Irrational
beliefs
Albert
Ellis, in his Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) identified eleven
dysfunctional beliefs that people often hold.
1.
It is a dire necessity for adult humans to be loved or approved by virtually
every significant other person in their community.
2.
One absolutely must be competent, adequate, and achieving in all important
respects or else one is an inadequate, worthless person.
3.
People absolutely must act considerately and fairly and they are damnable
villains if they do not. They are their bad acts.
4.
It is awful and terrible when things are not the way one would very much like
them to be.
5.
Emotional disturbance is mainly externally caused and people have little or no
ability to increase or decrease their dysfunctional feelings and behaviors.
6.
If something is or may be dangerous or fearsome, then one should be constantly
and excessively concerned about it and should keep dwelling on the possibility
of it occurring.
7.
One cannot and must not face life's responsibilities and difficulties and it is
easier to avoid them.
8.
One must be quite dependent on others and need them and you cannot mainly run
one's own life.
9.
One's past history is an all-important determiner of one's present behavior and
because something once strongly affected one's life, it should indefinitely have
a similar effect.
10.
Other people's disturbances are horrible and one must feel upset about them.
11. There is invariably a right, precise and perfect solution to human problems and it is awful if this perfect solution is not found.
Ellis's
belief are deliberately extreme, to highlight that we often take unreasonably
exaggerated viewpoints. He called this approach "awfulizing", as we
tend to pessimistically generalize these things.
A
way this can happen is that if we have a strong need for certainty, we will tend
to push perceptions that actually should be considered along a variable spectrum
towards the extremes. Thus, we create stereotypes of ourselves.
So
what? So if you want to help the other person adopt more functional beliefs,
help them first realize how extreme and irrational their generalized beliefs
are. Then discuss with them how more rational and useful beliefs can be found.
See
also: Ellis, A. (1994). Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy, NY: Birch Lane
Press
http://changingminds.org/explanations/belief/irrational_beliefs.htm
Updated: 7/10/10