The Words You Use

Recently I have had a few spammers flaming my blog, so I have had to begin moderating my comments. I will still approve dissenting opinions, as long as they are thought out, and constructive. I am not one to stock the pond with only true believers; I just don’t want my readership to be exposed to the kind of silliness the internet can breed. It is a shame that I had to do this, but that is the risk you take being on the internet. Now, I know most of you that do read approach me personally with comments and discussion, which is fine, but as always feel free to make comments. And as always, just you being on the page increases my numbers, which makes me look good, and increases my visibility on search engines and the like. So I thank each and every one of you for your patronage.

As far as my progress goes, every day that passes, I get just that much closer to getting my Bachelors of Science in Psychology. It will be very soon, and by next fall I will be sending out my grad school applications. It is exciting to look at the possible doctoral programs that I am eligible for. Many of them will take me to a far-away place for a great deal of time. I am actually kind of overwhelmed with all of the prospective directions I could move in. I have a particular passion for personality psychology, but there are other focuses that peak my interest. So as the day of sending out my doctoral program applications approaches, it becomes a process of comparing schools and weighing options.

Anyway, let us move onto the psychology discussion. While I do find other aspects of psychology interesting, I am drawn more toward that of REBT and other kinds of CBT. As you may have noticed, a great deal of my posts have been heavy on the cognitive behavioral side of personality theory. I do in fact appreciate other avenues, but this is my personal blog, so I decided to discuss topics that I find the most alluring, and psychotherapy, REBT, and interpersonal relationships are what I find to be the most fascinating.

One of the central pillars of the REBT ideals is the continuing internal struggle against irrational beliefs. These irrational beliefs come in a lot of forms, and one particular form that Ellis took issue with was what he called “musterbation.” In his book “How to control your anxiety before it controls you,” Ellis describes this musterbation as the “absolutistic Musts, Shoulds, Oughts, and other Demands” that we make on ourselves. Some of the most common, and most problem causing musts are directed at one’s self (e.g. “I MUST be clever, smart, successful, etc. . . . or it is awful”), directed at others (e.g. “Others MUST treat me well, fairly, pay attention to me, or I can’t handle it), and directed at the environment (e.g. “Life MUST be easy and without complications, otherwise I cannot cope”). These are the kinds of internal statements that can create the foundation for irrational beliefs.

‘Must’ statements are not the only kind of irrational statements. Almost any definitive statement can work its way into creating irrational beliefs. One kind of irrational statement that I have personally noticed often abused is “need.” Many people tell themselves that they need things that they in reality do not, that things need to be a certain way when other ways are functional, and that certain components in life are required to make it of value. The ‘need’ definitive can often be used interchangeably with the ‘must’ definitive, but there are a few subtle distinctions that make the two differ. The difference that I would like to point out is that ‘need’ is more often used by people to impose their own desires onto others, and in doing so, wrap up their own wellbeing into that of the other individual’s. An example of this would be when someone evinces that a friend “needs a man/women to complete their life.”

These statements are often visceral and automatic, like a reflex. They enter our minds as reactions to events, and without intervening circumstances, they can persist and foster irrational base beliefs that we begin using to make decisions. With conscious effort, we can resist these unnecessary musts. This aids us in becoming minimally anxious. We can replace phrases such as “I MUST achieve x” to a more flexible and amendable “achieving x would be preferable, and the realistic consequences of not achieving x is y.” Replacing MUST and NEED with ‘it would be preferable’ gives us an option of failure, and the notion that when things do not go as we prefer, it is not the end of the world. In this way, we can rationally weigh options, instead of attempting to live up to unreasonable expectations that we lay on ourselves, and catastrophizing when we as humans inevitably fail at something. When we do this, we open a door for discussion and questioning of what we desire, and what we find preferable. We can analyze evidence provided, weigh the consequences, and consider all avenues of action. This allows us to not live by definitive, irrational beliefs based on visceral reactions, but to operate on reason and consideration.

Above and beyond the “war on musterbation,” as Ellis called it, I think internal word choice can matter. It may blur the line between psychology and philosophy, but I think that the practice of e-prime may have psychological benefits, much as the semantics and word choice that Ellis talks about do. The e-prime form of the English language sets out to eliminate all definitive wording. If one were to use e-prime, they would eliminate all words derived from ‘to be.’ Is, are, am, is not, and all words that imply strict, rigid, and definitive existence, become replace with “appears to” and “seems to.” This use of language reflects a lack of absolutism, can help with the expansion of scientific thinking, and create a psychological environment of skepticism of perception that can be healthy. One classic example of e-prime is the example of a man observing a field of grass. He can say to himself “the grass is green” and rely completely on his senses, or he can say “the grass appears green,” thus taking information from his senses, while also using rationality to leave open the possibility that his senses are wrong. Like I said, this idea floats a bit closer to philosophy, but it is one worthy of a bit of consideration. The biggest problem with e-prime is the difficulty. I do try to use it sometimes, but it is a very difficult habit to keep up, and I am not very good at it currently.

In the future I will try to post little discussions between my bi-weekly bigger posts. Also, I promise after I finish with Ellis’s personality traits I will explore other territory. Anywho, come back next time for Ellis and Healthy Personalities #4: acceptance of uncertainty. And later down the pipe I will be talking about perception and Gestalt psychology.

Ellis and Healthy Personalities #3: Tolerance

First, I would like to apologize for my lengthy absence. The holidays, and other events, had me pretty occupied. I hope that I will soon be back into the full swing of things.

Ellis’s third trait of a healthy personality is tolerance. Tolerance in this context is the ability to tolerate the actions of others. Ellis states that one who demonstrates tolerance gives “other human beings the right to be wrong, and while disliking or abhorring some of their behavior, still not blame them as a person, for performing this disliked behavior.” This is much much easier said than done.

Often in life people behave in ways that displease us. Sometimes we can let these things go, and sometimes we hold grudges. Separating a person from their behavior is not always an easy task. Our language and culture is often even structured in a way that persuades us to define ourselves by the actions that we take. We are naturally inclined to characterize individuals by the actions they take, and this makes it very easy to characterize them poorly for such actions that we do not find acceptable.

I think an important point that Ellis makes is that it is not healthy to unrealistically expect others to be perfect. People will inevitably error, or act out of the realm of reasonable action. It is completely foreseeable that most, if not all people that one may encounter in one’s life, would at some time or another happen to offend them in some way. So to expect that people will act perfectly and never offend or upset you is unreasonable. Furthermore, to expect any one particular individual to never offend is also unreasonable. This highlights a pitfall that many relationships, romantic, familial, or even friendships, become susceptible too. Sometimes when we become close with friends or significant others, we begin to expect them to be completely sensitive to all of our own needs and to consider our feelings with every turn. Not only does this reflect a poor self sufficiency, but it also is an unreasonable demand from others, and anyone relying too heavily on the consideration of one’s needs in other’s actions will be sorely disappointed. This disappointment can breed resentment and distain. This is why tolerance is healthy in this instance. You can learn to manage when people do not act in the manner that you would prefer.

Though one can learn to tolerate other’s actions, and accept them as fallible human beings as Ellis would suggest, this does not mean that one would be best if they were to roll over, or allow oneself to be subjected to unfair treatment. A balance of acting on self-interest in response to undesirable actions by others, while accepting those actions as those of a flawed and valuable human being can be struck. That is not to say that all actions should be unanswered and just roll off everyone’s back like so much water on ducks. For example, human rights violations, dangerous criminal actions, and violence should definitely be impeded, but the committers of these acts can still be valued. Like Hitler. The actions of he and the Nazi party were appalling, and I doubt that many rational individuals would argue that they should not have been stopped. Yet, with proper and healthy tolerance, we can see Hitler and his party as flawed, deeply disturbed human beings with irrational ideas, rather than inhuman monsters. From this viewpoint, we can still desire to end the actions of such individuals, but respect their human rights as well. It is when we let the actions of others affect us so deeply, begin to commit war crimes, murder for revenge, torture for information, and thus become the “monsters” that we seek to stop. That may be slightly politicized, which I try to avoid, but I think that this point very much applies here.

Overall, in daily life we can learn to forgive and tolerate the minor infractions against us, letting these small infractions go without holding these trespasses against others, accepting that those around us will err. It may be difficult to do, but healthy practice and demonstration of tolerance can lift a great deal of undo anxiety and stress that we experience by latching onto negative feelings that are often produced in reaction to the actions of others that happen to offend us.

What do you think about tolerance in this sense? Lack of this kind of tolerance seems to be the stem of a lot of anger issues. What kind of issues with anger have you experienced?

Come back next time when I talk about the importance of word choice. In the distant future I will cover Ellis’s fourth personality trait: acceptance of uncertainty.