Instructions for this Report

1. The Book?s Overall Content

-ÀÀÀÀÀÀÀ Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT)À is about analyzing feelings in a particular situation and acknowledging that you play a part in choosing how those feelings dictate your actions.À REBT is about understanding the fact that, ?You refuse to give your self...any global rating.? (13)

-ÀÀÀÀÀÀÀ Unconditional Self Acceptance (USA)À is a major topic of the book.À USA is about accepting yourself ?just because you are alive, human and unique.? (13)À It is acceptance, ?independent of your performances.? (24)À

?You may dislike what you do, but you always accept yourself even when you don?t like some of your thinking, feeling and acting.? (25)

-ÀÀÀÀÀÀÀ ?I am not my behavior?À (141) is a common theme.À This concept is about being able to distinguish your behaviors, which may be decided as good or bad, from who you are as a person.À ?You are not what you do.À You are an ongoing, living process;?À (26)

-ÀÀÀÀÀÀÀ Irrational Believing and ?musts? are the core of unrealistic expectations that causes one to inevitably fail and experience negative, unhealthy feelings.À Ellis defines the 3 major must categories as:

ÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀ -I must do well

ÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀ -Others must treat me honestly and fairly

ÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀ -Conditions must not be very frustrating or they are intolerableÀ (21)

The problem with ?must? statements is that they don?t leave room for human fallibility.À Feeling that something has to go a certain way is a precursor to inflating the horror of the consequences if it doesn?t.À The fear and anxiety of irrationally making a ?should? statement a ?must? statement also puts too much emphasis on the behavior, which has already been covered in ?I am not my behavior.?À

The opposite of ?musts? would be ?prefer.?À ?REBT practically never argues with or disputes people?s basic preferences and goals as long as they are just that, strong preferences?

-ÀÀÀÀÀÀÀ Feeling Better vs. Getting Better is the difference between a temporary solution and a permanent solution.À Certain activities like meditation, yoga, exercise, socializing and drug use can relieve stress temporarily but getting better is about changing attitudes and actions in order to cope better and avoid unhealthy, irrational thoughts altogether.À

For example, exercise is described as a feeling better technique.À However, ?devotion to exercise can sometimes interfere with your rational thinking-feeling-acting and side track you from arriving at elegant solutions to your self-disturbing.? (71)

Getting Better is not just about feeling better, but actually being able to recognize and minimize stressful and irrational reactions to life situations.À (4)

-ÀÀÀÀÀÀÀ Another aspect of catastrophizing is the ?What if?? statement.À People spend a lot of time thinking about the effects of what might happen.À They focus on ?what if? something bad happens, sometimes for things that have a slim chance of happening.À What might happen becomes this life altering, negative event that they feel the emotions of whether it happens or not.À Ellis suggests analyzing the worst case scenario and realizing that even that event has ways of being overcome.

?You can face your ?What if?? thoughts by understanding that if anything really bad does happen, it most probably has advantages as well as disadvantages.? (97)

Evaluation:

I think all of these topics are relevant to each other.À I think the common thread has to do with taking responsibility for the choices that we make after acknowledging that we always have a choice.À There are things that happen to us that we can?t control but the book emphasizes over and over that we do have a choice about how to process the things that happen to us and assimilate them into the emotions that drive our behavior.À

I like what Ellis has to say about ?musts?.À I think that spending too much energy on something that might happen is one of the major things humans tend to do that greatly effects the quality of life.À The idea of ?What if?? ties into this for the same reason.À Being able to analyze the most horrific outcome and realize that sometimes, even bad things, work out for the best is a great tool for mastering irrational anxiety.À

I find myself using these techniques more often as I get older.À My experiences have taught me that things have a way of working themselves out.À Ellis explains this as everything, even bad things, has advantages and disadvantages.À Losing a job might be a push in a better direction.À Breaking up a relationship might mean that someone more compatible is in the near future.

I think the audience for this book is people already familiar with psychology and some of the techniques Ellis uses.À I feel this way because I think the book has a lot of structural problems and contradictions, which I will discuss further in the next section, that injure its credibility as a self-help book.À The ideas are present but the explanations contradict themselves making the overall intention convoluted.À Someone with experience would be able to pick out the quality points, but someone new to the themes may wonder what Ellis is trying to convey.

2. The Book?s Importance

Some of the techniques discussed in the book to feel better have become popular activities in today?s society.À Meditation and yoga has been around for a long time.À However, now it is becoming a popular way of handling stress.À Ellis emphasizes the fact that these are temporary solutions.À I think that any relief from stress and anxiety, even short-lived, is beneficial.À The break in focus offers one a chance to reprioritize and it often does help de-emphasize irrational anxiety.À

One of the things Ellis discusses is irrational fears and how to cope with them.À He suggests something called In Vivo Desensitization.À Which is, essentially, exposing yourself to the very thing you fear in an attempt to desensitize you to the experience.À I thought this was a great concept because I have used it in similar ways that Ellis describes.À First, Ellis wants you to analyze what the fear costs you.À For instance, if flying is a fear, it?s costing you the experience of travel.À If bridges are a fear, you are probably spending time going out of your way to avoid them.À Ellis suggests going in to these fears head first.À

Let?s say that your anxiety over not being accepted is keeping you from doing something you might enjoy.À My own example would be dancing.À I have seen people dancing that are not the best at it but they enjoy themselves anyway and no one seems to be judging them.À Regardless, I feel anxiety about dancing in front of people.À However, if I go into it thinking, ?everyone is going to think I look stupid and I probably do, but I look like everyone else and I don?t care if I look stupid?, then I am expecting the worst reaction and doing it anyway.À So, I can?t be surprised and I?ll probably discover that no one even cares.À I am desensitizing myself from feeling anxious about dancing.À

An example Ellis uses is in regard to feeling anxiety about being rejected. (174)À A man who is anxious about approaching women decides to approach several women in the Bronx Botanical Gardens and talk to them for one minute each.À Since he had chosen this as a task and carried it out with a purpose to overcome his anxiety, he was much more successful at letting his anxiety go and learn that being rejected upon approaching a woman is part of the game and will happen from time to time, but does not mean that no one will ever be attracted to him.

I think that in society today, a lot of how you are perceived is who you think you are.À People cue in to the most subtle signs about how you feel about yourself:À whether you are confident, comfortable or magnetic.À How you are perceived has a great impact on the opportunities that may present themselves.À People want to be around positivity and energy.À If you believe that you are such a person, people will gravitate to you.À Every person you meet offers a handful of new experiences.À The ideas in Ellis? book that emphasize overcoming anxiety and fear are very relevant today because they are related to the issues of perception of others and one?s self.

3. The Book?s Structure

The introduction of the book is very general.À It does not give enough indication of what the book is about.À I felt as though several topics in the book were repetitive which is common for self help books.À However, The contents page suggests a natural progression that I don?t think the book delivers.À It is a misleading outline in several ways, which I will discuss further in the next section.

The book was easy to read as far as language use and physical type.À The words and meanings were simple and the type size was easy to read.À I was able to read the book in a few reading sessions over two days.À This is beneficial in a self-help book because people usually read them to get insight and attainable results.À They do not want to dissect a complicated read.À They want to be able to absorb the information and have time and desire to go back over the passages that stuck out the most for them.

The index made it easy to go back to the topics that I was the most interested in since they did repeat through out the book.À For instance, REBT is discussed several times over the course of the book.À The index lists a handful of places where information on that topic can be found.À I felt like the index was more helpful than the contents page for condensing the topics because it gave several locations where certain topics applied.

The only diagram was the REBT Self-help form on page 121.À This chart was a great way to identify certain motivations and ÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀisolate them into what is healthy and rational, and what is negative and irrational.À I found this helpful because when I used it, I was able to reduce my level of stress by identifying the things that I had control over and realizing that the things I don?t have control over.À This helped to focus anxiety on the things I realized I could change and not waste energy on the inevitable.À This is a major topic in the book as well.À A lot of stress and anxiety is brought about by a fixation on things that people can?t do anything about.À

4. Critique of the Book

I have to say that there were more weaknesses than strengths to this book.À I felt that every topic Ellis introduced, he also refuted. ÀHe, often, contradicted himself as far as positive steps toward goals and reasons why these steps don?t work.À For example, Ellis spends much of the time pointing out that stressing about events that have not happened are wasted energy.À Then he goes on in Chapter 8 to say that thinking preventatively about the future can be, ??very good, since you may thereby ward off unfortunate things that are likely to occur.? À(95)À He wants to show the reader that a lot of anxiety about the future is unrealistic and then he contradicts himself by saying that troubleshooting future problems can prevent unwanted occurrences.

Ellis also presents several ways to temporarily feel better.À He gives examples of meditation, yoga and exercise.À On one had he will praise the benefits of the results saying, ?(these relaxation techniques)À will temporarily distract you from anxietizing and self-depressing and help you feel much better.? À(71)À But, then, he retracts the credibility of such exercises by saying that such stress-relieving activity can, ?interfere with your rational thinking-feeling-acting and sidetrack you from arriving t elegant solutions to your self-disturbing.?À (71)

Ellis continues to make suggestions and then go on to explain why they are inadequate ways of dealing with feeling better and getting better.À

I, also, think that Ellis? oversimplification of the difference between feeling better and getting better completely useless. ÀHis therapy consists of making a lot of lists of what is good and bad, but not judging at the same time.À His phrase repeated in the book is, Push Your Ass.À All this seems to mean is stop talking about feeling better and decide to feel better, force yourself to feel better.À However, anyone in need of reading his book is never given the tools to learn how to do this.À Everyone who can identify their faults knows that they should avoid indulging them.À The whole battle is how to do so.À Ellis? encouragement to just do it isn?t enough for someone without the tools.

Ellis did have some good advice even if it is up to the reader to be able to take it.À He says, ?Expect considerable uncertainty ? in love, definitely; but even in friendship.? (104) ÀI think the best way to look at the future is to be flexible.À Have a goal with no certain way of getting there is a way to put all your hard work and effort into it without being discouraged by the inevitable twist in the road.

In the last few chapters, Ellis continues to overgeneralize the steps to well-being.À ?Strongly, forcefully, and powerfully take responsibility for your own life, convince yourself to act, act, act in your major long-term interest, no matter how unpleasant some of your action may be.?À (231)À This is very true and a great outlook on life.À However, it is easier said than done. ÀHow does one begin to take responsibility if they have been catastrophizing the future and over anxietizing about things that are out of their control?À À

5. Additional Observations

In general, I was disappointed with this book.À I felt that Ellis constantly contradicted himself.À I felt that his advice was reduced to statements about how someone should be as opposed to useful tools for changing one?s outlook.À He praised certain techniques for reducing stress in one paragraph and went on to explain why they are counter-productive in the next.À Ellis didn?t even explore real emotional self-exploring activities until the second part of the book.À He focused more on how not to feel and how not to go about things.À The book should have been called, Ways People Tend to Go About Not Feeling Better Which Makes Getting Better and Staying Better Virtually Impossible.

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