Life-Damning When Using the ABC Model
For this psychoeducational lesson on my approach to care for mental, emotional, and behavioral health (collectively “mental health”), I currently can’t envision a better hip hop example than lyricist Reverie. Particularly, her album Satori (2017), produced by Louden, comes to mind.
For your consideration, on the track “Do No Favors”, Reverie states, “Had a bad day, fuck my life,” and, “What you gon’ do now, bitch, forfeit? Sit down, ‘cause your life is worthless! You[’re] a shame, an embarrassment! Always talking money, but where is it?”
Perhaps when reading these lines, you wonder how such a negativistic outlook relates to mental health. That’s the subjective beauty of the lyricist’s body of work! She’s able to speak what so many people believe, as I’ll now share a lesson on Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT).
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.
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.
Noteworthy, the unhelpful practice of damning (bringing damnation—a state of being led from condemnation or ruin), in particular, unproductively engaging in life-damning (causing or leading to life’s condemnation or ruin, as in unfavorably criticizing existence) isn’t helpful.
For example, a complete evaluation, appraisal, or rating of your life’s worth (i.e., it has no value) plays an integral role in self-disturbance (i.e., from a GLAD narrative). Therefore, I invite you to consider not assessing your life’s worth, though to instead rate your beliefs or behavior.
Also, 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 worldview, suppose that many unwelcome events happen throughout the course of Reverie’s day (Action), as the outcome is that things don’t go her way (Consequence). This fairly common occurrence isn’t what causes self-disturbance, as a B-C connection does that!
For instance, on the track “Do No Favors”, Reverie states, “Had a bad day [G], fuck my life [G],” and, “What you gon’ do now, bitch [G], forfeit? Sit down, ‘cause your life is worthless [G]! You[’re] a shame [G], an embarrassment [G]! Always talking money, but where is it?”
As indicated by my notation of the letter ‘G’ for global evaluations, the lyricist unhelpfully expresses life-damning narratives by completely evaluating, appraising, or rating her life’s worth. Now, imagine that I take these global evaluations a bit further with other GLAD scripts.
Hypothetically, many unwelcome events happen during Reverie’s day (Action), she Believes, “Fuck my life [G], ‘cause I can’t stand this existence [L], as it’s abysmal [A], so I should just end it [D],” as she then experiences negative, though unhealthy sadness (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.
Typically, global evaluations—such as those expressed by Reverie in “Do No Favors”—are accompanied by low frustration tolerance, awfulizing, and demandingness narratives. Life-damning through use of these GLAD scripts is what causes self-disturbance.
Now, I encourage you to healthily consider not assessing your life’s worth, though to instead rate your beliefs or behavior. As an example, it’s unhealthy to use GLAD narratives (i.e., beliefs) which cause you to attempt suicide (i.e., behavior). There’s no need to devalue your existence!
Thus, when unhealthily engaging in life-damning, I invite you to accurately consider that your life has worth – even if it’s difficult to readily identify its value. You exist, and because of this, you have some worth as a fallible human being – your GLAD beliefs be damned, not your life!
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 the world’s foremost hip hop-influenced REBT psychotherapist, I’m pleased to try to help people with an assortment of issues 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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