On a chilly November evening in 1952, a middle-aged black doorman was hailing a taxi for a white family who had just come down the steps from the Sheraton. Before anyone could stop her, their six-year-old child darted into the street. She was chasing her windblown hat directly into the path of an oncoming tour bus. Suddenly, with the reflexes of a much younger man, the doorman launched into the street, tackled the child, and rolled with her to safety.
What’s interesting about this event is the very different reactions it elicited. The doorman’s wife was furious. She told him he was risking his life on some fool stunt when he had a wife and children who needed him. “It’s just wrong; your family’s always got to come first.” A brother also disapproved, but mostly because the rescued child was white. “If you’re going to kill yourself, do it for one of our own.” The hotel manager, on the other hand, declared the rescue a “selfless act” and that year provided a rather substantial Christmas bonus. The doorman’s pastor heard the story and described it as heroic in his Sunday sermon. “Whoever saves a child,” he said, “saves the world. Because who knows which of our children will grow up to be the great healer, the great leader, or the saint?”
The same event triggered these very different reactions because of the unique belief systems through which people filter the world. Reality hardly matters. What really counts are the values and rules of conduct that you use to judge behavior. That’s why the same act can be selfish to the wife while selfless to the manager, stupid to the brother while heroic to the pastor.
Looking back, one is afforded the luxury of knowing the consequences of an act. And outcomes are the only sure form of judgment. The pastor was right. Thirty years later that little girl received an award for a major contribution to her medical specialty.
The pathological critic uses your beliefs and values to attack you. The “shoulds” that make up your rules for living form the ideological basis of the critic’s effort to destroy your self-esteem. The critic is constantly evaluating what you say, what you do, and even what you feel by comparing you to an ideal of perfection. Since you never live up to the ideal of how you ought to speak, act, or feel, the critic has endless grounds for indicting you as bad or worthless.
Consider the case of the young man who gets three As and a C+ on his report card. His beliefs about grades and success will entirely determine his reaction. If he uses the criterion of a B average as his standard for reasonable performance, then he’ll be delighted to see that he has far exceeded his goal. If he believes that a C is a totally unacceptable grade, a sign of stupidity or laziness, then his critic will have all the punch it needs to make his self-esteem feel like it went fifteen rounds with Muhammad Ali.
Woodrow Wilson brought America into the First World War in order to “make the world safe for democracy.” U.S. soldiers took their places in the trenches and foxholes of Europe believing that they were fighting against the forces of tyranny. Thousands died in the Argonne Forest and at St. Mihiel. The belief in nationalism, in the superiority of the American political system, and in such abstract values as duty and honor produced in 1917 a zealousness for the righteous war, a war that would forever end war. On the other side, young men were also dying for deeply held beliefs in German nationalism, in ideals of bravery and duty to the fatherland.
Looking backward seven decades, none of it seems worth fighting for. Why should young Germans die because of the Kaiser’s political ambitions? Why should American lives have been lost so that the allies could use the treaty of Versailles to punish and humiliate Germany and in so doing plant the seeds for World War II? Yet there is nothing new in this. Throughout history men have been dying for their beliefs, and rarely has the cause proved worthy of such sacrifice.
Why are beliefs and values so powerful? What is it about the nature of belief that makes a person willing to surrender comfort, safety, even his life so that he will not be guilty of doing wrong? The answer is that while the content of a belief may be arbitrary and is often erroneous, the motivation for believing springs from the deepest human drives.
Most beliefs are formed in the same way—in response to some basic need. Your first beliefs were generated out of the need to be loved and approved of by your parents. In order to feel safe and cared for, you adopted their beliefs about such things as how to work; how to handle anger, mistakes, and pain; how and when to be sexual; what one can and cannot talk about; what the proper goals in life are; how to act in a marriage; what is owed to parents and other family members; and how self-reliant one should be. Some of the rules and beliefs you acquired from your parents were promoted by value-laden words such as “commitment,” “honesty,” “generosity,” “dignity,” “intelligence,” and “strength.” Those terms, as well as their negative opposites, were used by your parents as value yardsticks to measure people and behavior. They applied some of them to you. And in your need to please your parents, you may have accepted even such negative labels as “selfish,” “stupid,” “weak,” and “lazy.”
A second group of beliefs is generated by the need to feel belonging and approval from peers. To ensure peer acceptance, you learn to live by rules and beliefs governing such areas as how to act with the opposite sex, how to handle aggression, how much to reveal, what you owe your community and the world at large, and what are appropriate sex-role behaviors. The approval of peers often depends on your willingness to accept the group’s beliefs. If your friends oppose American intervention in Syria, for example, there is a strong pressure to either support that belief or face ostracism.
A number of studies have shown that beliefs change dramatically in response to changes in role or status. For example, pro-union employees who are for workers’ rights undergo a change in viewpoint when promoted to managerial positions. Within six months, they have often shifted significantly toward pro-management beliefs and values. Again, the need for belonging and safety literally creates new patterns of belief in order to fit in with the new reference group.
There is a third major force that helps shape your beliefs. This is the need for emotional and physical well-being. Included here is the need for self-esteem; the need to protect yourself from painful emotions such as hurt and loss; the need for pleasure, excitement, and meaning; and the need to feel physically safe. Consider the example of the aspiring city councilman. He explains to his wife that during the next year of campaigning, he will have little time for her and the family. But it’s a necessary sacrifice, he argues, because once elected he will do so much for the community. The truth is that the few trivial changes a councilman could make might not be worth giving up a year with his children. But the truth is irrelevant. His belief is forged from a need for meaning, pleasure, and excitement.
Now consider the case of a man recently fired from his job as a bookkeeper. He reports to a friend that he was crazy to ever take a job like that, that it was “boring, soul-destroying, and politically incorrect. I’ve never met an accountant type,” he says, “who wasn’t an unmitigated nerd.” He vows not to sell out again, and some months later berates his sister for “working in some downtown numbers’ factory.” These opinions are an obvious rationalization. They are created entirely by the need to maintain self-esteem. This man must either devalue his employers or see himself as a failure.
A woman’s lover tells her that he needs three nights a week to be alone or visit friends. She says to herself, “You can’t let a man take you for granted,” and tells him that maybe they should call off their relationship. Her sudden conviction that she must assert herself is really in response to her need to avoid hurt and loss.
A man is in danger of losing his leg due to complications of diabetes. He concludes that God is punishing him for a long-standing extramarital relationship. He forms the belief that breaking off the affair will save his leg. His need for physical safety and a sense of control is generating what he would call in better times “stupid, magical thinking.”
As a last case, consider a woman who believes in full commitment to every task and hates the smallest sign of laziness. She works long hours trying to meet impossible deadlines. But her hard-work rule is really protecting her rather fragile self-esteem. Her need to see herself as competent and to feel safe from criticism is the fuel for her belief.
Since most beliefs and rules are formed in response to needs, they have nothing to do with truth or reality. They are generated by parental, cultural, and peer expectations and by your needs to feel loved, to belong, and to feel safe and good about yourself.
While the process that generates shoulds has nothing to do with the literal truth, it depends on the idea of truth for its power. In order to feel motivated to act on a should, you have to be convinced of its veracity. Take, for example, the case of Mrs. L. She is an ardent supporter of a Christian group that promotes the idea of chastity before marriage. Mrs. L. has three very strong needs that help to generate her belief about premarital sexuality. The first need is to win the love and acceptance of her mother, who is very uncomfortable with sexuality of any kind. The second need is to protect her children from environments and associations that she considers dangerous. A “strict conscience” is a good way to keep them safe. A third need is to feel a close identification with her children. She knows that they will seem strange and foreign to her if their sexual behavior differs markedly from her own. These three needs create the belief for Mrs. L. But her conviction that the belief is absolutely right in God’s eyes gives it its power. She can insist on her values because they are true, and not only true for her children, but for everyone, everywhere in the world.
This is the tyranny of shoulds: the absolute nature of belief, the unbending sense of right and wrong. If you don’t live up to your shoulds, you judge yourself to be a bad and unworthy person. This is why people torture themselves with guilt and self-blame; this is why they are willing to die in wars; this is why they become paralyzed when forced to choose between unbending rules and genuine desire.
Here is a list of some of the most common pathological shoulds:
Notice which of these shoulds apply to you. In the section on healthy versus unhealthy values, you can explore why these shoulds are un-reasonable.
You can tell whether your beliefs, rules, and shoulds are healthy or unhealthy by applying the following criteria.
A second way to measure the flexibility of your rules is to look at your failure quotas. Flexible rules include a built-in awareness that a certain percentage of the time you will fail to live up to the ideal standard. Rigid rules have no such quota system. You are crucified if you deviate one millimeter from the straight and narrow. As an example, consider the rule “I should never make mistakes.” Striving for excellence is a worthy ambition, but you need a healthy quota for mistakes and failures. Without such a quota your stress level will be high, and your self-esteem will be destroyed by the smallest error.
Consider the value “marriage should last forever.” As a rule governing your behavior, it’s unrealistic. That’s because it isn’t based on outcomes. It doesn’t take into account the fact that struggling to maintain your marital commitments may make you and your spouse unhappier than divorcing. The “marriage should last forever” rule is based on the unbending principle that marital commitment is the highest good. Your happiness is irrelevant. Your pain is irrelevant. All that counts is doing the “right” thing.
Now consider the rule “I should be honest with my spouse.” This value could be either realistic or unrealistic, depending on how you frame it. The rule might be realistic if you believe that it promotes intimacy, helps solve problems before they get too large, and encourages you to voice your needs. In other words, you can adhere to the value of marital honesty because you know it usually makes you feel good in the long run. But because your value of honesty is based on outcomes, you might not always choose to be honest. At certain times you might withhold your feelings because the prospect of greater intimacy would be outweighed by negative consequences of hurt or discord. In contrast, your honesty-in-marriage value would be unrealistic if it were based on principle rather than outcomes or consequences. You’d force yourself to adhere to the rule because it was right and dishonesty of any kind was wrong.
In the study of ethics, this approach is called consequencialism. What makes consequencialism appealing is that ethical systems based on absolute principles inevitably reach a point where some of the principles contradict each other. This problem can be demonstrated on a very simple level. Consider the conflict a child must face when trying to decide whether the highest good is telling his parents the truth or keeping a confidence with his brother. He will have to break one of his principles by either lying or betraying a sibling. The only realistic way you can escape such an ethical quandary is to evaluate the negative and positive consequences of each choice for all parties concerned.
Exercise
In this exercise, you will read vignettes about real-life situations and the values that people use to guide them. In each case, the protagonist of the story uses a rule that violates one or more of the criteria for healthy values. See if you can spot which criteria are being violated. To refresh your memory, here again are the criteria for healthy versus unhealthy values.
| Healthy Values | Unhealthy Values |
|---|---|
|
1. Flexible (exceptions and quotas) |
Rigid (global, no exceptions or quotas) |
|
2. Owned (examined and tested) |
Introjected (unquestioned acceptance) |
|
3. Realistic (based on consequences) |
Unrealistic (based on “rightness”) |
|
4. Life-enhancing (acknowledge your needs and feelings) |
Life-restricting (ignore your needs and feelings) |
Situation 1. Ellen is a thirty-year-old craftsperson. She loves working with her hands and specializes in making customized lampshades. Last year she opened a small shop and is very much enjoying her first experience as an entrepreneur. Ellen’s father is a full-time professor. He’s always been disappointed that she didn’t study harder and express a greater interest in academics. Despite the pleasure that she gets from her craft, Ellen has a nagging sense of failure. She feels that she should be teaching English, like she planned and her father wanted. She feels embarrassed that she isn’t “using her brain.” She had tried to go back to college three different times, and on each occasion dropped out. She confides to friends that in some ways her life “has been a waste.”
What’s wrong with Ellen’s values? Which of the following apply?
Ellen’s problem is that she has introjected her father’s value system without examining how it fits her unique needs and abilities. For years, Ellen has been tortured by values and rules that she never critically examined. If Ellen had developed her own realistic values, she would have recognized the positive consequences of working at her craft. She has a job that she enjoys and does well, as opposed to struggling with the rigors of an academic career.
Situation 2. Arthur has been an insurance broker for the past eight years. He has been moderately successful but has never made “the big money.” Arthur’s biggest problem is that he feels like a failure every time he loses an account. While losing accounts is inevitable and every broker anticipates a certain attrition rate for old accounts, Arthur feels that a good broker must please every one of his clients. When a client cancels, Arthur concludes that he is “screwing up” and hasn’t been sufficiently attentive.
What’s wrong with Arthur’s values? Which of the following apply?
Arthur’s rules are too rigid. He expects to be perfect, and when he is not 100 percent effective in reenlisting clients, he labels himself a failure. Flexible values allow a quota for being human. You expect to make mistakes, and so you build a realistic failure rate into your expectations. If Arthur’s values were flexible, he would find out the renewal percentages for other brokers. Then he could build a quota for lost accounts into his performance standards.
Situation 3. Every year Cynthia spends a week in Ann Arbor visiting her mother. Always she stays in her mother’s home, where she feels continually attacked and undermined by criticism. After the first twenty-four hours of good behavior, the relationship quickly degenerates to the point where Cynthia and her mom are having several blowups a day. If Cynthia doesn’t respond, her mother rebukes her for not listening. If she tries to defend herself, her mother simply shifts the ground and discusses another of Cynthia’s “failings.” This year Cynthia has decided to handle the visit differently. She stays at a motel, even though her mother insists that she stay at home. She spends more time visiting friends and taking breaks from her mom. She also refuses to see her aunt, who often joins forces with her mother for a two-on-one fight. Despite the fact that there are far fewer fights and an unusually sweet good-bye, and despite feeling safer and less beat up, Cynthia experiences guilt about her decision. “I hated myself for doing it. I ought to be loving and sort of endure things for Mom’s sake.”
What’s wrong with Cynthia’s values? Which of the following apply?
Cynthia’s values are unrealistic. They are based on the principle of doing right, rather than a realistic assessment of consequences. If Cynthia looked at the consequences, she would conclude that she felt safer and happier with her new strategy. She would realize that there was much less conflict and that for once she and her mother felt good about each other when they parted.
Situation 4. Will is an upholsterer by day, a delivery man by night, and a security guard on the weekends. He feels he has to be busy every minute in order to “achieve something in life.” Will hates “wasting time” because “I’ll keep feeling like I’m nothing till I earn some money and respect.” Will is in a relationship that he doesn’t like, but has no time to look for anyone new. He lives “on the cheap” in the “Hotel Roach Haven.”
What’s wrong with Will’s values? Which of the following apply?
Will’s values are life-restricting. They don’t take into account his basic needs for recreation, intimacy, or friendship. Will is leaving a lot of himself on the road to die in his headlong race for wealth and status.
Situation 5. At sixty, Sonya has a number of friends who’ve lost their spouses. One recently widowed friend has been phoning constantly and staying on the line for hours. The problem has continued to the point where Sonya’s husband has become quite annoyed. Recently, Sonya told her friend that she wanted to cut the telephone contact down to maybe once a week. But she felt terribly wrong and guilty. She has always believed that above all a person must be kind. To salve her conscience, she began phoning her friend nearly every day “just to see how she is.”
What’s wrong with Sonya’s values? Which of the following apply?
Sonya’s values are too rigid. They don’t allow for worthy exceptions. It’s clear that Sonya needs to set limits on her needy friend, but the rule of kindness doesn’t permit her. She needs to evaluate this situation to see whether the negative consequences make it a special case.
Situation 6. Arlene lives in a very poor school district where children have consistently scored below the national norms for reading and math. She has decided that she wants to send her children to a private school, but she needs her mother’s help with the tuition. Arlene is torn by conflicting values. Her number one rule is “get the best for your children,” but her number two rule is that “you should be self-reliant.” She’s determined to have her children get a good education, but she feels like a failure as a parent because she hasn’t the financial means to provide it. She also feels guilty that she’s “taking advantage” of her mother and “being dependent.”
What’s wrong with Arlene’s values? Which of the following apply?
Arlene’s values are both rigid and unrealistic. Being independent is a reasonable life rule, but there are times when the consequences warrant making an exception. The outcome of getting a good education for her children by far outweighs the general principle of independence.
Situation 7. Jarrett has been unhappy in his marriage for the past six years. His mother, who made many sacrifices for her family, used to say that it’s “better to hurt yourself than hurt the ones you love.” Jarrett can’t bear the thought of causing his wife pain. He imagines her alone and overwhelmed with grief after the divorce. But at the same time, he finds himself avoiding the family, working late, and being easily annoyed at home. He feels caught. Even though he’s attempting to “do the right thing” to protect his wife, he feels that he is failing her with his absence and irritation. Jarrett says, “I’m unhappy, so I keep staying out. But I’m kicking myself the whole time I’m away.”
What’s wrong with Jarrett’s values? Which of the following apply?
Jarrett’s values are introjected, rather than owned. He has never examined his mother’s value of self-sacrifice to see if it applies to his unique situation and needs. If he could look at the value critically, he might see that it does not apply to him, that he is a person who is strongly inclined to run away from emotional pain, and that it is better to end the relationship than continue the pattern of avoidance.
Situation 8. Jim is in a new relationship. Recently his lover told him that she had not been able to reach orgasm during their lovemaking. Jim has a very strong feeling that he should be a perfect sexual partner and should be able to bring his lover to orgasm at all times. Her distressing news has left Jim with a sense of failure and inadequacy. In fact, he feels so uncomfortable that he has experienced a sharp decline in sexual interest. He tells his girlfriend that he needs “space” and suggests that they spend a week apart.
What’s wrong with Jim’s values? Which of the following apply?
Jim’s rule about sexual performance is too rigid. There is no quota for anything less than perfection. Jim believes that he should immediately understand and meet every lover’s sexual needs. A healthier value would be that he should work toward understanding his partner’s unique sexual needs. He should expect this process to take time and not expect to succeed in perfect responsiveness every time.
Situation 9. Julie has recently moved to another city. She is increasingly distressed about her son’s problems in his new school. A bully has shoved and hit him in the schoolyard and has sometimes chased him on the walk home. Julie has a deeply held belief that a good parent should be able to protect her children from all pain. She blames herself and feels that she should do something to stop the harassment. She tries complaining to the principal, picking her boy up straight from school, and speaking to the bully’s parents. But the problem persists. Julie condemns herself whenever she sees the boy come home from another hard day.
What’s wrong with Julie’s values? Which of the following apply?
This is another case of a life rule that is too rigid to work. It is simply not possible to protect a child from every unpleasant experience in growing up. The value that one should protect children is a good one, but there are exceptions. There are many hurts that children suffer at the hands of their peers, and it is both inappropriate and impossible for Julie to protect her son from every mean kid.
Situation 10. Jorge owns a small factory that produces Christmas novelties. The business was founded by his father, who was a man of unlimited energy and drive. His father used to work fourteen hours a day and told Jorge that the owner must set the example “by working harder than any one else.” Like his father, Jorge puts in twelve to fourteen hour days. At thirty-eight, he has an ulcer. His marriage is strained because his wife never sees him. He misses his children and feels a growing sense of emptiness.
What’s wrong with Jorge’s values? Which of the following apply?
Jorge has introjected his father’s rules without determining if they fit him. His “work hard” rule is both unrealistic (because the negative outcomes far outweigh the benefits) and life-restricting (because it blocks his need to be with his family). Jorge has symptoms of stress, depression, and marital discord. He’s paid too big a price for keeping faith with his father’s entrepreneurial ideals.
The shoulds attack your self-esteem in two ways. First, your shoulds and values may not fit you. For example, the social mores of Cedar Falls, Iowa, may be quite appropriate for that area but serve you poorly if you move to Manhattan. Your father’s rule about hard work may have served him well, but now it’s killing you with high blood pressure. A rule against expressing anger might have worked in your very gentle family, but the same rule limits your effectiveness as a foreman. The value that you be slender and well shaped could be very damaging if you have a different body type.
The fact is that many of the shoulds you grew up with simply don’t apply to you. They don’t fit because you live in a different time and place and have different hopes, hurts, and needs from your parents. The values you’ve inherited were created by others to fit their needs in their unique circumstances—not yours. When your shoulds don’t fit you and begin to conflict with your basic needs, you are put into an impossible bind. Either you choose deprivation, the giving up of your need, or you choose to break faith with your values. Loss or guilt. If you choose to meet your needs at the expense of strongly held values, you may label yourself as weak, a screw-up, or a failure.
Shoulds often demand behavior that is impossible or unhealthy for a given individual. To illustrate how values can sometimes be impossible ideals, consider the case of Al. He’s an ex-airline mechanic who’s been drinking heavily for thirty years. He held his last job eight years ago and lives on social security disability in a downtown hotel. He spends his day in one of the plastic chairs in the lobby ruminating about past sins. He hates himself for continuing to drink, for not working, and for not putting his daughter through college. But the truth is that alcohol is the only pleasure he has. Peripheral neuropathy has destroyed his fine motor coordination, and he will never work his trade again. Al’s shoulds are demanding the impossible. They provide a daily torture. If Al could create values that fit the person he really is, he might demand of himself what was possible: to visit his daughter when clean and sober and to call her frequently to lend encouragement and support. Those things Al could do, but because his shoulds require him to be something he is not, he is immobilized to the point of giving his daughter nothing.
Rita has a set of shoulds that demand behavior that is essentially unhealthy for her. Rita believes that she should have unlimited energy to work. So in addition to caring for three children, a house, and an ailing father-in-law, she does all the books for her husband’s large construction company. She feels exhausted, depressed, and seems to fall further and further behind. “But it’s wrong not to help. And I keep asking myself what’s the matter with me that I can’t push myself and keep up with things. I’m just lazy or temperamental or something. Think of the women toiling in the fields. All over the world women toiling, and I can’t even finish his books.”
An article that appeared a few years ago in the National Enquirer illustrates this unhealthy variety of shoulds. A man had just completed building his own motor home from scratch. It was two stories, about the size of a Greyhound bus, and towed a “three-car garage.” He had worked between thirty and fifty hours a week on the project for ten years and was enormously proud of building and owning something “that no working man could ever afford.” But the cost was enormous. He’d been disabled by a heart attack, he had strained relations with his wife and family, and he hadn’t taken a vacation in ten years. His goal had become a consuming obsession. His rule that “a man should finish what he begins” had cost him far too much in terms of stress, family happiness, and time for the little pleasures.
A second way shoulds attack your self-esteem is by attacking moral concepts of rightness and wrongness to situations, behaviors, and tastes that are essentially nonmoral. This process starts in childhood. Parents tell you that you are good when you follow their rules and bad when you break their rules. You are told that certain actions are right and certain behaviors are wrong. The right-wrong, good-bad dichotomy has been built into your values and system of personal rules by an accident of language. The decision to make your bed or leave it messy as a child is lifted into the moral dimension when your parents label you as bad for your negligence. Family rules that are established to promote safety, convenience, or efficiency often get misrepresented as moral imperatives. For example, it is not morally wrong for a child to get mud on his clothes. It is a matter of inconvenience and extra work for his parents. But a muddy pair of pants can precipitate a moralistic monologue: “What’s wrong with you? Look what you’ve done to your clothes! You don’t deserve television tonight for being such a bad boy.”
Even worse is the tendency of many parents to confuse matters of taste and preference with moral ideology. Hairstyles, music, and choices in friends and recreational activities are often judged in terms of right and wrong instead of seen as normal intergenerational conflicts in taste.
Many parents label poor judgment as moral error. For example, a child who puts off a school project until the very end and is then forced to stay up late doing a rather slipshod job is guilty of poor judgment or poor impulse control (or both). But a parent who labels this behavior as lazy or stupid or “screwed up” is communicating to the child that he is morally bad. When you catch your nine-year-old smoking in the garage or playing with matches, these are errors in judgment that are dangerous to health and safety. But there is nothing moral about these issues and no badness or wrongness involved.
The more your parents confused matters of taste, preference, judgment, and convenience with moral issues, the more likely you are to have fragile self-esteem. Over and over you’ve gotten the message that your taste or decisions or impulses are bad. The shoulds your parents handed down to you made you the captive of an impossible dilemma: “Follow the rules we’ve created about how you should look and act, or be condemned as worthless and bad.”
In this section is an inventory that will help you identify some of your shoulds and personal rules. Each item on the inventory represents a particular area of your life. Ask yourself the following four questions for each of these areas:
When you recognize the presence of guilt, conflict, obligation, or avoidance in a particular area of your life, it’s usually fairly easy to identify the underlying should. For example, for the item “activities in the home” you might recall that you feel rather guilty about not helping your wife enough with the dishes and the laundry. You might also notice that you feel conflict about childcare; part of you believes you should do more childcare in the evening, while another part wants to drink a beer and read the news. The underlying should, you realize, has to do with the belief that you should split the work exactly fifty-fifty. As another example, consider the item “friends.” You might notice that you’ve been feeling a strong obligation to visit a recently divorced friend. You know that this feeling comes from a should that requires you to take care of anyone in pain.
Sometimes, despite the clear presence of guilt or conflict, the underlying should is hard to ferret out. Then you can use a method called “laddering” to reach down to the basic value or rule. An example using the item “inner experience” will show how it works. A woman filling out the inventory noted that she felt extremely guilty regarding feelings of anger toward her son. She was irritated by his remoteness and emotional unavailability, but had trouble identifying the underlying should. She “laddered” down to her basic rule by asking this question: “If I am angry at my son, what does that mean to me?” Her answer was that it meant that she was pulling back, letting go of him a little bit. She continued laddering by asking, “If I am pulling back, what does that mean to me?” She was afraid it meant she didn’t love or care for him enough. At this point she got in contact with the underlying should: that she should always feel love for a child. Because anger and withdrawal seemed to interrupt the feeling of love, they must be wrong.
A second example of laddering can be found in a young man’s response to the item “church activities.” He felt guilt and avoidance about not responding to an invitation to join the lay ministry. He asked himself, “What if I don’t join, what would that mean to me?” It meant that he wasn’t being generous with his time and energy. Again he asked himself, “If I don’t choose to be generous, what would that mean?” It meant that he would disappoint people who liked and thought well of him. It was then that he understood the should: “never disappoint someone who likes you.”
So laddering is very simple. Whenever you notice an area of guilt, conflict, obligation, or avoidance, but are having trouble identifying your shoulds, ask yourself, “If I , what does that mean to me?” Then try to honestly decide what is implied by your behavior, what it says about who you are. Keep asking the question until you’ve gotten down to what feels like a core statement, something that implies a clear value or personal rule.
Avoid these two dead ends: First, don’t answer with a simple judgment like “I’m bad” or “I’m screwing up.” Try instead to state the basis of the judgment, the value from which the judgment springs. For example, rather than answering, “It means I’m a jerk,” a more specific answer would be, “It means I’m not protecting someone in pain.” The second thing you shouldn’t do is answer with a feeling. For example, answering, “It means I’m going to feel afraid” will lead you nowhere. The object is to get at your beliefs, not your feelings.
Right now, get out a piece of paper and write down the shoulds that pertain to each item on the inventory. Naturally, some items will yield no shoulds because you simply don’t have areas of guilt, conflict, obligation, or avoidance. Other items will be extremely fruitful. Write as many shoulds as you can.
Shoulds Inventory
(If you like, you can download this form at http://www.newharbinger/33933.)
By now you have uncovered a number of shoulds that describe how you ought to behave. Some of these shoulds function as healthy guides. Some of them are psychological bludgeons that the critic uses to destroy your self-esteem.
Right now, review your list of shoulds and mark the ones that your critic has used as the basis for attacks. You are now in a position to evaluate these rules to determine if they are healthy and useful. For each should your critic uses, do the following three things:
Rebecca’s case is a good example of how these steps will help you deal with your shoulds. Her list included a should that her pathological critic used almost daily. The critic said she should weigh no more than 120 pounds, while Rebecca, in fact, weighed 135 to 140 pounds.
The first thing Rebecca did was examine her language. The phrase “no more than 120” gave the should an absolute quality. Rebecca rewrote her rule more flexibly—“I’d prefer to weigh in the neighborhood of 120 pounds.” Next, she examined the probable consequences of applying her should. Here is her list of positive and negative outcomes.
Liking her body and feeling more attractive were a big lure for Rebecca, but the negative consequences were much greater than she had realized.
She had never put down in black-and-white before all the problems that dieting created for her.
Finally, Rebecca asked herself whether the “120 rule” fit the person she really was. She had to admit that her natural weight seemed to fluctuate between 135 and 140, and only with arduous dieting was she able to get into the 125 range. Soon enough her weight would start to climb, and she would feel a sense of failure and a drop in self-esteem. Furthermore, much of her social life revolved around restaurants and shared meals. A diet meant curtailing her main way of being with friends. Rebecca’s lover was clearly attracted to her as she was, and so there was little to gain in the way of emotional or sexual intimacy from weight loss.
With great reluctance, Rebecca began to accept that the “120 rule” didn’t fit her and seemed to be costing more than it was worth.
Arthur is a high school composition teacher who suffers a continuous sense of guilt about his inability to “really teach writing.” His critic attacked him with a rule he’d learned from a beloved professor: to write decently, students must write daily. At the very least, Arthur felt that they should complete several assignments per week. But in Arthur’s large classes, he rarely gave more than two writing assignments per month. Here’s how he dealt with his should.
First he rewrote the rule in more flexible language: “I’d like my students, if possible, to have two writing assignments per week.” Then he examined the consequences.
| Positive | Negative |
|---|---|
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1. Students would get more feedback. 2. Students would learn faster. 3. I would feel successful because I see more progress. 4. My students would score higher on the state achievement tests. |
1. With five classes averaging thirty students each, I’d have 300 essays to read per week. 2. I’d lose most of my weekend correcting papers. 3. It would severely limit time with my family. 4. I’d never get to go rock climbing. 5. It would take a lot of my physical energy. |
The negative outcomes outweighed the positive, and it was clear to Arthur why he gave so few writing assignments.
At last, Arthur examined the question of whether the rule really fit him. His answer was a qualified yes. He still believed in the value of frequent assignments. But he now had an answer to his critic. Applying the rule in his crowded school would simply cost him too much both physically and emotionally.
Jamie’s critic was clever, using two contradictory shoulds so that she remained in a permanent no-win conflict. Jamie is a painter who has a good local reputation. She is also the mother of a ten-month-old boy. On the one hand, the critic told her that she should give all her available time to her son. On the other, the critic demanded that she continue to paint at the same level of productivity she had before the baby was born.
Jamie’s shoulds damaged her self-esteem in two ways. The “give everything to your son rule” made her reluctant to arrange any childcare. As a result, she felt depressed and listless during the day because there was no time for painting or recreation. These feelings led her to kick herself for being a lazy, bad mother. Jamie’s self-esteem also took a beating from the “keep painting” rule. In the evening, when she felt too tired to face an empty canvas, she kicked herself for wasting her talent and being “uncommitted” to her art.
Here’s how she dealt with her shoulds. First she rewrote them using flexible language: “I want to give most of my time to my son, but I want to keep painting as much as possible.” Then she examined the consequences of each should.
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A. Give most of my time to my son. |
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| Positive | Negative |
|---|---|
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1. Don’t have to feel anxious or guilty about turning him over to someone else. 2. He’s safer with me than anyone else. 3. He gets more attention and love from me than anyone else. 4. The baby cries when I leave him. 5. I worry about his separation anxiety. |
1. No energy to paint. 2. Seem to get depressed during day. 3. Miss painting and feeling involved in a canvas. 4. Feel stuck in the house. 5. Miss involvement with the artistic community. |
| Positive | Negative |
|---|---|
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1. The pleasure of painting. 2. A sense of meaning. 3. A break from the baby. 4. Maintain connection to art world. 5. I feel that the baby’s less safe while I’m away. |
1. Without childcare, painting would exhaust me. 2. If I got dependable childcare, it would cost $150 a week. 3. I would have to cope with anxiety and guilt about leaving the baby. 4. The baby gets less attention and love while I’m away. |
Jamie asked herself whether her should made sense for the person she was. It was clear that her needs for artistic expression, meaningful activity, and time off from the baby were being denied by the “give everything to your son” rule. She was trying to do without one of the sustaining pleasures in her life, and it was costing her in the form of low self-esteem, low energy, and depression. After several weeks of ambivalence, Jamie finally decided to get a babysitter for two five-hour periods—with the thought that she would later expand to fifteen hours if she felt comfortable.
When you have decided that a should is undermining your self-esteem, either as a general rule or in a particular situation, you need to cut it out of your internal self-talk. This means aggressively fighting back when the critic tries to hit you with your should. The best way to fight back is to prepare a one or two sentence “mantra” that you can memorize and use whenever you feel wrong for not living up to the should. You can say the mantra over and over, as many times as necessary, until the critic shuts up and leaves you alone. A mantra to combat your should would ideally include the following elements.
Here’s how mantras sound when condensed into a few simple statements.
Now it’s time to generate your own mantras. In the beginning, reserve them for your most deadly shoulds. Then, as those rules lose their power to create guilt, write mantras for your other shoulds. Having the mantra isn’t enough. You must commit yourself to using it every time the critic attacks with an unhealthy should. The critic will give up only if you consistently answer back. Remember that silence is assent. If you fail to reply when the critic attacks, your silence means that you are believing and accepting everything he says.
Some of your shoulds will turn out to be legitimate values—rules to live by that you need to follow to the best of your ability, which we will discuss further in the next chapter. When shoulds make sense, they don’t usually interfere with your self-esteem.
The only time sensible shoulds interfere with your self-esteem is when you violate them. Then your critic jumps all over you for having done wrong. If, after examination, the rule you violated feels healthy to you, the only way to stop your critic is to initiate the process of atonement. Very simply, you have to make up for what you’ve done. Without atonement, you’ll be saddled with a critic whose function is to make sure you pay and pay and pay.
Here are four guidelines to help you choose an appropriate atonement.