
trying to suppress them, distract themselves from them or engage with them.
If relevant, use the presence of this post-irrational belief thinking to help your
clients to identify and deal with the irrational beliefs.
Question the empirical nature of these thinking `C's' once or twice and then
return to the acceptance strategy detailed above.
Step 5: Recognise that your symptoms of unhealthy
envy are evidence of disturbance and not necessarily
that you truly desire the prized object that the other
person has, but you don't
Once you have identi®ed your unhealthily envious response and its healthy
alternative, it is important that you realise one important point. If you feel
envious a lot, your feelings and the thoughts that accompany them are
most likely to be evidence that you have an envy problem rather than proof
that you truly desire what the other has that you don't.
When you think that you really want something that others have that you
don't because you have envious feelings and envious thoughts, you are
Dealing with unhealthy envy
249
again succumbing to the two thinking errors known as emotional reasoning
and cognitive reasoning. In emotional reasoning, you assume that because
you feel envious, that is evidence that you truly want the prized object.
In cognitive reasoning, you think that your envious thoughts are proof
that again your desire is for the object itself and not to make equal what in
your eyes is an unequal situation (where someone has what you prize, but
don't have).
If your unhealthy envy is chronic, when you have envious feelings and
thoughts, your task is to remind yourself that these are, in all probability,
signs that you are thinking irrationally and that you need to identify and
deal with the irrational beliefs that underpin your unhealthy envy response
rather than to act on them. You may well ®nd this dif®cult, because when
you have envious feelings and thoughts, you will also experience an urge to
act on them. Refraining from doing so will go against the grain and will
thus be uncomfortable, but if you do so you will put yourself in the position
of dealing effectively with your unhealthy envy. If you don't, you will maintain this emotional problem.
Step 6: Identify your general irrational beliefs and
alternative general rational beliefs
A general irrational belief leading to your unhealthy envy response is an
irrational belief that you hold across situations de®ned by the major theme:
someone has something that you prize, but don't have. Remember that your
unhealthy envy can be object focused or person focused (see pp. 237±238
for how to distinguish between the two). In addition your unhealthy envy
may relate to the ego part of your personal domain or the non-ego part of
your personal domain. The rational alternative to this belief, which will also
be general in nature, will account for your healthy envy response.
Identify your general irrational beliefs
When you identify a general irrational belief, you take a common unhealthy
envy related theme (see above) and add to this a general rigid belief and the
main extreme belief that is derived from the rigid belief. In unhealthy envy,
your main extreme belief will be either a discomfort intolerance belief or a
self-depreciation belief.
Let me provide examples of the irrational beliefs associated with each of
the four types of unhealthy envy:
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Object focused unhealthy ego envy:
`I must have the latest gadgets that some of my friends have and if I don't have them
then I am useless.'
Object focused unhealthy non-ego envy:
`I must have the latest gadgets that some of my friends have and I can't stand the
deprivation of not having them.'
Person focused unhealthy ego envy:
`I must have what my younger sisters have and if I don't, then they are better than
me.'
Person focused unhealthy non-ego envy:
`I must have what my younger sisters have and I can't bear the inequality of not
having what they have.'
Identify your alternative general rational beliefs
When you identify your alternative general rational belief, you take the same
common theme and add to this a general ¯exible belief and a general
discomfort tolerance belief or a general self-acceptance belief. For
example:
Object focused healthy ego envy:
`I would like to have the latest gadgets that some of my friends have, but it is not
necessary that I have them. If I don't have them, that is unfortunate, but it does not
prove that I am useless. I am an unrateable, fallible human being whether or not I
have these gadgets.'
Object focused healthy non-ego envy:
`I would like to have the latest gadgets that some of my friends have, but it is not
necessary that I have them. If I don't have them, it would be a struggle for me to
tolerate the deprivation, but I can do so and it would be worth it to me to do so.'
Person focused healthy ego envy:
`I would like to have what my younger sisters have, but I don't have to have them. If I
don't, that would be bad, but it would not prove that they are better than me. I am
equal to them even though thay may have more than me.'
Person focused healthy non-ego envy:
`I would like to have what my younger sisters have, but I don't have to have them. It
would be hard for me to put up with the resultant inequality, but I can do so and it
would be in my healthy interests to do so.'
As you will have noticed in the Client's Guide, I encourage readers
to identify and work with their general irrational beliefs and to
develop general rational beliefs and, as you will see, when they are
Dealing with unhealthy envy
251
facing speci®c instances of their problems, I encourage them to
focus on speci®c examples of both sets of beliefs. This will be at
variance with your RECBT practice, where you will begin with
speci®c examples of your clients' problems and then proceed to
work at a more general level with their problems and how these
relate to one another.
The reason I have chosen to go `general' rather than `speci®c'
when helping readers to deal with their emotional problems is a
pragmatic one. In this book, I aim to help people to deal with a
range of emotional problems and therefore, in my view, it is best to
give readers general guidance with respect to dealing with this
range of problems and then help them to move from the general to
the speci®c rather than vice versa. My considered view was that I
just do not have the space to help readers focus on speci®c
examples of their emotional problems and then generalise from
this speci®c level.
Consequently, one way that you can help your clients who are
using the Client's Guide is to help them to work with speci®c
examples of their emotional problem, in this case unhealthy envy.
Use the following sequence as you do so and help your clients to
select a speci®c example of their unhealthy envy problem
express why their unhealthy envy constitutes a problem for them
identify what they felt most unhealthily envious about in the situation
identify the three speci®c components of their unhealthy envy response and set
speci®c goals with respect to each component
identify their speci®c irrational beliefs and alternative speci®c rational beliefs
question their speci®c beliefs.
In helping your clients to deal with a speci®c example of their
unhealthy envy, you can teach them how to use RECBT's ABCD
form, which appears in Appendix 6.
The following steps are the same as those that appear in Steps
8±11 later in this chapter. Thus, help your clients to
face up to what they are most envious about in imagery (if necessary)
face the same things in reality (if possible) and take appropriate action
capitalise on what they learned
generalise their learning.
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Step 7: Question your general beliefs
I recommended in previous chapters that you ®rst question together your
general rigid belief and its general ¯exible belief alternative and then
question together your general extreme belief and its general non-extreme
belief alternative.
Question your general rigid belief and its general flexible
belief alternative
First, take your general rigid belief and its general ¯exible belief alternative
and write them down next to one another on a sheet of paper. Then ask
yourself:
Which is true and which is false?
Which is sensible logically and which does not make sense?
Which has largely constructive results and which has largely unconstructive results?
Write down your answer to each of these questions on your piece of paper,
giving reasons for each answer. Consult Appendix 2 for help with the
answers to these questions, which you need to adapt and apply to the
beliefs you are questioning.
Question your general extreme belief and its general nonextreme belief alternative
Next, take your general extreme belief and its general non-extreme belief
alternative and again write them down next to one another on a sheet of
paper. Then, ask yourself the same three questions that you used with your
general rigid belief and its general ¯exible belief alternative. Again write
down your answer to each of these questions on your piece of paper, giving
reasons for each answer. I suggest that you consult Appendix 3 (for help
with questioning awfulising beliefs and non-awfulising beliefs), Appendix 4
(for help with questioning discomfort intolerance beliefs and discomfort
tolerance beliefs) and Appendix 5 (for help with questioning depreciation
beliefs and unconditional acceptance beliefs). Again, you need to adapt
and apply these arguments to the beliefs you are questioning.
You should now be ready to commit to acting and thinking in ways
consistent with your general rational belief.
Dealing with unhealthy envy
253
I included Appendices 2±5 in the Client's Guide as general guidelines to help readers to question their irrational and rational
beliefs (reproduced in this book as Appendices 2±5). If you are
working with clients who are using the Client's Guide, you will
have a chance to look at the questioning work that your clients
have done at this point and give them feedback on that work. No
book can provide such feedback.
I have suggested that readers question their rigid belief and their
¯exible belief together and then their main extreme belief and
non-extreme belief equivalent together using three criteria as
shown below:
Rigid belief vs. ¯exible belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status
Main extreme belief vs. main non-extreme belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status.
However, there are other ways of questioning beliefs as shown
below. When using the Client's Guide with your clients, outline
these other approaches in case they do not resonate with the
approach I put forward in the Client's Guide. The important point
is that your clients use all three arguments with each of their
rational and irrational beliefs.
Rigid belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status
Flexible belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status
Main extreme belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status
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Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
Main non-extreme belief
empirical status
logical status
pragmatic status.
And also:
Rigid belief
empirical status
Flexible belief
empirical status
Rigid belief
logical status
Flexible belief
logical status
Rigid belief
pragmatic status
Flexible belief
pragmatic status
Main extreme belief
empirical status
Main non-extreme belief
empirical status
Main extreme belief
logical status
Main non-extreme belief
logical status
Main extreme belief
pragmatic status
Main non-extreme belief
pragmatic status.
The ®nal point I want to make about questioning beliefs concerns
the concept of persuasiveness. Perhaps the most important aspect
of the questioning process is for your clients to develop arguments
Dealing with unhealthy envy
255
concerning the irrationality of their irrational beliefs and the
rationality of their rational beliefs that are persuasive to them. So,
encourage your clients to develop such persuasive arguments and
to make a note of these for future reference.
Step 8: Face your unhealthy envy related theme in
imagery
I hope that you have made a commitment to act on your general rational
beliefs (i.e. ¯exible belief and unconditional self-acceptance belief ).
Assuming that you have, your basic task is to face up to someone having
something that you prize, but don't have, and to learn to think rationally
about it.
Up to this point you have worked at a general level with respect to your
unhealthy envy related theme, dealing with the general irrational beliefs that
account for your unhealthy envy and developing your alternative general
rational beliefs. However, when you come to apply your general rational
beliefs in dealing with someone having something that you prize, but don't
have, you need to bear in mind one important point. Since you make
yourself unhealthily envious about speci®c events (actual or imagined)
where someone has something that you prize, but do not have, you need to
deal with these events by rehearsing speci®c variants of your general
rational beliefs.
While the best way to do this is in speci®c situations where someone has
something that you prize, but don't have, you may derive bene®t by using
imagery ®rst. If this is the case, you need to do the following:
Imagine a speci®c situation in which you felt or may feel unhealthily envious about
someone having something that you prize, but don't have and focus, in your mind's
eye, on what you felt most unhealthily envious about (i.e. your `A').
Focus on this `A' while rehearsing a speci®c rational belief relevant to the situation.
As you do this, try to make yourself feel healthily envious, rather than unhealthily
envious.
Then see yourself acting in ways consistent with your rational belief, such as
expressing admiration for rather than denigrating the person or object concerned.
Recognise that some of your post-belief thinking may be distorted. Respond to it
without getting bogged down doing so. Accept the presence of any remaining
distorted thoughts without engaging with them.
Repeat the above steps until you feel suf®ciently ready to put this sequence into
practice in your life.
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Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
If you ®nd that facing your unhealthy envy related `A', in your mind's eye, is
too much for you, use the `challenging, but not overwhelming' principle.
This means that instead of imagining yourself facing someone having
something that you prize, but don't have that you ®nd `overwhelming' at the
present time, choose a similar unhealthy related `A' that you would ®nd
`challenging, but not overwhelming'. Then employ the same steps that I
have outlined above. Work in this way with modi®ed unhealthy envy related
`A's' until you ®nd your original one `challenging, but not overwhelming'
and then use the steps again.
Some of your clients may say that they can't get very clear images
when they try to picture events in their mind's eye. While they may
get more out of imagery techniques if they can get such clear
images, they will still get something out of facing someone having
something that they prize, but don't have in imagery if they don't.
So, if clients want to face their particular adversity in imagery
before they do so in reality, encourage them to do so no matter how
clear their mental images are.
Step 9: Act in ways that are consistent with your
general rational belief
As I mentioned earlier, when you experience the emotional problem of
unhealthy envy and the thoughts that accompany it, you will also experience a strong urge to act on them. If you do, you will serve only to
strengthen the irrational beliefs that underpin such behaviour. So after you
have questioned your irrational and rational beliefs in the way I suggested
above and committed yourself to strengthening your conviction in your
rational beliefs, it is very important that you act in ways that will do this and
to refrain from acting in ways that will do the opposite.
So, it is crucial that you act according to the behavioural goals that you
identi®ed in Step 3 and accept that while you do so, you will still have the
urge to act and think in unhealthy ways. Accept that this is an almost
inevitable and natural part of the change process and these unhealthy
urges and thoughts will eventually subside if you do not engage with them.
I stress that this is dif®cult, but if you are clear about what you need to do
and act accordingly you will stack the odds in favour of, rather than against,
you dealing effectively with your unhealthy envy.
You may ®nd that your clients report various obstacles to facing
situations about which they have felt unhealthily envious while
Dealing with unhealthy envy
257
acting in ways that are consistent with their general rational
beliefs. I list here some of the major obstacles and suggest ways of
addressing them with your clients.
`If I face envy related situations, I will become too upset.'
Here, your client may have a discomfort intolerance belief about feeling upset.
This is evidenced in the phrase `I will become too upset'. Help your client to see
that if they do become upset, they can tolerate this and still act in ways that
are consistent with their rational beliefs.
`If I face envy related situations, I will ®nd the urge to act dysfunctionally too
tempting.'
Here your client considers that the urge to act in ways that have previously
maintained their unhealthy envy may be too powerful for them to resist.
Consequently, they are reluctant to face envy related situations while rehearsing their developing rational beliefs and acting constructively. Help your clients
to develop a greater sense of control over their urges by allowing them to be
there and showing themselves that they do not have to act on such urges.
`I don't feel comfortable facing envy related situations.'
Help your clients to see that if they wait until they are comfortable before
facing envy related situations, they will wait a very long time. Show them that
if they are comfortable about facing such situations, it is likely that they are
not unhealthily envious about them. Consequently, it is important that you
help your clients realise that they are bound to be uncomfortable about facing
an envy related situation even after they have disputed their unhealthy envy
creating irrational beliefs. Show them that they can tolerate this discomfort
and that it is worth it to them to do so.
Step 10: Capitalise on what you learned
When you have faced a situation in which you experienced unhealthy envy
and dealt with it as best you could, it is important that you re¯ect on what
you did and what you learned. In particular, if you were able to face the
situation, rehearse your speci®c rational beliefs until you felt healthy envy,
ask yourself how you can capitalise on what you achieved. If you experienced any problems, respond to the following questions:
Did I face the situation, and if not, why not?
Did I rehearse my rational beliefs before, during or after facing the situation, and if
not, why not?
Did I execute my plan to face the situation, and if not, why not?
Did I engage with post-belief distorted thinking, and if so, why?
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Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
Re¯ect on your experience and put into practice what you learned the next
time you face a situation in which someone has something that you prize,
but lack.
It is useful to monitor your client's responses to these questions and
help them to re¯ect on any issues that they have not considered.
Step 11: Generalise your learning
Once you have dealt with your unhealthy envy in a speci®c situation by
holding the relevant speci®c version of your general rational belief and by
acting and thinking in ways that are consistent with it, you can generalise
this learning to situations de®ned by your unhealthy envy based theme.
Virginia was particularly prone to person focused unhealthy ego envy with
respect to her friends' boyfriends. She did not have a boyfriend of her own and in
order to prove that she was lovable, she ¯irted with their boyfriends and
encouraged them to make passes at her. When they did, she took that as proof
that she was lovable and rebuffed their advances. In helping herself deal with
this type of unhealthy envy, she did the following:
Virginia assessed the three components of her unhealthy envy response and
set goals with respect to all three components.
She identi®ed her relevant general irrational belief regarding her envy related
theme (i.e. `I must have what my friends have and I am less lovable than them
if I don't') that underpinned her unhealthy envy response. She then identi®ed
her alternative general rational belief (i.e. `I would like to have what my friends
have, but I don't have to have it. It is frustrating when I don't have it, but it
does not prove that I am less lovable than them. We are equal in lovability
even if we are unequal in that they have what I want') that underpinned her
healthy envy response.
She questioned her general irrational belief and her general rational belief
until she clearly saw that the former were false, made no sense and were
detrimental to her and that the latter were true, sensible and healthy.
She acted on shortened versions of her rational beliefs in speci®c situations
and had non-¯irtatious conversations with her friends' boyfriends rather than
encouraging them to make passes at her.
As she acted on her rational beliefs, she tolerated the discomfort that she felt
and accepted that some of her distorted and skewed negative thinking would
still be in her mind as she did so. She let such thinking be without engaging
with it, suppressing it or distracting herself from it.
As this section shows, you can generalise what you learn about dealing
with unhealthy envy from situation to situation as de®ned by your unhealthy
envy based inference.
Dealing with unhealthy envy
259
USING RECBT'S ABCD FORM TO DEAL WITH
SPECIFIC EXAMPLES OF YOUR UNHEALTHY
ENVY
This chapter is mainly geared to help you deal with your unhealthy envy in
general terms. However, you can also use this material to address speci®c
examples of your unhealthy envy. I have developed a self-help form to
provide the structure to assist you in this regard. It is called the ABCD
form and it appears with instructions in Appendix 6.
In Appendix 6, I outline the major problems that clients have in
using this form and how to deal with them.
OTHER IMPORTANT ISSUES IN DEALING WITH
UNHEALTHY ENVY
In the above section, I outlined an eleven step programme to deal with
unhealthy envy. In this section, I discuss some other important issues that
may be relevant to you in your work to become less prone to this emotional
problem. If you want to, you can incorporate them as additional steps in the
above step-by-step guide at points relevant to you.
Rethinking the place of objects in your life
In unhealthy envy, you think a certain way about the place of objects in your
life.3 In object focused unhealthy ego envy, you tend to think that such
objects, particularly when you don't have them, de®ne your worth as a
person. Thus, when you don't have what you prize when another person
has it, you think that you are less worthy than you would be if you did have
it. Ironically, however, were you to possess the object, your self-esteem
might be raised, but this would be temporary and you would depreciate
yourself when you focus on something else that someone else has that you
prize, but lack. This clearly shows that the possession of prized objects
does not solve your self-esteem problem; rather, it perpetuates the problem. Self-depreciation in the face of someone having something that you
3 Please remember that I am using the term `objects' in this chapter to include anything
that you prize.
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Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
prize but lack is a psychological problem and can be solved only by psychological means. In RECBT, we argue that unconditional self-acceptance
is the most robust solution to the self-esteem problems and I suggest that
you review this rational belief in Appendix 5. I also discuss it in my book
How to Accept Yourself (1999). Basically, holding this belief means that
while you may prize the object that someone else has that you don't have,
its lack does not lessen your worth and your possession of it does not raise
your worth. Your worth is ®xed and is most healthily based on certain facts
about you that do not change (i.e. your humanity, your fallibility, your
uniqueness and your aliveness). It may be better if you possessed the
object, but you are not better for having it. Interestingly, holding this
rational belief helps you to determine how important the object really is to
you, once you have stripped it of its power to determine your self-worth!
In object focused non-ego unhealthy envy, you tend to think of prized
objects that others have but you lack, as `must have' items that are
necessary for your overall happiness rather than things that are desirable
which may improve the quality of a restricted part of your life. Once you think
that something is necessary, rather than desirable but not necessary, you
overvalue it and often become obsessed by it. However, as in object focused
unhealthy ego envy, if you ®nally possess the object, your joy will be shortlived as you focus on something else that someone else has that you prize,
but lack. Again the rigid and discomfort intolerance beliefs that underpin
object focused non-ego unhealthy envy represent the existence of a psychological problem that is perpetuated rather than solved by the possession of
prized objects. Indeed, if you are prone to this type of unhealthy envy, it is
very likely that you will have a large collection of discarded objects that you
once saw as essential to your life. You discard such items as soon as you
focus on another object that someone else has that you prize, but lack. It is
only when you adopt a set of rational (¯exible and discomfort tolerance)
beliefs that you will take a realistic position on the role of objects in your life,
and in doing so, you will pursue only objects that will have enduring value
for you.
Some clients think that you may mean that any value that they
place on possessing objects is unhealthy. Help your clients to see
that this is not the case. Make the point that unhealthy interest in
objects is fuelled by two dysfunctional ideas: that possession of
coveted objects raises their self-esteem and deprivation of objects
that they think they want is intolerable. Once they put in place
more functional alternative ideas ± one's worth is not changed by
possession of coveted objects and deprivation of such objects is
Dealing with unhealthy envy
261
tolerable and is worth tolerating ± they are in a position to determine if the possession of such objects is based on true desire. On
this point help your clients to consider why they want to possess the
coveted object by asking the following questions:
Why do you want the object?
Can you see yourself enjoying or using the object over time?
Once you get the object, will your attention shift to something else that you
covet but don't have?
If your clients do not provide good, persuasive answers to these
questions, it may be that they need to do more work on developing
healthy envy-based rational beliefs.
Making healthy comparisons
As I have already shown you, in person focused unhealthy envy your focus
is on the person who has the object that you think you prize rather than on
the object itself. I say `think you prize' here because in this type of
unhealthy envy, should someone else with whom you are not in competition
possess this object, you will not experience unhealthy envy. Thus, person
focused unhealthy envy involves competition and comparison. The goal of
rational thinking is not to eradicate competition and comparison, but to
maximise the chances that when you are competitive and make comparisons, you do so healthily.
In person focused unhealthy ego envy, you are making comparisons
between yourself and another person with whom you feel competitive, and
if you lose out in the comparison, your self-esteem goes down. As in object
focused unhealthy ego envy, in its person focused counterpart you adhere
to the idea that you can rate a person and your rival has more worth than
you if the other person has something that you think you prize, but lack. To
deal with this type of unhealthy envy, you once again need to work towards
unconditional self-acceptance and realise that you and your rival are equal
in worth and that this cannot be altered by the possession or nonpossession of prized objects. Adopting this philosophy will help you
determine whether you want the prized object for what it can offer you in
that sphere of your life or whether you want it only because your rival has it.
In person focused unhealthy non-ego envy, you make a similar comparison between yourself and your rival and you conclude that it is unfair
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Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
when your rival has something that you think you prize, but lack. The root of
this type of unhealthy envy is in your rigid belief that such unfairness must
not exist in the ®rst place or must be eradicated in the second place and that
if not, the continuing unfairness is intolerable. As a result, you seek to make
things fair either by getting what you don't have or by spoiling what the
other person has. This is quite clearly a psychological problem and cannot
be solved by making things fair. It can be solved only by adopting a healthy
rational belief towards unfairness. You do this by swallowing a bitter pill
and see that, however undesirable, there is no law of the universe that
decrees that unfairness (as expressed in situations where certain people
with whom you are in competition have what you think you prize, but don't
have), must not exist in the ®rst place or must be eradicated in the second
place. You also see that the ongoing existence of such unfairness is
dif®cult to tolerate, but you can tolerate it and it is worth it to you to do so.
If you adopt this philosophy, you will be able to determine whether or not
you want the prized object for its own sake and whether or not it will have
any enduring value for you. You will also see that while it may be unfair (to
you) not having what certain others have, it is equally unfair (to others) not
having what you have. You will come to see, therefore, that `unfairness' is
an inference and a matter of perspective rather than an objectively determined fact.
Why you feel unhealthy envy much of the time and
how to deal with this
If you are particularly prone to unhealthy envy, you hold the following belief,
which I call a `chronic unhealthy envy based general irrational belief':
`I must have what I want and if I don't have it I am unworthy and less worthy than
those with whom I am in competition who do have it. It is also unfair when I don't
have what I want when others have it and I must eradicate this unfairness and I can't
bear it if I can't.'
As you can see, this belief refers to both ego and non-ego aspects, since in
my experience people who have a problem with chronic envy have problems
with envy in both these realms of the personal domain.
Holding this belief you will do the following:
You will focus on what you don't have when others have it and will assign more
importance to this than to what you have. When you focus on what you don't have,
you will disturb yourself with a speci®c version of your general irrational belief.
Dealing with unhealthy envy
263
You will initially be pleased to get what you have previously prized but lacked, but you
will soon lose interest in this because you have used the object to solve your
psychological problem and it can never do that and you will soon become aware of
something else that others have that you want, but don't have.
You will ignore all the things that you have previously prized, obtained and lost
interest in and continue to think that what you presently covet will solve your envy
problem.
How to deal with chronic unhealthy envy
In order to deal with this chronic sense of unhealthy envy, you need to
develop and apply an alternative general rational belief which protects you
from such unhealthy envy.
`I would like to have what I want, but I don't need to have it. If I don't get it, that would
be unfortunate, but it would not prove that I am unworthy or less worthy than those
with whom I am in competition who do have it. My worth is ®xed and is equal to the
worth of others and that cannot change unless I refuse to acknowledge this fact.
While it may be unfair when I don't have what I want when others have it, I don't have
to eradicate this unfairness and if I can't, that would be hard to bear, but I can do so
and it would be in my healthy interests to do so.'
When you hold this belief and there exists objective evidence that others
have what you truly want, you will feel healthy envy rather than unhealthy
envy because you will be processing this with a speci®c rational belief.
In addition, this belief will help you to
focus and appreciate what you do have as well as acknowledge what you truly want
that others have and you don't
see that your possessions have their place, but are not as important as you previously thought
pursue what you don't have when it is likely to have lasting rather than transitory
value for you and when it is not too time consuming to pursue it.
If your clients ®nd that the above explanation is too complex, you
can help them to see that holding rigid beliefs about not having
what they covet but lack means that unless they are clear that they
do not want the object, they assume that they do want it. When
their beliefs are ¯exible, they can be more objective about this issue.
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Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
How to examine the strength of your desire for what
others have that you prize, but don't have
When you operate according to a set of general and speci®c rational beliefs
with respect to what someone else has that you prize, but don't have, you
should be able to gauge how important the desired object truly is to you.
However, if you are still unsure that you really want what others have that
you prize, but don't have, answer one or more of the following questions:
Ask yourself how strong is your desire for the prized object?
Ask yourself whether or not you would still want the object if getting it did not
improve your self-esteem or make you feel better about life?
If the other people who possess the desired object suddenly discarded it, would you
still want it?
Draw up a list of pros and cons for striving to get the object.
Assessing and dealing with emotional problems
about unhealthy envy
In previous chapters, I discussed the concept of meta-disturbance (literally
disturbance about disturbance). It is important to assess carefully the
nature of this meta-disturbance about unhealthy envy before you can best
deal with it.
The best way to start dealing with the assessment of any emotional
problems you might have about unhealthy envy is to ask yourself the
question: `How do I feel about my feeling of unhealthy envy?' The most
common emotional problems that people have about unhealthy envy are as
follows: anxiety, depression, shame and unhealthy self-anger. I refer you to
the relevant chapters on these emotional problems in this book for help in
dealing with meta-emotional problems about unhealthy envy.
Your clients will sometimes need to address their emotional problems about unhealthy envy before they address their unhealthy
envy. They need to do this particularly when their secondary emotional problem gets in the way of them dealing with their primary
unhealthy envy. However, despite the interfering presence of their
secondary problem, some clients still want to target their primary
envy. There are two ways of dealing with this situation:
Dealing with unhealthy envy
265
Provide a rationale to help your clients target their secondary problem. For
example, explain to your client that their secondary problem is like having a
ball and chain around their leg while they are climbing a steep hill (akin to
their primary feelings of unhealthy envy). In the same way as climbing the hill
is easier when they remove the ball and chain from their leg, dealing with their
primary unhealthy envy is easier when they deal with their secondary problem
®rst.
Go along with your clients' wish to deal with their primary unhealthy envy and
when they fail to do so, help them to understand that the reason why they
failed is because they had not addressed their secondary problem and then
agree that they will now do so.
Developing and rehearsing a non-unhealthy envy
world view
People develop views of the world as it relates to them that make it more or
less likely that they will experience unhealthy negative emotions. The world
views that render you vulnerable to unhealthy envy do so in a similar way to
the chronic unhealthy envy based general irrational belief discussed above
(i.e. `I must have what I want and if I don't have it, I am unworthy and less
worthy than those with whom I am in competition who do have it. It is also
unfair when I don't have what I want when others have it and I must
eradicate this unfairness and I can't bear it if I can't') by making you focus
unduly on not having that which you prize when others do have it. However,
these unhealthy envy based world views have this effect on you much more
widely.
It is important that you develop realistic views of the world that will help
you to deal with unhealthy envy. In Table 9, you will ®nd an illustrative list
of such world views rather than an exhaustive one, so you can get an idea
of what I mean, which will enable you to develop your own. In Table 9, I ®rst
describe a world view that renders you vulnerable to unhealthy envy and
then I give its healthy alternative. You will see that the former is characterised by a view of life where objects and possessions are seen as the
source of happiness and a major determinant of personal worth. In the
latter, a more balanced view of life is put forward in which objects and
possessions are not the `be all and end all' of life and of personal worth. As
a result, this latter view will help you deal more healthily with situations
where others have what you prize, but lack.
If you hold rational beliefs that are consistent with the views of the world
listed on the right hand side of Table 9 and if you act and think in ways that
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Dealing with emotional problems: a practitioner's guide
Table 9 World views that render you vulnerable to unhealthy envy and help you to deal
with unhealthy envy
Views of the world that render you
vulnerable to unhealthy envy
Views of the world that help you
deal with unhealthy envy
My worth is measured by my
possessions
My worth is determined by my aliveness
and not by my possessions
If others with whom I am in competition If others with whom I am in competition
have more than me, then they are
have more than me, they have more
worthier than me
than me, but we are of equal worth
The more I have, the happier I will be
My happiness is determined by my
striving to achieve what I ®nd
personally meaningful and I am unlikely
to ®nd such meaning in possessions
I can be happy only if I get the
possessions that I want
I can be happy even if I do not get the
possessions that I want
If someone has what I want, I really
want it
If someone has what I want, I think I
really want it, but that level of desire is
coloured by my feelings of unhealthy
envy
It's unfair if others have what I don't
have, but it is fair if I have what others
don't have
If it's unfair that others have what I
don't have, it's unfair to others if they
don't have what I have
are, in turn, consistent with these rational beliefs, then doing all this will
help you become less prone to unhealthy envy.
We have reached the end of this book. I hope you have found it instructive and valuable and I would appreciate any feedback c/o the publisher.
References
Beck, A.T. (1976). Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders. New York: International Universities Press.
Burns, D. (1980). Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy. New York: William Morrow.
Dryden, W. (1999). How to Accept Yourself. London: Sheldon.
Dryden, W. (2009a). Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy: Distinctive Features. Hove, East
Sussex: Routledge.
Dryden, W. (2009b). How to Think and Intervene Like an REBT Therapist. Hove, East
Sussex: Routledge.
Dryden, W. (2009c). Self-Discipline: How to Get It and How to Keep It. London: Sheldon.
Gilbert, P. (2009). The Compassionate Mind: A New Approach to Life's Challenges.
London: Robinson.
Wills, F. (2009). Beck's Cognitive Therapy: Distinctive Features. Hove, East Sussex:
Routledge.
1
Descriptions, foundations and illustrations
of thinking errors and their realistic and
balanced alternatives
Descriptions of thinking errors and
realistic and balanced alternatives
Illustrations1
Jumping to unwarranted
conclusions
`Since they have seen me fail . . . [as I
absolutely should not have done] . . .
they will view me as an incompetent
worm'
Here, when something bad happens,
you make a negative interpretation and
treat this as a fact even though there is
no de®nite evidence that convincingly
support your conclusions
Sticking to the facts and testing out `Since they have seen me fail . . . [as I
would have preferred not to do, but do
your hunches
demand that I absolutely should not
have done] . . . I am not sure how they
Here, when something bad happens,
you stick to the facts and resolve to test will view me. I think that some will think
badly of me, others will be
out any negative interpretations you
compassionate towards me and yet
may make which you view as hunches
others may not have noticed or be
to be examined rather than as facts
neutral about my failure. I can always
ask them, if I want to know'
`If I fail at any important task . . . [as I
must not do] . . . I will only ever fail
Here, you use non-overlapping black or again'
white categories
All-or-none thinking
Multi-category thinking
Here, you make use of a number of
relevant categories
`If I do fail at any important task . . . [as I
would prefer not to do, but do not
demand that I must not do] . . . I may
well both succeed and fail at important
tasks in the future'
1 In these illustrations, the beliefs (irrational and rational) are shown in square brackets
and the thinking errors and realistic and balanced alternatives are underlined.
Descriptions of thinking errors and
realistic and balanced alternatives
Illustrations
Overgeneralising
`[My boss must like me] . . . If my boss
does not like me, it follows that nobody
at work will like me'
Here, when something bad happens,
you make a generalisation from this
experience that goes far beyond the
data at hand
Making a realistic generalisation
Here, when something goes wrong, you
make a generalisation from this
experience that is warranted by the data
at hand
`[I want my boss to like me, but my boss
does not have to do so] . . . If my boss
does not like me, it follows that others
at work may or may not like me'
`As things are going wrong . . . [as they
must not do and it is intolerable that
Here, you pick out a single negative
they are] . . . I can't see any good that is
detail and dwell on it exclusively so that happening in my life'
your vision of all reality becomes
darkened, like the drop of ink that
discolours the entire glass of water
Focusing on the negative
Focusing on the complexity of
experiences
Here, you focus on a negative detail,
but integrate this detail into the
complexity of positive, negative and
neutral features of life
`As things are going wrong . . . [as I
prefer, but do not demand that they
must not and when they do, I can bear
it] . . . I can see that my life is made up
of the good, the bad and the neutral '
Disqualifying the positive
`[I absolutely should not have done the
foolish things that I have done] . . .
Here, you reject positive experiences by When others compliment me on the
insisting they `don't count' for some
good things I have done, they are only
being kind to me by seeming to forget
reason or other, thus maintaining a
those foolish things'
negative view that cannot be
contradicted by your everyday
experiences
Incorporating the positive into a
complex view of your experiences
Here, you accept positive experiences
and locate these into the complexity of
positive, negative and neutral features
of life
`[I would have preferred not to have
done the foolish things that I have
done, but that does not mean that I
absolutely should not have done them]
. . . When others compliment me on the
good things I have done, I can accept
these compliments as being genuine
even though I also did some foolish
things which the others may also have
recognised '
Descriptions of thinking errors and
realistic and balanced alternatives
Illustrations
Mind reading
`I made some errors in my presentation
. . . [that I absolutely should not have
Here, you arbitrarily conclude that
made] . . . and when I looked at my
someone is reacting negatively to you,
boss, I thought he was thinking how
and you don't bother to check this out.
hopeless I was and therefore he did
You regard your thought as a fact
think this'
Owning and checking one's
thoughts about the reactions of
others
Here, you may think someone is
reacting negatively to you, but you
check it out with the other person
rather than regarding your thought as
fact
Fortune telling
Here, you anticipate that things will
turn out badly, and you feel convinced
that your prediction is an already
established fact
`I made some errors in my presentation
. . . [that I would have preferred not to
have made, but that does not mean that
I absolutely should not have made
them] . . . and when I looked at my boss
I thought he was thinking that I was
hopeless, but I quickly realised that this
was my thought rather than his and
resolved to ask him about this in the
morning'
`Because I failed at this simple task . . .
[which I absolutely should not have
done] . . . I think that I will get a very
bad appraisal and thus this will happen'
Because I failed at this simple task . . .
[which I would have preferred not to
have done, but I do not have to be
immune from so doing] . . . I may get a
Here, you anticipate that things may
very bad appraisal, but this is unlikely
turn out badly, but you regard that as a
since I have done far more good than
prediction that needs examining
bad at work during the last year'
against the available data and is not an
established fact
Owning and checking one's
thoughts about what will happen in
the future
Always and never thinking
`Because my present conditions of
living are not good . . . [and they are
Here, when something bad happens,
actually intolerable because they must
you conclude that it will always happen
be better than they are] . . . it follows
and/or the good alternative will never
that they'll always be this way and I'll
occur
never have any happiness'
`Because my present conditions of
living are not good . . . [but they are
tolerable because they don't have to be
Here, when something bad happens
better than they are] . . . it does not
you recognise that while it may happen
follow that they will always be that way
again that it is not inevitable that it will
and I can be happy again'
and it is very unlikely that it will always
occur. Also, you recognise that the
good alternative may well occur in the
future and that it is very unlikely that it
will never happen
Balanced thinking about the past,
present and future
Descriptions of thinking errors and
realistic and balanced alternatives
Illustrations
Magnifying
`I made a faux pas when introducing my
new colleague . . . [which I absolutely
should not have done and it's awful that
I did so] . . . and this will have a very
negative effect on my career'
Here, when something bad happens,
you exaggerate its negativity
Keeping things in realistic
perspective
Here, when something bad happens,
you view it in its proper perspective
`I made a faux pas when introducing my
new colleague . . . [which I wish I had
not done, but I do not have to be
exempt from making. It's bad that I did
so, but hardly the end of the world] . . .
and while people may remember it for a
day or two, I doubt that it will have
much lasting impact on my career'
Minimising
`[I must do outstandingly well and I am
completely useless when I do not do
Here, you inappropriately shrink things so] . . . When I have seemingly done
until they appear tiny (your own
reasonably well, this is the result of
desirable qualities or other people's
luck and anyone could have done this.
imperfections)
Whereas if another person had done
the same thing, I would acknowledge
their achievement'
Using the same balanced
perspective for self and others
`[I want to do outstandingly well, but I
do not have to do so. I am not useless
when I do not do so] . . . When I or
Here, when you do something good
someone else has seemingly done
and/or others do something bad, you
reasonably well, this may be the result
can recognise this kind of behaviour for of luck, but it may be because I or they
what it is
fully deserved to do well '
Emotional reasoning
Here, you assume that your negative
emotions necessarily re¯ect the way
things really are: `I feel it, therefore it
must be true'
Sound reasoning based on thinking
and feeling
`Because I have performed so poorly . . .
[as I absolutely should not have done]
. . . I feel like everybody will remember
my poor performance and my strong
feeling proves that they will '
Because I have performed so poorly . . .
[as I wish, but do not demand that I
absolutely should not have done] . . . I
think and feel that people will have
different responses to my performance:
some negative and nasty, some
compassionate and empathic and some
neutral and this is probably the case'
Descriptions of thinking errors and
realistic and balanced alternatives
Illustrations
Personalising
`I am involved in a group presentation
and things are not going well . . . [Since
Here, when a negative event occurs
I am acting worse than I absolutely
involving you which you may or may not should act] . . . and the audience is
be primarily responsible for, you see
laughing, I am sure they are laughing
yourself de®nitely as the cause of it
only at me'
Making a realistic attribution
`I am involved in a group presentation
and things are not going well . . . [Since
Here, when a negative event occurs
I am acting worse than I would like to
involving you which you may or may not do, but do not demand that I must do]
be primarily responsible for, you
. . . and the audience is laughing, I am
acknowledge that you may be the cause not sure who or what they are laughing
at and indeed, some might be laughing
of it, but you don't assume that you
de®nitely are. Rather, you view the
with us and not at us'
event from a the whole perspective
before making an attribution of cause
which is likely to be realistic
2
Reasons why rigid beliefs are false, illogical
and have largely unhealthy consequences
and flexible beliefs are true, logical and
have largely healthy consequences
Rigid belief
Flexible belief
A rigid belief is false
A ¯exible belief is true
For such a demand to be true the
demanded conditions would already
have to exist when they do not. Or as
soon as you make a demand, these
demanded conditions would have to
come into existence. Both positions are
clearly false or inconsistent with reality
A ¯exible belief is true because its two
component parts are true. You can
prove that you have a particular desire
and can provide reasons why you want
what you want. You can also prove that
you do not have to get what you desire
A rigid belief is illogical
A ¯exible belief is logical
A rigid belief is based on the same
desire as a ¯exible but is transformed
as follows:
A ¯exible belief is logical since both
parts are not rigid and thus the second
component logically follows from the
®rst. Thus, consider the following
¯exible belief:
`I prefer that x happens (or does not
happen) . . . and therefore this
absolutely must (or must not) happen.'
The ®rst component [`I prefer that x
happens (or does not happen. . .)'] is
not rigid, but the second component
[`. . . and therefore this absolutely must
(or must not) happen'] is rigid. As
such, a rigid belief is illogical since one
cannot logically derive something rigid
from something that is not rigid
`I prefer that x happens (or does not
happen) . . . but this does not mean
that it must (or must not) happen.'
The ®rst component [`I prefer that x
happens (or does not happen)' . . .] is
not rigid, and the second component
[`. . . but this does not mean that it must
(or must not) happen'] is also not rigid.
Thus, a ¯exible belief is logical because
it is comprised of two non-rigid parts
connected together logically
Rigid belief
Flexible belief
A rigid belief has largely unhealthy
consequences
A ¯exible belief has largely healthy
consequences
A rigid belief has largely unhealthy
consequences because it tends to lead
to unhealthy negative emotions,
unconstructive behaviour and highly
distorted and biased subsequent
thinking when the person is facing an
adversity
A ¯exible belief has largely healthy
consequences because it tends to lead
to healthy negative emotions,
constructive behaviour and realistic
and balanced subsequent thinking
when the person is facing an adversity
3
Reasons why awfulising beliefs are false,
illogical and have largely unhealthy
consequences and non-awfulising beliefs
are true, logical and have largely healthy
consequences
Awfulising belief
Non-awfulising belief
An awfulising belief is false
A non-awfulising belief is true
When you hold an awfulising belief
about your adversity, this belief is
based on the following ideas:
When you hold a non-awfulising belief
about your adversity. this belief is
based on the following ideas:
Nothing could be worse.
The event in question is worse than
100 per cent bad.
No good could possibly come from
this bad event.
Things could always be worse.
The event in question is less than 100
per cent bad.
Good could come from this bad
event.
All three ideas are patently false and
thus your awfulising belief is false
All three ideas are clearly true and thus
your non-awfulising belief is true
An awfulising belief is illogical
A non-awfulising belief is logical
An awfulising belief is based on the
same evaluation of badness as a nonawfulising belief, but is transformed as
follows:
A non-awfulising belief is logical since
both parts are non-rigid and thus the
second component logically follows
from the ®rst. Thus, consider the
following non-awfulising belief:
`It is bad if x happens (or does not
happen) . . . and therefore it is awful if
it does happen (or does not happen).'
The ®rst component [`It is bad if x
happens (or does not happen. . .)'] is
non-extreme, but the second
component [`. . . and therefore it is
awful if it does (or does not) happen']
is extreme. As such, an awfulising
belief is illogical since one cannot
logically derive something extreme
from something that is non-extreme
`It is bad if x happens (or does not
happen) . . . but it is not awful if it does
happen (or does not happen).'
The ®rst component [`It is bad if x
happens (or does not happen)' . . .] is
non-extreme and the second
component [`. . . but it is not awful if it
does happen (or does not happen)'] is
also non-extreme. Thus, a nonawfulising belief is logical because it is
comprised of two non-extreme parts
connected together logically
Awfulising belief
Non-awfulising belief
An awfulising belief has largely
unhealthy consequences
A non-awfulising belief has largely
healthy consequences
An awfulising belief has largely
unhealthy consequences because it
tends to lead to unhealthy negative
emotions, unconstructive behaviour
and highly distorted and biased
subsequent thinking when the person
is facing an adversity
A non-awfulising belief has largely
healthy consequences because it tends
to lead to healthy negative emotions,
constructive behaviour and realistic
and balanced subsequent thinking
when the person is facing an adversity
4
Reasons why discomfort intolerance beliefs
are false, illogical and have largely
unhealthy consequences and discomfort
tolerance beliefs are true, logical and have
largely healthy consequences
Discomfort intolerance belief
Discomfort tolerance belief
A discomfort intolerance belief is
false
A discomfort tolerance belief is
true
When you hold a discomfort
intolerance belief about your adversity,
this belief is based on the following
ideas, which are all false:
When you hold a discomfort tolerance
belief about your adversity, this belief is
based on the following ideas, which are
all true:
I will die or disintegrate if the
discomfort continues to exist.
I will lose the capacity to experience
happiness if the discomfort
continues to exist.
Even if I could tolerate it, the
discomfort is not worth tolerating.
All three ideas are patently false and
thus your discomfort intolerance belief
is false
I will struggle if the discomfort
continues to exist, but I will neither
die nor disintegrate.
I will not lose the capacity to
experience happiness if the
discomfort continues to exist,
although this capacity will be
temporarily diminished.
The discomfort is worth tolerating.
All three ideas are patently true and
thus your discomfort tolerance belief is
true
Discomfort intolerance belief
Discomfort tolerance belief
A discomfort intolerance belief is
illogical
A discomfort tolerance belief is
logical
A discomfort intolerance belief is
A discomfort tolerance belief is logical
based on the same sense of struggle as since both parts are non-extreme and
a discomfort tolerance belief, but is
thus the second component logically
transformed as follows:
follows from the ®rst. Thus, consider
following discomfort tolerance belief:
`It would be dif®cult for me to tolerate
it if x happens (or does not happen) . . .
`It would be dif®cult for me to tolerate
and therefore it would be intolerable.'
it if x happens (or does not happen) . . .
but it is would not be intolerable (and
The ®rst component [`It would be
it would be worth tolerating).'
dif®cult for me to tolerate it if x
happens (or does not happen . . .)'] is The ®rst component [`It would be
non-extreme, but the second
dif®cult for me to tolerate it if x happens
component [`. . . and therefore it would (or does not happen)' . . .] is nonbe intolerable'] is extreme. As such, a extreme and the second component [`. . .
discomfort intolerance belief is illogical but it would not be intolerable (and it
since one cannot logically derive
would be worth tolerating)'] is also
something extreme from something
non-extreme. Thus, a discomfort
that is non-extreme
tolerance belief is logical because it is
comprised of two non-extreme parts
connected together logically
A discomfort intolerance belief has
largely unhealthy consequences
A discomfort tolerance belief has
largely healthy consequences
A discomfort intolerance belief has
largely unhealthy consequences
because it tends to lead to unhealthy
negative emotions, unconstructive
behaviour and highly distorted and
biased subsequent thinking when the
person is facing an adversity
A discomfort tolerance belief has
largely healthy consequences because
it tends to lead to healthy negative
emotions, constructive behaviour and
realistic and balanced subsequent
thinking when the person is facing an
adversity
5
Reasons why depreciation beliefs are false,
illogical and have largely unhealthy
consequences and unconditional
acceptance beliefs are true, logical and
have largely healthy consequences
Depreciation belief
Unconditional acceptance belief
A depreciation belief is false
An unconditional acceptance belief
is true
When you hold a depreciation belief in
the face of your adversity, this belief is When you hold an unconditional
based on the following ideas, which are acceptance belief in the face of your
all false:
adversity, this belief is based on the
following ideas, which are all true:
A person (self or other) or life can
legitimately be given a single global
A person (self or other) or life cannot
rating that de®nes their or its
legitimately be given a single global
essence and the worth of a person or
rating that de®nes their or its
of life is dependent upon conditions
essence, and their or its worth, as far
that change (e.g. my worth goes up
as they or it have it, is not dependent
when I do well and goes down when I
upon conditions that change (e.g. my
don't do well).
worth stays the same whether or not I
A person or life can be rated on the
do well).
basis of one of his or her or its
Discrete aspects of a person, and life
aspects.
can be legitimately rated, but a
person or life cannot be legitimately
Both of these ideas are patently false
rated on the basis of these discrete
and thus your depreciation belief is
aspects.
false
Both of these ideas are patently true
and thus your
depreciation belief is true
Depreciation belief
Unconditional acceptance belief
A depreciation belief is illogical
An unconditional acceptance belief
is logical
A depreciation belief is based on the
idea that the whole of a person or of a
life can logically be de®ned by one of
their or its parts. Thus:
`x is bad . . . and therefore I am bad.'
This is known as the part-whole error,
which is illogical
An unconditional acceptance belief is
based on the idea that the whole of a
person or of a life cannot be de®ned by
one or more of their or its parts. Thus:
`x is bad, but this does not mean that I
am bad, I am a fallible human being
even though x occurred.'
Here the part-whole illogical error is
avoided. Rather it is held that the whole
incorporates the part which is logical
A depreciation belief has largely
unhealthy consequences
An unconditional acceptance belief
has largely healthy consequences
A depreciation belief has largely
unhealthy consequences because it
tends to lead to unhealthy negative
emotions, unconstructive behaviour
and highly distorted and biased
subsequent thinking when the person
is facing an adversity
An unconditional acceptance belief has
largely healthy consequences because
it tends to lead to healthy negative
emotions, constructive behaviour and
realistic and balanced subsequent
thinking when the person is facing an
adversity
6
ABCD blank form with instructions
SITUATION =
`A' =
`iB'
(irrational belief ) =
`rB' (rational belief ) =
`C'
(emotional consequence) =
`C'
(emotional goal) =
(behavioural consequence) =
(behavioural goal) =
(thinking consequence) =
(thinking goal) =
1. Write down a brief, objective description of the `situation' you were in.
2. Identify your `C' ± your major disturbed emotion, your dysfunctional behaviour and, if
relevant, your distorted subsequent thinking.
3. Identify your `A' ± this is what you were most disturbed about in the situation.
(Steps 2 and 3 are interchangeable.)
4. Set emotional, behavioural and thinking goals.
5. Identify your irrational beliefs (`iBs'), i.e. rigid belief + awfulising belief, discomfort
intolerance belief or depreciation belief.
6. Identify the alternative rational beliefs (`rBs') that will enable you to achieve your
goals, i.e. ¯exible belief + non-awfulising belief, discomfort tolerance belief or
acceptance belief.
OVERLEAF
7. Develop persuasive arguments to convince yourself that your irrational beliefs are
irrational and that your rational beliefs are rational ± `D'. These arguments will help
you to achieve your emotional, behavioural and thinking goals.
8. Re-examine `A' and consider how realistic it was. Given all the facts, would there
have been a more realistic way of looking at `A'? If so write it down.
`D'
(Disputing)
Re-examine `A' =
NOTES FOR PRACTITIONERS
These notes refer to the eight instructions that are listed on the
ABCD self-help form and highlight errors that clients tend to make
at each of the eight steps. In these notes I outline the most frequent
of these errors and suggest ways of helping your clients to address
these errors effectively.
1. Write down a brief, objective description of the
`situation' you were in
The error that your clients may make here is to be too general in
their description of the situation in which they experienced their
problem. If this is the case, show your clients how to apply the rules
of the game `Cluedo' (called `Clue' in the USA) to describing the
`situation'. This involves clients specifying precisely where they
were in the episode, who else was there and what happened (e.g. `It
was Colonel Mustard, in the dining room, who killed the victim
with the candelabra').
2. Identify your `C' ± your major disturbed emotion,
your dysfunctional behaviour and, if relevant, your
distorted subsequent thinking
Here your clients can make a number of errors, although the fact
that the Client's Guide is structured in the way that it is means
that if your clients are working on anxiety, for example, they
should list `anxiety' as their emotional consequence and they
should select the appropriate behavioural and thinking consequences that are listed in Chapter 2. This should be the case for
each of the eight emotional problems dealt with in the Client's
Guide. However, if your clients have a number of emotional
problems or if they are using the ABCD form as a stand-alone
method without reference to any speci®c chapter, they may make a
number of errors in this step.
Error: your client does not list a speci®c unhealthy negative emotion (UNE),
dysfunctional behaviour and/or grossly distorted and (where relevant) safetyseeking thinking.
Response: help your client to specify this material.
Error: your client lists a vague emotion. For example, your client may write
that they felt `bad' or `upset'.
Response: explain why this response is vague and then ask again for a speci®c
UNE giving suitable prompts and suggestions when relevant.
Error: your client lists an inference as an emotion. For example, your client
may write that they felt `rejected' or `criticised'.
Response: explain why this response is an inference rather than a UNE and ask
your client how they felt when they were rejected or criticised, assuming, of
course, that they were.
To help you assist your clients to identify the emotional, behavioural and thinking components of their situationally based
problem I have included all relevant information with respect to
emotional problems (and their healthy alternatives) in Appendix
7. This appendix will help you to easily ®nd this information and
save valuable therapy time.
3. Identify your `A' ± this is what you were most
disturbed about in the situation
In RECBT, `A' is perhaps the most dif®cult concept for clients and
novice therapists alike to grasp. In this book, I refer to `A' as an
adversity when discussing emotional problems and their healthy
alternatives. It may also be referred to as a `negative activating
event'. The most important thing that you need to bear in mind
and help your clients to do so when identifying `A' when assessing a
speci®c example of their emotional problems is that `A' represents
the aspect of the situation about which your clients disturb
themselves the most.
One way to describe this to your client is to ask them to imagine
that a doctor is assessing their leg re¯exes with a rubber hammer.
In that procedure, the doctor asks them to cross their legs and
when the doctor hits the right spot, your client's re¯ex is triggered.
If the doctor misses this spot by much, then no response is forthcoming. If the doctor's attempt is there or thereabouts, but not
directly on the right spot, your client's response will be present but
muted. When you help your client to assess `A', your goal is to hit
the right spot so that your client says something like `That's exactly
what I was most anxious about', for example.
Here are common client errors in assessing `A' on the ABCD selfhelp form and how best to respond.
Error: your client reiterates the situation as `A'.
Response: ascertain whether this is exactly what the client was most disturbed
about and if not, help to identify `A' (e.g. by using the magic question technique). In using the magic question technique you do the following:
Ask your client to imagine the situation in which they were disturbed
(specify the precise unhealthy negative emotion that they experienced in this
situation).
Without changing what happened, ask your client to nominate one ingredient that would have eliminated or signi®cantly reduced their disturbed
emotion.
The opposite of the nominated ingredient is likely to be the client's `A'.
Error: the relevant theme is not clear in your clients' `A'. In Chapters 2±9, I
outlined for each emotional problem and its healthy alternative the themes
that are present in these problems. In this context, if your clients are anxious in
their chosen speci®c example, they will be anxious about an aspect of the
situation that they found particularly threatening ± threat being the inferential theme associated with anxiety and its healthy alternative, concern. The
inferential themes associated with each emotional problem and healthy
alternative are listed in Appendix 7.
Response: if the theme is not clear in your clients' `A', then use this theme (or
themes) in your questions to help your clients in this regard (e.g. what did you
®nd was most threatening about being in this situation?). Also, using the magic
question technique (described above) will usually help you to identify the
theme. You may wish to encourage your clients to specify the theme at `A' in
addition to listing what they were most disturbed about. You may suggest this
to any client who needs an additional reminder of the relevant theme to identify
`A'. Thus, instead of `Being criticised by my boss' your client might be encouraged to write `My biggest threat in the situation was being criticised by my boss'.
(Steps 2 and 3 are interchangeable.)
In the ABCD form, I recommend that clients identify the emotional, behavioural and thinking components of their emotional
problem before identifying `A'. I suggest this because it is often
helpful for clients to use the emotional component, in particular,
to identify `A' (e.g. `What was I most anxious about in this situation?'). However, some clients ®nd it more helpful to identify `A'
before `C' and it is ®ne to let them do so, although it is worth
checking that their nominated `A' is, in fact, what they were most
disturbed about after they have identi®ed their `A'.
4. Set emotional, behavioural and thinking goals
Error: your client does not list one or more of the following as goals: a speci®c
healthy negative emotion alternative to their UNE, functional alternatives to
their dysfunctional behaviour and realistic and balanced alternatives to their
highly distorted (and where relevant) safety-seeking thinking.
Response: help your client to specify this material.
Error: your client may suggest an emotional goal which is based on the absence
of the UNE (e.g. `I don't want to be anxious').
Response: explain why this is problematic (i.e. people do not exist in an emotional vacuum in the face of an adversity) and outline and provide a rationale
for the HNE alternative to their listed UNE (e.g. concern as an alternative to
anxiety).
Error: your client may suggest an emotional goal which is based on the idea
that it is desirable to experience the UNE with less intensity (e.g. `I want to feel
less anxious'). Explain that a less intense version of a disturbed emotion is still
a disturbed emotion and if achieved it will be done, not only by retaining your
client's irrational belief but also by reducing the importance of their preference. Outline and provide a rationale for the HNE alternative to their UNE and
explain that this HNE will allow your client to retain the importance of their
preference by changing their irrational beliefs to their rational alternatives.
Error: your client may nominate safety-seeking behaviour as a behavioural
goal.
Response: remind your client that their behavioural goal should ideally be in
response to the adversity at `A'. Help your client to understand that the behaviour that they have nominated as a gaol is designed to help keep them safe in
the situation or to change this `A' before they have dealt with it rather than
to deal effectively with their `A'. With this principle in mind, help your client to
set an appropriate behavioural goal in the face of `A'.
Error: your client may nominate safety-seeking thinking as a thinking goal.
Response: the most common form of safety-seeking thinking that your client is
likely to nominate as a thinking goal is self-reassurance. Help them to see that
such thinking is not designed to help them face their `A' and deal with it
effectively. Rather it is designed to eradicate their UNE. Explain this to your
client and help them instead to nominate as a goal thinking that is realistic,
balanced and designed to help them to face and deal with their `A'.
Error: your client may nominate unrealistically positive thinking as a thinking
goal.
Response: help your client to understand that thinking positively about an
adversity is not healthy and that realistic and balanced thinking about the
adversity is the healthy alternative to highly distorted and exaggerated negative thinking about it. Help your client to nominate the latter as their thinking
goal at `C'.
5. Identify your irrational beliefs (`iBs'), i.e. rigid
belief + awfulising belief, discomfort intolerance
belief or depreciation belief
Error: your client uses the word `should' to denote a rigid belief.
Response: this may or may not be an error. While the word `should' may re¯ect
a rigid demand, it may also denote a non-rigid, ideal or preferable `should'.
The best way to tell is to ask your client whether they believe that their `should'
must come to pass or not. If they say `yes' then their `should' is rigid. If they say
`no', then it may not represent an irrational belief. If your client is going to use
the word `should' to denote a rigid belief then I suggest that you encourage
your client to qualify the `should' with the term `absolutely' or alternatively to
use the word `must'.
Error: your client thinks that role-depreciation ± where your client globally
depreciates their performance in a role ± is synonymous with self-depreciation
± where they depreciate their `self' (e.g. `I'm a bad parent' is synonymous with
`I am a bad person').
Response: if this occurs help your client to differentiate self-depreciation from
role-depreciation and to make the former explicit on the form (e.g. `I'm a bad
person for being a bad person').
6. Identify the alternative rational beliefs (`rBs') that
will enable you to achieve your goals, i.e. flexible
belief + non-awfulising belief, discomfort tolerance
belief or acceptance belief
Error: your client articulates a partial rational belief, but does not negate the
irrational belief (e.g. `I want to be loved' as opposed to `I want to be loved, but I
do not have to be loved').
Response: if this happens, explain to your client the importance of negating
their irrational belief as well as asserting their partial rational belief and
ensure that they do so. If they assert only their partial rational belief (e.g. `It
would be bad if I fail') then they may implicitly transform this into an
irrational belief (`It would be bad if I fail and therefore it would be awful if I
do so'). Whereas if your client explicitly states both parts of a rational belief,
this is unlikely to happen (e.g. `It would be bad if I fail, but it would not be
awful if I did so').
7. Develop persuasive arguments to convince yourself
that your irrational beliefs are irrational and that
your rational beliefs are rational ± `D'. These
arguments will help you to achieve your emotional,
behavioural and thinking goals
Error: in the Client's Guide, I provide tips for clients when they come to question their beliefs (both rational and irrational) ± see Appendices 2±5. If I did
not provide these tips, clients would probably struggle to question these beliefs.
However, their inclusion may mean that your clients will apply the arguments
contained in the appendices rather than using them to develop their own
persuasive arguments.
Response: if you suspect that your clients' arguments in the questioning process
lack persuasiveness, ask them to rate each argument on a 0±10 persuasiveness
scale. If your clients' scores are low, have them develop arguments with you in
the session that help to increase these ratings.
8. Re-examine `A' and consider how realistic it was.
Given all the facts, would there have been a more
realistic way of looking at `A'? If so, write it down
Error: in RECBT, we encourage clients to assume temporarily that their inferences at `A' are correct (see Step 3) so that they can identify and deal with the
irrational beliefs that they hold about these adversities (at `B') that underpin
their disturbed responses at `C'. Only when they have questioned their irrational beliefs and have developed some conviction in their rational beliefs that
they are ready to re-examine their `A's'. This is why this is the last step on the
ABCD self-help form. However, sometimes clients take this step ®rst rather
than last. When they do this, their commitment to change their irrational
beliefs is lowered, since they have changed `A' rather than `B' to change `C'.
Response: ask your clients when they completed Step 8. If they did this at the
outset or certainly before Step 5, then explain the problems with doing so and
encourage them to take this step last.
Use supervision
If you are not sure how to respond to your clients' errors when
completing the ABCD form, then take these issues to your RECBT
supervisor. In addition, I suggest that you take to supervision a
random selection of your clients' completed forms since you may
not spot a number of your clients' errors. Your supervisor will take
a form and ask you to identify your clients' errors and how you
responded to them. If you fail to spot errors, your supervisor will
point these out to you.
7
Quick reference guide to the eight
emotional problems and their healthy
alternatives
This appendix comprises a guide to each of the eight emotional problems
and their healthy alternatives.
ANXIETY VS. CONCERN
Adversity
Belief
Emotion
Behaviour
You are facing a threat to your personal domain
Irrational
Rational
Anxiety
Concern
You avoid the threat
You withdraw physically from
the threat
You ward off the threat (e.g. by
rituals or superstitious
behaviour)
You try to neutralise the threat
(e.g. by being nice to people of
whom you are afraid)
You distract yourself from the
threat by engaging in other
activity
You keep checking on the
current status of the threat
hoping to ®nd that it has
disappeared or become benign
You seek reassurance from
others that the threat is benign
You seek support from others
so that if the threat happens
they will handle it or be there to
rescue you
You overprepare in order to
minimise the threat happening
or so that you are prepared to
meet it (NB it is the
overpreparation that is the
problem here)
You tranquillise your feelings so
that you don't think about the
threat
You overcompensate for feeling
vulnerable by seeking out an
even greater threat to prove to
yourself that you can cope
You face up to the threat
without using any safetyseeking measures
You take constructive
action to deal with the
threat
You seek support from
others to help you face up
to the threat and then take
constructive action by
yourself rather than rely
on them to handle it for
you or to be there to
rescue you
You prepare to meet the
threat but do not
overprepare
Subsequent
thinking
Threat-exaggerating thinking
You overestimate the probability
of the threat occurring
You underestimate your ability
to cope with the threat
You ruminate about the threat
You create an even more
negative threat in your mind
You magnify the negative
consequences of the threat and
minimise its positive
consequences
You have more task-irrelevant
thoughts than in concern
Safety-seeking thinking
You withdraw mentally from the
threat
You try to persuade yourself
that the threat is not imminent
and that you are `imagining' it
You think in ways designed to
reassure yourself that the threat
is benign or if not, that its
consequences will be
insigni®cant
You distract yourself from the
threat e.g. by focusing on
mental scenes of safety and
well-being
You overprepare mentally in
order to minimise the threat
happening or so that you are
prepared to meet it (NB once
again it is the overpreparation
that is the problem here)
You picture yourself dealing
with the threat in a masterful
way
You overcompensate for your
feeling of vulnerability by
picturing yourself dealing
effectively with an even bigger
threat.
You are realistic about the
probability of the threat
occurring
You view the threat
realistically
You realistically appraise
your ability to cope with
the threat
You think about what to
do concerning dealing
with threat constructively
rather than ruminate
about the threat
You have more taskrelevant thoughts than in
anxiety
DEPRESSION VS. SADNESS
Adversity
Belief
Emotion
You have experienced a loss from the sociotropic and/or
autonomous realms of your personal domain
You have experienced failure within the sociotropic and/or
autonomous realms of your personal domain
You or others have experienced an undeserved plight
Irrational
Rational
Depression
Sadness
Behaviour
You become overly dependent
on and seek to cling to others
(particularly in sociotropic
depression)
You bemoan your fate or that of
others to anyone who will listen
(particularly in pity based
depression)
You create an environment
consistent with your depressed
feelings
You attempt to terminate
feelings of depression in selfdestructive ways
You seek out
reinforcements after a
period of mourning
(particularly when your
inferential theme is loss)
You create an
environment inconsistent
with depressed feelings
You express your feelings
about the loss, failure or
undeserved plight and talk
in a non-complaining way
about these feelings to
signi®cant others
Subsequent
thinking
You see only negative aspects
of the loss, failure or
undeserved plight
You think of other losses,
failures and undeserved plights
that you (and in the case of the
latter, others) have experienced
You think you are unable to help
yourself (helplessness)
You see only pain and blackness
in the future (hopelessness)
You see yourself being totally
dependent on others (in
autonomous depression)
You see yourself as being
disconnected from others (in
sociotropic depression)
You see the world as full of
undeservedness and unfairness
(in plight based depression)
You tend to ruminate
concerning the source of your
depression and its
consequences
You are able to recognise
both negative and positive
aspects of the loss or
failure
You think you are able to
help yourself
You look to the future
with hope
GUILT VS. REMORSE
Adversity
Belief
Emotion
You have broken your moral code
You have failed to live up to your moral code
You have hurt someone's feelings
Irrational
Rational
Guilt
Remorse
Behaviour
You escape from the unhealthy
pain of guilt in self-defeating
ways
You beg forgiveness from the
person you have wronged
You promise unrealistically that
you will not `sin' again
You punish yourself physically
or by deprivation
You defensively disclaim
responsibility for wrongdoing
You reject offers of forgiveness
You face up to the healthy
pain that accompanies the
realisation that you have
sinned
You ask, but do not beg,
for forgiveness
You understand the
reasons for your
wrongdoing and act on
your understanding
You atone for the sin by
taking a penalty
You make appropriate
amends
You do not make excuses
for your behaviour or
enact other defensive
behaviour
You do accept offers of
forgiveness
Subsequent
thinking
You conclude that you have
de®nitely committed the sin
You assume more personal
responsibility than the situation
warrants
You assign far less
responsibility to others than is
warranted
You dismiss possible mitigating
factors for your behaviour
You see your behaviour only in a
guilt related context and fail to
put it into an overall context
You think you may be penalised
rather than receive retribution
You take into account all
relevant data when
judging whether or not
you have `sinned'
You assume an
appropriate level of
personal responsibility
You assign an appropriate
level of responsibility to
others
You take into account
mitigating factors
You put your behaviour
into overall context
You think that you will
receive retribution
SHAME VS. DISAPPOINTMENT
Adversity
Belief
Emotion
Something highly negative has been revealed about you (or
about a group with whom you identify) by yourself or by others
You have acted in a way that falls very short of your ideal
Others look down on or shun you (or a group with whom you
identify) or you think that they do
Irrational
Rational
Shame
Disappointment
Behaviour
You remove yourself from the
`gaze' of others
You isolate yourself from others
You save face by attacking
other(s) who have `shamed' you
You defend your threatened
self-esteem in self-defeating
ways
You ignore attempts by others
to restore social equilibrium
You continue to
participate actively in
social interaction
You respond positively to
attempts of others to
restore social equilibrium
Subsequent
thinking
You overestimate the negativity
of the information revealed
You overestimate the likelihood
that the judging group will
notice or be interested in the
information
You overestimate the degree of
disapproval you (or your
reference group) will receive
You overestimate how long any
disapproval will last
You see the information
revealed in a
compassionate selfaccepting context
You are realistic about the
likelihood that the judging
group will notice or be
interested in the
information revealed
You are realistic about the
degree of disapproval self
(or reference group) will
receive
You are realistic about
how long any disapproval
will last
HURT VS. SORROW
Adversity
Belief
Emotion
Others treat you badly (and you think you do not deserve such
treatment)
You think that the other person has devalued your relationship
(i.e. someone indicates that their relationship with you is less
important to them than the relationship is to you)
Irrational
Rational
Hurt
Sorrow
Behaviour
You stop communicating with
the other person
You sulk and make obvious you
feel hurt without disclosing
details of the matter
You indirectly criticise or
punish the other person for their
offence
You communicate your
feelings to the other
directly
You request that the other
person acts in a fairer
manner towards you
Subsequent
thinking
You overestimate the unfairness
of the other person's behaviour
You think that the other person
does not care for you or is
indifferent to you
You see yourself as alone,
uncared for or misunderstood
You tend to think of past `hurts'
You are realistic about the
degree of unfairness in
the other person's
behaviour
You think that the other
person has acted badly
rather than as
demonstrating lack of
caring or indifference
You see yourself as being
in a poor situation, but
still connected to, cared
for by and understood by
others not directly
involved in the situation
If you think of past hurts,
you do so with less
frequency and less
intensity than when you
feel hurt
You are open to the idea
of making the ®rst move
towards the other person
UNHEALTHY ANGER VS. HEALTHY ANGER
Adversity
Belief
Emotion
You think that you have been frustrated in some way
Your movement towards an important goal has been
obstructed in some way
Someone has transgressed one of your personal rules
You have transgressed one of your own personal rules
Someone or something has threatened your self-esteem
Irrational
Rational
Unhealthy anger
Healthy anger
Behaviour
You attack the other(s)
physically
You attack the other(s) verbally
You attack the other(s) passiveaggressively
You displace the attack on to
another person, animal or object
You withdraw aggressively
You recruit allies against the
other(s)
You assert yourself with
the other(s)
You request, but do not
demand, behavioural
change from the other(s)
You leave an
unsatisfactory situation
non-aggressively after
taking steps to deal with it
Subsequent
thinking
You overestimate the extent to
which the other(s) acted
deliberately
You see malicious intent in the
motives of the other(s)
You see yourself as de®nitely
right and the other(s) as
de®nitely wrong
You are unable to see the point
of view of the other(s)
You plot to exact revenge
You ruminate about the other's
behaviour and imagine coming
out on top
You think that the other(s)
may have acted
deliberately, but you also
recognise that this may
not have been the case
You think that other(s)
may have had malicious
intent in their motives, but
you also recognise that
this may not have been
the case
You think that you are
probably rather than
de®nitely right and the
other(s) as probably
rather than de®nitely
wrong
You are able to see the
point of view of the
other(s)
You have ¯eeting rather
than sustained thoughts
to exact revenge
UNHEALTHY JEALOUSY VS. HEALTHY
JEALOUSY
Adversity
Belief
Emotion
A threat is posed to your relationship with your partner from a
third person
A threat is posed by uncertainty you face concerning your
partner's whereabouts, behaviour or thinking in the context of
the ®rst threat
Irrational
Rational
Unhealthy jealousy
Healthy jealousy
Behaviour
You seek constant reassurance
that you are loved
You monitor the actions and
feelings of your partner
You search for evidence that
your partner is involved with
someone else
You attempt to restrict the
movements or activities of your
partner
You set tests which your partner
has to pass
You retaliate for your partner's
presumed in®delity
You sulk
You allow your partner to
initiate expressing love
for you without prompting
him or her or seeking
reassurance once your
partner has done so
You allow your partner
freedom without
monitoring his or her
feelings, actions and
whereabouts
You allow your partner to
show natural sexual
interest in others without
setting tests
Subsequent
thinking
You exaggerate any threat to
your relationship that does exist
You think the loss of your
relationship is imminent
You misconstrue your partner's
ordinary conversations with
relevant others as having
romantic or sexual connotations
You construct visual images of
your partner's in®delity
If your partner admits to ®nding
another person attractive, you
think that your partner ®nds that
person more attractive than you
and that he or she will leave you
for this other person
You tend not to
exaggerate any threat to
your relationship that
does exist
You do not misconstrue
ordinary conversations
between your partner and
other people
You do not construct
visual images of your
partner's in®delity
You accept that your
partner will ®nd others
attractive but you do not
see this as a threat
UNHEALTHY ENVY VS. HEALTHY ENVY
Adversity
Belief
Emotion
Another person possesses and enjoys something desirable
that you do not have
Irrational
Rational
Unhealthy envy
Healthy envy
Behaviour
You disparage verbally to others
the person who has the desired
possession
You disparage verbally the
desired possession to others
If you had the chance you would
take away the desired
possession from the other
(either so that you will have it or
so that the other is deprived of
it)
If you had the chance you would
spoil or destroy the desired
possession so that the other
person does not have it
You strive to obtain the
desired possession if it is
truly what you want
Subsequent
thinking
You tend to denigrate in your
mind the value of the desired
possession and/or the person
who possesses it
You try to convince yourself that
you are happy with your
possessions (although you are
not)
You think about how to acquire
the desired possession
regardless of its usefulness
You think about how to deprive
the other person of the desired
possession
You think about how to spoil or
destroy the other's desired
possession
You honestly admit to
yourself that you desire
the desired possession
You are honest with
yourself if you are not
happy with your
possessions, rather than
defensively trying to
convince yourself that you
are happy with them when
you are not
You think about how to
obtain the desired
possession because you
desire it for healthy
reasons
You can allow the other
person to have and enjoy
the desired possession
without denigrating that
person or the possession
Index
`ABC' model 19, 20; anger 183; anxiety 31;
depression 63; envy 243; guilt 93;
jealousy 213; shame 124
ABCD form 281±2; errors made in using
283±8
absence of emotion, client's desire for 3;
anger 189; anxiety 35; depression 67;
envy 246; errors in setting goals 285±6;
guilt 96±7; hurt 157; jealousy 217;
shame 128
acceptance beliefs 11, 13±15; anger 184,
191±2, 204; anxiety 38; depression 70;
envy 250, 261; guilt 88, 92, 99, 101±3,
104; hurt 160; jealousy 221; shame
119, 122, 123, 129, 131, 132±5, 136;
true, logical and healthy nature of
279±80
action tendencies 18±19, 20±1; anger 187;
anxiety 24±6, 34; concern 35±6;
depression 66; envy 245; guilt 96;
jealousy 216; overt behaviour
distinction 109; shame 127; see also
behaviour
activity 62
adversity (`A') 2, 16±17; ABCD form 281±2;
anger 179, 296; anxiety 290; associated
behaviour 18±19; associated thinking
19±20; depression 292; envy 255±6,
298; errors in identi®cation 283±4;
guilt 293; hurt 166, 295; inference
themes 17; jealousy 226±7, 297; reexamination of 281, 282, 287; shame
136±7, 294
all-or-none thinking 268
always and never thinking 270
anger (healthy) 4, 179, 184, 296; associated
thinking 19±20; development of nonanger worldview 205±6; goals 188±90;
imagery techniques 197; negative
connotations of 182; power and
assertiveness 182; rational beliefs
177±8, 200; strength of 182; unhealthy
anger distinction 181
anger (unhealthy) 1, 176±206, 296; ABCD
form 201; action tendencies 18;
assessment of emotional problems
about 203±5; associated behaviour
178±9, 187, 296; associated thinking
179±80, 188, 200, 296; development of
non-anger worldview 205±6;
generalisation of learning 199±201;
healthy anger distinction 181; imagery
techniques 196±7, 200; inference
themes 176±7, 184±7; irrational beliefs
177±8; language used to describe 176;
overestimation of disrespect 202±3;
positive connotations of 182; steps to
deal with 180±201
anxiety 1, 22±55, 290±1; ABCD form 48;
assessment of emotional problems
about 51±4; associated behaviour
24±6, 34, 290; associated thinking
26±9, 34, 290; development of nonanxious worldview 54±5;
distinguishing between emotional
problems and healthy alternatives
17±18; emotional vacuums 3;
generalisation of learning 47±8;
imagery techniques 43±4; inference
themes 16, 23, 285; irrational beliefs
23±4; language used to describe 22;
overestimation of threat 49±50; steps
to deal with 29±48; see also concern
`aspect evaluation' component 14
`asserted acceptance' component 14
`asserted badness' component 12
`asserted preference' component 11
`asserted struggle' component 13
300
Index
assertiveness 182, 197±8, 200
attribution, realistic 272
autonomous depression 57, 60, 64±5, 83
awfulising beliefs 7±8; anger 177; anxiety
24, 38; depression 58, 70; envy 238;
false, illogical and unhealthy nature of
274±5; hurt 149
balanced thinking 20, 21, 268±72, 285;
anger 198; anxiety 45; concern 190;
depression 76; disappointment 129;
discomfort tolerance beliefs 277;
¯exible beliefs 273; healthy envy 248,
265; healthy jealousy 219, 236; hurt
175; non-awfulising beliefs 275;
remorse 98; shame 138; sorrow 158;
unconditional acceptance beliefs 279
Beck, Aaron T. 6, 15
behaviour 18±19; ABCD form 281; anxiety
24±6, 34, 290; concern 35±6, 290;
depression 59, 66, 292;
disappointment 128±9, 294; guilt
89±90, 96, 293; healthy anger 189,
296; healthy envy 247, 298; healthy
jealousy 218±19, 297; hurt 150, 156,
295; remorse 97±8, 293; sadness 68,
292; shame 119±20, 127, 294; sorrow
157±8, 295; unhealthy anger 178±9,
187, 296; unhealthy envy 239±40, 245,
298; unhealthy jealousy 209±10, 216,
297
`best bet' 16
blame see self-blame
Burns, David 19
calmness 35, 189
CBT see cognitive behaviour therapy
`challenging, but not overwhelming'
principle: anger 197; anxiety 44, 45,
52, 53; depression 76, 77; envy 256;
guilt 105±6; hurt 166; jealousy 227;
shame 137
checking out one's thoughts 270
chronic envy 249, 262±3
chronic guilt 110±11
chronic hurt 171±2, 174
chronic jealousy 208, 220, 232±4
chronic shame 140, 141±3, 146
cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) 5±6
cognitive-emotive reasoning 248±9; anger
180; depression 60; envy 241; guilt 90;
hurt 151; jealousy 211, 220; shame
121
comfort area 15
complexity of experiences 269
concern 4, 23±4, 30, 290±1; distinguishing
between emotional problems and
healthy alternatives 17±18; goals 34±7;
imagery techniques 44; rational beliefs
47; threat inferences 16
con®dence 45
cost-bene®t analysis: anxiety 30; guilt 92;
hurt 152; jealousy 212; shame 123
depreciation beliefs 7, 9±10; anger 177,
191±2; depression 58, 70; envy 238,
249, 259±60; errors in identi®cation
286; false, illogical and unhealthy
nature of 279±80; guilt 99; hurt 149;
jealousy 208, 221, 232; shame 118,
119, 123, 124, 130, 145
depression 1, 56±86, 292; ABCD form 80;
assessment of emotional problems
about 82±5; associated behaviour 59,
66, 292; associated thinking 60±1,
66±7, 292; clinical 56n1; development
of non-depressed worldview 85±6;
focus on loss, failure, and undeserved
plight 80±2; generalisation of learning
78±9; imagery techniques 75±6;
inference themes 57, 64±6; irrational
beliefs 57±9; language used to describe
56; personal domain 56±7; self-anger
distinction 185; steps to deal with
61±79; see also sadness
deservingness 57, 83; see also undeserved
plight
desires 7
devaluation of relationships 148, 156±60,
165±6, 170±3
dialogue 106, 167
disappointment 4, 118, 123, 294; goals
127±30; imagery techniques 137;
rational beliefs 119, 138, 139, 141, 143
disapproval: depression 64; fear of 23, 32,
38, 47, 49; shame 120, 129, 141, 142
Index
discomfort intolerance beliefs 7, 9; anger
177, 191±2; anxiety 38; depression 58,
70; envy 238, 249, 260; false, illogical
and unhealthy nature of 276±7; hurt
159; jealousy 208, 221, 228
discomfort tolerance beliefs 11, 12±13;
anger 191±2; anxiety 38; depression
70, 77; envy 250, 260; hurt 160;
jealousy 221; true, logical and healthy
nature of 276±7
disquali®cation of positive experiences 269
disrespect 177±8, 183, 185, 186±7, 188,
202±3
distorted thinking 20; anger 197, 198;
anxiety 37, 44, 45; awfulising beliefs
275; depreciation beliefs 279;
depression 75, 76, 79; discomfort
intolerance beliefs 277; envy 248, 255,
258; guilt 105, 108; hurt 166, 169;
jealousy 227, 230; rigid beliefs 273;
shame 129±30, 137, 139; see also
thinking errors
divine forgiveness 93±4
double penalty 153±4, 184, 214
Dryden's Invitation Technique 144
ego anger 177
ego anxiety 24, 53, 149
ego area 15
ego depression 58, 83
ego envy 238, 249, 250, 258, 259±60, 261
Ellis, Albert 5
emotional pain 51, 52
emotional problems 1±2; anger 203±5;
anxiety 51±4; depression 82±5;
distinguishing between emotional
problems and healthy alternatives
17±21; envy 264±5; guilt 114±15;
healthy alternatives to 2±5, 10±15;
hurt 173±4; irrational beliefs 6±10;
jealousy 234±5; rational beliefs 10±15;
shame 144±6
emotional reasoning 220, 248±9, 271
emotional vacuums 3; see also absence of
emotion
envy (healthy) 4, 238, 242, 298; goals
246±8; imagery techniques 255;
making healthy comparisons 261±2;
301
non-envious worldview 265; rational
beliefs 239, 249, 258, 263
envy (unhealthy) 1, 237±66, 298; ABCD
form 259; assessment of emotional
problems about 264±5; associated
behaviour 239±40, 245, 298; associated
thinking 240±1, 245, 298; chronic 249,
262±3; development of non-envious
worldview 265±6; evidence of
disturbance 248±9; generalisation of
learning 258±9; imagery techniques
255±6; inference themes 237±8,
243±5; irrational beliefs 238±9;
language used to describe 237; making
healthy comparisons 261±2;
rethinking the place of objects 259±61;
steps to deal with 241±58; strength of
desire for prized object 264
Epictetus 6
exercise 62
extreme beliefs 7±10, 17; anger 177, 191,
193±6; anxiety 24, 31, 38, 40±3;
depression 58, 62, 70, 72±4; envy 238,
242, 249, 252±4; guilt 88, 92, 99; hurt
149, 153, 159, 161±4; jealousy 208,
209, 213, 221, 223±6; shame 118, 119,
123, 130, 136; see also irrational beliefs;
rigid beliefs
facts, sticking to the 268
failure: depression 60±1, 64, 67±9, 75±9,
80±2, 83, 85; fear of 32, 47±8
¯exible beliefs 11, 17; anger 177, 193±5,
203; anxiety 24, 38, 40±2; certainty 46;
depression 58, 70, 72±4, 82; envy 250,
260, 263; guilt 99, 101±3, 104, 111;
hurt 160, 161±3; jealousy 209, 221,
223±5; shame 119, 132±4, 136, 143;
true, logical and healthy nature of
273±4; see also non-extreme beliefs;
rational beliefs
forgiveness 89, 93±4, 97, 106
fortune telling 270
frustration 200, 203
future, anticipation of the 270
`general' and `speci®c' approaches: anger
192±3; anxiety 39; depression 70±1;
302
Index
envy 251; guilt 100; hurt 160±1;
jealousy 222; shame 131±2
generalisation, realistic 269
generalised anxiety 23
Gilbert, Paul 113
goals: ABCD form 281; anger 188±90, 199;
anxiety 34±7, 47; depression 67±9, 78;
envy 246±8, 256, 258; errors in setting
285±6; guilt 96±9, 107; hurt 156±9,
169; jealousy 217±20, 228, 230; shame
127±30, 139
guilt 1, 87±116, 293; ABCD form 108;
assessment of emotional problems
about 114±15; associated behaviour
89±90, 96, 293; associated thinking
90±1, 96, 293; chronic 110±11;
development of non-guilty worldview
115±16; ego area 15; generalisation of
learning 107±8; healthy self-care
111±12; hidden conceit 112±13;
imagery techniques 105±6; inference
themes 87±8, 94±5; irrational beliefs
88±9; language used to describe 87;
safety-seeking measures 109±10; selfanger distinction 185; shame
distinction 117; steps to deal with
91±108; see also remorse
health anxiety 23
healthy negative emotions (HNEs) 4±5, 17,
181; discomfort tolerance beliefs 277;
distinguishing between emotional
problems and healthy alternatives
17±21; errors in setting goals 285±6;
¯exible beliefs 273; non-awfulising
beliefs 277; unconditional acceptance
beliefs 279
healthy self-care 111±12, 116
helplessness 60, 112
high standards 135±6, 139, 142
HNEs see healthy negative emotions
hopelessness: anxiety 31; depression 60, 63,
77; guilt 93; shame 124
hunches 268
hurt 1, 148±75, 295; ABCD form 169;
assessment of emotional problems
about 173±4; associated behaviour
150, 156, 295; associated thinking
150±2, 156, 295; chronic 171±2, 174;
development of non-hurt worldview
174±5; generalisation of learning
168±9; imagery techniques 165±6;
inference themes 148±9, 154±5;
irrational beliefs 149±50; language
used to describe 148; reciprocity in
relationships 164±5; safety-seeking
measures 170±1; steps to deal with
152±69; see also sorrow
hurting others' feelings 87±8, 92, 94, 96±9,
105±11, 113±16
`I', Individual and Socially De®ned 143±4
imagery techniques: anger 196±7, 200;
anxiety 43±4; depression 75±6; envy
255±6; guilt 105±6; hurt 165±6;
jealousy 226±7; shame 136±7
indifference 2±3; anxiety 35; depression 68,
97; envy 246±7; hurt 157; jealousy
218; shame 128
Individual `I' 143±4
inference themes 16±18, 20±1; anger
176±7, 184±7, 191, 197, 201; anxiety
23; depression 57, 64±6; envy 237±8,
243±5; errors in identi®cation 284;
guilt 87±8, 94±5; hurt 148±9, 154±5;
jealousy 207±8, 214±16; shame 118,
125±6
inferences 15±16; anger 179, 185±6, 201,
203; anxiety 49, 50; depression 81;
errors in identi®cation 283; guilt
110±11, 113; hurt 170, 172±3; jealousy
234; shame 118, 120, 140±1, 142;
unfairness 262
intensity of emotion 3±4; anger 189;
anxiety 35; depression 67, 97; envy
246; errors in setting goals 285; hurt
157; jealousy 218; shame 128
Invitation Technique 144
irrational beliefs 6±10; ABCD form 281;
anger 177±8, 183, 189±91, 193±8,
199±200, 202, 205; anxiety 23±4, 26,
29, 31, 36, 37±43, 47±50, 54;
associated behaviour 19; associated
thinking 19±20; depression 57±9,
60±1, 69±71, 72±5, 77, 78±84;
distinguishing between emotional
Index
problems and healthy alternatives
17±18, 20; envy 238±9, 241, 243,
247±50, 252±6, 258, 262±3; errors in
identi®cation 285±6; guilt 88±9, 90±1,
93, 98±105, 107±10, 112±14, 115; hurt
149±50, 151±2, 157±64, 165, 169, 171,
174; jealousy 208±9, 211, 213, 218,
220±6, 230, 232±3, 235; reexamination of adversity 287; selfcontrol 35; shame 118±19, 120±1,
124±5, 129±30, 132±6, 139, 141±2,
146; see also extreme beliefs; rigid
beliefs
jealousy (healthy) 4, 208, 212±13, 297;
goals 217±20; imagery techniques 227;
non-jealous worldview 236; rational
beliefs 209, 230, 231±2, 233
jealousy (unhealthy) 1, 207±36, 297; ABCD
form 230±1; assessment of emotional
problems about 234±5; associated
behaviour 209±10, 216, 297; associated
thinking 210±11, 217, 297; chronic
208, 220, 232±4; development of nonjealous worldview 235±6; evidence of
disturbance 220; generalisation of
learning 229±30; imagery techniques
226±7; inference themes 207±8,
214±16; irrational beliefs 208±9;
language used to describe 207; safetyseeking measures 231±2; steps to deal
with 212±30
jumping to conclusions 268
language: anger 176; anxiety 22, 23;
depression 56; envy 237; guilt 87; hurt
148; jealousy 207; shame 117, 122
`less me' hurt 149, 159
life-acceptance beliefs 14; anger 191±2;
anxiety 38; depression 70
life-depreciation beliefs 10; anger 191±2;
anxiety 38; depression 70; hurt 149
loss 60±1, 67±9, 75±9, 80±2, 83, 85
`magic question' technique 284±6; anger
186; anxiety 33; depression 65±6; envy
244; guilt 95; hurt 154±5; jealousy 215;
shame 126
303
magni®cation 271
meta-disturbance: anger 203±5; anxiety
51±4; depression 82±5; envy 264±5;
guilt 114±15; hurt 173; jealousy
234±5; shame 144±6
mind reading 270
minimisation 271
moral code, breaking or failing to live up to
one's 87, 92, 94, 99, 105±6, 107±8,
109±11
multi-category thinking 268
`negated awfulising' component 12
`negated depreciation' component 14
`negated rigid' component 11
`negated unbearability' component 13
negative thinking 269
neutral emotions 2±3
non-awfulising beliefs 11±12; anxiety 38,
39; depression 70; true, logical and
healthy nature of 274±5
non-ego anger 177
non-ego anxiety 24, 52
non-ego depression 58, 83±4
non-ego envy 238, 249, 250, 260, 261±2
non-ego hurt 149
non-engagement with thoughts 28±9
non-extreme beliefs 11±15, 17; anger
191, 193±6; anxiety 24, 38±9, 40±3;
depression 58, 70, 72±4; envy
252±4; guilt 88, 99; hurt 161±4;
jealousy 209, 223±6; shame 119;
see also ¯exible beliefs; rational
beliefs
objects: anger towards 186, 191; envy
237±8, 244, 247±9, 250, 259±61,
263±4, 265±6
optimism 69
other-acceptance beliefs 14; anger 191±2;
anxiety 38; depression 70
other-depreciation beliefs 9; anger 191;
anxiety 38; depression 70
others, anger towards 185
overcompensation 25, 27
overestimation of disrespect 202±3
overestimation of threat 27, 49±50
overgeneralisation 269
304
Index
overt behaviour 18; action tendencies
distinction 109; anger 187; anxiety 34;
depression 66; envy 245; guilt 96; hurt
156; jealousy 216; shame 127
panic 23
part-whole error 280
person focused envy 238, 244, 250, 258,
261±2
personal domain 15, 16; depression 56±7;
envy 237±8; guilt 87; jealousy 207±8;
shame 118
personal weakness: anxiety 51, 53; hurt
154; jealousy 214; shame 124±5
personalisation 272
persuasive arguments 43, 287±8
pity-based depression see undeserved
plight
`poor me' hurt 149, 159
positive emotions 2
positive experiences 269
positive thinking 286
power 182
promises, keeping 192
public speaking anxiety 23
questioning of beliefs: anger 193±6, 200,
202; anxiety 40±3, 47, 50; depression
72±5, 79, 81; envy 252±5, 258; guilt
101±4, 108; hurt 161±4, 169; jealousy
223±6, 230; shame 129, 132±5, 139,
145
rational beliefs 10±15; ABCD form 281;
anger 178, 189±90, 191±8, 200,
202±3, 206; anxiety 24, 36, 38±9,
40±4, 47±52, 54; associated
behaviour 19; associated thinking
19; depression 58, 59, 69±75, 78±9,
81, 83±4; distinguishing between
emotional problems and healthy
alternatives 17±18, 21; envy 239,
249, 250±6, 260, 263, 265; failure to
negate irrational belief 287; guilt
88±9, 93, 98±105, 107±11, 116;
healthy self-care 112; hurt 149±50,
157, 159±66, 168±72, 175; jealousy
209, 221±8, 233, 236; shame
118±19, 129, 131±6, 139, 141±3,
147; see also ¯exible beliefs; nonextreme beliefs
rational emotive behaviour therapy (REBT)
5±6
rational-emotive cognitive behaviour
therapy (RECBT) 5±15; `ABC' model
19, 20, 31, 63, 93, 124, 183, 213, 243;
anger 176, 183, 184; anxiety 22, 30, 31;
depression 56, 57, 62, 63; envy 237,
238, 242, 243; guilt 87, 88, 92, 93, 113;
high standards 136; hurt 153; jealousy
207, 213, 214; language used 22, 23;
responsibility 104; shame 123, 124,
144; unconditional self-acceptance
260
realistic attribution 272
realistic perspective 20, 21, 271, 286; anger
198; anxiety 45; concern 190;
depression 76; disappointment 129;
discomfort tolerance beliefs 277;
¯exible beliefs 273; healthy envy 248,
265; healthy jealousy 219, 236; hurt
175; non-awfulising beliefs 275;
remorse 98; shame 138; sorrow 158;
unconditional acceptance beliefs 279
REBT see rational emotive behaviour
therapy
RECBT see rational-emotive cognitive
behaviour therapy
reciprocity in relationships 164±5, 172, 174
rehearsal: anger 196±7, 198, 200; anxiety
43, 44, 47; depression 75, 76, 79; envy
255±6; guilt 105; hurt 165±6; jealousy
227; shame 136, 137
religious beliefs 93±4
remorse 4, 87, 91±2, 293; chronic guilt 111;
goals 96±9; imagery techniques 105;
productive dialogue 106; rational
beliefs 88, 93, 107±8, 109, 114; taking
responsibility for behaviour 104
responsibility: anger 183±4, 204; anxiety
31±2; depression 62±4; envy 242±3;
guilt 89, 92±4, 104±5, 106, 108, 114,
116; hurt 153±4; jealousy 213±14;
obstacles to accepting 31±2, 63±4,
93±4, 124±5, 153±4, 183±4, 213±14,
243; shame 123±5
Index
revenge 180, 188
rigid beliefs 6±7, 17; anger 177, 191, 193±5,
203; anxiety 24, 31, 38, 40±2;
depression 58, 62, 70, 72±4, 82; envy
238, 242, 249, 252±4, 260, 262; errors
in identi®cation 286±7; false, illogical
and unhealthy nature of 273±4; guilt
88, 92, 99, 101±3, 111; hurt 149, 153,
159, 161±3; jealousy 208, 209, 213,
221, 223±5; self-control 35; shame
118, 119, 123, 132±4, 136, 143, 145;
uncertainty 46; see also extreme beliefs;
irrational beliefs
risk taking 109, 140, 141, 170
role-depreciation 287
rumination 27, 60, 180
sadness 4, 58, 292; advantages and
disadvantages 61±2; goals 67±9;
imagery techniques 75; rational beliefs
78, 79
safety-seeking behaviour: anxiety 25±6, 34,
36, 43±4; errors in setting goals 286;
guilt 109±10; hurt 170±1; jealousy
231±2; shame 140±1
safety-seeking thinking 27±9, 37, 286,
291
self-acceptance beliefs 14; anger 184,
191±2, 204; anxiety 38; depression 70;
envy 250, 260, 261; guilt 88, 92, 99,
101±3, 104; hurt 160; jealousy 221;
shame 119, 122, 123, 129, 131, 132±5,
136
self-anger 185, 204
self-blame: anger 183±4, 204; anxiety 31;
depression 63; envy 242±3; guilt 93,
114; jealousy 213
self-care 111±12, 116
self-compassion 113
self-control, loss of 23, 32, 35, 38±9, 45±6,
51, 52±3, 55, 65, 198
self-depreciation beliefs 9; anger 177, 191;
anxiety 24, 38; depression 58, 70; envy
238, 249, 259±60; errors in
identi®cation 287; guilt 88, 99, 101±3;
hurt 149, 159; jealousy 208, 221, 232;
shame 118, 119, 123, 124, 130, 132±5,
145
305
self-esteem: anger due to threats to 177,
185, 191, 196, 203; anxiety 32, 38;
depression 70; envy 259±60, 261;
shame 120, 243
self-pity 31, 63, 159
shame 1, 117±47, 294; ABCD form 139±40;
assessment of emotional problems
about 144±6; associated behaviour
119±20, 127, 294; associated thinking
120±1, 127, 294; chronic 140, 141±3,
146; development of non-shame
worldview 146±7; ego area 15; envy
and 242, 243; generalisation of
learning 139; guilt distinction 117;
healthy orientation to high standards
135±6; hurt-related dialogue 167;
imagery techniques 136±7; Individual
and Socially De®ned `I' 143±4;
inference themes 118, 125±6;
irrational beliefs 118±19; language
used to describe 117, 122; safetyseeking measures 140±1; self-anger
distinction 185; steps to deal with
121±39; see also disappointment
social anxiety 23
Socially De®ned `I' 143±4
sociotropic depression 57, 60, 64, 83
sorrow 4, 152±3, 295; disclosure of 167,
169; goals 156±9; imagery techniques
166; rational beliefs 149, 160, 169;
reciprocity in relationships 165
sound reasoning 271
sticking to the facts 268
supervision 288
test anxiety 23
themes see inference themes
thinking 19±20, 21; ABCD form 281;
anxiety 26±9, 34, 291; concern 36±7,
291; depression 60±1, 66±7, 292;
disappointment 129±30, 294; guilt
90±1, 96, 293; healthy anger 190, 296;
healthy envy 247±8, 298; healthy
jealousy 219±20, 297; hurt 150±2, 156,
295; remorse 98±9, 293; sadness 68±9,
292; shame 120±1, 127, 294; sorrow
158±9, 295; unhealthy anger 179±80,
188, 200, 296; unhealthy envy 240±1,
306
Index
245, 298; unhealthy jealousy 210±11,
217, 297; see also balanced thinking;
distorted thinking
thinking errors 19, 268±72; anger 179;
anxiety 26; depression 60; envy 240,
248±9; hurt 151; jealousy 210, 220;
shame 120; see also distorted thinking
threat-based inference themes 16, 17
threat-exaggerating thinking 26±7, 29, 291
trust 55, 86, 174, 233, 236
uncertainty: anxiety 32, 46, 49±50, 55;
depression 81; jealousy 208, 217, 218,
221±2, 226±7, 230, 232±3
unconditional acceptance beliefs 13±15;
anger 184, 191±2, 204; depression 70;
envy 260, 261; guilt 88, 92, 99, 101±3,
104; hurt 160; jealousy 221; shame
119, 122, 123, 131, 132±5, 136; true,
logical and healthy nature of 279±80
undeserved plight 60±1, 65±6, 67±9, 75±9,
80±2, 83, 85
UNEs see unhealthy negative emotions
unfairness: depreciation beliefs 10;
depression 60, 70; envy 261±2, 263,
265, 266; hurt 151, 158, 164±5, 167,
170±1, 174
unhealthy negative emotions (UNEs) 1±2,
17, 181; awfulising beliefs 275;
depreciation beliefs 279; discomfort
intolerance beliefs 277; errors in
identi®cation 283; errors in setting
goals 285±6; rigid beliefs 273; see also
emotional problems
West, Mae 10
world views: angry/non-angry 205±6;
anxious/non-anxious 54±5; depressed/
non-depressed 85±6; envious/nonenvious 265±6; guilty/non-guilty
115±16; hurt/non-hurt 174±5; jealous/
non-jealous 235±6; shame/non-shame
146±7
`worth it' component 13