10-11-16
10-11-16
I really think I’m beginning to come to some understanding. Not that I verily employ Rebt, hell I don’t even know that much about it. I resist such methodologies and theories or whatever you want to call them although some ideas are pure enough without hokyness or mysticism so I take away what is reasonable.
12 steps is not reasonable and demands a form of necessary redemption that tastes a whole lot like a certain religion and literally requires you to be a morally good person or should I say pretend to be. Deny who you are, what you want, make believe you get no pleasure from the thing you are addicted to, apologize and ask for forgiveness, and become a saint. Its literally a playbook on how to be a fucking saint and there is almost no way to delete God from the equation if you have no faith. And the biggest problem is to admit powerlessness and putting your faith in something outside yourself ie God or whatever. And also its cultish, true believers are swept into a reverie and praise the word with just the same fervor of raging religiosity. Not saying that’s a bad thing, it just isn’t for me. I cannot make myself believe something just because it may help me. I cannot just create faith or pretend, God I cannot pretend or as they say “fake it till you make it”, if a seed of doubt exists the whole ideology topples from the bottom up.
I can only have faith in me and try to empower MYSELF, not somehow absorb it through the supernatural or fabricated system of beliefs some person made-up….that is unless it makes sense. REBT literally is about destroying beliefs that are incorrect, not about believing in unreasonable or unrealistic things. I’m glad I came across this and Barbara introduced this. I mean I was told about it a while ago but discarded the system as the others, but this time I think I may take the time to really understand it better. The fact that it uses a more scientific and rational approach to how thoughts behavior and feelings come about makes it a better fit.
But before I say its the only correct method or something equally foolish, I already know that I can take what I can get from it and possibly incorporate it but there is no static belief system I would ever adhere to. There are SO many ways of interpreting life and reality, from the divine to the absurd, some interesting others completely terrifying, but what a melody of divergent thoughts. So many people thinking so many different things and even within the systems they schism. I would go even further and say every human has their own independent worldview and experiences life very different from one another. I guess that makes me a true existentialism, which of course is a philosophy system itself with a variety of different takes.
Tangent aside, REBT may be helpful to root-out fundamental problems in the way I think about things and the way I interpret events and most importantly how I react. Reaction is really the key. If I were to state a belief of mine, that nothing is serious except death, than why would any silly thing other than death bother me? If that is what I belief, that everything is basically a cosmic joke; jobs, society, culture, money, sex, status etc etc, than why can’t I just live free of worry unless i’m threatened with actual demise? Of course i’m not so callous to think people who I care about getting hurt or dying is a joke too, or anyone for that matter, but that is an empathic reaction and perhaps even a moral reaction that can create an intense feeling of sadness or grief or any other emotion appropriately enough. But with that exception, why get worked up or stressed out or depressed or angry about what people say or think or even do?
I really can’t figure it out and by thinking about it and using REBT I think I have come, at least, to the understanding that this is a core...i want to say belief but it isn’t a belief, its some deeply imbedded nebulous obstacle perhaps best summed up as the question “what do I fear?” Death, I fear death, not the act of dying cause I have no control over that but the fear of being dead.
But that isn’t true, is it? That’s the big fear, or A fear, but there is more. That obstacle is in my way and I need to move it. Perhaps if I had a psych-lever.
There is nothing wrong with me, for this is the right me and if it was the wrong me it wouldn’t rightly be me. I can be no other way but I can change and if I change that too would be the right me. And if others think there is something wrong with me than they are the ones who are wrong. The lesson is, don’t go around saying “something is wrong with that person,” cause the wrongness isn’t in that person it is in the way you think about that person.
Thinking, in essence, is the problem. Thinking is my problem.
What do I fear?
