Disputing Irrational Beliefs
Ann C. Jorn Copright 2008
Up to this point, we explored the connection between your beliefs, emotions, activities and pain. Now that you are more aware of how your beliefs, especially extreme and rigid beliefs, affect your mood, activities and pain, let’s look at ways to replace those negative beliefs with more realistic, coping ones or what we call Rational Beliefs. A rational belief is just the opposite of an irrational belief.
Rational Belief – is one that is flexible, not rigid, not extreme and more helpful to your natural goals for happiness, comfort, success, love and approval.
Rational beliefs are based on your preferences not extremist demands for comfort, success and approval. A belief also develops an emotional component after you practice it 50 billion times a day. As the saying goes practice makes perfect. Unfortunately we humans can rehearse idea that are not true and develop irrational beliefs. Typically our common sense tells us that an irrational belief is false but we do not have much emotion connected to our common sense thought. In other words, we can see the idea is wrong but it feels true. We tend to confuse this feeling, because it is so strong, with the truth and then tend to engage in activities that support our irrational belief. Disputing your irrational beliefs involves asking yourself a few simple questions. Disputing irrational beliefs or iBs involves three basic strategies: 1.) The Empirical or Scientific Dispute, 2.) The Functional Dispute and 3.) The Logical Dispute (Ellis and Dryden, 1987).
The Empirical or Scientific Dispute: Ask yourself Where is the proof that this belief is true? With this question, you are looking for the scientific evidence of your irrational belief’s validity. Let’s take a non-pain related example. John’s irrational belief is that his love interest, Jane, should not reject him. But John is feeling very sad and rejected because Jane turned him down for a dinner date and he thinks that he cannot stand this rejection and that it is just awful! Where is the proof that his belief that Janet should not reject him is true? There isn’t any is there? In fact, she did reject him, therefore, the irrational belief that she should not reject him is clearly false. Also, do you think that did not hold his irrational belief about Jane in the first place, he would not feel overly sad or rejected? Definitely not! Let’s hope that john gives up his irrational belief and does not turn into a stalker!
The Functional Dispute: Ask yourself Is my irrational belief helping me or does it make things worse for me? With this question, you are asking yourself whether your belief works to help you achieve your goals or not. Is this belief helping you to be happier or more upset? It was clear that John’s Irrational belief made him feel worse when his belief was confronted with the facts.
The Logical Dispute: Ask yourself Is this belief logical does it ring true to my common sense? With this question, you are looking for ways in which your belief does not stem from your preferences for love and approval, comfort and success or achievement. You may be blowing things way out of proportion or over-generalizing. Does it make common sense that Jane should not reject John because he believes that she should not? Human's three basic goals of love and approval, comfort and success or achievement are desires. They are preferences or wants. When we engage in demanding thinking or absolutist thinking we turn those preferences into absolute demands (Ellis and Dryden, 1987).
Our preferences are not laws of the nature. While it is true that humans have these basic desires or preferences for their lives that does not mean that those preferences are necessarily achieved. Remember in the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson states that we have the rights of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We do not have the inherent right to happiness but only a right to pursue it. The reason why he does not say we have the right to happiness is that happiness is not a law of nature. That we like happiness appears to be law and that we pursue happiness appears to be law of our nature. That we like love and approval comfort and success is a fact. But because we like something or want something or prefer something does not make it a law that we must have it. We definitely suffer if we don't have happiness or get our goals met that is true. It is not a law that we must have it. If it was a law of nature we would simply be happy our desires for love comfort and success would just exist for everybody as a fact. And there would be no reason for Jefferson to state that we have the right is to pursue happiness. You would have just said we have the right to happiness. Any irrational belief stems from a core 'should', 'must', 'have to', 'need to' statement. The illogical inferences of low frustration tolerance, awfulizing, and self or other downing (global rating) all flow from the demands for comfort, love and approval, and success or achievement. When you make a logical dispute the first question to ask yourself is do my conclusions stem from my preferences or do they stem from some demand that I have made. Let's take a look at how making a demand can lead to false conclusions.
The statement all dogs must have white hair followed by a the presence of what appears to be a dog with black hair leads us to incorrectly conclude that this dog-like creature with black hair is not a dog. When we say I must have love and approval and we don't get it from someone we find important, we then tend to conclude that it is awful that it is intolerable and that maybe you are unworthy. If we take each of these conclusions we can also argue against them independently as being illogical. If it was a fact that not getting the love we want was truly awful or intolerable we would just drop dead. We would not be able to survive. And if we conclude that we are unworthy or unlovable because we do not get someone's love we also make a false statement. It is impossible for your basic worth to be based on getting the love or approval of one particular person. As I have discussed above self-worth is the result of judgment we pass on ourselves. It is our judgment of ourselves that makes us feel bad or good. When we judge our basic value based on some external events like not getting someone's love or approval were saying that our value as a person is dependent on getting someone's love or approval and it clearly is not. In fact, when we call ourselves worthless or we use the words awful or say I can't stand it we are really using words they have very vague definitions. We know they are vague because every person's definition of them is different.
You will find that when you begin to regularly and vigorously dispute your irrational beliefs, the irrational beliefs feel less true than they once did and the rational beliefs begin to feel truer. You will also notice that your ability to problem-solve improves and that you tend to become emotionally upset less frequently. Challenging your irrational beliefs has the added benefit of reducing your stress level and improving your motivation to employ your pain and life coping skills. Let’s look at an example of how to challenge your irrational beliefs and the new Pain Management Cycle.
Maybe the most important thing to understand about tearing down irrational beliefs is the Rule of Hard Work. Changing you irrational beliefs to break the Pain Cycle takes hard work, but this work is far easier than doing nothing to break the cycle. There are many reasons why you may feel that working to break your irrational beliefs “seems” difficult. Here are a few:
Beliefs (and thoughts) move at lighting speed just below our conscious awareness making them seem mysteriously powerful.
We practice the irrational belief a thousand times a day without realizing we do it.
Practicing irrational beliefs a thousand times a day makes them “feel true”.
We tend to think that a strong feeling means that the thought connected to it is true
Our intellect or common sense does not “feel true” when we hold onto an irrational belief
We tend to use the negative emotions and behaviors caused by the irrational belief as proof that
the irrational belief is “true”.
Strong negative emotions and behaviors stemming from an irrational belief lead to the idea that the irrational belief is unchangeable
We tend to be work whiners and favor short-term gains (Low Frustration Tolerance).
We tend to jump to conclusions quickly and then over-generalize by raising our preferences for Approval, Success and Comfort to demands when we get frustrated.
Our language supports over-generalizing (“is”, “failure”, “horrible”, “awful”, “intolerable”, etc).
We simply may not know how to change our beliefs.
When we hold an irrational belief about our pain and someone suggests that we change it, we tell ourselves they do not understand our pain as they must.
These are just a few reasons why we hold onto irrational beliefs and why changing them seems difficult. I would argue that what your intellect or common sense tells is nearly always true! Your feelings can fool you. For instance, strongly imagine that under your chair lies a big alligator just reaching up to chomp on your leg. How do you feel? Didn’t you get a little feeling of anxiety and weren’t you tempted to get out of that chair or look under the chair? You are designed to have feelings give you important information. But if your feeling does not stand the test of common sense then usually the feeling is not telling you the truth of the matter. Now, will you be able to perfectly conquer all of your unhealthy negative emotions? No way! You are human and definitely not perfect!
Disputing Unhealthy Negative Emotions with Emotion
Some people in our culture say that all feelings are equally valid or true and healthy. I would say that all feelings are factual – you do in fact feel them, but they are not all equally true or healthy. Certain negative or positive emotions depending on their strength and the length of time you hold them can become unhealthy. An unhealthy negative or positive emotion tends to block your normal goals for approval, success and comfort. Often you will be aware of your negative emotions before you are aware of your thoughts, so let your emotion inform you. Here are some questions to ask of your negative emotions.
Is this negative emotion been going on for a while and how strong is it?
Is this emotion getting in they way of my ability to problem-solve for ways to obtain
my natural preferences for approval, success or comfort?
If your answer is yes to either of these questions, dime to a dollar you are holding on to an irrational belief.
Now ask yourself the following questions.
When did I start having this emotion today (or this week).
What was the Activating Event just before this emotion?
What was my Irrational Belief about this Activating Event.
Once you have identified the irrational belief, get in there and tear it up VIGOROUSLY. You are going to deliberately use emotion while Disputing your irrational belief. You do this make the rational belief feel stronger than the irrational belief. As you vigorously practicing you will begin to see the irrational belief as absurd and clearly false. Often in my work with clients, people will begin to laugh when they see the absurdity of their irrational belief. Humor, in fact, is a very important way to dispute your irrational belief. Remember you are never making fun of you (self-rating) but, rather, you are making fun of the irrational belief. Remember those great Woody Allen movies where he always was awfulizing. Some horrible and awful thing was always going to happening to him. Ask yourself – “What, am I Woody Allen?! I should win an Oscar!” Pretend you are a judge and dispute your Self-Rating in a deep British accent saying “Yeah you shall be condemned to life imprisonment for not being perfect!” Say to your LFT in a big and kingly or queenly voice “ I dub thee Sir or Lady Whine-constantly!” Poke fun at your Demands your shoulds, oughts and musts, by singing like a town crier “I master of the universe demand that all my demands be put into law!”
Disputing Irrational Beliefs by Recognizing the Irrational Beliefs of Others
Another good way to become expert on identifying your own irrational beliefs is to identify them in others when you see them consistently troubled by a negative unhealthy emotion. If you have children, you probably have heard them complain about doing their homework. Well you have just recognized LFT. Once you have recognized someone else’s irrational belief you can help them by disputing the belief. You could say to your children (and probably have). “Doing your homework is not going to kill you. But wait, let me check.” Pick up a book and begin to read . “Uhm, I’m still alive.” Or you could begin to read and pretend you are dying. You could also say “Whining will not help you do your homework or get you to the party on Saturday.”
Now I want you to go back to the first chapter and read over those initial questions that you answered yes are no to. For those items you answered yes to find them in the items listed below and circle yes again. For those items that you answered yes identify what irrational belief you think things that I am. It's possible that you think of more than one irrational belief fits that particular item. For each item that you answered yes to a 1 to 2 transfer to the form below. Place the full question at the top of the form where it says Activating Event. Your homework is to disputes these irrational beliefs. I will take one question and show you how to precede.
References:
Ellis, A. & Dryden, W. (1987). The practice of rational_emotive therapy. New York, NY: Springer Publishing Company.