Page 52 - ALIVE CODE

DARE TO BE A.L.I.V.E. - DON’T BE A D.A.S.H.

Demand and Must Statements

There is another part of your self-talk to explore: Demanding statements-at
usually include a rigid must, should, or ought. “I must do well! You absolutely
should treat me fairly! Conditions always ought to be the way I want them to
be!” Learning to dispute these demand statements and replace them with
preference statements that express a wish, desire, want, or preference.

Feel whatever you line and don’t like, and often (not always!) express your
preferences. Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy holds that it is healthy for
you to have strong and important desires and preferences, but unhealthy to
have dogmatic demands, shoulds, and musts.

If you begin to say that things absolutely must, should, and ought to be the
way you want them to be, you may make yourself inappropriately upset.
Unfortunately, saying that something “must be” or “MUST NOT be” does not
make it so. Saying how things absolutely should be, and demanding that
they be different does not usually change them.

In fact, unfortunate events should be the way they are because nothing as

yet has happened to make them different. Later, you hope, they will be
better. But right now they have to be the rotten way they are if that's the way
they are right now!

The reasoning behind demands statements is usually weak: “It must
because it must Because that’s the way it should be. Because that’s the way
it’s done.” “I must because I should” is not much of a logical argument.

Demands are also godlike: “Because I want to be successful, I have to be.

Because I desire you to treat me well, you must do so. Because I prefer
conditions to favor me, they should do so.” You, in other words, must run the
universe!

Sometimes we learn these imperative statements from our parents, or we
make them up on our own, without any help from anyone. And we repeat
them to ourselves like some broken record when no law says that we have
to keep “masturbating.”

ALIVE CODE
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