by Mark Schiffman, M.S.
I had a three year old client once who said that she needed candy. When I told her that I couldn’t give her any, she persisted that she really needed the candy. “Why do you really need the candy? “I asked. “Because my tummy says it needs candy!” Her answer caught me off guard. After all, how could I argue with her tummy?
The truth is that even as we get older we hold on to the same sort of logic. We often mistakenly think that if our brain tells us something, it must be true. If my brain tells me to demand that others listen to me, who am I to tell my brain anything different? If my brain says “I can’t stand this,” then I really must not be able to stand it. If my brain says that I am a failure, then it must be true!
Nothing could be farther from the truth. Our brains, as great and wonderful as they are, are not the complete arbiters of truth. Albert Ellis believed that all humans had both a biological tendency to think rationally and a biological tendency to think irrationally. Just because the thought came from our brain, does not mean it is factual or helpful. The goal of REBT is to train us to identify the irrational thoughts that our brains conjure up, and replace them with rational thoughts.
This job is hard to do as it is, but it is made much more difficult when we fight back the rational thoughts because the irrational thoughts seem so real and so true. Don’t take thoughts at face-value. Analyze them. Are they rational? And remember; even if your tummy tells you something, it doesn’t mean you have to listen.
