During his first years of practicing REBT (Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy), the famous American psychologist and psychotherapist, Dr. Albert Ellis saw that practically all of his clients held variations of a dozen or so irrational beliefs. He later reduced them to three.
September 27, 1913 - July 24, 2007
His Irrational Idea No. 1 is the one that triggers my most serious and regular response. I am getting better at managing it, but a recent e-mailed criticism of one of my homilies from a total stranger triggered an irrational response as soon as I read the criticism. I work hard on my homilies, get a high degree of affirmation and "put them out there" on my blog so I am always vulnerable to being "triggered" by a critical response. I know it is irrational. I have worked hard to lower my being "triggered" because I realize such a response is irrational. I also know that others are "triggered" much more often than me so I have decided to share this one personal experience in the hopes that it will help someone else who gets "triggered" into an irrational response when they, or their work, are rejected or criticized.
Irrational Idea No. 1
The idea that it is a dire necessity for an adult human being to be loved or approved of by virtually every significant other person in his community.
- It’s impossible to be liked or loved by everybody. No matter how popular you are, there will always be someone who doesn’t like you.
- Even if you could get everybody to like or love you, you would never know if they liked you enough, or if they still liked you.
- Different people have different tastes. Some people might like (for example) your new hairstyle; other people might hate it. Therefore, no matter what you do, some people will admire you, and some people won’t.
- Getting people to like you takes time and effort. If you try to get everyone to like you, you won’t have any time or energy left over to do the things that you want to do.
- If you demand others’ approval, you’ll always be doing what they want you to do, instead of doing what you want to do with your time and your life. Your life will no longer be your own.
- If you try too hard to be loved or approved, people will soon tire of your constant sycophancy, and they will not respect you.
- Paying too much attention to how much love and approval you are receiving, means you won’t pay enough attention to how much love and approval you are giving.
- There’s no harm in trying to be popular, but it’s best not to try too hard. In other words, it’s self-helping to want to be popular, but it’s self-defeating to need to be popular.
- Having love and approval means you’ll find it easier to have friends, to find and keep a job, to find accommodation, etc. But just because other people approve of you doesn’t mean that you’ll like yourself. It’s better to strive for unconditional self-acceptance; i.e., you accept yourself, regardless of what others think of you.
- It’s not pleasant when other people don’t like you, but it’s not awful, it’s not the end of the world, and it’s not fatal.
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