I don’t know a thing about you, but I’ll bet at least a few of these ideas have crossed your mind, generated low self-esteem or disrupted relationships. Here are 10 irrational ideas that make people crazy, based very loosely on the work of Albert Ellis.
Crazy Making Irrational Ideas
1. If people knew me as I really am, not they would not like me.
2. You must seek and find love and approval from all the people you find important in your life.
3. When people act unreasonably and unfairly, you should blame them and see them as they are, bad or deficient individuals.
4. You must prove to others that you are a thoroughly confident human being. You must be a high achiever and perfect.
5. All your emotional misery comes from outside pressures. People ‘make’ you feel a certain way. You believe you have little ability to control or change your feelings.
6. “Should statements: You criticize yourself based on the ideas of ‘could have’, ’should have’, or ‘I shouldn’t have done it’.
7. Unless you worry about and agonize over a problem it will only get worse.
8. It is much more comfortable and easier to avoid facing life’s difficulties than to face challenges directly. Ignore problems and hope they go away.
9. You keep your past fresh, because something in it influenced your life, and past actions will keep on determining your feelings and how you behave today.
10. You need to be rich, smart, powerful and attractive to be happy.
Your next step? Take some of those ideas just presented and see if they are keeping you stuck in a dysfunctional relationship or generating low self-esteem.
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This is a great post, Bill. Thanks.
Well, I have to agree that most everyone has said these things to themselves. I agree that most people including myself have sometimes in life felt these ways. I think that it is a normal part of life and often we forget that we are normal and that this thinking is not out of the ordinary.
I think a lot of these crazy points are related to me. I tend to over analyze everything and wonder what people will think of me and wonder if people will like me if they get to know the real me. Seeing all in writing, makes what I do even sound more crazy than I thought it was. That’s the sad part. But thanks for the post, I love reading this blog.