by Amanda Rosinski, M.A.
I received this letter in the mail this week, summoning me for jury duty during the week of Christmas. I became very angry as soon as I saw those words in bold on the outside of the envelope. I only became angrier as I opened the letter and saw that the date to serve was during the week of Christmas. I wasn’t angry because of what just happened though, I was angry because of how I interpreted what just happened. What did opening this envelope mean to me that caused my anger? It meant demandingness: “I shouldn’t have to deal with jury duty during the holidays.” It meant frustration intolerance: “This is going to take up too much time, and I don’t have enough of it as it is.” It meant awfulizing: “This is terrible. It is literally the worst timing ever.” It even meant global evaluations: “The court system is so problematic anyways. How can I have any positive impact by just serving as a juror this one time?” How was holding all of these irrational beliefs helping me? In fact, these beliefs were only hurting me, because they were causing me to feel anger.
So after my initial period of anger, I decided to take a step back and think about how my thoughts were affecting my emotions. I noticed that the letter stated, “There are NO EXEMPTIONS. Everyone who is eligible must serve.” Well, that seems rigid. But as we know in REBT, we cannot control the actions of others, only ourselves. Reading this made me think about how I can control my emotional reactions when receiving this letter. By using flexible preferences: “I may not want to deal with jury duty during the holidays, but there’s no rule that I absolutely should not have to deal with it during the holidays.” By having high frustration tolerance: “I don’t like that this will take up some time, but I can stand it, and will still have time to enjoy many other things during the holidays.” By using anti-awfulizing: “It may be unfortunate timing, but it is not the absolute worst, and I will still be able to enjoy some things during the holidays.” By using other-acceptance: “The court system may have some flaws, but I can still accept it as an imperfect system.” Taking a step back and adapting my beliefs into these more helpful beliefs allowed me to turn my anger into a more controllable annoyance.
