by Jeff Goldman, M.A.
As a new extern at the Ellis Institute, I find myself trying to become familiarized with REBT’s tenets and principles. Not only is it like learning a foreign language, it equates to adopting a new philosophy on life. It is this new take on living that can potentially foster a tremendous sense of autonomy and empowerment. More specifically, this auspicious proposition really resonated with me in the context of our interpersonal experiences.
We can all unequivocally agree that social interaction resides at the core of being human. From an evolutionary perspective this makes sense because we depend on others for various resources to ensure survival. Even as far back as when hunter-gather societies were the most prevalent, bartering and trading took place (e.g., food for material that can be woven into clothing). In modern times this equates to diplomatically and tactfully navigating through office politics to collecting a paycheck. It is this salary that allows us to obtain the same food and clothing that our hunter-gatherer ancestors needed. From this standpoint, caring about what others think becomes paramount and inveterate in our psyche.
Consonant with the logic above, it’s not surprising that irrational beliefs, such as demandingness (“others must like me”) and awfulizing (“my life is over if someone doesn’t likes me”), surface in the social arena. Despite this, the beauty of REBT is that it allows us to tease out when these beliefs are rearing their ugly heads and detrimentally impacting our lives. That is, in contrast to the example above, someone else’s opinion does not have to be the center of our world!! That would be synonymous to placing your self-worth into everyone else’s hands but your own. Would you take a job that bases salary on your coworkers’ performance and impression of you? Imagine that you had to walk down Madison Avenue and ask one hundred people what their first impressions are of you. If more than half of the responses are positive, you are an awesome person. One the other hand, if more than half of the responses are negative, you are a bad person. As outlandish as these two hypothetical scenarios are, they coincide with the irrational beliefs and the statements that stem from them (e.g., demandingness – “others must like me”; awfulizing – “my life is over if someone doesn’t like me”).
The take home message here is that in some situations others’ opinions are important (e.g., making a living might be difficult if your employer is not happy with you), while in other instances, these opinions hold little weight (e.g., it might be disappointing, but not life-altering, if a first date does not share a mutual attraction to you). While our evolutionary past might underlie our proclivity to place high value on how others think of us (as stated in the previous paragraph), it does not have to apply in all cases (as stated above, an employer versus a first date). With that said, it is through the conceptual lens of REBT that we can decipher which situations warrant this concern regarding others’ evaluations. Based on this, not only can thinking in more of a rational manner be empowering, it can help free us from the inextricable binds of irrational mayhem!