You'll Always Be the Place I Belong, but I'm Letting Go

[DISCLAIMER]

When listening to an electronic dance music (EDM) DJ set by Xenia Torino (UA), I heard her spin the track “After Love” by Anyma, from his album Genesys II (2024), featuring vocals by Delilah Montagu. The second verse states:

Where does the feeling go when it’s gone?

Will it reappear?

When it finds its storm?

You’ll always be the place I belong,

But I’m letting go.

I’m not that strong.

When contemplating these lyrics, I can relate from both a personal and professional point of view. Regarding my occupational outlook, it may be useful to provide a psychoeducational lesson on Rational Emotive Behavioral 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.

In particular, there are four predominate irrational beliefs which people often use to upset 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.

In “After Love”, I imagine Montagu arriving at healthy distress in the form of an unpleasant disappointment with letting go behavior regarding an intimate partner relationship. This is comprehensible, given how healthy negative emotion (e.g., sadness) follows one’s beliefs.

For example, Montagu endures a breakup (Action) and healthily Believes, “Things preferably shouldn’t have ended this way [D], though I can’t always get what I want,” as she then feels sadness, experiences disappointment, and lets go of a hopeless relationship (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.

In the case of “After Love”, I posit that Montagu already uses a healthily distressed outcome, not an unhealthily disturbed result, so there’s no need to challenge the attitude she uses. Now, I invite you to consider that sometimes it’s healthy to let go of unhelpful relationships.

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 EDM-influenced REBT psychotherapist—promoting content related to EDM, 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

Photo credit, fair use

References:

Anyma. (2024, March 28). Anyma - After Love (feat. Delilah Montagu) [Visualizer] [Video]. YouTube. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/ymK4h7DyXKw?si=wPo1HdP5kB6XXQ6I

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