Recently, a man and his wife reversed into my wife’s car in a car park while she was waiting to get into a space that
someone else was coming out of.
The man apologised, admitted guilt, gave his details and left, humbly.
He later told insurance company
representatives that the sun had blinded him, and that my wife had actually driven into the back of his car (apparently our car can go sideways, because it is the very side of our car damaged, and the very centre of his back bumper that photos show to have occurred during this incident) and he mysteriously discovered a witness who wrote a statement trying to confirm his lies. He blamed my wife, lied and it has cost us money and caused some major frustration. The CCTV and photographic evidence
will prevail in the end, but it is not a great thing to have to go through and deal with - heck, we would all rather spend our energy on more pleasing matters, right?
We all experience and frustration from time to time, some of us more than others.
- Your spouse is being selfish.
- Your boss treats you poorly.
- Someone has been rude or careless.
- Or someone drives into your car and then lies about who was at fault.
What’s more, we’ve all had days where these kinds of things can all seem to happen at once, haven’t we?
Howevuuuuur….
There is a great help at hand for all of us.
Albert Ellis provided us with the answer. Despite being considered one of the most influential individuals in the field of talk therapies, I am amazed that
more hypnotherapists in particular have never heard of him. He founded Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT), pioneered Cognitive Therapy and is one of the major contributors and founders of the modern field of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy. My own studies of him have shown him to be provocative, controversial at times, quite rebellious and certainly outspoken - all of which make him all the more likeable to me!
When I work with clients in my therapy rooms, one of the things I do in my assessment with them is draw a highly complex algebraic formula to conceptualise their problem, ready yourself for this, I write on a piece of paper the following:
A =
C
This may seem a bit sophisticated for some, but hang in there, it’ll become plain in due course. I tell the client that this is how they currently perceive their problem.
A
represents adversity, or antecedent. C represents consequences.
So the client turns up for therapy believing that something happens (A) which causes the problem (C). I.e. The man drove into my wife’s car (A) caused me to feel upset, frustrated and anxious
(C).
I then draw them an even more complex algebraic formula, that goes like this:
A x B = C
I then tell them that actually, the
activating event, the adversity they experience does not directly cause the negative consequences to happen. But actually The activating event (A) is multiplied by our beliefs, cognitions and thoughts (B) which causes the consequences (C).
So if for example, you believe and think that your wife should not
have been blamed for an accident, or you think something should not have happened to you, and you think a misjustice has occurred (B) then when this is multiplied by the actual events that happened (A), the result is that we can feel frustrated, upset and tense (C).
You’ll notice there are quite a few uses of the word ’should’ in the previous paragraph.
Ellis referred to this as ‘shouldism’ or the The Tyranny Of "Should.” I like that, I also love how he refers to ‘musterbation’ when the word must is just as prevalent as should, but lets move on….
Let’s get the input of some very clever people to sum up a key point here that I meant to illustrate with the ABC highly complex algebra
stuff:
People are disturbed not by things, but by the views they take of them.
Epictetus, Stoic Philosopher.
There’s nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.
Shakespeare, in Hamlet.
