by Mark Schiffman, M.S.
The Pokémon Go craze has made for some interesting stories. CNN collected some of the most extreme, including the story about Tom Currie from New Zealand who quit his job in order to travel the world to try and catch all 250 Pokémon. Two men in San Diego fell off a cliff and suffered unknown injuries in pursuit of one particularly evasive one. The Holocaust Museum and Arlington National Cemetery had to ask visitors not to act irreverently by trying to catch Pokémon in their somber spaces.
Hearing such extreme stories made me think of the compelling pull the catch phrase may have on people – “Gotta Catch em All!” In REBT terms we would have to clarify, is this a preferential “gotta” or an absolutistic “gotta”. When people talk to themselves about catching Pokémon do they think that they absolutely must catch all of the Pokémon or would they just strongly prefer to catch all of the Pokémon. Absolutistic “gottas” can probably lead to people quitting their jobs, injuring themselves, and completely forgetting any social conventions about how to act in serious places.
Pokémon fan or not, we all (preferably) should reflect on our language use and clarify what we mean when we say things like “I must lose weight,” “s/he must approve of me,” “I must not make any mistakes,” “other people must not criticize me,” “life should not be so hard,” etc. When we make absolutistic demands on ourselves, others, and the world, it tends to lead us down a road of unhealthy emotions. If we adjust our absolutistic shoulds to preferential shoulds, we will tend to have more healthy and helpful emotions and actions. So before you pick up your phone to catch the next Pokémon, you may want to practice saying “While I prefer to catch all of the Pokémon, I do not absolutely ‘gotta catch em all’.”
