Watch out for these Traps
Included:
Secondary Disturbances
Advice from Ellis
Concerns from the East
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Three Minute REBT: REBT and Secondary Disturbances
By Philip Tate, Ph.D. Editor, SMART Recovery News & Views, and Author, Alcohol: How to Give It Up and Be Glad You Did One of the most important concepts in REBT is secondary disturbance: when you upset yourself about getting upset. For example, you may notice that you are anxious, then you may feel shameful about being anxious. The secondary disturbance, i.e., shame, creates an even greater disturbance than the first, and you keep it longer. If you ever tell yourself, I must not get upset, or I can't stand this depression, you are creating a secondary disturbance. Sometimes addictive behavior can be a secondary, or even tertiary, disturbance. An example is when you tell yourself, I can't stand this stress; I've got to drink. When you find yourself disputing your irrational beliefs without benefit, you also may be upset at an upset. Your secondary upset is preventing your disputing from being effective. The first step in eliminating this problem is to develop awareness of your secondary disturbance. You can recognize and accept that it is entirely possible to observe yourself getting upset and disturbing yourself about it. The second step is to do the ABC's to discover your belief that creates your secondary upset. Ask yourself, what am I telling myself that gets me upset at my depression, anxiety, drinking, etc. Next, dispute the irrational belief. For example, dispute the belief that you must not be disturbed, or that you can't stand stress (or a craving), and that you've got to drink. The resulting effective new philosophy may be something like, I can stand this stress; I don't like it, but I can stand it. A good result of this process is greater self-acceptance. You more fully realize and accept that you are a fallible creature, that you can create self-defeating feelings and acts, and that you are not damnable. With this, you will also be able to deal with your primary upsets more quickly, easily, and successfully. Reprinted from the Jan.. 1999 SMART Recovery News & Views Newsletter 
Remember to use the Browser's Back Button to Return ADVICE FROM ELLIS (except from the Albert Ellis Reader) When bright and generally competent people give up many of their irrationalities, they frequently tend to adopt other inanities or go to opposite irrational extremes. Devout religionists often turn into devout atheists. Political left-wing extremists wind up as right-wing extremists. Individuals who procrastinate mightily may later emerge as compulsive workers. People who surrender one irrational phobia frequently turn up with another equally irrational but quite different phobia. Extremism tends to remain as a natural human trait that takes one foolish form or another.
A Concern from The East from Nothing Special : Living Zen Charlotte Joko Beck In Zen practice, we tend to toss around many fancy Concepts: "Everything is perfect in being as it is." "We're all doing the best that we can." "Things are all one." "I'm one with him," We can call this Zen bulishit, though other religions have their own versions. It's not that the statements are false. The world is one. I am you. Everything is perfect in being as it is. Every human being on the planet is doing the best he or she can at this moment. True enough. But if we stop there, we have turned our practice into an exercise of concepts, and we've lost awareness of what's going on with us right this second. Good practice always entails moving through our concepts. Concepts are sometimes useful in daily life; we have to use them. But we need to recognize that a concept is just a concept and not reality and that this recognition or knowledge slowly develops as we practice. Gradually, we stop "buying into" our concepts. We no longer make such general judgments: "He's a terrible person," or "I'm a terrible person." We notice our thoughts: "I wish he wouldn't take her out to lunch." Then we have to experience the pain that accompanies the thought. When we can stay with the pain as a pure physical sensation, at some point it will dissolve, and then we move into the truth, which is that everything is perfect in being as it is. Everyone is doing the best that he or she can. But we have to move from experience, which is often painful, into truth and not plaster thoughts over our experience. Intellectual people are particularly prone to this error: they think that the rational world of concepts is the real world. The rational world of concepts is not the real world, but simply a description of it, a finger pointing at the moon... ... As we stay with it, our desire to think comes up again and again: judgments, opinions, blame, retorts. So we label our thoughts and again return into our cellular experiencing which is almost indescribable, perhaps just a light shimmering of energy perhaps something stronger. In that space there is no me or you' When we are this nondual experiencing we can see our situation more clearly. We can see that "she is doing the best she can." We can see that we are doing the best we can. If we say such sentences without the bodily component of experiencing however , we will not know what true practice is. A calm, cool, rational perspective must be grounded in that pure cellular level. We need to know our thoughts. But that doesn't mean that we must think they're real, or that we must act on them. After observering our self-centered thoughts, moment by moment, the emotions tend to even out. This serenity can never be found by simply plastering sonic philosophical concepts on top of what is actually happening. In doing the work of practice, we need endless patience. which also means recognizing when we have no patience. So we need to be patient with our lack of patience: to recognize when we don't want to practice is also part of practice. Our avoidance and resistance are part of the conceptual framework that... requires our awareness and patience
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