A Thinking Man

A friend of mine was attacked last week. She, a 24 year old woman, was standing in the driveway in front of her house in the afternoon chatting to a neighbour. A 55 year old disabled woman from across the square in a middle-class suburb, came towards her shouting abuse, then grabbed hold of my friend’s hair, pulled her head back, and started hitting her across the head with a walking stick.

Regardless of the details, what is quite clear is that the attacker was very angry, and that her aggressive actions reflected her strong feelings, which were being inflamed by the messages or beliefs that she was telling herself.

All human beings are simply tape-recorders on legs. From birth we go around recording messages, storing them in our conscious and sub-conscious, and then playing them back through life. And those messages or tapes or beliefs influence how we feel, and how we act. Some of those beliefs are functional for us - the tapes are true, and they help us live social and productive lives. Other beliefs are dysfunctional for us - the tapes are false and cause problems for us.

A lot of the untrue and dysfunctional beliefs that we have involve the word ‘must’. Albert Ellis, one of the founders of REBT, a branch of modern cognitive therapy (see also Reducing Stress With A Seagull) said that people go around MUSTerbating a lot. What he meant was that people say things like: “He must do that … she mustn’t do that … that must happen … I MUST, HE MUST, SHE MUST, THEY MUST, IT MUST …” We often cling to beliefs that are just not true, and extreme.

Here are some common unhelpful beliefs that lead us into problems - and I would suggest led the woman above to attack my friend:

• Things MUST be exactly the way I want them to be and if they are not, it is absolutely awful.
• People MUST take notice of me, but they don’t take notice of you unless you are forceful. You MUST get angry to make your point.
• All people are basically selfish, self-centred, and unhelpful. If you want help, you MUST make people help you.
• All people are basically hostile and waiting to put you down. You MUST always be on the alert and MUST attack first in order to protect yourself.
• If people do wrong, they MUST be punished. You MUSTN’T let people get away with things under any circumstances.

If we find ourselves with extreme emotion that is leading us to do things that are likely to cause problems for ourselves and others, let’s remember that we are probably MUSTerbating. If we can only pause for a second to find the faulty MUST belief, we stand a chance of avoiding pain and of leading a more social and productive life. The key is to find the untrue and dysfunctional MUST statement, and turn it into a true and functional WANT statement.

Here are some very functional WANT statements:

• I WANT things in a certain way, but hey, I can’t always have what I want. That would be ridiculously selfish. Other people are allowed to make their choices and get their wants too, even though I don’t have to like them.
• I WANT people to take notice of me, but hey, other people can make their choices and ignore me if they wish. I don’t like that, but I don’t have to force people to notice me. I am significant and secure whether or not they notice me.
• Some people are good, some are bad. I WANT people to help me when I need help, but I don’t have to force them. Force is often unproductive anyway. Other people are adults and can make their own choices about whether they help or not. I may not like their choices, but I can’t always get what I like or want.
• Some people are good, some are bad. I WANT to be healthily sensible and cautious about people, because to be otherwise would be naive. However, I don’t have to attack in order to avoid being put down. I may not like what other people choose to do, but I don’t have to go to painful and ridiculous lengths to protect myself from some hypothetical threat.
• I may WANT transgressors to be punished, but I don’t have to enforce that on all occasions or at any cost.

Anger can be good and healthy. It is a natural human emotion. If we feel, we care, and if we care, we are involved. The problem is not with anger, but with anger which is disproportionate and/or anger which is unjustified. If we have unjustified or disproportionate anger, it will become a problem for us and will certainly become a problem for others.

The word behind all such anger is ‘must’. Let’s try to learn to stop MUSTerbating - for our sakes, and for everybody else’s. MUSTerbating won’t make you go blind, but it could lead to you getting your eyes poked out!

Tags: anger, beliefs, CBT, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, emotion, frustration, musterbation, Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy, REBT, stress