‘Grant me the serenity to accept what I can’t change, the courage to change what I can and the wisdom to know the difference.’
—Reinhold Niebuhr
Developing an attitude of self-acceptance
Self-acceptance means valuing yourself even if you do not achieve everything you want or do not always act in the way you think you should. The most lasting kind of self-acceptance involves recognizing that you can make mistakes and have flaws in your character without that meaning that you are worthless.
Conditional and unconditional self-acceptance
In his book The Myth of Self-Esteem (2005), the psychologist Albert Ellis distinguished between conditional self-acceptance, where your feelings about your self-worth are dependent on achieving some kind of goal (for example success in work or the approval of others) and unconditional self-acceptance, where you value yourself irrespective of whether you achieve goals or obtain the respect of others.
Ellis advocated unconditional self-acceptance. He acknowledged that conditional self-acceptance can result in benefits – placing a high importance on achieving personal goals or cultivating relationships can sometimes motivate you to achieve more. However, he saw it as having serious drawbacks:
• It can lead you to feel very bad about yourself if you don’t achieve important goals
• It can lead you to focus too much on superficial achievements
• It may incline you to be dishonest (because you don’t want to admit to failure) or to seek social approval rather than to act with integrity.
Ellis (in The Myth of Self-Esteem) and others such as David Burns (in his book Ten Days to Self-Esteem) argue forcefully that unconditional self-acceptance and having a healthy view of yourself is linked to not rating yourself globally as worthless or inferior. If you can accept yourself for what you are and see yourself as having an intrinsic worth whether or not you achieve particular personal goals or gain compliments from other people then this can help you to be less vulnerable to low self-esteem.
In Ellis’s view it is okay to rate your success in relation to particular goals or aspirations but try to avoid judging yourself generally, or your overall worth, on the basis of whether you do or don’t succeed in a particular task or goal.
Each time you catch yourself being self-critical or you do not achieve a goal, acknowledge to yourself that you have not achieved your goal or that you wish that you had acted differently but then remind yourself that it does not mean that you are worthless. If it helps, when you do this you can also remind yourself of the affirmations that you created in chapter 1 (page_27).
Benefits of accepting yourself unconditionally
There are a number of potential benefits that can ensue if you accept yourself unconditionally. If you regard yourself as having worth irrespective of whether or not you achieve particular goals, act in certain ways or gain the approval of others, then:
• You may feel happier, because you do not feel so much pressure to achieve or to be a certain way
• You are unlikely to get so despondent if you fail to achieve a particular goal
• You may well be better able to make decisions for yourself because you do not feel that your worth is reliant on the opinions of other people
• You do not experience the stress of frequently comparing yourself to other people or to excessively high standards.
Disadvantages of accepting yourself unconditionally
There may however be some potential disadvantages from accepting yourself unconditionally, such as:
• You may lose some of your drive because you feel you don’t have to prove yourself so much
• You may become inconsiderate or disrespectful of others if you go to the extreme of not valuing the opinion of others at all or of thinking that you are completely self-sufficient.
You can minimize the likelihood of the disadvantages arising if you remember that your aim, as suggested at the beginning of chapter 1 (page_11), is not to have a super-high level of self-esteem (which might involve arrogance or conceit) but merely to achieve a reasonable level of self-esteem. Accepting yourself unconditionally does not have to mean that you become arrogant. Indeed Albert Ellis advocated in many of his books that alongside aiming for unconditional self-acceptance, you should also try to aim for unconditional acceptance of others – the two aims can be complementary.
Write a list of what the benefits and disadvantages might be for you if you were able to move closer towards an attitude of unconditional self-acceptance. Do the benefits outweigh the disadvantages? Is there any way that you can minimize the risk of the disadvantages you have identified occurring, or else manage them if they do occur?
Linked to the idea of unconditional self-acceptance is the idea of not judging yourself for your perceived weaknesses or failings. One way that you can help to do this is by keeping a conscious record of your internal descriptions of your own perceived failings and errors, then reframing the negative descriptive language in which you originally described the failings in a less emotionally charged, more specific and neutral way, so that you are not making a moral judgement on yourself.
Marcia: reframing negative judgements about yourself
Marcia’s relationship with her partner of two years has just ended and she has become very self-critical, questioning whether the end of the relationship was due to some personal failing of hers. To help herself adopt a more accepting stance towards herself she makes a note of the language with which she criticizes herself and then in her mind reframes the descriptions, taking out the more judgemental phrases in them, so that they are more neutral and less emotionally charged:
Negative self-description: ‘I am disgustingly fat.’
Reframed neutral description: ‘I have difficulty controlling my weight and do not have the body shape that I would like.’
Negative self-description: ‘I am very poor at telling people my real feelings.’
Reframed neutral description: ‘I don’t express my feelings to others as much as I would like to.’
Negative self-description: ‘I am uselessly disorganized.’
Reframed neutral description: ‘I don’t organize my work tasks as efficiently as some people.’
Negative self-description: ‘I am hopeless at relationships.’
Reframed neutral description: ‘I am not currently in a relationship.’
Changing prescriptions into preferences
Another technique recommended by Albert Ellis that you can use to help you accept both yourself and others is this: every time you catch yourself making a prescriptive statement about how you or someone else should be or should behave, such as ‘I must …’ or ‘I ought to …’, reframe that statement in your mind (or indeed out loud if you are speaking to someone) so that you express a personal preference, wish, hope or intention rather than an inflexible prescription. For example, instead of ‘I mustn’t slip up this time’ say to yourself ‘I am going to try not to slip up this time’ or ‘I hope that I don’t slip up this time.’ This may help to reduce your tension and stress and in doing so it may actually also increase your chances of success.
Accepting your physical appearance
If some of your negative feelings about yourself relate to your appearance, then you can try an exercise involving looking in a full-length mirror and honestly focusing on each of the ‘bad’ aspects of your body that you dislike, but trying to do so in a detached observational way rather than in an emotional self-condemnatory way. Nathaniel Branden in his book The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem and Ellis in The Myth of Self-Esteem both include an exercise of this type in order to help with self-acceptance around body image (Ellis attributes the version he describes to Jeffrey Brandsma).
The crucial element in doing this exercise of scrutinizing your physical imperfections is to try to do it with an attitude of calmness and acceptance (difficult as that is). Acceptance here doesn’t mean that you say you are not going to try to do anything to improve aspects of yourself that you don’t like or that you are not going to try to become healthier but it does mean that if you don’t succeed in changing yourself you still accept yourself. You can focus on aspects that you want to change and work out a plan to try to do that but at the same time remind yourself that you can accept those perceived imperfections and continue to act and live in positive ways whether or not you achieve your desired change.
For some people, learning not to judge yourself or your physical appearance too harshly can be extremely difficult. In these circumstances, you may find it helps to use detached self-observation to note your thoughts, feelings and sensations when you are being judgemental about yourself.
When you have a negative thought about yourself or your appearance, try simply to observe your thoughts and feelings and sensations or physiological changes in a detached way. To help you with this detached observation, you may find it useful to describe your thoughts/feelings/sensations in the third person (as illustrated in the example below). When doing so, imagine you are a friendly third party observing yourself in a compassionate way, or alternatively imagine you are a scientist observing yourself in a detached way as if you were reporting data.
For example, someone trying the exercise of looking in the mirror and scrutinizing their body might report his thoughts, feelings etc. to himself thus (using the third person rather than ‘I’): ‘John is looking at his stomach, John is thinking he is fat, John is upset, John is feeling tense, John is trying to relax his shoulders …’.
As in the above example, if you use this detached reporting technique and you still find negative feelings intruding, try not to be critical of yourself for having them, just report them and then move on to your next observation if you can.
You may also find that meditation and breathing techniques can help you achieve the kind of calmness and detachment that can help with accepting yourself. Chapter 4 on understanding yourself contains further information about basic meditation practice (page_156).
A healthy attitude towards your own faults or failings
Below are set out three different attitudes that you might have when reflecting on your own faults:
1. Defensiveness/denial: You don’t admit to yourself that you have the faults or you minimize them because you see them as shameful, bad or even unforgiveable.
2. Acceptance (without judging yourself): You acknowledge failings, faults and errors honestly and accept yourself at the same time, realizing that everybody has faults.
3. Self-condemnation: You see your faults and condemn yourself as a human being for having them, not recognizing that it is normal to have faults and make mistakes or fail in some enterprises.
Consistent with Ellis’s ideas on unconditional self-acceptance, I would suggest that the middle category – acceptance of your faults or failings without judging yourself – is a sounder basis for a reasonable level of self-esteem than either of the two extremes.
The ABC model of emotions
Some time before writing his book on self-esteem, Ellis developed a famous model for looking at the relationship between thought patterns and emotions, which can also be usefully applied to helping you deal with issues around self-acceptance. In its initial formulation this model was called the ‘ABC model of emotions’. It has come to be one of the most famous methods used in cognitive behavioural therapy (or CBT). The model analyzes the development of emotions in the sequence A: activating event; B: belief; C: consequent emotion. (In some of his books Ellis uses the phrase ‘adversity’ in place of ‘activating event’ because the context in which CBT is used is often one where the initial activating event is something which appears to the person on the receiving end of it to be an adverse or problematic situation.)
A simple example of an analysis using the ABC model of emotions would be:
In this example you may well be regarding yourself in a non-accepting way – jumping from the mere fact that your friend disagrees with you to the belief that she must be thinking you are useless, and seeing that as awful.
Another example of using the ABC model to analyze a situation in which you don’t adopt an accepting attitude towards yourself and your actions is given below:
When you have an experience that leaves you passing negative judgements on yourself, use Ellis’s ABC model to record the activating event that prompted your feelings; the thoughts or beliefs that went through your mind; and your consequent emotions. (Next we will start to consider what you might do to address these negative, self-critical judgements!)
Disputing with yourself – a route to greater self-acceptance
Ellis later added onto his ABC model a ‘D’ standing for ‘disputation’ (and also an ‘E’ to stand for the positive ‘effects’ of this disputation, or the ‘energizing’ results of it). The ‘D’ for ‘disputation’ gives the key to what is likely to be helpful for you if you want to break a pattern of self-critical thoughts and negative feelings about yourself – namely using techniques to dispute and challenge your own self-critical thinking.
It may sound strange to suggest that disputing with yourself might lead you to accept yourself more. However, the idea is to dispute irrational, overly negative and self-critical thoughts, so that your thinking becomes more balanced. Here is a disputation checklist of key questions I suggest you use to help you do this:
1. Ask yourself: ‘If I were talking to a friend who was in my situation and they were expressing those self-critical thoughts, what would I say to them?’
The response might include suggestions like:
• ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself’
• ‘No one else noticed so it didn’t really matter’
2. Alternatively, imagine a reasonable and supportive friend is talking to you about your self-critical perception of yourself. What might they say to you?
This might include similar things to the above, or other points specifically related to the situation or to your personal qualities, such as:
• ‘Maybe organization is not your strong point but you’ve got other more important qualities, like being a good friend’
• ‘It isn’t the most important situation. You made a mistake, that’s all. We all do it from time to time.’
3. Ask yourself if your self-critical assessment is accurate or exaggerated – for example, if you find that your self-critical statement includes the words ‘never’ or ‘always’ you may be able to soften it by recognizing that sometimes you make the mistake or act in the way you feel bad about, but on other occasions you do act in the positive way that you would like.
4. Ask yourself if there any similar occasions when you have acted positively. Often people remember mistakes and failures but not successes, so to put the situation into context, acknowledge that on this occasion you perhaps didn’t act as you would have liked but remind yourself that on other occasions you have done so.
5. Even if your self-critical thought is true, ask yourself how much it really matters? Is it really as important as you think? Is it a matter of life and death or just something that in an ideal world you might have done differently? Once you have gone through the checklist, create a sentence based on one or more of your answers. Say that sentence to yourself when experiencing the self-critical thoughts, so as to challenge them and put them in a more balanced perspective (we will look in greater detail at this idea of creating a ‘balancing thought’ or ‘balancing statement’ later in this chapter – see pages 70–77).
In a situation that you have analyzed using the ABC model, or in another situation where you are being highly critical of yourself, remember the ‘D’ for ‘disputation’ and try to challenge your self-critical thoughts by asking yourself the five questions in the disputation checklist above.
CBT and self-acceptance
Ellis was one of two people who in the second half of the twentieth century came up with related though not identical ideas that later came to be described under the umbrella term ‘cognitive behavioural therapy’, or CBT for short. His approach was influenced by the thinking of ancient Greek philosophers such as Epictetus, who held that ‘Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.’
Cognitive behavioural therapy builds on the idea in the above quote by encouraging you to try to look at situations, problems and relationships in fresh or different ways, and to take responsibility for the way in which you look at and react to events. Ellis’s approach, which he first began to use in the mid-1950s and developed over subsequent decades, enabled clients to change self-defeating beliefs by helping them to see the irrationality or inflexibility inherent in those beliefs. Ellis called his approach rational therapy (later renamed ‘rational emotive therapy’ or ‘rational emotive behaviour therapy’). As indicated above, it is also often seen as a form of cognitive behavioural therapy.
The other key figure in the development of CBT theories is Dr Aaron Beck. Beck developed his system of ‘cognitive therapy’ in the early 1960s as a psychiatrist at the University of Pennsylvania. He had studied and practised psychoanalysis and in order to seek research validation for the theories of psychoanalysis he conducted research to test psychoanalytic concepts of depression. To his surprise he found that the research results did not validate the psychoanalytic concepts so he started to test and research alternative methods. The ideas that he developed, like Ellis’s, can be used to help you deal with issues of low self-esteem and to develop greater self-acceptance if you have a tendency to dismiss and belittle yourself and your efforts.
Negative automatic thoughts
Working with patients who were depressed, Beck found that rather than the psychoanalytic concepts that he had been expecting to discover, a frequent thread in the depressed patients was that they often experienced negative thoughts which appeared to occur spontaneously, for which he coined the term ‘automatic thoughts’. The patients’ thoughts fell into three types:
1. Negative thoughts about yourself
2. Negative thoughts about the world
3. Negative thoughts about the future
The first type of negative thoughts, thoughts about yourself, are highly relevant to the topic of self-esteem and in particular to self-acceptance. Everyone has some negative thoughts about their self but if you often have negative thoughts about yourself and the things that you do or don’t do, or if your negative thoughts are extreme, then this is an indication that you have low self-esteem.
Sanjay: jumping to negative conclusions about yourself
Sanjay is a student from a poor background who gets a relatively low test score in a practice test a few months before an important exam. His instinctive, automatic reaction to the test score is to think: ‘I’m stupid’ (negative thought about himself) and ‘I’m going to fail the exam’ (negative thought about the future).
Sanjay’s negative thoughts lead him to feel highly anxious and downcast. The way in which he quickly draws a negative conclusion and general characterization of himself (‘I’m stupid’) from one poor test score illustrates his lack of self-esteem.
Part of Sanjay’s negative characterization is that he sees himself as in some way inadequate and he thinks that getting a poor test score is unacceptable or shameful. He finds it difficult to accept himself if he doesn’t achieve what he feels he should.
Dealing with negative thoughts about yourself
Cognitive therapy, devised by Beck, encourages people to examine their negative thoughts and challenge or question possible distortions or exaggerations in their conclusions and viewpoint.
It is important to realize that cognitive therapy (and similarly cognitive behavioural therapy) does not say that if we have an automatic negative thought it is necessarily completely wrong or erroneous. What it does do is ask us to examine the evidence for our beliefs, to see if they are fully justified and if not then to moderate them in an appropriate manner.
Sanjay (continued): dealing with negative thoughts
Using cognitive techniques with Sanjay, a therapist or coach might encourage him to look out for any exaggerations or distortions in his thoughts, to write down ways in which they were distorted and to then balance out the thoughts with more realistic statements to remind himself of the reality and put his situation in perspective. In such a context, Sanjay might come up with more realistic observations such as:
You could have done better in the test but it doesn’t prove that you are stupid
or:
You could fail the exam, but even if you do there will be an opportunity to retake it and if you seek advice from the tutor about where you went wrong you may be able to do better in the real exam.
Reminding himself of these more balanced statements could help Sanjay to take the edge off the feelings of despondency and negative thoughts he experiences and help him to approach the exam itself and the build-up to it in a more constructive way.
A balancing thought (which can also be called a balancing statement) is something that you can say to yourself to help you put into perspective negative or self-critical thoughts.
Here are some examples of balancing thoughts that people might create in particular situations to put self-critical thoughts in perspective:
Situation: Sarah is watching TV with her partner John when he starts expressing his dislike of a politician who is speaking on the news. Sarah agrees with some of the politician’s views and thinks John has described them inaccurately so she challenges his comments. John then walks out of the room.
Beliefs/thoughts: ‘I shouldn’t have upset John by contradicting him.’
Feelings: Guilty
Balancing thought created: It was reasonable for you to contradict John because you didn’t agree with what he was saying.
Situation: Paul is working hard on a difficult piece of work his boss has given him.
Beliefs/thoughts: ‘I won’t be able to finish this piece of work on time and my boss will be annoyed with me. I’m never able to get things done properly.’
Feelings: Annoyed with himself and stressed.
Balancing thought created: Do your best to finish the work on time but it’s not the end of the world if you don’t manage it.
Situation: Linda comes home and finds her mum has visited unasked while she was out and moved some of her belongings around in the house while tidying up. She reacts angrily and shouts at her mum.
Beliefs/thoughts: ‘I got angry with mum; that proves I am totally thoughtless.’
Feelings: Angry with herself and despondent.
Balancing thought created: Okay, you did something that you would prefer not to have done. You can’t put the clock back but you can apologize to her and try to act differently if the situation arises again.
Situation: Jean-Paul gives a presentation at a conference as part of his work. He forgets to make some of the points he had intended to. However, no one seems to notice and there are a series of questions at the end from interested participants, which he answers well.
Beliefs/thoughts: ‘My presentation was useless. Everyone is going to think that I can’t do the job.’
Feelings: Frustrated with himself.
Balancing thought created: Some people gave you good feedback. Others may have thought you could have done better but it’s unlikely you’ll please everyone. This is an aspect of your job that you know you find difficult, but everyone has different strengths and there is no real evidence to suggest that people think you can’t do the job.
Situation: Serena is frustrated by something one of her friends has done and mentions it in conversation with another friend, Tamsin, but she only receives a cursory response.
Beliefs/thoughts: ‘Tamsin didn’t look at me when I was speaking and just responded with a quiet “yes”. Therefore she obviously didn’t agree with what I said. I always say too much. I have offended her.’
Feelings: Anxious, guilty.
Balancing thought created: It’s possible that Tamsin didn’t like what you said but there are other possible explanations of her response. For example, she might have been thinking of something else completely and you could be jumping to conclusions.
You can create balancing thoughts for past situations or events to help you come to terms with them and feel better about them. You can also use balancing thoughts in the present when difficult situations and negative or self-critical thoughts arise.
Give yourself permission to make mistakes! No one is perfect and you can learn from mistakes.
How to create balancing thoughts
The first way to create balancing thoughts is simply to remind yourself that what you are trying to do is to create a realistic statement that you can say to yourself to help you put into perspective any negative or self-critical thoughts that you have and then come up with some suggestions and see if they do indeed put the original negative thought in a more realistic perspective.
If, however, you find it difficult to generate balancing thoughts by that initial method, then a second method you can use is to go through the five key questions in the disputation checklist (page_64), and see if doing that helps you to come up with any helpful balancing thoughts that you can say to yourself in the relevant situation.
Another way of creating balancing thoughts is to use the ACCEPT acronym below which I have created to help clients memorize different ways of generating a more accepting attitude towards yourself. Some of the ways outlined in the ACCEPT acronym overlap with questions in the disputation checklist but the acronym may help you to remember them more easily.
Using the ACCEPT acronym to help you create an attitude of self-acceptance
If you find yourself adopting a non-accepting attitude towards things you do or don’t do, or thinking self-critical thoughts, write down exactly what your thought is then use one or more of the techniques indicated below to create and write down a balancing thought to say to yourself to help you put the original negative thought in perspective:
Accept yourself:
i.e. Don’t be so hard on yourself. What would you say to yourself if you were being a little more forgiving towards yourself? Write this down as your balancing thought and say it to yourself.
Counsel a friend:
What would you say to a friend in your situation or what would a good friend say to you? Write this down as your balancing thought.
Constructive approach:
If you were asked to say what positives might come out of the situation or what you might learn from it, what would you say? Write these comments down as your balancing thought.
Explore alternatives:
What alternative interpretations might there be of the actions, behaviour or events that are leading you to jump to negative conclusions about yourself? Could your negative judgement about yourself be a bit exaggerated? What would be a more balanced or moderate interpretation of the significance of the situation? Write this down as your balancing thought.
Face your fears! Imagine that the worst were to happen – how serious would it really be on a scale of 1–10 compared to other possible life events? And how could you respond to it if it did happen? Write down your assessment of seriousness and of how you could react or deal with the eventuality as your balancing thought.
Try to focus on something else:
Is it really worth expending all your emotional and mental energy over this issue? If you can’t resolve the situation in your mind then consider doing something active or focusing on something else altogether for a short time, to give your mind some respite from circular or unproductive thoughts that may be affecting your self-belief and feelings of self-worth. This isn’t really a balancing thought as such – it is an action. You can say things to yourself such as ‘STOP!’ or snap an elastic band on your wrist to help you snap out of the cycle of negative thoughts and then make an effort to find something to occupy yourself and your mind, such as exercise or a crossword or work.
The importance of practice
Coaches or therapists who use CBT techniques and principles often stress the importance of practice (Beck in particular emphasizes the importance of adopting an experimental attitude and trying out some of the ideas or techniques to see how you get on with them). Practise creating balancing thoughts over a period of time until it has become second nature. The aim is not to get rid of negative or self-critical thoughts but to find a method for helping to manage them and put them in perspective, which in turn will help you to feel better about yourself and act in more constructive ways.
As a first step, try observing what you are thinking and recording any self-critical thoughts on a daily basis for a week or two using Ellis’s ABC model (pages 61–3) then creating balancing thoughts for each self-critical thought using the methods described above. Read the balancing thoughts through to yourself to remind yourself to keep your self-criticism in perspective. If there are particular patterns that emerge, then try to remind yourself when one of those patterns is emerging and instead of getting harsh with yourself for allowing it to happen again, be kinder on yourself. Acknowledge that the pattern is coming up again and remind yourself of the balancing thought that you have created to deal with it.
Be patient with yourself – negative and self-critical thought patterns tend to become habitual. So to ‘unlearn’ them, be prepared to practise this technique for a while.
Congratulate yourself each time you find a balancing thought that helps you!
If you forget to use a balancing thought or it doesn’t work so well on another occasion, don’t be overly critical of yourself. Have a break (literally, go and do something relaxing if possible) or else reflect on whether there is anything you can try out instead next time which might help you to remember to use the balancing thought or to devise a different one that might in fact work better for you in the situation.
Analyzing negative thoughts
For some people the balancing thoughts technique may be effective enough to deal with the situations where you are experiencing negative thoughts. However, if you find that you want to understand in greater detail what patterns you are getting into with your negative thoughts, so as to change them in a more precise way, then CBT can offer a number of specific ways of classifying different types of distorted thinking patterns that you may find helpful.
Bear in mind that if you find some or all of the following ‘distorted thinking’ patterns apply to you, you don’t need to perceive this as a particular problem that you alone have – most people experience these kinds of difficulty to a greater or lesser degree, and most people can benefit from understanding which specific types of distorted thinking most apply to them, so that they can then learn to correct them, redress the balance, feel and act better.
Thinking flexibly and creatively
Below I list some different types of distorted thinking patterns that can occur and make some suggestions as to the types of approach that might help you if you feel that a particular thinking pattern is one which you have a tendency towards:
All or nothing thinking (all-good or all-bad thinking): This involves extremes of thinking, without recognizing that realities may have shades of complexity or colour to them, e.g. thinking that something is perfect or else it is hopeless, that someone is a demon or else they are a saint.
What to try:
• Think of some in-between possibilities, if you can.
• Acknowledge that most people (whether you or someone else) have some good characteristics and some not-so-good characteristics. Be prepared to identify both sides to people (please note the exception to this: if your personal safety or that of someone you know is threatened by someone else then I advise you to take sensible steps to protect yourself – in these extreme cases safety may come before balance).
• Acknowledge that you may not have all the information needed to understand a situation fully and be prepared to suspend judgement if this is the case.
Mind-reading: This involves assuming that other people are thinking certain things about you or doing things for a particular reason, without having sufficient evidence to justify the assumption.
What to try:
• If the person you are making the assumption about is in conversation with you or is acting in a certain way, try to generate some alternative possible explanations for what the other person is doing or saying and then evaluate which of the alternative explanations seems most reasonable. If there are some which are equally likely or you don’t know all the facts then acknowledge this.
• If you are imagining that someone who is not actually talking to you but is present with you (for example in a work or social situation) is thinking badly of you, remember that other people may have their own problems and may not be thinking about you at all.
• Imagine purely for the sake of argument that you are right about the explanation of the other person’s behaviour. Try to clarify for yourself why that matters so much to you – then ask yourself what is the most constructive response you can have even if your assumption is right.
Fortune-telling or catastrophizing: Imagining that the worst is going to happen or making negative predictions in your mind.
What to try:
• Ask yourself what the evidence is to support your view that the worst will happen and what evidence there is that more positive outcomes might happen.
• What do you think is the percentage likelihood that the feared event may happen?
• What can you do to decrease the prospect of it happening?
• What can you do or say to yourself to help you cope if the feared event does happen?
Generalizing: This involves making sweeping statements that don’t allow for exceptions, like: ‘Why do I always …?’ or ‘Why do I never …?’ This might be a thought about yourself or about someone else or about a certain group of people, e.g. men or women or people from a particular culture, religion or region.
What to try:
• Ask yourself if a more moderate claim might be more accurate, e.g. ‘I sometimes …’ or ‘I often …’.
• Try to be fair, reasonable and accurate in your assessments of yourself as well as of others.
• Evaluate the evidence for and against the proposition you are making and ask yourself if it really justifies the sweeping generalization.
Labelling people and situations: This involves categorizing people according to extreme labels (usually negative labels, although excessively positive labels can also lead to problems when a person is not be able to live up to your fantasy of them). You might apply a label to yourself and/or to others – both can feed into low self-esteem. Examples might include accusing yourself or someone else of being: ‘hopeless’ or ‘useless’ or ‘a failure’ or ‘self-centred’.
What to try:
• Remember that people and even situations are complex and that you too, just like anyone else, have some good and some not so good qualities.
• Allow for degrees and the possibility that some people (including yourself) may be good at some things and not so good at others.
• Allow others to be imperfect sometimes.
• If you are applying a negative label to someone else, then consider giving the person you are applying it to the possibility to comment on it. If you do make your point to them, then see if there is a way in which you can get it across which avoids over-generalization – e.g. comment on how they behaved in a particular situation and ask how they might behave differently if the situation occurs again.
• If you insist on applying a negative label to yourself or others and you are sure your perception is correct, then decide what your options are for dealing with the situation and how you want to respond. If you have a tendency to think of yourself as a victim, instead ask what your options are and pick the most constructive one if you can.
• If you are applying a negative label to yourself then ask what you can do to create at least some situations when the negative label doesn’t apply to your behaviour. You don’t have to fit that label all the time.
‘Must’, ‘should’ and ‘ought’ thoughts (making unreasonable demands of yourself or others): Again, the judgements may relate to others or to yourself.
What to try:
• Try to avoid dogmatic moralistic words like ‘must’, ‘should’ and maybe try out ‘wish’, ‘prefer’, ‘want’ or other words which reflect your feelings and wishes rather than impose a demand on yourself or on others.
• If you have a tendency to place too many demands on yourself then before committing yourself to doing something, weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of different responses and then choose the one that you think is most sensible rather than automatically trying to please everyone or do everything.
• Remind yourself that you have a right to some time for yourself and for meeting your own needs.
• If you are placing demands on someone else, then ask yourself, will it be helpful if I impose demands or expectations (whether in word or thought)? An alternative might be to make a request or slightly to lower your expectations of the other person (and of yourself as well if you expect to be always perfect in a particular role). None of us is perfect.
• Retain your own standards, ideals and preferences but try not to insist that the world (or you) always operate by them or should do so, as the world may not agree! Instead, acknowledge simply that you would prefer or like it if the world or another person (or yourself) acted differently (this is the tip given by Albert Ellis, mentioned earlier in this chapter under the sub-heading ‘Changing prescriptions into preferences’, page_58).
• If another person’s behaviour is obviously aggressive or harmful, don’t collude with that, but ask yourself what options you have to help you prevent the harmful effects or change the situation.
Emotional reasoning: You feel a certain way so you assume that your feeling must be justified by the situation, e.g. you feel like a failure so you assume you are one.
What to try:
• Examine the actual evidence for and against your interpretation of the situation and rate the likelihood of alternatives.
• Ask yourself what a friend whose judgement you trust would say about the situation.
• Remind yourself that just because you are unhappy with one of your actions or with a situation doesn’t mean that you are totally flawed or that the situation will always apply.
• Think of some counter-examples where you might feel the same way but a different explanation is correct rather than the one you assume.
• If you have a tendency towards emotional reasoning, remind yourself of that and pause before making an evaluation.
Self-downing: You continually put yourself down.
What to try:
• Remind yourself of some of the affirmations you created in chapter 1.
• Ask yourself what a good friend would say to you in this situation.
• Make a mental note that you are about to put yourself down and decide not to.
• Aim for a small improvement next time rather than perfection.
Discounting the positives: You only see the negatives about yourself or your actions, not any positives.
• Remind yourself of some of the affirmations you created in chapter 1.
• Ask yourself what a good friend would say to you in this situation.
• Ask yourself what you would say if you had to reframe the negative thought so as to find a positive in the situation.
Keep a record of times when you have a negative self-critical thought and specify in it:
1. What the negative thought is
2. What type of distorted thinking pattern or patterns are involved
3. A balancing thought to use to deal with the negative thought – use any of the techniques mentioned previously to create your balancing thought.
Once you have got an idea of particular negative thinking patterns that you have a tendency towards, then create a plan covering:
1. The type(s) of negative thinking you have a tendency towards
2. Examples of the kinds of situation where you tend to think that way
3. A plan for what you are going to try to do if you find yourself thinking that way.
Below is a sample plan that you might create:
Type of negative thinking pattern: Mind-reading
Example of a situation where I might think in this way: When I am in a meeting at work or in an unfamiliar social situation with people I don’t know, I tend to think that people must be thinking that I don’t know what I am doing or that I am awkward and look nervous.
Plan for what I might do if I find myself thinking in this way:
• Remind myself that other people have their own problems and may not be thinking of me or noticing me at all
• Ask myself what other less negative possibilities there might be for what the other people are thinking and evaluate which is most likely. Or, if I just can’t tell, acknowledge that.
Type of negative thinking pattern: Fortune-telling/catastrophizing
Example of a situation where I might think in this way: If I am in a relationship I tend to predict that it is going to go wrong and imagine the worst for fear of the other person rejecting me.
Plan for what I might do if I find myself thinking in this way:
• Ask myself what evidence there is to support the view that the worst will happen and what evidence there is that more positive outcomes might happen.
• Remind myself of positives in the relationship.
• Recognize that even if the worst does happen then I will be able to cope.
• Do other things to build up a balanced life, which helps me not to be dependent on approval or validation from that one person
Type of negative thinking pattern: Making unreasonable demands on myself
Example of a situation where I might think in this way: If someone asks me to do something for them, I tend to think that I should do what they are asking to please them.
Plan for what I might do if I find myself thinking in this way:
• Pause before agreeing to do things I am not sure I want to do.
• Weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of different responses and choose a response on the basis of that analysis rather than automatically trying to please everyone or do everything.
• Remind myself that I have a right to some time for myself and for meeting my reasonable needs.
If there are other types of ‘negative thinking’ that you think apply to you, or you have your own strategies that you know or believe may work for you, then feel free to put those in too. You don’t have to follow just the possible strategies I have given – the ideas I have given are suggestions that can be helpful but they are not the only ones.
Remember you are trying to achieve practical results for you, not to get locked into a mindset about what is right and wrong – if you can, focus on what is helpful for you in the situation, not on whether you or someone else is right or wrong.
If you find that something you try out is useful then try it again. If not, then try something different. Remember that you can’t usually learn without making some mistakes, so don’t think you have to get it right first time and always. There is a famous saying used in the related field of neuro-linguistic programming (NLP): ‘There is no such thing as failure, only feedback.’
Some people may feel that the idea of classifying your negative thoughts into different types is a little too analytical or scientific. If you find that that applies to you, then an alternative method of recording your thoughts is to keep a diary. This can be set out in a number of different ways. Whatever format you use for the diary, it is important that you make a note as accurately as possible of any significant negative thoughts that go through your head and the feelings that go with them so that you can then use the disputation checklist (page_64) or the ACCEPT acronym (pages 74–6) to help you create balancing thoughts for the negative thoughts.
You can also if you want make a note of any positive thoughts in your diary. This can help to clarify positive points in the day that you may overlook (most of us have a tendency to focus on and remember the negative, so it helps to remind ourselves of the positive too). Provided that the positive thoughts are reasonably balanced and sensible and not excessive or distorted, they can help to counter-balance the negative thoughts.
(If your ‘positive’ thoughts are extreme and unrealistic, which may apply for example to people who experience bipolar disorder, then part of your approach may instead involve moderating or balancing overly positive thoughts, to put them in reasonable perspective. Since this book is primarily aimed at people who have low self-esteem and associated negative thoughts or self-critical attitudes, I don’t discuss inappropriately positive thoughts in this book. However, it is worth bearing in mind that CBT is about balancing unrealistic or distorted thinking and that this can apply to overly positive thoughts just as to overly negative thoughts – some of the types of distorted thinking such as generalizing can apply as much to excessively positive thinking as to excessively negative thinking. Other types such as self-downing don’t apply to overly positive thoughts – you are more likely to be prone to over-grandiose thoughts about yourself if you think too positively.)
In your diary, also give an overall rating for how you felt on each day that the diary covers. Then at a later stage, say in a few weeks, you will be able to check your records to see any changes in your general level of positive/negative feelings. Also, by giving a daily rating you will be able to see across the course of a week the extent to which your feelings are up and down. (Note: rating your feelings is very different from rating yourself globally, which Ellis spoke against – see pages 53–4. It is a legitimate, helpful piece of self-observation which can be useful.)
Things your diary could cover each day include:
1. What you did during the day
2. Your mood or feelings at different times in the day
3. The situations or circumstances when you felt that way
4. Any thoughts that went through your mind when you were in that mood/experiencing that feeling
5. An overall rating of how you felt during the day (out of 10).
Claire: using a diary to address negative feelings and thoughts
Claire has a tendency towards negative feelings about herself and her abilities. A few weeks ago she separated from her partner Pete. She has been preoccupied by that and also has had worries about her job. She has decided to create a diary to help her keep issues in perspective and cope with negative thoughts about herself. In the diary she includes the five elements listed above. Here are the entries from her first day of keeping the diary:
Day 1
Didn’t sleep very well – got up late and arrived ten minutes late for work. Felt annoyed with myself and worried I might get into trouble. Thinking thoughts like: Why am I always late? I’m so disorganized. They must all think I’m useless at work. What if my supervisor reports me?
Set myself five tasks to get through in the day – found it difficult to concentrate – kept thinking about Pete leaving me. Only managed to get through three of the tasks.
Feeling angry and ashamed about how the relationship ended. Thinking: Why do I always muck up in relationships? Am I always going to be alone? How stupid I must have been not to realize Pete was seeing someone else.
I reminded myself of what Jo said about how many relationships fail and about some of my positive qualities. It did help a bit – not good that so many relationships fail, but at least I’m not the only one!
Went for a walk in the lunch break, trying to clear my head. Felt a bit more relaxed and was able to work a bit better in the afternoon. My supervisor didn’t come over and seemed to be looking at his work all the time. I wondered: Is he deliberately avoiding me? I know the firm is struggling at the moment. Perhaps I’m going to lose my job.
Spent the evening watching TV – still thinking about the end of my relationship and feeling frustrated: I ought to be able to shake this off – it’s been three weeks now. I want to move on. Eventually found a rerun of some old comedy – actually got me laughing a bit, although strangely I almost felt annoyed with myself in finding I could forget about the relationship even if for only twenty minutes!
Went to bed at 10.30pm – trying to get in a healthy routine.
Overall rating for how I felt during the day (out of 10): 3
Making use of your diary
Once you have started recording your feelings, thoughts and actions in a diary, you can start to make use of it by going through and creating balancing thoughts (using any of the techniques described earlier in the chapter) for any negative thoughts you have noted down, to put them in perspective or help you realize when the negative thought is distorted or exaggerated.
Claire (continued): creating balancing thoughts to use in relation to her diary
Claire’s balancing thoughts after going through her diary are set out below. At the end of the exercise she has also added a ‘constructive comment’ on the day, which you can also do.
Negative thought: ‘Why am I always late? I’m so disorganized. They must all think I’m useless at work.’
Balancing thought: Actually you’ve had good performance reviews. It’s true that time-keeping is not your strong point. You can concentrate on improving it starting with the next week but it doesn’t mean that you are useless – the feedback you get shows you are highly regarded.
Negative thought: ‘Why do I always muck up in relationships? … How stupid I must have been not to realize Pete was seeing someone else.’
Balancing thought: Relationships are hard – many fail and others continue but in a very bad state. Yes, some are good and that’s what you want but there’s no point in being too hard on yourself. Maybe you could have realized what was happening earlier but being overly suspicious wouldn’t necessarily have helped.
Negative thought: ‘Is my supervisor avoiding me? … Perhaps I’m going to lose my job.’
Balancing thought: There are other possible explanations of why your supervisor seemed preoccupied – perhaps he has his own problems or perhaps he is just focusing on his own work! Anyway, if the worst happens and you lose your job, it’s not actually the end of the world.
Negative thought: ‘Why do I keep thinking about the end of the relationship? I ought to be able to shake off these thoughts. It’s been three weeks now. I want to move on.’
Balancing thought: What happened was stressful and it’s normal that you will think about it for some time. Three weeks is not long. You can try to find other things to focus on but it will take time. Be patient!
Constructive comment at the end of the day: Although I was tired and stressed, and indulged in some negative thoughts which didn’t help, I still did some sensible things – like taking a break at lunch to clear my head. I got through the day despite my worries and I even managed to laugh at a TV programme and forget about my problems for twenty minutes.
Looking for patterns in your diary
Another thing you can try if you are using a diary like Claire is to look over your diary entries over a period of days, looking out for anything you are doing which is helping you to feel better and act more positively. Unless there are significant downsides to those actions which outweigh the positives, make a commitment to trying them again in similar situations.
If you start to use a diary in a similar way to Claire, or if you are keeping any other kind of record of your thoughts, feelings and actions over a period of time, look through your entries for a few days then write down your answers to the five questions listed below. If this gives you some ideas for what might help to raise your self-esteem in a helpful way then try to apply those ideas:
1. What activities do you find make your mood worse or do not help your situation?
2. What activities do you find can help your mood in a reasonable way without significant adverse consequences? (Note: Do not include in your answer activities which have a significant negative aspect or subsequent negative consequence such as drinking excessive amounts of alcohol, which can lift your mood initially but then acts as a depressant drug and is likely to worsen your feelings overall.)
3. What ways of reacting to situations do you find make the situations worse?
4. What ways of reacting to situations do you find tend to help?
5. What new activities or new ways of reacting might you try out to help with your situation?
Success, aspirations and self-esteem
One thing that Claire’s diary graphically indicates is that you can put a lot of pressure on yourself if you feel that you must be successful in work, relationships or other particular spheres of life. If you place too much importance on success, then if you think you have failed this can be damaging for your self-esteem.
William James, an American psychologist who lived in the second half of the 19th century, is often cited as a forerunner of interest in self-esteem in modern times. James presented self-esteem in a formula:
(from The Principles of Psychology by William James, Chapter X: The Consciousness of Self, 1890).
By ‘pretensions’ James means your aspirations or goals. In other words his view was that your self-esteem will increase if you are successful in achieving your goals and will be even higher if you achieve more than you aspire to. On this view, however, if you don’t succeed in reaching your goals your self-esteem will suffer. In part, this chapter has been about showing what you can do to accept yourself if that situation arises and you do not meet your goals. Following James’ formula through logically you can also see that if you want to increase your self-esteem it is sensible to set realistic goals rather than over-optimistic ones (which you might not have much chance of achieving). However, I would suggest that you don’t want to set your goals too low or you may lose all motivation! It’s about achieving a sensible balance.
The ideas of Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck, as indicated in this chapter, suggest that achieving a balanced view about your own failures or imperfections, instead of attaching too much importance to success, may ultimately benefit you. This kind of balanced approach to yourself and your life can be a more secure route to a reasonable level of self-esteem than focusing all your attentions on achieving success. In the next chapter we will be looking at another aspect of achieving balance in your life – looking after yourself.
Key ideas from chapter 2
Some of the key ideas from chapter 2 are:
• Developing an attitude of self-acceptance involves recognizing that you can make mistakes without that meaning you are worthless
• Developing an attitude of self-acceptance involves adopting a less judgemental attitude towards yourself
• Practising detached observation of yourself, your thoughts and your feelings can be helpful for dealing with shame about yourself or your body
• You can use the ABC model to help you analyze negative and self-critical thoughts
• You can use a disputation checklist or the ACCEPT acronym to help challenge self-critical thoughts and create balancing thoughts to put them in perspective
• You can analyze distorted thinking patterns into different types and use appropriate techniques to tackle the types of distorted thinking that you may have a tendency towards
• Keeping a diary focusing on balancing out negative thoughts can be helpful for your self-acceptance and related self-esteem.