The Four Thoughts That F*ck Up Christmas (and how to fix them)

/0 Comments/in , , , , , /by

Ah Christmas, the advertising starts in August, the aftershocks last until January. It’s a lot of stress, just for one day. And that day has many moving parts. There’s a lot riding on it and it’s easy to get upset but, as Shakespeare famously wrote, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” (Hamlet, Act II, Scene II). Of course, events influence you. When things go well, you feel happy (yay, presents! Thoughtful gifts!). When things go wrong, you feel stressed (the dog ate the turkey!). However, your reactions depend far more on what you tell yourself about what happened. That includes Christmas. If you often find the festive period stressful and want to emerge unscathed this year, these thought strategies may help. Think of them as seasonal stress management tips.

Everything must be perfect

Beware of words like must, mustn’t, should, and shouldn’t. Avoid phrases such as got to and have to too. Psychologists call these dogmatic demands. They create rigid beliefs that wind you up, increase stress, and trigger anxiety or anger.

People often become surprisingly dictatorial about Christmas Day. They say things like, “Everything must be perfect,” or “Everything has to go right,” or “Cousin Frank must not get drunk.” Sadly, life rarely obeys these demands. Things go wrong, perfection never arrives, and Cousin Frank does whatever Cousin Frank wants.

Try replacing dogmatic demands with flexible preferences. These thoughts express what you want while accepting you do not have to get it. Think, “I would like things to be perfect, but they don’t have to be.” Or, “I hope things go well, but they don’t have to.” You might also think, “I’d prefer Cousin Frank not to get drunk, but there’s no rule saying he must not.”

Acceptance reduces pressure and makes it easier to relax.

That’s it, Christmas is ruined

You’ve probably heard phrases like, “Christmas was ruined,” or “It was a total disaster.” You might hear, “Christmas was awful,” or “Cousin Frank was a nightmare.” Words like ruined, disaster, awful, and nightmare fall into a thinking habit called awfulising, or catastrophising.

Awfulising means treating something as the worst possible thing. It implies the situation is 100 percent bad, with nothing worse imaginable. In reality, almost nothing is entirely bad. You can always imagine something worse.

Awfulising exaggerates problems. That exaggeration explains why Christmas often brings intense emotions and unnecessary stress. Try more balanced alternatives instead. Say, “Christmas didn’t go to plan, but it wasn’t ruined.” Or, “It wasn’t ideal, but it wasn’t a disaster.” You might also think, “It was bad, but it wasn’t awful,” or, “I didn’t like Cousin Frank getting drunk, but it wasn’t the end of the world.”

Balanced thinking restores perspective. When you keep events in proportion, your emotional reactions stay proportionate too. This even applies to the celebratory household drama known as, “Oh no, I burned the turkey.”

I can’t stand it / them / this

“I can’t stand it,” also known as “I can’t cope” or “This is intolerable,” reflects low frustration tolerance. To see how unhelpful this thought is, consider its literal meaning.

Some things truly are unbearable. Being airdropped into the Arctic in pyjamas will kill you quickly. The Sahara at noon would do the same. Christmas, however, does not belong in that category. You can stand family gatherings. And you can tolerate awkward conversations. Plus, you can cope with people you’d rather avoid. You can also handle people getting drunk.

It may feel unpleasant and challenging, but it remains survivable. This mindset reflects high frustration tolerance. Things can feel difficult, yet you can endure them. You always have.

You have survived every Christmas so far. That’s a 100 percent success rate. Not bad, eh?

Pejorative put-downs

We often judge harshly. This includes putting ourselves down (“I’m an idiot,” “I’m a failure”). But we also put others down (“They’re useless,” “They’re idiots”). And we can even put things down (“Christmas is rubbish,” “The pudding was disgusting”).

People and situations are more complex than those labels suggest. People have strengths and weaknesses. So do puddings. We all contain successes and failures, positive traits and flaws. One person’s “yuck” is another person’s “yum.”

You are worthwhile and fallible. Worthwhile means you have value as you are. Fallible means you will make mistakes. Everyone does. You are not a failure; you are a worthwhile, fallible human being. Cousin Frank is not useless. He is also a worthwhile and fallible human being.

Christmas is not rubbish. It contains good parts and bad parts. You enjoy some elements and dislike others. Overall, it simply is what it is. Despite months of build-up and endless preparation, Christmas remains just one day.

These ideas come from my book The Four Thoughts That F*ck You Up… and how to fix them. The book draws on Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) and Rational Emotive Behaviour Coaching (REBC). Albert Ellis developed these approaches, building on Stoic philosophy, Buddhism, and existentialism.

 

I hope these ideas give you festive food for thought, not just for this Christmas, but for all the ones to come. Also, for more stress management tips, fell free to check out my piece on five things to stop stress in its tracks.

Also, if you want to start the new year just right, have a look at ‘how to have a new year that lasts all year long.’

And remember, stress management isn’t just for Christmas; it’s for life.

Swearing at the Coronavirus Might Just Do You the Power of Good

/0 Comments/in , , , , , , , /by

 

Sometimes, you’ve just got to call a spade a spade and, sometimes, you’ve got to look at something that’s a bit shit and just say, “fuck it.” Believe me, it will help you, as swearing at things can be a very empowering and life-affirming thing to do.

 

Many studies have backed up the usefulness of swearing in a variety of settings. Swearing can help you cope with adversity, get on with people more quickly, cope with difficult and demanding situations and, even, bolster the persuasiveness of your arguments, speeches and conversations.

 

One such experiment, from researchers at Northern Illinois University, examined the effects of swearing on the persuasiveness of a speaker. Participants were invited to listen to three versions of a speech. One where the word ‘damn’ appeared at the beginning, one where it appeared at the end and one where it didn’t appear at all. The results showed that swearing at the beginning or the end of the speech significantly increased not only the persuasiveness of the speech but also the perceived intensity of the speaker. 1

 

Meanwhile, Professor Richard Stephens, over at Keele University in Newcastle, has tested swearing in a wide variety of ways over the years. He and his team have discovered that people who do swear can hold their hands in freezing cold water for longer than those who don’t swear and that, in a test of anaerobic strength, people who swore produced more power wattage and a stronger handgrip on a stationary exercise bike than those who did not.

 

Elsewhere, other studies have shown that people who swear, as long as swearing is part of their overall and otherwise extensive vocabulary, tend to be healthier, happier and a whole lot more honest too.

 

 

Swearing then, is not only good for your physical and mental health, but it is also a great way to gain control over your pain, your stress and your emotions.

 

There’s a lot going on at the moment; a lot of things are currently out of our control and it’s easy to feel powerless and lost. However, if you want to lift your spirits and feel more resilient in the face of the current adversity, don’t be afraid to drop the F-bomb.

 

It’s not for nothing my therapy book is called The Four Thoughts That F*ck You Up (and how to fix them). In fact, it when it comes to self-help books with swearwords in the title, it’s not alone.

 

We have The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson (as well as his follow-up, Everything Is F*cked) and The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F**k by Sarah Knight, as well as Healthy as F*ck (Oonagh Duncan), Wake the F#ck Up (Brett Moran) and, my favourite, Fuck Off (a mindfulness swearword colouring book for adults). Finally, there’s the daddy of them all, F**k It Therapy by John C Parkin (plus his two f*ck-related follow ups). In a similar, but also slightly different refrain, we have Get your Sh*t Together by Sarah Knight and (proving that even Knights of the Realm thing swearing is good for you) How to Fix Your Sh*t by Sháá Wasmund MBE.

 

Swearing crops up very frequently in my therapy room.

 

I once had a client who had an anger management issue and a very short fuse. “You must respect me,” he believed. “It’s intolerable to not be respected and people who don’t show respect me are arseholes.” This belief allowed him to kick off whenever he felt disrespected by anyone and, even, anything. He once ripped an IKEA cabinet to little bits and pieces just because ‘Thing A’ disrespected him by not fitting into ‘Groove B.’

 

The healthy alternative to all this was, “I like to be respected but I don’t have to be respected; I find it difficult to deal with when I’m not, but I know I can stand it; people who don’t respect me are not arseholes, they are worthwhile fallible human beings.”

 

With a little vim and vigour, his healthy beliefs became “I like to be respected but I don’t fucking have to be respected; I won’t like it when I’m not but it won’t fucking kill me and people who don’t aren’t fucking arseholes, they’re all-fucking-right really.” Eventually, over time, he whittled all this down to just, “fuck it.” And that was enough for him to gain control over his anger and keep calm, even when other people were being less than his ideal.

 

Profanity can be quite profound, you see; and this Coronavirus well, it can just fucking do one, can’t it?

 

 

1:Cory R. Scherer & Brad J. Sagarin (2006) Indecent influence: The positive effects of obscenity on persuasion, Social Influence, 1:2, 138-146, DOI: 10.1080/15534510600747597

 

 

There’s No Need to Panic About this Pandemic

/0 Comments/in , , , , /by

 

Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) makes a distinction between unhealthy anxiety and healthy concern. Both share the same theme, or inference, as both are about the threats and dangers of everyday life. It doesn’t matter if the threat is real (something that is happening or is about to happen) or imaginary (something that hasn’t happened yet and probably won’t happen at all); anxiety and concern are all about threat and danger.

 

Unhealthy anxiety is the result of irrational (or unhelpful) beliefs about a given event or situation; whilst healthy concern arises when you hold rational (or helpful) beliefs about the exact same event or situation.

 

When you are unhealthily anxious you overestimate the probability of that threat occurring and underestimate your ability to deal with it, you can create an even more negative threat in your mind and might find it difficult to concentrate on other matters. Typically, the anxious will avoid the threat (physically or mentally), ward off the threat, tranquilise their feelings and seek reassurance about it.

 

When you are healthily concerned, however, you are more realistic about the probability of the threat occurring and are equally realistic about your ability to cope with it. You do not create even more negative scenarios in your mind, and you are able to concentrate on other tasks and matters. As a result, the concerned are more able to face up to the threat (if it even occurs) and are more able to take constructive action to minimise said risk or danger.

 

This also applies to health anxieties. A health anxiety is an obsessive and irrational worry that you have caught or are about to come down with a severe medical condition.

 

And, right now, as a health anxiety, as a public and medical concern and as a severe medical condition Coronavirus, or COVID-19, is right up there and scaring us all.

 

But, are our news outlets and our governments overdoing it or not; are we all literally making a drama out of a crisis; are our fears rational or irrational; founded or unfounded? In short, are we experiencing collective Coronavirus anxiety or COVID-19 concern?

 

Considering the statistics (at the time of writing of the 107,828 cases so far, 86 percent have been of a mild condition and a massive 94 percent have so far recovered and/or been discharged.) it would seem to be the former. And so, asset stripping the shelves in supermarkets and chemists of bog roll, antibacterial hand gels and facemasks does seem like reassurance seeking writ large, whilst completely shunning people, public places and public transport could count as avoidance.

 

Beating people up based on their ethnicity or holiday choices, meanwhile, is definitely overkill.

 

Yes, people have sadly died but there have been other factors involved (such as age and other underlying health conditions).

 

Caution is advised, certainly, but the current advice is to wash your hands regularly and thoroughly (for at least 20 seconds) and that’s about it. That is considered effective protection, not just against COVID-19, but all other cough and cold-related germs and viruses.

 

Whilst the Coronavirus is something to be concerned with, and something to take reasonable precautions against, it is nothing to get anxious about.

 

For more on the current global pandemic panic, please feel free to read my post over at Psychology Today (click here).

 

If you want to know more about REBT, the thoughts that can freak you out and, more importantly, how to deal with them, please feel free to purchase a copy of this book that I wrote (click here).

 

Not So Crazy in Love

/0 Comments/in , , , , /by

 

Today, is February 14th; Valentine’s Day, the day for lovers, the day for romance, the day for card companies, florists, chocolatiers, jewellers, and restaurants up and down the country to make you make the most of this day, come what may. Back in the day (my day, that is) you were lucky if you got a small card and a cup of tea in bed. Now, it’s nothing but pressure to perform, please and be more loved-up than thou (we can partly blame social media for the latter, but only partly). Basically, Valentine’s Day has gone and gotten all a bit crazy, when you think about it.

 

But then, love is not the most rational of emotions.

 

Enter then, Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT). Not only is it a form of psychotherapy but it is also considered to be a school of thought. This means that, while it is great for dealing with specific emotional problems such as anger, anxiety, depression, jealousy and so on, it is also (and at the same time) a brilliant way of looking at life and all of life’s problems in a whole new way.

 

This is important as irrationality surrounds us and penetrates us (a bit like The Force in Star Wars only crap), and it can bind us together in unhelpful ways if we are not careful.

 

With it, we can develop the tendency to blow things out of proportion, magnify their difficulty, throw our toys out of the pram and, generally, rush headlong into foolish decisions that we later regret.

 

REBT offers a way of stepping back a little, and of questioning a thought and the emotion it engenders, before you react (or overreact) according to it.

 

Once you start to question the validity and rationality of your thoughts, you will soon start to see just how silly life, and by default, our everyday language really is. Like, really, amazingly, off-kilter crazy.

 

This goes double for love songs.

 

To find out how truly ludicrous love songs actually are, to wise up to their irrationality, please read my new post over at Psychology Today (click here).

 

As you do so, whilst remembering that Valentine’s Day can be as restrained or as OTT as you allow it to become, it means that you can still be as romantic as you wish, but it also means you won’t be no fool for love (or any other emotion) again.

 

How’s that for heart-warming?

 

 

 

If You Only Buy One Book This Christmas

/0 Comments/in , , , , /by

 

So, I wrote a book. It’s available to buy right now as you’re reading this and it would be awfully remiss of me if I didn’t blog about my book in my own actual blog so, here it is.

 

It’s called The Four Thoughts That F*ck You Up (and how to fix them) and it’s a hopefully humorous and insightful (I leave that for you to decide) book about rational emotive behaviour therapy (REBT).

 

REBT was invented in the mid 1950s by a psychotherapist called Albert Ellis. It’s actually considered to be the first form of cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) to be developed. And it’s brilliant.

 

REBT is the form of CBT that I practice and promote. It follows the philosophy that it is not the events in life that disturb you, but what you tell yourself about those events that disturbs you. So if you are thinking, feeling and acting in ways that you don’t like, but don’t seem to be able to change, it’s not because of the thing, but down to what you tell yourself about the thing, change what it is that you tell yourself and you get to change how you think, feel and act.

 

Now, it’s not saying when stuff happens, that it doesn’t have an influence, because it does but, it’s only an influence. So, even in the face of something difficult, or challenging, or downright negative, you can still remain in control (or regain control if you think you’ve lost it) by looking at what you tell yourself in the face of that difficult, challenging or negative thing.

 

This means that nobody makes you angry, nothing makes you anxious, and nobody and nothing can drive you to drink, drugs, distraction, despair or doughnuts. It’s what you tell yourself about those things and people that does that.

 

REBT says that there is always a thing (or an activating event) and a reaction to that thing (a consequence) but, between the thing and the reaction there will be a specific thought process (known as a belief) that drive the reaction about the thing.

 

So, REBT is all about beliefs. My book is all about the four beliefs that REBT says lie at the heart of psychological disturbance (i.e., that f*ck you up) and the four healthy equivalents that can help keep you calm and rational. It also has a step-by-step guide to help you work on a specific problem

 

Someone recently asked me why I wrote it. That answer could be a whole blog in itself but, briefly, I’ve been in practice now for over 15 years and just for once, when I was finishing therapy with someone and they asked if there is any reading material I could suggest, I wanted to be able to say, “why yes, there is this very book right here.”

 

And now I can.

 

It’s available on Amazon and Waterstones and WHSmith, or directly from the Penguin Random House website and it’s available from all good online bookshops in your country, area and/or territory (so it’s not just available in the UK).

 

I am reliably informed that it is both “super-wise” and “warm and funny.” And it wasn’t my friends that said that. It would make for a good Christmas stocking filler, or last-minute Christmas gift idea. And for those of you looking a little further ahead, it would be a great way of coming up with and sticking to any one of a number of New Year’s resolutions.

 

If you haven’t bought it yet, I hope you consider buying a copy. If you have already bought one, I thank you for doing so. And, either way, I hope you will enjoy it, are enjoying it and/or have enjoyed it.

 

Personally, as much as I enjoyed writing it, I will never forget the thrill of standing in the WHSmith bookshop in Paddington station on the day of publication and seeing out on the shelves already.

 

All the feels.

 

 

 

There Is No Try!

/in , , , , , /by

 

Yoda said it best when he told Luke Skywalker in the movie The Empire Strikes Back, “Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try.” But, what did he mean? What was the lesson, and why was it an important one?  Read more

Brand New Bristol Based Therapist

/in , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , /by

img_2444

 

Well, fairly new; well, sort of new. New-ish; okay, I moved here from London in January 2016 but, due to other work commitments, it’s taken me this long to sort a private practice out. However, I am a psychotherapist and I’ve been working as one since 2004. Read more

Why You Need to Give up Your Demands

/in , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , /by

Demand1

 

In Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT), the form of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) that I advocate, we say that your demands are at the root of your psychological disturbance. But, what is a demand exactly, and how does it disturb you?  Read more

Do You Want to Feel like Spring has Sprung?

/in , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , /by

easter

 

It’s Easter, a time for renewal, rebirth and resurrection, a celebration of new life and the passing of spring into summer. It’s also the time for a good old spring clean, literally, metaphorically, physically and emotionally. So, as the days get longer, brighter and warmer and as summer beckons, where do you want to start? Read more

You’re Having a Laugh!

/in , , , /by

Oscar Wilde once famously wrote that life was far too important to be taken seriously, whilst one of the most often used sayings ever is that laughter is the best medicine. And while the therapy room might be the last place in which you expect to experience laughter, it is as good a place as any for it. Read more