Healthfully Negative vs. Unhealthfully Negative Reactions
As Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) was formed by the late psychologist Albert Ellis, who reportedly developed the first cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) psychotherapeutic modality in 1955, this blog entry is part of an ongoing series regarding his book, Ask Albert Ellis?: Straight Answers and Sound Advice from America’s Best-Known Psychologist.
REBT uses the ABC model to illustrate that when an undesirable Action occurs and you Believe an unhelpful narrative about the event, it’s your unfavorable assumption, not the occurrence itself, that causes an unpleasant Consequence. This is known as distress or disturbance.
It’s worth noting that the American Psychological Association defines a reaction as “a response to a stimulus,” as in Consequences caused by Beliefs, and defines health as “the condition of one’s mind, body, and spirit, the idea being freedom from illness, injury, pain, and distress.”
Now, what one considers healthy (enjoying good health), healthful (beneficial to health of body or mind), unhealthy (not conducive to health), or unhealthful (harmful to health of body or mind) is a matter of subjectivity (i.e., personal view), not objectivity (i.e., perceived without prejudice).
Therefore, healthfully negative or unhealthfully negative reactions are unique to the one who experiences these unpleasant Consequences. Nevertheless, one’s unhelpful Beliefs about undesirable Actions are what cause these reactions.
Noteworthy, with virtually any undesirable Action that occurs, it’s your unfavorable Beliefs which cause unpleasant distress or disturbance (Consequence). Given this framing of self-distress and self-disturbance, it’s worth noting that one REBT source states (page 71):
REBT conceptualizes [distress] as healthy even though it is intense. Other approaches to therapy have as their goal the reduction of the intensity of negative emotions. They take this position because they do not keenly differentiate between healthy negative emotions (distress) and unhealthy negative emotions (disturbance).
Now, REBT keenly distinguishes between healthy distress and unhealthy disturbance. Healthy distress stems from your rational beliefs about a negative activating event [Action], whilst disturbance stems from your irrational beliefs about the same event.
Complete elimination of distress is highly unlikely in an impermanent and uncertain world wherein people conceptually suffer, struggle, and battle with, or merely experience hardship. Still, individuals often make matters worse for themselves by disturbing about such instances.
In particular, there are four predominate irrational beliefs which people often use to distress or disturb themselves: global evaluations, low frustration tolerance, awfulizing, and demandingness. When contemplating these unproductive beliefs, think of the acronym GLAD.
Worth noting, the two forms of should, must, and ought demands with which people most often distress or disturb are associated with use of absolutistic and conditional beliefs. Generally speaking, these scripts serve as inflexible commands used toward oneself, others, and life.
An absolute must narrative is, “You absolutely must do as I say!” A conditional should narrative is, “Either you should do as I say, or you should be punished!” Noteworthy, in REBT literature, demandingness of this sort is said to function as a primary appraisal mechanism of self-upset.
Global evaluations (i.e., self-downing, other-downing, and life-downing), low frustration tolerance (also known as frustration intolerance), and awfulizing (e.g., terrible, horrible, etc.) function as secondary appraisal mechanisms. Together, GLAD will make you sad or mad, etc.
While still functioning as prescriptive rather than descriptive, flexible use of recommendatory, preferential, ideal, empirical, moral and ethical, and legal ought beliefs won’t inevitably cause disturbance, as they may align with distress. Rigidity versus flexibility makes a difference.
Additionally, from a psychological standpoint, people distress or disturb themselves using a Belief-Consequence (B-C) connection. Of course, this isn’t to suggest that in the context of the naturalistic or physical world there is no Action-Consequence (A-C) connection.
From an A-C view, you discover that your longtime intimate partner has been unfaithful (Action), and after further discussing the matter, your romantic relationship is terminated (Consequence). A breakup of this sort doesn’t cause you to sit alone in dreary conditions.
Photo credit, Designed by Magnific, fair use
You experience healthfully negative distress (e.g., disappointment) by using rational Beliefs. You may also sustain unhealthfully negative disturbance (e.g., symptoms of depression) by utilizing irrational Beliefs. Self-distress is one goal of REBT, though self-disturbance isn’t.
Thus, you experience a breakup (Action), Believe, “Life is now worthless [G], and I can’t bear it [L], because this experience is dreadful [A], as this mustn’t be the end of our relationship [D],” and you then sustain the unhealthfully negative reaction of depression (Consequence).
Addressing how people upset themselves with unhelpful attitudes, the ABC model incorporates Disputation of unproductive philosophies of life in order to explore Effective new beliefs. Whereas rigid beliefs cause self-disturbance, flexible beliefs result in an un-disturbed condition.
Suppose that you instead used a B-C connection that caused the healthfully negative reaction of disappointment by Effectively believing, “Although I’d prefer not to have broken up, this result is precisely as it empirically ought to be.” Of this view, Ellis stated (page 5):
When adversities happen to people, they can choose to make themselves either (1) healthfully negative – sorry and regretful and annoyed and frustrated and disappointed about the happening – or (2) unhealthfully negative – creating feelings of horror, terror, anxiety, depression, rage, and other disturbed feelings, along with dysfunctional behaviors.
And even if they create these dysfunctional feelings and behaviors, they’re able – because we humans are born constructivists – to reconstruct and to change them to healthy negative feelings and healthy negative behaviors, instead of unhealthy ones.
Given this framing of the ABC model, suppose that after a breakup you find yourself sitting alone in dreary conditions. If you don’t want this unhealthfully negative reaction, then I invite you to instead consider a healthfully negative one. After all, you control your B-C reactions!
If you’re looking for a provider who tries to work to help understand how thinking impacts physical, mental, emotional, and behavioral elements of your life—helping you to sharpen your critical thinking skills, I invite you to reach out today by using the contact widget on my website.
As a psychotherapist, I’m pleased to try to help people with an assortment of issues ranging from anger (hostility, rage, and aggression) to relational issues, adjustment matters, trauma experience, justice involvement, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety and depression, and other mood or personality-related matters.
At Hollings Therapy, LLC, serving all of Texas, I aim to treat clients with dignity and respect while offering a multi-lensed approach to the practice of psychotherapy and life coaching. My mission includes: Prioritizing the cognitive and emotive needs of clients, an overall reduction in client suffering, and supporting sustainable growth for the clients I serve. Rather than simply trying to help you to feel better, I want to try to help you get better!
Deric Hollings, LPC, LCSW
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