In my personal and professional life, I practice Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) which is a form of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) that serves as a self-help method of reducing self-disturbance. Before going any further, it may be useful to know how REBT works.
Firstly, the ABC model is used to illustrate how when Actions occur and people maintain irrational Beliefs about the events, these unhelpful assumptions – and not the actual occurrences – are what cause unpleasant cognitive, emotive, bodily sensation, and behavioral Consequences.
When providing psychoeducation to clients and readers of my poorly written blog, I invite people to consider that there are four predominate irrational beliefs which people often use: global evaluations, low frustration tolerance, awfulizing, and demandingness.
Of these, REBT literature suggests that “global evaluation/self-downing” (page 13) falls into the same category. This is also referred to as self-deprecation, self-condemnation, and a negative self-rating. Herein, I’ll focus on this category of self-disturbing belief.
Noteworthy, there are two main forms of self-downing beliefs: absolutistic and conditional. Although they relate to global evaluations, these assumptions are often accompanied by demandingness. Examples of these unrealistic personal philosophies of life are as follows:
· Absolutistic – “I absolutely should accomplish my interests and goals.” Stated in its shortened form, “I should attain success.” Absolutistic beliefs tend to be rigid while allowing little to no balanced perspective.
A healthier personal philosophy would be to believe, “Although I’d like to attain success, I don’t have to accomplish my interests and goals.” The key to reducing self-disturbance in this regard is flexibility.
· Conditional – “If I want to be considered a good person, then I ought to please other people.” Conditional beliefs establish a requirement for conditions to be met in order to achieve an outcome.
A more helpful assumption would be to believe, “It would be nice to please other people and be considered a good person, yet I cannot possibly please everyone.” Here, expression of a preference versus demandingness can make a significant difference in regard to self-downing.
When using unhelpful attitudes, the ABC model incorporates Disputation of these unproductive assumptions in order to explore Effective new beliefs, which I’ve indicated above. Noteworthy, Actions and Consequences aren’t Disputed, as only unproductive Beliefs are challenged.
From a psychological standpoint, people disturb themselves using a Belief-Consequence (B-C) connection. Of course, this isn’t to suggest that in the context of the naturalistic or physical world there is no Action-Consequence (A-C) connection.
Perhaps it may be useful to provide a personal anecdote of self-downing so that you may better understand the distinction between A-C and B-C connections. Many years ago, I met a woman and we fell in love while she was physically separated from her husband and pending a divorce.
At the time, she had a six-month-old daughter. Not long after her divorce was finalized, the woman and I wed. Although I had no biological children of my own, I was proud to become a stepdad.
As family dynamics often reveal, neither the woman nor I were well-suited for marriage or parenthood – at least not in regard to one another. Despite the fact that since childhood I vowed never to get divorced, my wife and I parted ways when her daughter was five-years-old.
Unaware of REBT, I disturbed myself with use of the B-C connection to the point whereby the aftereffects of my inflexible self-downing beliefs resulted in a depressive episode punctuated by suicidality—the increased risk of suicide with suicidal ideation (thoughts), a plan, and intent.
My divorce was finalized (Action) and I unfavorably Believed, “I’m a failure, I was a bad husband, and I was a lousy parent!” Notice that I negatively self-rated, as opposed to merely rating my behavior or function of a fallible human being, spouse, or stepdad.
My irrational self-downing beliefs related to a negative global evaluation of self. This occurs when neglecting to consider balanced information that may offset one’s own imbalanced personal philosophy of life.
As such, when I Believed that I was a failure, a bad husband, and lousy parent, I caused the Consequence of depression with suicidality. By not honestly stating that although my marriage failed and I had some good and some bad traits, I self-disturbed with a B-C connection.
Do you understand the distinction that I’m highlighting herein? To clarify, it wasn’t that I—Deric, as an individual human—was a failure. After all, I’d succeeded at a great many other endeavors in life (e.g., I was a moderately successful marksman).
Although it was true that I had a failed marriage—the dissolution of a marital union involving me and another person—I, as an individual human, wasn’t a failure. Noteworthy, divorce (Action) didn’t lead to depression and suicidality (Consequence). There was no A-C connection.
This personal anecdote illustrates the first helpful technique addressed by REBT. Use of the ABC model can help you to seek balanced perspectives (i.e., Effective new beliefs) so that you can stop the self-disturbing process of self-downing your way toward unpleasant outcomes.
Secondly, REBT uses the technique of unconditional acceptance to relieve suffering. This is accomplished through use of unconditional self-acceptance (USA), unconditional other-acceptance, and unconditional life-acceptance.
Worth noting, in a bit, I’ll address how USA can improve your overall functioning and quality of life. For now, one helpful REBT resource expands upon self-downing thusly (page 226):
In some ways, it is easier to illustrate the meaning of self-acceptance by its converse, self-depreciation (also referred to as self-downing or negative self-rating). Semantically, self-depreciation involves the mislabeling of one’s overall value as a person as worthless, hopeless, or failure.
Logically, self-depreciation is seen as a non‑sequitur where a conclusion is reached that because one (or more) aspect of one’s behavior or traits is bad, therefore, all aspects of oneself are bad. Empirically, self-depreciation results from selective abstraction of one or more aspects of one’s negative behavior or traits to arrive at the false conclusion that all aspects of oneself are bad.
Imbalanced self-downing beliefs can be disputed. Similarly, one can learn to simply tolerate and accept that these unhelpful assumptions exist as mental noise. If you’re one of the many people who has experienced self-downing, USA is an antidote to your self-induced suffering.
Oh, wait. You thought you were the only one who self-downed? According to one REBT source, “Self-downing, or the feelings and behavings that go with lack of unconditional self-accepting, seem to afflict practically all humans at many times during their lives” (page 20).
To demonstrate how I use USA, let’s revisit my personal anecdote and apply a helpful technique known as the elegant solution—granting as true the premises and conclusions of irrational beliefs.
To recapitulate, I concluded that I was a failure, a bad husband, and lousy parent. Fine, suppose it was true that I was all of those things. I’m not going to argue the supposed facts or dispute the assumptions.
Granting that what I told myself was true; could I accept myself as a failure, bad husband, and lousy parent? If I say “no,” then how is it possible that I lived through that incredibly difficult period of my personal history?
I didn’t have to like or love that I was allegedly an altogether lousy individual, though I was able to achieve acceptance—the process of enduring without protest or reaction. In this way, even if I was a lousy person (which I wasn’t), I was resilient enough to function from day to day.
Of course, I’m not one who merely stops at the point of an elegant solution outcome – at least not in my personal life. Instead, I prefer mixing the ABC model with USA when it comes to self-downing.
Why must I have absolutistically been a successful human being, husband, or parent? Was it helpful for me to place an inflexible condition upon myself whereby I rated my entire worth on either success in marriage or failure through divorce? What do you think?
From the perspective of USA, I’ve always been imperfect and always will be. This means that none of my behavior (which isn’t me, though represents me) will be perfect. As such, I sometimes fail at things, I failed in marriage, and I failed at being a perfect parent.
I imagine that you, too, have failed at many things without your failure constituting a global rating of your worth. Am I wrong? Offering a healthy outlook in regard to USA and self-downing, one REBT source suggests (page 117):
Accepting yourself unconditionally will solve many of your problems. But to be able to do this, you [recommendatorily] must get past the following things:
· Your inborn tendency to feel guilty and depressed when you think, or when you think others think, you have acted badly, wrongly, or stupidly
· Your habitual self-downing
[…] Can you really get past all your old thinking and accept yourself unconditionally? Of course, because as you have learned, you have some remarkable abilities and talents on your side.
You control your own feelings. You don’t have to let them control you.
You largely feel the way you think, and you can think about your thinking—and change it.
“No one can insult you or put you down without your permission,” as Eleanor Roosevelt said.
Self-downing is a common occurrence with flawed human beings, yet it isn’t some profound curse upon our existence by which we must walk the Earth in mourning for our perceivably lousy lives. Although we may behave in a lousy fashion at times, we aren’t our behavior.
Just as I wasn’t a failure, a bad husband, or a lousy parent – even when behaving imperfectly or in a less than desirable manner – you aren’t a failure even when your efforts fail to align with your interests and goals. Besides, failed effort is dissatisfying enough without needless self-downing.
If you’re looking for a provider who tries to work to help understand how thinking impacts physical, mental, emotional, and behavioral elements of your life—helping you to sharpen your critical thinking skills, I invite you to reach out today by using the contact widget on my website.
As a psychotherapist, I’m pleased to try to help people with an assortment of issues ranging from anger (hostility, rage, and aggression) to relational issues, adjustment matters, trauma experience, justice involvement, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety and depression, and other mood or personality-related matters.
At Hollings Therapy, LLC, serving all of Texas, I aim to treat clients with dignity and respect while offering a multi-lensed approach to the practice of psychotherapy and life coaching. My mission includes: Prioritizing the cognitive and emotive needs of clients, an overall reduction in client suffering, and supporting sustainable growth for the clients I serve. Rather than simply trying to help you to feel better, I want to try to help you get better!
Deric Hollings, LPC, LCSW
References:
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