Post: #26

Dusty, because of your recommendation, I have bought and started reading this book.

I plan on reading through it thoroughly a few times.

I have suffered from social anxiety for a long time. Even though I have brought it down to manageable levels it is still there.

Let's just say I have missed out on many approaches and life opportunities due to this weight on my heart.

If the concepts of this book and their application help me, you will see me on here a few months from now praising this book.

Post: #27

(10-15-2013 10:17 PM)All or Nothing Wrote:  Dusty, because of your recommendation, I have bought and started reading this book.

I plan on reading through it thoroughly a few times.

I have suffered from social anxiety for a long time. Even though I have brought it down to manageable levels it is still there.

Let's just say I have missed out on many approaches and life opportunities due to this weight on my heart.

If the concepts of this book and their application help me, you will see me on here a few months from now praising this book.

Good luck man!

Maybe see if you can find an REBT therapist where you live (and have your insurance pay for it). I think there are REBT therapist referral web sites. If you can't find an REBT one, a CBT one is good too.

The key to implementing this stuff is action. What happens for most people, is they can identify their irrational beliefs, and come up with new rational beliefs, but they don't change much because they don't believe their rational beliefs enough. It is because they've been practicing the irrational beliefs their whole lives and its habitual. But when you start acting in accordance with your rational beliefs, and against your irrational beliefs, you can't help but believe the rational ones conclusively.

Post: #28

Interesting side note. Albert Ellis started creating REBT (which branched out into CBT and obliterated the prevalent therapy of the time, Freudian psychology) on himself to conquer his apporach anxiety. I posted this quote from Ellis on another thread:

Quote:Albert Ellis: I was scared shitless of approaching women. I flirted with them in Bronx Botanical Garden near my home, but I never approached them, made up all kinds of excuses.

So I gave myself a brilliant homework assignment at the age of 19 when I was off from college, to go to Bronx Botanical Garden every day that month, and whenever I saw a woman sitting alone on a park bench, I would sit immediately next to her - not in her lap - which I wouldn't dare do before, and give myself one lousy minute to talk to her. If I die, I die, screw it so I die. And I did that. I found 130 women sitting alone that month on the park bench. I sat next to all of them, whereupon 30 got up and walked away, but that left me an even sample of 100 good for research purposes. I spoke to the whole hundred for the first time in my life about the birds and the bees, the flowers, their reading.

But I prepared myself philosophically, even then, by seeing that nobody took out a stiletto and cut my balls off, nobody vomited and ran away, nobody called the cops. I had 100 pleasant conversations and with the second 100 I got good and made a few dates.

I used techniques I later developed into Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy on myself by thinking philosophically and differently. Nothing is awful or terrible, it's just a pain in the ass. That's all it is.

There's no horror in being rejected. I forced myself uncomfortably to do what I was afraid of, the opposite of what phobics' do, because whenever they're afraid of innocent things, they beat it the hell out of there and then never get over their fears.

Quote:At nineteen, Ellis tried an experiment to conquer his fear of rejection: he hung around the Bronx Botanical Garden, and, whenever he saw a girl on her own, forced himself to start a conversation. “I got to be one of the best picker-uppers of women in the United States, and finally started making it with them, a lot,” he said.

Post: #29

The original day-game master. haha

I bet this guy fileted a lot of puss.

Beyond All Seas

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Kipling

Post: #30

You might also want to check out "Feeling Good" by Dr. Burns. Its based directly on the work of Albert Ellis.
In the book you learn techniques to classify and counter your irrational thinking.

Post: #31

I see Dr Helen, author of Men on Strike, is a fan of Ellis and REBT.

From 2007 (Ellis is dead now):

http://drhelen.blogspot.com/2007/03/how-...s.html?m=1

Quote:I learned about this "accept rejection" philosophy early in my career from one of psychology's wise gurus, Albert Ellis, the founder of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy. In a recent short interview in Psychology Today, Ellis talks about self confidence, having a happy existence and learning to accept rejection no matter what. And he should know as his own institute tried to oust him. Ellis encourages people to "keep moving, moving, moving and to try scary things and not to give a s**t when they are rejected." He practices what he preaches as he developed the "shame-attacking exercise" when he was 19 years old.

Okay, so this was 1933, who knows what would happen today--just imagine if one of the ballbusters from Pandagon or Feministing sat down on that bench, but that's beside the point. The point is, learn to not only accept rejection, but to welcome it, it seems that it is the only way to overcome the irrational belief that the world owes you. It doesn't. Of course, one should fight injustice, but the irrational belief that the world should be nice to you just because you are you is a sure way to end up disappointed about life.

If you would like to try some of Ellis's techniques to reduce anxiety and gain a sense of mastery over your social reactions, try reading How to Make Yourself Happy and Remarkably Less Disturbable. At 93, his advice is still ahead of its time.

Post: #32

Chapter 6 (Part 2)- Recognizing and Reducing Neurotic Behavior:

Okay, we were talking about the very important REBT of unconditional self-acceptance (USA). With USA, your self-worth (or self-esteem, or self-identity, or whatever you want to call it) does not change based on conditions (thus unconditional). It’s on a rock solid foundation that doesn’t move no matter how strong are the winds of life you might face. If a girl rejects you, that is not a condition for lowering your self worth (indeed, there are no conditions for lowering your self worth when you adopt this philosophy). As I said in Part One of this chapter, you can rationally rate attributes about yourself (I am short, I weigh too much, I don’t have much money) because you have evidence to support those attributes (5’5” is short for a male, my BMI puts me in obese category, my financial liabilities are more than my assets) but you can not rationally rate your entire being because of those attributes (“because I am short I am a loser”). Such global ratings of your “being” do not exist in the real world, and are simply arbitrary dogmas you pull out of your ass (and then beat yourself over the head with).

The authors say self-downing beliefs and emotions stem from unrealistic overgeneralizations that cannot be scientifically upheld. They contain magical, demonizing philosophies that are definitional, improvable, and unfalsifiable.

Let’s say you meet a girl that you really like. You hit it off. You seemed to have a real connection. She laughed at all your jokes and looked at you with big doe eyes the whole night. You made out a little and you got her digits. The next couple of days you are thinking of her a lot and can’t wait to see her again, and to eventually fornicate. You send her a text.. You eventually get a text back from her “I thought you were really sweet, but I just want to be friends.” UGH.

You have a couple thoughts in your head:

1. She isn’t interested in me sexually.
2. It’s unfortunate she isn’t sexually interested in me.
3. Because she isn’t interested in me it’s awful and it makes me a rotten person.

#1 and #2 can be verified. # 3 cannot be verified except by arbitrary definition. What is a “rotten person” and how does one become one? Just by dogmatic declaration. There is no evidence of such a thing as a “rotten person” in the real world.

If you believe it is unfortunate that this girl is not sexually attracted to you, that still isn’t positive, but you don’t feel frenzied and down on yourself. That’s rational. When you add “I am rotten”, then you feel panicky and feel inner turmoil, and you will likely undermine your effectiveness with other girls. That’s irrational.

Post: #33

Chapter 7 – Overcoming the Influences of the Past

Your parents may have treated you unfairly, and you think they gave you a complex, but as an adult you have the ability to use your cognitive skills to not perpetuate your complex. Your parents (or siblings, or kids at school, etc) may have said mean things to you that hurt your feelings of self-worth, but you keep them alive with your beliefs and self talk. You are not shackled by your past. Adults can choose to believe hurtful or unhurtful ideas.

If people call you bad names, you have the choice to take them seriously or not. Applied to game, if a girl calls you bad names (“creepy”, “loser”, etc) it is entirely up to you if you buy into it or not. If you choose to take her overly seriously and insist that you must have her approval, you will probably make yourself feel ashamed and depressed. If you do not take her at all seriously, and don’t care that she thinks you are a creep or a loser, you probably won’t even feel sad or peeved about the name-calling. Whenever you feel hurt by a girl’s words, you make her words sacred and thus you end up actually hurting yourself. Putting a manosphere spin on it, are you going to deify the words of a random girl who probably spends her free time watching the Kardashians and posting selfies and pictures of her dinner on FB? Are you going to hold high and sacred her opinion of you, or laugh her off? Your choice.

The authors say in this chapter that you can have negative feelings when your goals are blocked that are healthy or unhealthy. When something obnoxious happens to you, it is better to feel just concerned or disappointed which is healthy. It is unhealthy when you feel over concerned – meaning: panicked, self-downing, horror-stricken, depressed or enraged.

Really, a lot of what REBT is about is not exaggerating things. You only need REBT when your goals are blocked (when your goals of being alive, healthy, and happy are being met, you don’t need REBT). When your goals get blocked, you can handle the frustration in a calm level headed way or you can fly off the handle and make things worse by exaggerating how bad things are. REBT teaches you to handle blocked goals in a levelheaded way. You feel a lot better, and you end up getting your goals met more often. When you react to your goals being blocked in an exaggerated fashion, not only does it feel really bad, you also end up blocking your goals more in the future!

Personally, whenever I feel my emotions getting too frenzied, I remind myself that no problem in my life thus far has “ruined” me. Things always have a way of resolving themselves in ways in the long run that I can accept and deal with. In other words, whatever angst I am feeling at the moment is an exaggeration because so far in my life things never turned out as bad as how I built them up to be in my mind. This insight calms me and allows me to deal with my setbacks in a more mature and levelheaded way. I can then think of better solutions to my problems in this frame of mind versus when I am feeling inflamed or butt-hurt.

This chapter ends with this paragraph:

“Emotional disturbance in sum usually stems from your irrational beliefs. You can uncover the basic unrealistic ideas with which you disturb yourself; see clearly how misleading these ideas are; and, on the basis of better information and clearer thinking, change the beliefs behind your disturbance.”

Post: #34

I think this is one of the greatest insights of REBT, that whatever happened in the past to make you feel the way you do, you still have to be thinking and feeling that way right now for it to be affecting your life. So instead of digging up the supposed ultimate causes from the past, just find what it is that you're thinking right now that is making you miserable, and figure out more rational and realistic ways to think.

This is a radical break from Freudian psychoanalysis where you're always supposed to find something in the past that still has a magical hold on you. People love this idea, but it ends up enslaving them to the past even more without solving any problems.

Ellis' insight is that to the extent the past has a hold on you, that hold is not magical. It can only exist because you're allowing it to exist right this moment. So don't worry about the past -- it may or may not be useful or even possible to understand it, but what really matters is the habits of thought and emotion that you're engaged in at present. Very simple and yet completely counterintuitive idea!

There is a great Turkish proverb that sums it up and which is like the essence of REBT:

"No matter how far you have gone on the wrong road, turn back"

Post: #35

Picked up the book today because of this thread. Thanks for doing this!

Post: #36

“I've had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.”
― Mark Twain

Post: #37

Chapter 8 – Is Reason Always Reasonable?

Humans, even very smart ones, have trouble thinking and emoting rationally. Most people hold very rational and sensible thoughts at the same time they hold irrational and insensible thoughts. People are highly reasonable creatures, but have strong tendencies to act in ridiculous ways.

One of the most common mistakes people make in their thinking is over-generalizing. Because something happens once, you assume it happens all the time. Applied to game, because one girl (or even several girls) are not attracted to you, you conclude all girls are not attracted to you. You call yourself unattractive (universally!) based on a overly small sample size, and then you don’t even bother trying to meet girls because you assume all girls will reject you. Or you behave very meekly and shy around girls because you assume they won’t be attracted to you, they will reject you, and you will feel horrible. Or you might over-generalize that girls are turned off by everything about you. In fact, there might be one attribute about you that turns off a lot of women (but not all!) and can be corrected (like smiling like a retard when you approach her). Sure some guys have it easier than others, but we all have to talk to a lot of girls until we find the ones that are available and interested in us. It is the male’s role in society (usually at least) to take the risk and make the first move. We’re the stronger sex and are more naturally inclined to be bold and courageous. We have balls, they don't. It’s the girl’s role to accept or reject the guy’s advances. Us guys are not mind readers and don’t know which girls will like us unless we approach them to find out. So naturally, due to this process, men put themselves out there and get rejected often, and women have it seemingly easier and can pick and choose the ones who approach her. Some guys lose sight of this process and over-generalize that the rejection they face is an indictment against them. They over-generalize and assume the rejections mean they are wholly undesirable. It is better to think of rejection as just a byproduct of meeting chicks. It’s almost like wiping your ass. Every day you need to wipe your ass, which is unpleasant and inconvenient, but it’s just the end byproduct of eating. You accept wiping your ass as the price of enjoying food and staying nourished, and don’t think too much about the inconvenience and unpleasantness of it. You understand it’s just a fact of life. So too is being rejected a somewhat inconvenient and unpleasant byproduct of approaching and meeting girls. To the extent you don’t grant great meaning to any rejection and over-generalize and extrapolate them to define your “being”, like wiping your ass it’s just something mildly unpleasant that you barely think about. (The ass-wiping parable is mine not the authors)

The authors talk about how people have social pressure to conform. But if you want to fulfill your own destiny, you need to be somewhat independent and individualistic.

The authors talk about how difficult it is to be rational all the time. It can’t be done, and it would be irrational to try to always be rational. For one thing, being rational can be inefficient. It takes time and energy to analyze your thoughts and try to determine if they are logical and based on evidence, and then seek out new logical beliefs based on evidence. It’s not worth it a lot of the time. As for me, I only employ REBT when my thoughts and emotions may be harmful to me. I know I do a lot of over-generalizing in my day-to-day life, but I won’t stop it unless I think it is doing me harm. I may judge others in an irrationally negative way, but I rarely judge myself in an irrationally negative way because it would be too harmful to me. I’ll take the time and effort to stop my irrational beliefs about myself, but I won’t bother when I have irrational thoughts about Lindy West (unless the irrational thoughts about Lindy were pissing me off too much , which hasn’t yet happened.). I do try to not focus too much on negative things (although it can be fun sometimes) and try to be good natured and laid back a good deal of the time. I read once that Albert Ellis himself used to get aggravated at airports and so forth dealing with slowpoke people. He knew it was irrational to be upset by others dithering, but he said it wasn’t worth his time and energy to fix. He said he was mildly crazy enough to put down others sometimes, but not crazy enough to put down himself ever. I’d say I am pretty similar.

Ellis takes a shot at Ayn Rand in this chapter. He thinks Rand, and her objectivism philosophy takes rationality to the extreme. She turns rational thought into something obsessive and religion-like. Thus, Ellis' opinion is trying to be too rational is irrational. Only strive to be rational where it helps you.

The authors define “rational” as such: showing reason, not foolish or silly, sensible, leading to efficient results, producing desired results without unnecessary effort, helping you achieve the individual and social goals you strive for.

Post: #38

Chapter 9 – Refusing to Feel Desperately Unhappy

The authors say REBT can teach you to be almost never desperately unhappy. They admit they have less expertise in teaching you how to be happy. That is because people find happiness in all different kinds of pursuits. I guess the implication is that unhappiness has its roots in common things that can be identified and worked on, while happiness is more unique to the individual. They do make some suggestions on what might make you happy, like having an absorbing project you’re working on. My current absorbing work is the book I’m writing which is challenging and frustrating, but it also keeps me out of trouble, and I feel a lot of satisfaction when I make progress. When you have an absorbing interest, you have less time to look inward and navel gaze about your problems. It’s a distraction and keeps you occupied. Some suggestions I can think of for your absorbing work might be: learn how to be a great public speaker, take acting classes, read the great novels, travel and see the great works of art, become really good at a social sport like volleyball, skiing, bowling, etc. The authors suggest that you use trial and error to find what floats your boat.

Many people make themselves miserable – anxious, depressed, self-pitying or self-downing. Almost all of the sustained and “unbearable” anguish that you feel, except that which goes with prolonged physical pain, is unnecessary. You mostly manufacture it. They define extreme unhappiness when something bad happens as having two parts (1) you feel sad, sorrowful, irritated, annoyed, sorry etc (2) you feel depressed, worthless, and/or enraged. #1 is healthy. You acknowledge something bad happens like a loss of a job or a girl. Misery enters the equation when you add #2. #2 comes from exaggerated thinking, like being horrified and losing all hope that life can ever be good again, or self-flagellation.

Put another way, the healthy negative feelings in #1 come from thoughts that feature: preferences, wishing, and desiring. You wish that girl liked you. You desire that the night would have ended with her in your bed, you wish things would have turned out differently with her. The unhealthy feelings in #2 come from demanding, insisting, and commanding. She must not have flaked on me and she is (or I am) a rotten person because she did!

When you add this demanding style of language to your thoughts (#2), you inflame yourself. You create a very unrealistic situation in your head that you can’t resolve (because it’s impossible to fix something that doesn’t exist- it just frustrates the fuck out of you). “She must not have flaked on me.” But she did flake, what the fuck did you mean by “she must not have flaked on me?” There is no reasonable way to resolve this conflict you created in your head. Since she already flaked, you would need a time machine to go back to before she flaked. Then even if you had a time machine, how can you make her (a person with free will) like you and not want to flake? You’d have to have the power of god or a dictator to make her like you when she does not (and even then she would have to pretend to like you because she was coerced).

It might not seem like a big difference, but it is. When things go wrong and you think in realistic terms and wish things turned out different, you feel maybe annoyed or sorrowful. Conversely, when you say things that exist “must” or “should” not exist, you inflame yourself.
When you desire rather than demand, you understand you don’t control the universe and accept the fact (even with regret) that things won’t always go your way. It’s a mature and healthy attitude. When you demand things go your way, you are acting like a spoiled child and make yourself feel shitty. Ellis calls demanding that things go your way that you can’t control “whining.”

You may sanely choose to feel strongly annoyed or irritated by frustrating conditions. But you need not make yourself feel very enraged or self-pitying about these defeats.

I said in an earlier post that REBT is largely about not exaggerating. When you describe a bad event as “horrible” you will feel “horror.” When you think of a setback as “awful”, you feel “awful.” If you describe something as “unfortunate” you will feel a less intense feeling than horror or awfulness, probably something more like “regret.” These bad feelings are much less intense, are easier to cope with, and they go away faster when you choose to think of things without exaggerating. In the context of game, keep things in perspective! It’s not like we are in a foxhole in a war, or we just found out we have cancer, or just lost a limb in a car accident. Our setbacks in chasing tail are not “horrible” or “awful”. At most they are “annoyances” or “inconveniences” that can be shaken off quickly. You will enjoy game better, and be much more resilient if you choose appropriate language to describe events and don’t freak out over little shit.

One of the root causes of approach anxiety I believe is the belief that “I must not be rejected.” You set things up so that when you are rejected, you will not feel merely disappointed, you will feel destroyed. Because what you really mean is “If she rejects me, I will be a thoroughly inadequate person who cannot possibly accept myself or lead an enjoyable existence.” Thinking this way will make you feel very insecure, and it will probably show in your demeanor and body language. If you thought instead “I wish she would accept me and not reject me, but I understand she has free will and I might not be her type, and I can give it a shot and if she rejects me that’s regrettable but fair.” You will feel more secure. The first example is a demand ("I must not be rejected by her”) the second is a preference (“I wish she would not reject me, but I’ll understand if she does.”). You really turn down the pressure when you think “preferentially” rather than “demandingly.” This is one of the ways you acquire a calm and cool attitude about approaching. You readily acknowledge that the girl has free-will, she has every right in the world to reject you if she chooses, and you accept that fact of life in a calm and mature way. The opposite of resistance is acceptance. When you demand, you resist reality. When you prefer, you accept reality.

Think about a toaster. A toaster has those curled wires that turn bright red when the electricity is on, and the heat toasts your bread. The reason those curled wires get red-hot is because the electricity is being resisted. It can’t flow through the wire unimpeded, so there’s a bottleneck of electrons and things heat up. Likewise, when you resist the bad things in life and say they “must” not exist, when in fact they do exist, you are resisting reality; your emotions get red hot. When you accept that something bad happened, without even liking it, but acknowledging it is reality and you have no choice but to accept it, then reality can make its way through your mind without your emotions getting overheated, and you can resolve problems faster.

Remember the ABC model in post #7? You can choose your beliefs (B) when things go wrong at A. You can consider set backs to be unfortunate and unpleasant rather than awful or terrible. If you do so, your emotions will be much more manageable and beneficial for achieving your goals in the long run.

Disputing irrational beliefs is probably a life long pursuit. However, if you consistently seek out and dispute your disturbed philosophies, you will find their influence weakens greatly. You will never be perfectly rational, nor perfectly in control of your emotions all the time, but the more you do it, as time goes by, your irrational beliefs will come back less often and have less of an influence.

This book was written in the 1960’s. It’s funny, Ellis gives an anecdote in this chapter about a fat frumpy young girl who was his client, who he was trying to get to lose weight and dress nicer to get a man. This book is very highly rated on Amazon, but if you read the few bad ratings, they are usually women who hate this anecdote (It’s sexists! It’s behind the times! Etc).

Post: #39

I think Ellis' actual coinage of "musturbation" is worth mentioning. It's a nice shorthand for the sort of irrational thinking that says things must turn out a certain way, or else! -- which Ellis correctly identifies as the basic cause of a huge amount of misery.

The realization that well, no, things don't have to turn out the way you want them to is like a lot of REBT/CBT realizations. It's deceptively simple, yet people miss it all the time and there has to be a light bulb turning on moment at which the realization is made. And like many of the lessons of REBT/CBT it seems like a letdown but is in fact a liberation.

Post: #40

(10-24-2013 09:54 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  I think Ellis' actual coinage of "musturbation" is worth mentioning. It's a nice shorthand for the sort of irrational thinking that says things must turn out a certain way, or else! -- which Ellis correctly identifies as the basic cause of a huge amount of misery.

The realization that well, no, things don't have to turn out the way you want them to is like a lot of REBT/CBT realizations. It's deceptively simple, yet people miss it all the time and there has to be a light bulb turning on moment at which the realization is made. And like many of the lessons of REBT/CBT it seems like a letdown but is in fact a liberation.

Agreed.

And "musterbating"is child-like. It's like you throw a tantrum because things aren't going how you want. A mature adult understands that things will often not go the way you want them to, that that is the human condition, and you accept that and work with that reality.

Ellis also says musterbating is caused by a "Jehovahian" mindset. Jehovahian meaning god-like. You think you can command the universe (and people) to do certain things, then you get mad at the universe when it doesn't comply with your orders.

Post: #41

Post: #42

wow, great tip it is now on the top of my list

Post: #43

Chapter 10 – Tackling Your Dire Need for Approval

Ellis argues that although we strongly desire approval from others, and some level of approval make us happier, we do not need approval. Approval is not utterly required for life and happiness.

Most people want some approval (we game so we get female approval) but wants and desires are not the same as needs and necessities. Children need approval, but adults do not. As an adult you can learn to accept the disapproval of others (rejection), do something about it, and come off unharmed. You don’t have to like disapproval (rejection), but you can learn to tolerate it and use it for your own good.

When you need approval, and can’t tolerate disapproval or rejection, you have a bottomless pit that can never be filled. You will always feel inadequate because, let's face it, you're not that special and people aren’t going to worship you all the time. Having a need for approval (versus a desire) makes you weak, insecure, and needy. That’s what “neediness” means – a need for approval. We all know what a turn-off neediness is and how it manifests itself: “try hard”, pedestalizing, being too nice and wimpy, acting insecure, etc. These “beta” behaviors originate in your need for approval, versus your desire for approval. When you treat approval as a need, you become panicky and prioritize her approval above almost everything. When you simply have a desire for approval, you still want her approval, but you prioritize other things more, like your self respect. You’ll walk away from potential pussy before you’ll do some “try hard” song-and-dance to desperately try to win her over. "Next!"

I have a need for water. Without it I would die. If I were in a situation where I was dying of thirst and someone had water, I probably would be very panicky and desperate and probably would do anything for that water. Conversely, I never need any of these bishes to approve of me. I can always walk away and meet other ones. There is no reason to treat any girl’s approval of you as a need, where you get panicky and desperate at the thought of her disapproval.

Constantly striving for approval means living mainly for what others want you to do rather than for your own goals. If you follow your own basic desires and are not overly concerned with what others think of you, you spend little time in egocentric worrying and will find absorbing outside interests.

As I said before, a lot of what REBT is about is not exaggerating. It is healthy and normal to want approval from others. So continue trying to win people over (like hot chicks). You get in trouble though when you spin this desire for approval into a desperate need. Neediness is an exaggerated form of desiring. Find a middle-of-the-road ground.

Part of what causes neediness is attaching your self-worth to others approval. This makes you very panicky and desperate. Earlier I talked about the REBT concept of unconditional self-acceptance (USA), where you don’t base your worth on any condition, like another person’s approval. If this sounds like you, you need to change your philosophies so that your self-worth never depends on any other person’s approval. This philosophy will make you much more mentally strong. Inner game. Ellis says in this chapter that USA means fully accepting yourself, your existence, and your right to live and to be as happy as you can be – no matter what traits you have or acts you do, or for that matter, whether people approve of you or not.

Ask yourself, are you making decisions in your life to please yourself or to please others? Are you holding back from doing things in your life because you are afraid you might be disapproved by important people in your life (family, friends, co-workers, etc). Give yourself permission to be polarizing and be ok with disapproval. Our proprietor Roosh is probably a good role model here. I’m sure important people in his life did not approve of his choice to give up a corporate job and travel to pussy paradises. Roosh speaks his mind without giving much of a fuck that a lot of people disapprove of him. He is living his life on his terms, and not overly concerned that others will disapprove of him.

Post: #44

Chapter 11 – Reducing Your Dire Fears of Failure

A lot of people have anxiety or low self-esteem issues because they feel they are not skilled enough in: meeting and bedding women, their work competencies, their social skills, their studies, playing sports, their hobbies, being popular, etc. This chapter deals with emotional issues surrounding your fears of failure or of not being competent enough.

Many people hold the irrational belief that they absolutely must be thoroughly competent, adequate, and achieving. Or, they must be competent or talented in some important area. Society puts a lot of pressure on us in this area. There’s a lot of societal dogma regarding the “necessity” of being achieving before one can accept oneself.

As a result of holding these irrational beliefs about having to be good at everything or some things, you overly fear failure or incompetence. Probably a lot of guys don’t approach because they fear they might not be good at it. And you know what? They probably won’t be good at it at first - all the more reason to approach and to not avoid it.

You might believe if you speak up, you will say something stupid, so you clam up and be quiet to not risk “exposing” your incompetence. Sometimes that’s not a bad strategy, but you can get a reputation of being too quiet, which hurts your career and other areas (dating) – all because you are too cautious. Being prudently cautious is ok, but being overly cautious (because you fear being incompetent) hurts you.

Underlying the fear of failure is the mistake of only giving yourself value as a person when you are competent, and if you are incompetent in some important area, you consider yourself no good.

This is an error in thinking because:

•By definition, very few people can be a top performer at a task. There’s very little room at the top of the pyramid. No one can be a top performer at everything.

•Achievement does not increase your self worth. If you arbitrarily use your achievements to boost your “self-esteem” you set yourself up for a later fall. Live by the sword die by the sword.

•When you identify and rate your self according to how you perform some activity, you create the illusion you only have as much worth as that activity. If you are not good at picking up chicks and you rate yourself lowly because of that, then you are basing your whole identity on how you game broads. You are in fact more than that!

•If you fear failure, you will have a lot of anxiety. You fear taking chances. You will flagellate yourself for making mistakes, and avoid doing things that will benefit your self-development. Fearing failure is more crippling to your life than failure itself.

The authors say that many people feel like they have to be superhuman to be worthwhile, and when they are not, they consider themselves subhuman. REBT teaches that you are neither superhuman nor subhuman, but merely human and thus you have both good and bad traits and are very fallible. If you fully accept your humanity and your fallibility, and if you give up basing your worth on being better than most everyone else, you will have real difficulty making yourself seriously upset about anything.

REBT does not teach you not to seek achievement. Far from it. Albert Ellis himself was a very driven man who had much achievement in his life. What REBT teaches is to seek achievement as you wish, but do not base your self worth on whether you succeed or not. Also, pursue your quests for achievements in a mature manner, acknowledging that you are often not good at something until you get a lot of experience and practice. In approaching, you might rack up a lot of rejections when you are new because you are new and might be bumbling at first. Like the first day at your job you were probably not very good, but you got better and more skilled as time went on. Don’t let your lack of skill at approaching stop you from approaching because the only way you will improve is by doing it a lot. Give yourself permission to suck and take the pressure off.

If you seek achievement so that you can feel superior to others and boost your ego, you set yourself up for a fall. Because what underlies this is a philosophy that you are no good unless you are better than others. This leaves you on very insecure ground. For, you can always find someone who is better than you in any activity. Wouldn’t it be better to just pursue achievements for their intrinsic pleasures without conditioning your self-worth on how well you do? This puts you on a more solid foundation. You feel more secure, and are happier in the long run.

Seemingly paradoxically, when you stop fearing failure, you usually end up becoming better skilled. It’s like the previous chapter’s lesson: when you give up your need for approval, you end up getting more approval! Both fearing failure and needing approval cause you to choke and not perform well (or more commonly, shy away from even trying).

Take approaching girls for example. If you link up your “self-worth” to how well you do with your approaches, you're probably going to tense up around girls, and beat yourself up at rejections. If you delink your performance from “you”, you will feel a whole lot better (and probably have fun with it) and you can examine your failures and mistakes in a calm detached way. Then you can come up with solutions for mistakes and reduce your errors and get better.

Apropos to not fearing failure and to taking chances:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

-Theodore Roosevelt

Post: #45

Do you guys think REBT can rewire a person's brain to not abuse drugs and alcohol?

Post: #46

(10-29-2013 12:13 AM)JoyStick Wrote:  Do you guys think REBT can rewire a person's brain to not abuse drugs and alcohol?

I don't know a lot about it, but please see this description of SMART recovery, which is an REBT based program for drug and alcohol abuse:

http://www.threeminutetherapy.com/smart.html

http://www.smartrecovery.org/intro/

Post: #47

(10-29-2013 12:13 AM)JoyStick Wrote:  Do you guys think REBT can rewire a person's brain to not abuse drugs and alcohol?

I think that REBT/CBT would challenge the premise of the question.

It is not about "rewiring" the brain, but rather helping one see some simple things clearly.

Here are some REBT insights that I think are relevant:

1. One can stop abusing drugs or alcohol at any time -- one merely needs to make a decision to do so and stick to it (technically for some drugs one would taper rather than quit cold turkey but the principle remains the same).

2. Just because one feels that one must go back to a drug, doesn't mean that one actually has to go back. Not having the drug is very unpleasant but it's not a catastrophe, and it's within one's power to stay away from it.

3. A failure to stick to one's initial decision is disappointing, but it's not a catastrophe, either. Just go off again. Past failure in no way precludes future success. I think this in particular is an insight that people trying to go off often lack -- if they "fall off the wagon", they feel strong shame, and feel that the failure is so catastrophic that they might as well give up. REBT would say that a failure is just a failure, and you just shrug it off and succeed the next time.

Post: #48

Wow. Great viewpoint! Thanks for sharing.

Post: #49

This is kind of interesting. Dr. Edelstein probably carries the REBT flag more than anyone else now that Albert Ellis is dead.

This is a discussion of self-esteem, and how sick our society is by pumping up peoples "self-esteem" for doing nothing. Edelstein is a proponent of unconditional self-acceptance, where you don't rate yourself at all and therefore don't have low or high self-esteem.

Post: #50

(10-29-2013 12:13 AM)JoyStick Wrote:  Do you guys think REBT can rewire a person's brain to not abuse drugs and alcohol?

Though I haven't read any of the REBT books, I would say yes based on what I know about it. I quit drinking in early September after reading Allen Carr's "Easy Way to Control Alcohol." When I picked up the book, I was only committed to giving it a cursory read, but by changing my views of alcohol, Carr convinced me to quit and made doing so easy.

Seems very in line with REBT philosophies to me.

That said, I think it's less about rewiring your brain than it is about reexamining the way your brain interprets things. By rewiring, it sounds like you're looking for a way to flip a switch. You're giving the desire for alcohol too much power over you.

By choosing to reexamine the juxtaposition between your beliefs and reality instead, you put the power back in your hands...where it belongs.

Beyond All Seas

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Kipling