corollaries of Irrational Belief

Some of the main corollaries of this Irrational Belief include:

IRRATIONAL IDEA 1 deals mainly with your expectations of personal achievement. In addition, it involves the importance you place on other people’s opinions of you. You set expectations for yourself and, if you do not live up to them, see yourself as inferior in your own eyes and in the eyes of others. Hence you feel that the only measure of your self-worth is the degree to which you can perform in a near-perfect manner. You feel that other people will condemn and reject you if you do not

1a. “I must have sincere love and approval almost all the time from virtually all the people whom I find significant or important in my life.” 1b. “I must be a thoroughly competent achiever or at least have an outstanding skill or talent in something important to me.” 1c. “I must succeed in avoiding noxious or unpleasant situations. My emotional misery comes almost completely from external pressures that I have little ability to change or control. Unless these pressures change, I cannot help making myself feel anything but anxious, depressed, self-downing, or hostile.” 1d. “I must never encounter events that put me in real danger or that threaten my life, as I would have to make myself totally preoccupied with and upset about them.” 1e. “I must continue to think, feel, and behave as I have in the past. My past life influenced me immensely and remains important today because if something once strongly affected me, it continues to determine and affect my present feelings and behavior. My early-childhood gullibility and conditioning still remain, and I cannot conquer my suggestibility and think for myself.” 1f. “I must find a high degree of order, certainty, or predictability in the universe in order to feel comfortable and to perform adequately.” 1g. “I must continue to rely and depend on other people. Because I remain weak in this respect, I shall also continue to need and rely on certain sets of superstitious and magical ideas in order to survive times of real stress.” 1i. “I can and should give myself a global rating as a human, and I can rate myself as good and worthy only if I perform well, do worthwhile things, and have people generally approve of me.” ​1j. “I must never make myself depressed, anxious, ashamed, or angry, for if I give in to these feelings of disturbance, I am a thoroughly weak and rotten person.” 1k. “I must never question the beliefs, attitudes, or opinions held by respected authorities or by my society, family, or peer group because they might be correct. If I do question them, people should rightly condemn and punish me.”​

​IRRATIONAL IDEA 2, we see the same negativeness and dogmatism as exist in Irrational Idea 1. Here, however, you direct these evaluations toward other people instead of yourself, and you place unrealistic expectations on others. Often humans like to feel or think that we are the center of the universe and that all other people should, must cater to our needs and whims. Naturally, when two or more persons interact, a distinct possibility exists that each of them will have this attitude. If so, conflicts can easily arise since each person has her own interest as a primary concern. You can healthily consider other people as well as yourself.​

​2a. “Other people must treat everyone, but especially me, in a fair and considerate manner. If they act unfairly and inconsiderately, they are rotten people who deserve punishment and damnation, which society should see that they get.” 2b. “Other people must not behave incompetently or stupidly. If they do, I justifiably can see and label them as thorough idiots who ought to feel ashamed of themselves and should expect none of the good things in life.” 2c. “People who have the ability to perform well must not choose to shirk or avoid their responsibilities. They absolutely ought to accept and carry out their duties. They are rotten people and should feel utterly ashamed of themselves if they don’t. People must achieve their potential for a happy and worthwhile life, or else they have little or no value as humans.” 2d. “Other people must not unjustly criticize me. If they do, they are rotten people who deserve practically nothing good in life!”

​IRRATIONAL IDEA 3 has the same basic components of the two previous dysfunctional ideas, and you may find it perhaps the most troublesome of the three. We mostly recognize the irrationality of demanding that the conditions of our environment personally suit us. Yet many people actually do upset themselves frequently and unnecessarily when these forces refuse to “comply.” How many times have you met people who view it as “unbearable” when the weather does not suit their taste?

“The world (and the people in it) must include conditions that enable me to get everything that I want when I want it. Conditions must be arranged so that I don’t ever get what I don’t want. Moreover, I usually must get what I want quickly and easily.” 3a. “Things must go the way I would like them to go because I need what I want and life is awful, horrible, and terrible when I do not get it!” 3b. “I must continually preoccupy myself with dangers and upset myself about them. In that way I increase my power to control or change them. And I must control or change them.” 3c. “I must avoid, rather than face and deal with, many of life’s difficulties and responsibilities since I need or must have immediate comfort and can’t discipline myself or go through present pain to achieve future gains.” 3d. “People absolutely should act better than they do, and if they act badly or create needless hassles for me, they are totally bad! I can’t stand the difficulties they create by their horrible conduct!” 3e. “I must continue to suffer endlessly if handicaps plague me, no matter how I acquired these handicaps. I can do practically nothing to change them, and I find that so horrible that life is hardly worth living.” 3f. “I must not find it difficult to change obnoxious or handicapping elements in my life. Such difficulties absolutely ought not exist! I find it too hard to do anything about them, and I might as well make no effort to change them since the situation is more or less hopeless.” 3g. “Things like justice, fairness, equality, and democracy must prevail, and when they don’t, I can’t stand it and life seems too unbearable to continue.” 3h. “I must find the correct and perfect solutions to my problems and to those of other people whom I care for. If I don’t, catastrophe and horror will surely result.” 3i. “I must remain a helpless victim of anxiety, depression, feelings of inadequacy, and hostility unless the conditions that cause my unhappiness change and allow me to stop feeling disturbed.” 3j. “Since I managed to come into this world and still remain alive, my life must continue forever or just as long as I want it to continue. I find it completely unfair and horrible to think about the possibility of dying and of no longer having any existence. I also find it horrible to think about the death of those whom I love. Death, except for my enemies, must not exist.” 3k. “As long as I remain alive, my life must have some unusual or special meaning or purpose, and if I cannot create this meaning or purpose for myself, I am hopelessly lost!” 3l. “I can’t stand the discomfort of feeling anxious, depressed, guilty, ashamed, or otherwise emotionally upset, and if I really went crazy and found myself in an institution, I could never stand that horror or make the adjustment back to normal life.” 3m. “When things really have gone badly for me for a reasonably long period of time and there exist no guarantees that they will change or that anyone will take the responsibility to make things better for me, I simply can’t bear the thought of living any longer and may seriously contemplate suicide.”

​Most people at one time or another hold this and other Irrational Beliefs. This is hardly criminal. We all have IBs. But we’d better keep in mind that we would act wiser and feel a lot happier if we looked for and found these​ IBs and changed them. No magic cure here, nor any formula for eternal happiness, but an effective step that you can take to assist you in stubbornly refusing to upset yourself when your strong desires are thwarted.

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