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but I've started noticing that she hardly criticizes at all for an
hour or two after I have done something for or with her." "I
used to think women didn't know much about politics and
international affairs but Louise, Kathy, and Paula are very
knowledgeable and interesting." "Just because I haven't gotten
a good job yet doesn't mean that finishing college and working
as an aid in a nursing home has been a total waste of time."
"Just because I have a pimple on my chin doesn't mean I'm
ugly or totally unattractive in every way." (Method #8 deals
with logical thinking.)
8.
Counter "driver" messages with "allower" messages: "I don't
have to be perfect or always on top." "It's OK to be emotional,
take my time, respect myself." See scripts in chapter 9.
9.
Counter self-put-down, "witch" messages which hold you back:
"Why not approach that attractive person over there even if I
find out she/he is going with someone or even if she/he
eventually thinks I'm forward... odd... boring?" See method #1.
Several books concentrate on controlling your self-defeating
thoughts and upsetting feelings or beliefs. Some of the better ones are
David Burns's (1980), Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy, McKay &
Fanning's (1991), Prisoners of Belief, and Lazarus, Lazarus, & Fay
(1993), Don't Believe It! Many people like Wayne Dyer's (1976) best
selling, Your Erroneous Zones, but mental health professionals think it
encourages self-centeredness and shallow thinking (Santrock, Minnett
& Campbell, 1994). Many other books are cited at the end of this
method.
This is an important step--learning to think rationally and seeing
the sources of your irrational ideas--but your emotional responses are
not likely to immediately change. You may rationally see why you
shouldn't be depressed, angry, panicky, etc. long before the gut
responses fade away (as a result of the cognitive changes or, if
necessary, other self-help methods in chapter 12, such as
deconditioning).
STEP THREE: Identify the feelings and the circumstances in
which you experience unwanted emotions. Write each
upsetting situation on the top of a 3 X 5 card.
The irrational ideas discussed in step 1 may have sounded familiar.
If so, perhaps you can start observing and tracking your irrational self-
talk, and in that way discover what emotions are generated by these
thoughts. However, it is usually more practical to start by identifying
the times and situations in which you have unwanted feelings --fears,
worries, fatigue, guilt, pessimism, resentment, shyness, regrets,
loneliness, jealousy, envy, passivity, conformity, sadness, etc. In the
next step, we will go looking for the irrational ideas you might be
telling yourself that could produce the unwanted emotions. In this
step, however, we are simply identifying the emotions and situations
we would like to change.
