I am reading a book by David D. Burns called 'Feeling Good , The New Mood Therapy'. It is an exceptional book, packed full of ways to overcome depression, and I would definitely recommend it even if you're not depressed!
One of the chapters I have been reading recently is about defeating feelings of guilt, and here I will share some of it with you.
Guilt is the emotion you will experience when you have the following thoughts:
1) I have done something that I shouldn't have (or I have failed to do something that I should have).
2) This 'bad behaviour' shows that I am a bad person.
This concept of 'badness' is central to the feelings of guilt. Without this, your hurtful action may lead to a healthy feeling of remorse. Remorse or regret are different from guilt as there is no implication that your actions indicate that you are a bad, evil, or immoral person.
Even if your guilt is unhealthy and based on distortion, once you begin to feel guilty, you may become trapped in an illusion that makes the guilt appear valid.
1) I feel guilty and worthy of condemnation. This means I've been bad.
2) Since I'm bad I deserve to suffer.
Therefore, your guilt convinces you of your badness and leads to further guilt. This cognitive (thinking), emotional connection locks your thoughts and feelings into each other. You end up trapped in a circular system called the 'guilt cycle'.
If you have actually done something inappropriate or hurtful, does it follow that you deserve to suffer? If you feel the answer to this question is yes, then ask yourself, "How long must I suffer? One day? A year? For the rest of my life?" Are you willing to stop suffering and making yourself miserable when this sentence is over? This would at least be a reasonable way to punish yourself because it would be time-limited. But what is the point of you abusing yourself with guilt in the first place? If you did make a mistake and act in a hurtful way, your guilt won't reverse your blunder magically. It won't speed up your learning process as to reduce the chance you'll make the same mistake in the future. Other people won't love and respect you more because you are feeing guilty and putting yourself down in this manner. Nor will guilt lead to productive living. So what's the point?
Certainly, if your behaviour has a needlessly hurtful impact on others, a small amount of painful remorse will add to your awareness and help you not to do it again.
The 'should removal techniques' are methods for reducing all those irrational 'should' statements you have been hitting yourself with, and therefore making yourself feel guilty with.
The first is to ask yourself, "who says I should? Where is it written that I should?" The point of this is to make you aware that you are being unnecessarily critical of yourself. Since you are ultimately making your own rules, once you decide that a rule is not useful, you can revise it or get rid of it. Suppose you are telling yourself that you should be able to make your boyfriend/girlfriend happy all the time, but experience teaches you that this is neither realistic nor helpful, you can rewrite the rule to make it more valid. You might say, "I can make my boyfriend/girlfriend happy some of the time, but I certainly can't at all times. Ultimately happiness is up to him/her. And I am not perfect any more then he/she is. Therefore I will not anticipate that what I do will always be appreciated."
In deciding on the usefulness of a particular rule, it can be useful to ask yourself, "What are the advantages and disadvantages of having that rule for myself?"
Another simple technique for eliminating 'should' statements involves substituting in other words. The terms "it would be nice if" or "I wish I could" work well. For example, instead of saying, "I should be able to make my boyfriend happy", you could substitute "It would be nice if I could make my boyfriend happy now because he seems upset. I could ask what he's upset about and see if there's anyway I could help"
Another should removal technique focuses in on the fact that you don't really trust yourself. You may believe that without all these should statements you would just turn wild and go on a rampage of destruction, murder or even ice-cream eating! A way to evaluate this is to ask yourself if there was any period in your life when you were particularly happy and felt reasonably fulfilled, productive, and under-control. Think it over before you read on, and make sure you have a mental picture of this time. Now ask yourself, 'During that period of my life, was I whipping myself with a lot of should statements?" I believe your answer will be no. So, were you ding all these wild, terrible things then? I think you'll realise you were 'should-free' and under control. This is prof that you can lead a productive, happy life without all these shoulds.
Please note that some of this material has been directly lifted out of the book. I would also really recommend reading the book yourself because I have missed out a lot and adapted some of it because it doesn't make sense without the knowledge of beginning chapters!
No comments:
Post a Comment